Holding Steady

There is not much new to report the last couple of days except that the stridor (breathing spells) that I wrote about last week have pretty much resolved. This is great news and it means that the "only" thing Zoe has left to deal with are the feeding issues. She is still taking < 50% of her feeds by mouth and this has held steady the last few days. The nurses assure me that this continues to be related to her prematurity and that one day soon she'll make a turn in the right direction. She needs to take 100% of her feeds by mouth before they will remove the feeding tube. When this happens, they will watch her for 24 hours and then she'll be ready to come home! It's hard to play this waiting game, but Zoe is in charge here and she is teaching us a great deal of patience early on.

Silas ended up gaining 7.8 oz in a span of 72 hours. All of our hard work force feeding him to ensure he would gain weight ended up paying off! His pediatrician was hoping for 3.5 oz so we more than doubled the goal. She doesn't need to see him again until his 1-month well baby visit (which coincides with their 40 week gestational birthday). We still can't depend on his "on demand" feeding cues because he doesn't always wake up on his own to tell us when he's hungry. We are getting good uses out of our blackberry alarm clocks during our respective overnight shifts to make sure we stay on the 3-hour feeding schedule.

They get cuter by the day so here are a few new pictures from the last couple of days.