Not a $1,000,000.00 Baby...

Well, it's been 10 months since Jack was born, 3 of that spent in the NICU.  We had always wondered what the total amount for those days, months spent in the NICU would total out to be...just curious if we would hit the million dollar mark.  Well, we received the official bill last week, he did NOT hit the million dollar mark for his time spent in there - only $590,000 - he did a pretty good job of closing in on that mark and I think with all of our other hospital stays and surgeries we may be close. I might have to add it all up just to know what the first year ended up being...no particular reason as to why I want to know, just curious I guess.  Either way, no matter what the final total ends up being, my Jack is MORE than worth every penny!  The care he received was over and above wonderful and I love the fact we still keep in touch with those amazing nurses!!

As I'm realizing that September is almost here, Jack's 1st birthday is coming up VERY soon and I am starting to work on planning it.  I look at how far we've come, starting off at a tiny 1lb 10o to now a chunky almost 16lbs and over 26in tall, off all meds except reflux ones, no lung problems, and one of the most important things is no tubes now!  It's been a long road but totally worth it!

So much fun...

Whew...what a busy weekend!  Jack got to spend the majority of the weekend hanging out with Dad - I'm sure they both enjoyed it!  Here's a quick recap of everything they did...

Friday...took an awesome 5oz of food in the morning, went to the pulmonologist, and continued on a great roll with the bottle!

Saturday...continued with awesome intake of formula from the bottle, hung out with Adam, went to Target with Dad, and enjoyed mashed potatoes and chocolate pudding!

Sunday...we all spent the morning here at home, went swimming, reorganized the living room to give Jack more rolling room and spent some time planning our projects on the house.

The pulmonologist...Jack is now OFF one medicine and his breathing treatments!!  They have also FINALLY discharged the apnea monitor.  Turns out, most of his lung problems were actually due to the aspiration rather than chronic lung disease - fantastic news!!

Still rocking it with NO tube, he's rolling all over the place now and is talking up a storm!  We swear he's said "Dada" a few times and "hi" a couple also.  He's enjoying some solid foods - definitely does not like baby food but does like mashed potatoes and chocolate pudding!  We are working on peaches and yogurt also.

NICU Picnic...

Saturday was the NICU picnic - all graduates from the NICU are invited.  There seemed to be a wide range of ages - from 7(maybe even older) down to newly discharged babies.  It definitely looked like in a couple years it will be lots of FUN!  This year it was nice to go and enjoy the park, see some of our nurses and doctors, and see some of the friends we made while we were in there.  Jack seemed to enjoy himself.  We saw Nurse Emily and Nurse Sara while we were there.  He spent some time swinging - a first! 

Also, we are in the midst of doing a wean - we are now on day 5 without the tube and amounts of formula have increased daily.  Yesterday was a big 20 oz.  As of right now, he has taken 13 oz so far today.  Our goal is a minimum of 20/day and hoping for close to 24 oz/day.  I am cautiously optimistic that we will be finished with the feeding tube.  He's doing wonderful!!  He is also rolling all over the place now and thinking about crawling...makes me wonder if the irritation from the tube was holding back some other developmental things also...we will see!  For now, we are happy he's doing so well and hoping for continued progress!!

Daddy's out of town...

Well, last week Dustin had to go out of town for work - he spent the whole week in San Antonio, TX - of course Jack and I missed him VERY much!  I even received a wonderful surprise of some very pretty roses on Friday from him for being the 'best mom' - I LOVED it!  It is wonderful to get flowers from your husband thanking you for being a good mom!!  Well, Dustin is headed out of town again today - boo!  It is sooo very rare that he has to leave town - maybe once a year - but this year it was 2x and they just happened to be within a week of one another.  I know Jack enjoyed having his daddy home again and they spent yesterday evening together while I finished up at work (it was a VERY busy day).  I enjoyed receiving this adorable picture of Jack hanging out in the grass while I was writing my notes!

Doesn't he look so big!!

The NICU picnic is this coming weekend - it should be great to see some old friends from there but we are so very bummed that Jack's favorite nurse is working that day...boo!  We did stop by and see her the other week after Speech therapy...hopefully we'll get to hang out with her again soon!!

We are attempting the wean again this weekend - going for more than one day and hoping for continued improvement - I am waiting to find out how much food he needs to take in a day's time to stay hydrated and then want to work towards the amount that allows him to continue to gain weight - he truely does much better with oral feeds when the tube is NOT in place - it causes just enough irritation in his throat to make him not want to eat.  Go figure - probably like when we have a sore throat and don't want to eat anything that day...makes sense, right?

Wean update...

Well, yesterday went pretty well.  We took the tube out early in the morning and had a fairly successful day.  Jack got better as the day went on in regards to the bottle or his honey bear cup.  We took some good bites of green beans and even ate some tiny pieces of turkey breast lunch meat!!  He sucked on a dill pickle, a strawberry, and a cheeto puff!  No gagging or crying - woohoo!!  He took a couple ounces of diluted apple juice from his honey bear cup (a honey bear bottle with a straw attached - which I adapted even more for his small mouth - OT skills coming in handy at home!) and towards the end of the day he started taking milk from the bottle!  It was very successful and our plan is to increase his days off next week to at least 2 and if that continues we'll just keep going! 

We took Jack to see the Indianapolis Indians play last night and he started taking the bottle while we were there - I got an action shot with my phone!

Wean today...

So, today is a big day - we are attempting to do a slow wean.  We went to see Dr. Escobar for Jack's NICU follow-up appointment on Tuesday and he thought we needed to do a wean to get Jack off the tube.  We started this morning - pulled the tube and we are going to email him as to what he takes for the day to determine how many days we are off next week.  Please hope for good results so we can continue to increase our tube free days till there is NO MORE TUBE!

Outside of the feeding thing (which is getting slightly better - no gagging or extreme crying anymore - he just now clamps his mouth down and we have to sneak in bites when he is smiling), Jack is doing wonderful - handling tummy time on all fours a little better and he has gone from a sitting position to his tummy a couple times this week.  No crawling yet but it seems close...he likes to do things in his own time...as we all well know. 

Taking pictures...

So, I really don't know much at all about taking pictures - I wish I did!  Our camera is awesome - we went all out - mainly for Jack (we bought it before he arrived).  Now, we just need to learn how to use it and all the abilities it has.  This morning, Dustin was holding Jack just right where the sun, coming in from the windows at the side and above the front door, was making his crazy hair shine like a halo.  It was so cool looking, so I tried to take a picture of it...Here are the 2 different pictures I took - using different settings.

Jack looks so serious when his picture is being taken - I wish I could get a smile showing those 2 little teeth!

Laughing...

Last night after Dustin got home from work we were playing with Jack upstairs and he was laughing up a storm any time he got close to Turk!  Of course we didn't have the video camera up there, so we brought Jack downstairs and got this video of him and Turk!

We never realized Turk was so hilarious! 

Quick feeding update - still with the tube (boo) but he's been taking 4-5 bites of food 2-3x/day since Sunday (yay!) with minimal gagging, no crying, but still fighting the spoon.  We are doing speech and OT 1x/week to work on this. 

Jack's doing a great job sitting up and playing, we are working on crawling and standing while holding on to the couch.  He loves playing with Austin (cat) and Austin will just let Jack pull his tail and fur without getting mad - it's great!