Bath Redux

Today it was Mommy's turn to give Emerson a bath, she was just as squirmy and hard to hold onto as I was.  Since Emerson is sleeping in an open crib now, she gets to wear footie pajamas and a sleep sack.  She's up to 4lbs 6oz now.  Here's a picture of Emerson and Mommy after her bath.

Both of us got our food increased today.  Our doctor wants us to keep gaining weight.  Now that I am back on oxygen, I am doing great at keeping my temperature up.  As soon as another open crib is available, I will get to try out a big girl bed too!  Our doctor and nurse decided today that we would stay on our low level oxygen for a little while since we do so well with just a little boost and it will allow us to focus on other things.
When Mommy was talking to our doctor today, he told her that there are two major hurdles we need to clear in order to graduate from the nursery to home!  We have to be able to take all of our feeds by mouth, at a volume high enough to continue to gain weight.  Our target volume is 60-70ml 8 times a day.  Right now we are both at 40ml every 3 hours so we are over half way there, but we are still taking a majority of our feedings through the tubes in our noses.  The second hurdle is that we need to coordinate our swallowing while we are eating, just plain swallowing when we are not eating, and if we have reflux.  They will know we have coordinated our swallowing when we don't drop our heart rate (brady), have a change in color (oxygen saturation drop) or have irregular breathing - these are called spells and we have to be spell free for 5 days before we can go home (right now we are still having many spells throughout the day, mostly desats where our oxygen saturation drops).  This is one of the last things babies learn how to do.