NICU day 6

We seriously have a little warrior on our hands.

Which isn't ironic to us because the meaning of Charles is WARRIOR.
Plus, you put that together with his middle name, Hatch, which is exactly what he did...6 weeks early. So it makes us giggle with delight on how absolutly, perfectly fitting his name is for him.

So we apparently told a small fib yesterday. We said he weighed 4lb 9oz...well oopsies, he really weighed 4lb 5oz! Since yesterday, he gained 30 grams and now is roughly 4lb 6oz!!!

His bilirubin level also continued to decline, even off the bili lights, so he just won himself no more lab draws!!! Yahoo for no more blood draws! :)

He ate both bottles at 32ml/feed and continues to breastfeed really well. So this afternoon they decided to let us add one more oral feed and bumped his feeds up to 36ml/feed. We get to chose what we want to do. We can either chose to do a bottle feed OR we can do a breastfeed and if he takes longer than 5 minutes they will only give him half of his feed via the NG tube. So far he has always latched longer than 5 minutes so we are confident this won't be a problem for our little warrior.

Here is a pic of a proud papa feeding his baby from last night.

Daddy tried to give him a bottle feed at 5pm and he just couldn't seem to wake up for it. So instead of pushing him, we decided to back off and put the entire feeding down the NG tube. We pray we are sensitive to his cues and don't push him because we don't want to tucker this little preemie boy out. So we'll head back down there, well now, to do another feed. We prayed over him before we left last time that he continues to stay healthy and strong. That he continues to make forward progress each day and for the addition of this extra feeding, that he takes it like he has with everything else, with ease. We prayed specifically for this 8pm feed and for his parents, that we are given wisdom and guidance on raising him as Christ desires us to. We are thankful for the weekend because Blake gets to be here ALL weekend long and we get to do this together.

xoxo,
A, B, & C


***we just got back from the 8pm feeding, yes it's close to 11pm, you easily lose track of time when you are down there snuggling with that little cuddle bug. Anyway, he took the 36ml feed like champ! Way to go Charlie Hatch!!!