Day 45 & 46

Nate is growing like a weed!!! He flew past the 2 lb mark yesterday weighing in at 2 lbs 2 oz. This morning he decided to get almost half way to 3 lbs. You read that right, Nate's weight this morning was 2 lbs 6.4 oz!!!! Now, the doctor isn't convinced that this is real weight. He thinks most likely it's either fluid build up or scale error but we're going to see what he weighs tomorrow to know for sure.

Nate is also starting to grow in length. He was 11 1/2 inches long (3rd percentile) when he was born. We knew we had no hope of having tall kids but Todd started to get concerned when he dropped down to the 1st percentile. His poor growth curve for length was a flat line. He finally had a growth spurt though! Last week he measured in at 12 1/2 inches and this week he was 13 1/2 inches. Now Todd's convinced we've got an NBA player. I'm not so sure :)

Other than some major growth, the past couple of days have been quiet. Boring is good in the NICU! Health wise, Nate has been doing really well. Normal naught boy behavior has been a problem though. I think he has decided that now that he's 2 lbs he's too big for all of the silly hospital stuff. He has become very good at pulling out his feeding tube. The nurses try and tape it down but Nate always finds a way to get it out. He pretends to be sucking on his thumb and then hooks it under his tube and gives one big pull. He has also decided that he no longer needs his CPAP mask. All day today he would grab the mask over his nose and push it off to one side, just enough for it to be useless. His oxygen levels have been going down more often today so we started watching him. Sure enough, every time he'd have a spell, we'd look in and his mask would be off. Naughty boy!!

I only have 1 picture of Nate to share today and it requires a little explaining. Nate has had many roommates during his 6 weeks here. Most of them are here for just a few days and then get sent home. His latest roommate came in last week. He is a full term baby and quite big but he has a lot of health problems and will be here for a while. He had surgery a couple of days ago and has been been in quite a bit of pain. He's been sedated for the most part but he'll wake up every once in a while screaming. This kid is loud!! The doctor tried cutting back on his pain medication today which they quickly learned was a big mistake. He screamed for an hour and a half straight. Todd peeked in at Nate during the chaos and found him like this...