"I see the road is rough. You know I'm not giving up." ---U2

34 weeks (gestation) old today. Isaac is now considered "old". The nurses keep saying, "Now that Isaac is so old..." I have to agree. He seems ancient.

He is up to 38 mls of milk every 3 hours and is tolerating it well. Today they are going to start giving him a quarter breast milk each time. Hopefully he will tolerate it and they can keep increasing the amount. The only issue with the breast milk is that he needs more calories than what it provides. Breast milk is about 20 calories an oz. and the formula they are giving him is 24 cal/oz. They want to bump him up to the 26 cal/oz formula, but will wait to see how he tolerates the breast milk. He is 4 lbs. 1 oz and hasn't gained very much this week. He's just burning too many calories. If and when he is on full breast milk, they will have to add fortifiers to it to increase the calories so he'll chunk up even more.

He had an ultrasound of his liver this morning. No results yet. It is still enlarged from the CMV and being on the IV nutrition for so long. It's smaller than it was, but they want to make sure everything is still okay.

There's not much else going on--except him being moved to a big boy crib! :) YAY! I am super happy to see him out of the isolette to be sure. I have just always had an issue with hospital cribs. They look like little jail cells to me--maybe it's because they are made out of steel? I'll just have to make it look and feel super cozy for Isaac. It's so nice to be able to see his little face without plastic between us.

We're able to bring in our own clothes and blankets for him as well which is so fun. I've never really been a 'kootchy kootchy' cutsie baby type of person. I love babies and baby stuff is the cutest--I have just never gone ga ga over baby clothes or anything. With Isaac, I'm definitely drifting more to the 'kootchy kootchy' end of things. He's so sweet and precious and so are those tiny little preemie clothes. How can I help it?

The nurses have been great about letting us take over the space a little bit, so it doesn't feel like we are intruding so much. We're all trying to make a cozy little home for Isaac for as long as he is in the NICU. Despite how badly we want him to come home, I know I will miss this place when he does. It's where he spent the first months of his life--where we fell in love with him, got to know him, prayed for him, cried for him.

I was surprised at being a bit sad as they rolled away the isolette. It was his first little home.

I am very happy to be moving forward though. It's very exciting and Isaac is becoming so much more responsive. They said we could bring in a mobile for his crib. Just the fact that he's ready for a mobile when just weeks ago touching him was too much, is incredible.

(FYI--a few people have told me that they wanted to post comments, but couldn't unless they had a blog. Apparently I just had to adjust the blog settings. So if you would like to leave a comment, you should be able to now. :) God Bless.