Rub-a-dub-dub

Riley continued to have trouble staying warm enough last night, and by this morning she had tired herself out, so she is back on a low level of oxygen.  The doctor decided that rather than spend all of her energy working on breathing  it was better for her to save her energy for staying warm and growing so she could move to an open air crib too.  Once she is big enough to stay warm without having to work so hard, then she can focus more on breathing.

We both continue to take some of our feeds from the bottle and are doing very well.  The nurse is going to ask the doctor if we can start compressing my feeds again, down from 2.5 hours.  It is a delicate balance - if you think of our stomachs as water balloons, we have to work on stretching our stomach and right now mine isn't having to stretch at all.  Giving me more food over a shorter amount of time encourages this stretching.  The challenge is that stretching our stomachs is sort of like eating a big Thanksgiving meal, when our stomachs are big it puts pressure on our diaphragm and makes it hard for us to take deep breaths which can cause us to spell.  Its a delicate balancing act.

Daddy did another first today...he gave the first bath to Riley!

Here's the before picture (you can see Riley is up to 2095 grams, which is 4lbs 9oz):

The during picture (which Daddy equated to holding onto a greased pig in a bowl full of water):

The after picture: