Thanks for following Josh!

Thank you everyone for following Josh's story while he was in the NICU. Now that he is home and doing well our days are full with feeding, changing, playing and sleeping. This will be our last post but we will try to send out pictures and post updates on Facebook.

Josh recently was checked out as the cardiologist and everything looked great with his heart. He is now concentrating on growing and gaining weight and we think most of his appointments from now on will be routine. Soon he will have an evaluation by a physical therapist, as part of the Colorado Early Intervention program, and they will assess whether or not he needs any additional therapy moving forward.

He is now 7 weeks adjusted and weighs 10 pounds and is 22 inches long. All in all he is a happy little boy.

Figuring out a schedule

In the last week Josh has gotten better at sleeping at night but has shifted his time of fussiness to the day, but at least he is sleeping a little more at night. Right now he wakes up like clockwork every 3 to 3 1/2 hours and is ready to eat. We have discovered that we need to burp Josh completely or his fussiness increases at night. This also happens if he has extra gas so we have tried gas drops intermittently. This can be quite a challenge because sometimes it can take 30-45 minutes to get a burp. We have also been using a great swaddle called the "Miracle Blanket" which is basically a straight jacket for babies.

After his last doctor's appointment it was determined that he still needs some extra calories to gain weight so he is getting a mix of 24 calories hypoallergenic formula and breast milk. We hope this will help him gain weight and keep him around the 50th percentile line. He is a very active boy but doesn't like to eat a lot so it's hard for him to maintain his weight gains.  Because of his time at the NICU working with physical therapy he already can hold up his head about 80% of the time, he can push up on his arms when doing tummy time and has even rolled himself over after being placed on his small tummy time bolster.

This last weekend we had a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Jorgensen and spent some time going on walks and hanging out with everyone at Grandma and Grandpa Yeager's house.

Sleepless Nights

Josh is still having a lot of trouble at night, in fact, he rarely sleeps at all which of course puts a lot of pressure on us. After midnight he turns into a different baby who won't sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time, screams, and flails around. No amount of swaddling or shushing can calm him down. Needless to say this is hard on us because one of us has to be up with him all night and the second we lay down to rest is when he starts crying again. Our best guess is that he has reflux and gas but we'll have to discuss it with the doctor again. If anyone has any advice as to how to deal with an extremely fussy baby it would be appreciated.

Otherwise Josh is doing well and we are coping with the lack of sleep.

First Week at Home/Four Months old

Josh has had an interesting first week at home with some ups and downs. He has mostly adjusted to the new environment and to being with mom and dad all the time. He still has some trouble sleeping, especially at night when he gets colicky and can't relax. This is mostly hard on us because we don't like to see him in discomfort.

On Tuesday Josh had some bloody stools and we had to take him to urgent care in the middle of the night to get him checked out. The doctor seemed to think that this was a reaction to the formula and he has been placed back on a hypoallergenic formula which should be easier for him to digest.

Today he got checked out by the pediatrician and he has gained 6 ozs in the last week, weighing in at 8 lbs 11 ozs. Next week he will get his four month checkup and his next round of vaccines.

Josh's first days at home

Welcome Home Josh

Josh was discharged yesterday afternoon from the hospital and is adjusting well to life at home. It's a little different environment with less light, noise, and people so it will take him a little while to get settled but so far so good. We are also all adjusting to having him home and learning his sleeping/eating patterns. Right now he is waking up every 2-3 hours and then eating smaller amounts. We are shooting for a goal of 270 mls every 12 hours. Caleigh (our cat) is cautious around Josh but mostly treats him as a non-entity.

Today Josh went to the pediatrician office and got a clean bill of health. He will continue to see the pediatrician once a week for the next month. At the end of October we will take Josh to see the cardiologist in Denver to look more into his ASD vs. PFO.

Trying new things

Josh is still a "feeder/grower" and working on taking full feeds and we are trying new things to get him home soon. Because he is full-term they are now letting him sleep up to four hours at a time and then hoping he'll eat more when he is awake. Unfortunately he hasn't taken extra amounts yet to meet the prescribed volume, but we are hoping that if we try this for a few days he'll start to take larger volumes when he is awake.

Tonight we are trying what they call "rooming in" where Josh will be hooked to a portable monitor and will stay with us in the family room where we will care for him overnight. We want to see if Josh will eat as well for us overnight as he eats for the nurses.  The nurses will still prepare his milk for us and be available for an emergency but in general we will be on our own.