Charles in Charge

After a slow first two weeks, Charlie made some great progress this weekend.  He’s been eating about half of his food orally, and he has to eat all of it orally before he can go home.  He would take a feeding or two from a bottle, and then be too tired for the next one and take that meal through his tube.

Starting at 5am on Saturday, he has taken every meal orally.  He eats every 3 hours, so that’s a lot of meals!

To be discharged, he needs to continue eating orally, and outgrow his acid reflux spells which can dip his heart-rate and breathing too low.  He also has to maintain his temperature, which he’s very close to doing.

He doesn’t have a target weight for discharge, but he’s started putting weight back on and he’s up to 4lbs, 5 ounces, which they are thrilled with considering he got down to 3lbs 8oz after birth.

It’s still early to say when he’ll be home – I’ve been saying “2 more weeks” for 2 weeks now, so I’ll stop saying that.  But he’s finally showing some progress, which is what we need to start gauging when he’ll come home.  If we can continue this progress for a few more days, we might get a better picture of when he can come home.

Thanks to all of our family and friends for the cards, flowers, meals, phone calls, texts and well wishes.  We can’t wait for all of you to meet Charlie!

-Scott, Anne and Charlie