Rest and Grow! Day 66!

3 lbs 10 ozs

Yes I know repeat titles. But that is all that is left to do. He is growing like a weed and they are working to just pump him full of breast milk now so that they can meet his growing need for nutrition. They have made an increase to 30 ml every 3 hours now with that 30 ml going in over an hour and then a 2 hour break. Do you see the trend? He is going to be a preprogrammed eating machine when he gets home, kind of nice, this will reduce randomness and should bring some pleasant harmony to the feeding plans. 

I did hold him today although it was very short. The ophthalmologist is going to be here today to look at his eyes. With that said at 1 pm they had to put him in the isolett and shut all the lights off so that the nurse could instill some eye drops to dilate his eyes. The eye doctor is supposed to be here at 2 pm so we are planning to hang out here until they come because we have never been here when they have, rumor has it, it is not very pleasant to watch because they have to put springs in there eye lids to keep there eye's open and babies don't really like that to much. So it is super gloomy outside today and now we have to sit in the dark in his room, blahhh, talk about depressing. 

There appears to be less swelling his his eye's today then usual so that is exciting, I hope it really comes off and stay's off. I was talking with his nurse yesterday about the swelling and she said at this point that it really isn't very common and she wasn't sure why he had it so bad. So it really doesn't seem to be affecting him that much so that is good and hopefully we will see a nice steady drop. I think it had to do a lot with him being on SiPAP and  CPAP so long that the straps of the mask caused the swelling. 

I can't think of anymore changes than that. We have been working very diligently at home to get his room all done. It started out as a simple project of putting up a wall and now has become like a complete remodel of the entire room. So many new walls up and I just finished the bulk of mudding them, they are ready for paint. The project isn't really that bad except for it is happening in our living room which means that our front room is a mess and second we have a real hard time getting anything done when Joey is awake, therefore we have to start work after 10 pm when he is in bed. So we are up till 2 am every night working so that it will be done when he gets home, craziness. In the room that is becoming Calen's there was large shelving system that was for us a book shelf. Pulling everything off of it really made me sad because I was able to look through all the book's Holly and I used to read but has went to the wayside  with just being so busy with life. A lot of the books we had on the shelves for stored in Rubbermaid's headed for the garage, but I took all of our good books and built a new book shelf last night to put them up in our bedroom. Maybe sometime we will actually start reading again. 

Our nurse is rather hilarious. Her name is Candice and the nurse practitioner was Caroline, and of course Calen is Calen so there was all these C's up on he bored. She decided to fill in C's for the respiratory therapist name's as well so they went by CRachel and CSean today, they were completely satisfied with this. 

Ok so we waited it out for the eye doctor to come in and they did his eye exam. It actually wasn't that bad really. They put the little device in his eye's to hold it open, then used a cotton ball swab to kind move his eye around while they look. They said that babies normally cry when it is happening but then quickly relax afterward. It didn't really seem to bother him at all though, he took it like a champ. The results though were not so great. He is actually starting to develop some Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). He was getting 0's but they have since increased to 1. So right now they will do nothing, they will check him again next week. Doctor said if it continues to worsen then possible laser surgery to fix it, we shall just wait and see. There is a association though that babies who are on oxygen for a long period of time have increased problems with ROP.