I finally feel like a mom! I know sounds funny considering that my son is 22 days old, but I feel like I am finally a parent! I'm not sure how to truly explain this, and unless you've been a NICU parent, I'm not sure you can understand what I am saying. For 21 days, I have had to look at my son in an incubator, wearing only a diaper, watching someone else feed him. Today, I walked into Will's room to find that the nurse had dressed in him a pair of pajamas in preparation to move him to an open crib. Then, I was able to nurse Will without any help and he did great! He nursed for about 45 minutes and when he was done, he went into a milk coma! This meant that he didn't need to be fed through his tube. I was able to produce enough nutrition to satisfy my son. Yes, I have been pumping milk and Will has been receiving it through his tube, the fact that he could feed from me on his own was amazing! After Will finished nursing, he fell asleep on me, and it made me have a flash into the future and what the next few months will bring. I finally realized that he won't be in the NICU for forever. One day, and I hope one day soon, Will will come home for good!
Of course I made it to the hospital for rounds with Will's medical team, and the doctor said that we were going to stay the course and listen to what Will is telling us. He had been doing really well on 2 Liters of oxygen, so he was weaned to 1.5 liters and tomorrow he will go to 1 Liter and change over to a regular nasal cannula. He won't need the high flow anymore. The doctor also said that it was fine to start weaning Will out from the incubator. I am thinking that by 11:30 pm tonight, he should be in his big boy crib.
Tonight Will lost some weight. Last night he was 1905 grams which is almost 4 pounds 4 ounces. Tonight he weighed 1880 which is 4 pounds 3 ounces. The nurse said that it is expected for him to lose a little weight since he has started nursing and that burns a lot of calories. Once Will gets used to nursing, he will gain weight again. Also tonight, Will tried to nurse again, but I think he was so tired out from earlier that we weren't as successful. He was able to latch on and make good attempts at sucking, but he was a sleepy little guy. He couldn't stay awake too long to nurse so he received his feeding in his tube. I'm okay with the effort and I know that we will try again tomorrow. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! 
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