Sunday, February 20, 2011

Scar is healing nicely


Thinking hard and eating fingers


Working out


Cereal face

Caleb had another great week. We are declaring that he is no longer throwing up. He spits up every once in a while, but we haven't a clothes-soaking incident in at least a week. We are thinking that the increase in his Zantac dose, the elimination of the oxycodone and/or his recovering from the stress of surgery are the reason for the great change.

When the visiting nurse came on Thursday, Caleb weighed 12 pounds, 9 ounces and his oxygen saturation was 81%. Everything looked and sounded good.

Caleb had cereal for the first time on Tuesday. He did a great job and seemed to like it. He moved the cereal around in his mouth like the other kids did and didn't choke on it, so we think his feeding issues are limited to sucking.

We haven't made much progress with the bottle, but he does tolerate the nipple being put in his mouth better. So far, his best performance has been 10 cc's. Everyone is still hopeful that he will get the hang of it.

We have been working on developing Caleb's upper body strength. His chest muscles are still pretty weak. His neck is quite strong, but he does not push his chest off the floor with his arms like he should. His weakness in this area may also be affecting his ability to drink from the bottle.

Everything is going very well and with the exception of the NG tube and his medications, he looks and acts like a very happy six month old.