June 25, 2012- 3 weeks old

3 weeks ago at 6:31am, I gave birth to a wonderful and sweet baby boy.  To celebrate his 3 week birthday, Will was able to breastfeed for the first time!  I'm not talking about practicing after I pump, I'm talking about true breastfeeding!  The nurse said not to expect much since this was the first time, but Will did great!  The plan is to let Will nurse once per shift and when he gets the hang of nursing, he can move on to the bottle once a shift.  After he masters this skill, he can nurse or take a bottle twice per shift, then 3 times per shift and then on demand.  These are the four stages of feeding in the NICU.  Once he has mastered the feeding stages, he can come home!  My awesome nurse today said that it could take 2-3 weeks to master these skills. 

Also today, Will's oxygen was lowered to 2 Liters from 2.5 Liters.  He did great with the oxygen wean and he probably could have been weaned some more, but his medical team is being conservative with his oxygen wean and Brandon and I are just fine with that.  After he weaned down the last time, and had to go back on high flow, I would rather go slow than too fast and have him have another setback.  The medical team will make the decision in the morning whether to wean him again tomorrow or not.  I don't see why they wouldn't wean him down to 1.5 Liters.  I guess we will have to wait and see.

Finally, Will was able to be held by more people than just Brandon and myself.  My friend, Laura and my niece, Aubry were able to snuggle my little man.  He did pretty well being held, but because of all of his activity in the morning, he soon grew tired and I had to put him back in his box.  I was sad that Josh, Aubry's new husband, wasn't able to hold Will.  He will have to be first in line next time he and Aubry are in town.  Brandon and I have to watch to make sure that Will doesn't get too over stimulated with his new surroundings and his new privileges.  We have found that when Will's respirations go up and his oxygen saturations go down, that he needs to go back in his incubator to rest.  Will is really good at letting us know what he needs from us.