No longer in intensive care! Merry Christmas!

Adam is 38 weeks old (gestational age) today, or 72 actual days old, and probably weighs 1.5 kg (he was 1.49 kg yesterday and they didn't weigh him last night!).  He is getting cuter by the day.  Today he was moved from intensive care to "high dependency" care, which doesn't mean a vast amount as he can get all the care he was having in his intensive care nursery, except the stuff that they need if something goes wrong is a bit further away.  It also means we are now slightly nearer the entrance and the tea room, which is handy, I guess.  He's still on the "Optiflow" breathing support, at slightly higher oxygen levels than he was last week (30-40% now) which is probably fine as he's almost totally come off the steroids that were helping his lungs, though I'm a bit worried that he's slipping back and would rather he was going down the oxygen rather than up. He needs to wean to much lower oxygen concentrations and flow rates before he would be able to come home.  He would also need to grow a lot more (he's less than half the size he should be at his age)!  So growing and breathing are still the things to focus on in the future.

I spent half this week not being able to see Adam at all though, as I got a nasty cold, and after 65 days with only one day away, I had to stay away from the hospital for 3 days so as not to risk infecting him or anyone else. In the meantime, he had lots of Daddy-love, who discovered the art of rocking as a cross baby soothing strategy. On my first proper day back though, he made another leap forward, and was put into clothes for the first time!  This was swiftly followed, overnight, by being moved from his incubator into a cot.  He has handled this transition well, and looks more and more like a proper, though tiny, baby.  Dressing him has been delightful - he's been pretty unfazed by the process and incredibly seems only borderline small enough for his first growsuit for 3 lb babies (he must be 3.3 lb now).  Now he's in a cot he is much easier for us to get out for cuddles on our own, which we've been enjoying.  He spends most of the day asleep, or almost asleep, and usually settles well if he's sucking his dummy.  Unfortunately he's still no good at keeping it in his mouth, so keeping him settled is often fairly labour intensive, and his suck is growing ever more powerful, and noisy!  When he's awake, though, he really properly looks around at stuff and is very, very cute as his eyes are really big compared to the size of his head (and he's beautiful, but I am rather biased).  I loved coming in one morning this week to find him being dandled by one of the lovely Irish nurses, while he gazed around with a somewhat perplexed expression on his little face.

So, he's lovely, and seems to be more or less moving in the right direction, the little star!  I hope he can keep on with it.  I'd like to take this Christmassy occasion to thank everyone again for all your support and love throughout all this, and to apologise for the Christmas cards that you won't have received.  Despite not having found time to send them, this has been the year when we have really learnt to value everyone, whether near or far, and we'd really like you all to know that.

Merry Christmas!
with love from Catherine, Chris and Adam xxx

Clothes!

Cot!

Cuddles!

Dummy!

Zzzzzz....