15 and 16 weeks

Well, I guess I don’t have pictures from 15 weeks old.  (I think I do, but I’m not sure where they are). 

Anyway, Hank turns 4 months old today.  Really, he is 4 to 6 weeks old developmentally, if you adjust for his actual due date.  He really has been growing up a lot and despite still being in the hospital, is getting his own definite personality. 

Health wise, he is doing pretty good.  Looking to come home in the next few weeks hopefully. 

What’s going on?

• He’s on 2.5 liters of high flow oxygen, his lowest yet.  Doing well on that.  Just weaning very slowly.   He does get an inhaled steroid twice a day to see if it will help with his lung disease.  We will see. 
• He gets to take his feeds from a bottle and is allowed 30 minutes to take his full feed.  After that, he has the rest as a gavage feeding through his NG tube.  I think on last report, he was taking about 70% by mouth, which is great.  Most of the time he doesn’t is because he is asleep.  Unlike everything else in his life, this is one area he hasn’t struggled too much!  Lucky us.
• He is slowing getting off his diuretics and allowing his body to adjust to that.  We will see how that goes.  We watch his weight gain and hope he doesn’t gain too fast. 
• He is finally off the morphine completely.  I’m not sure how much he likes that, but he does have ativan to help him compensate for the anxiety and agitation that it causes him. 
• Pacemaker is working great.
• Heart looks good.
• Hank does have an inguinal hernia.  Poor kid.  Surgery consulted and said that it is large, but easily reducible, so we will have surgery to correct that when he gets a little older.  Maybe 6 months or so.  

Hank is really waking up and interacting a lot more than he used to.  He likes to stand up on his feet and look around at everything. 

Hank with Aunt Lori and Uncle Nate visiting.