My camera is on the fritz right now, so here is a picture I stole from Grandpa Dougherty.
As you can see from his picture, Caleb is growing and getting more social. He has started to coo frequently and usually smiles when he is the center of attention. He likes to be held and to watch people.
His heart catheterization is scheduled for Wednesday morning at 8:30 a.m. We will check into the hospital on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. The purpose of this procedure is to check out his heart in depth and check out the pressures in his lungs. The pressure in the lungs needs to be below a certain level for the next surgery to work.
The visiting nurse checked Caleb out on Friday this week. He weighed 10 pounds, 6 ounces. Everyone is very happy with his growth rate. He has actually grown enough that we got to increase his feedings. He now gets 80 mL every three hours. We have noticed that he is now starting to get hungry, instead of just being fed when the clock says it is time to eat. He still doesn't wake up for his middle of the night feedings, though. That is fine by us - he's still getting fed and hopefully his good sleeping patterns will stick as he gets older!
Caleb's oxygen saturations were back up to the mid 70's to 80. He definitely looks much better and seems to be kicking the cold. He coughs every once in a while, but he seems much less congested. So far, so good!
Caleb is making progress drinking from a bottle. Up until this week, his record was 17 mL and that was while we were still in the hospital. On Wednesday, he took 27 mL at one feeding. He went right back to not being interested until yesterday when he took 28 mL. He fell right asleep both times, so it must still be a lot of work for him. At least we know he can do it and hopefully as he grows stronger and gets a more efficient sucking pattern, he will be able to take more by bottle.
Caleb is on track to have spent 47 nights at home before heading back to the hospital and we couldn't be happier. We know of a lot of families that made return trips a whole lot sooner. We feel so blessed to have him here as a real part of our family. We know that we have many more nights apart, but in the end, there is a good chance that Caleb will get to grow up in our crazy family!
I will try to post this week on the results of the heart catheterization.
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