First month at home

Gabriel came home from the hospital a day before his 5 month birthday. You can read about his hospital days on his CaringBridge journal.

Gabriel has been home from the hospital for a little over a month now. He just had his 6 month birthday, but in developmental time, he is only two months old. We have seen a lot of changes in him in just this past month. He has started smiling quite a bit; we noticed the "real" smiles right around his Chrismation in October. He is also very active and social in the mornings. He enjoys kicking in his bouncy chair and waving his arms around, which is much more activity than he was doing in his hospital crib. He has grown from over 10 lbs. to over 12 lbs. and has gained an inch or two in length as well. That's a long way from his birth weight of 1 lb. 6.9 oz. and 12.5"! He currently trends just below the 50th percentile on the WHO growth curves, and we're watching him closely.

His current challenge is still his eating ability. He came home with a gastrostomy button so that we can get food directly into his stomach if he is unable to take it all by mouth, and we do this at every feeding still. He is using a super-easy bottle called the Habermann that lets him get milk just by compressing the nipple. Of course, if he sucks, he gets a lot more! His volumes have slowly gone up. At the hospital, we would see days where he would take nothing at several feedings in a row or only take 20mL or less. Now, he does eat at every attempt (we feed him on a schedule four times during the day) and his minimums are around 30mL, so he is improving, but slowly. He gets his nighttime milk via a feeding pump plugged into the gastrostomy button, so he sleeps through the night. We didn't want to fight with trying to wake him up at feeding times overnight, since that didn't work so well in the hospital. Let him (and us) sleep! Every once in awhile he goes into what we call "vacuum pump" mode where he can take down over half his bottle in less than 10 minutes. We see this behavior once or twice a week, but it seems to maybe be happening a little more often than before. It's still a very slow process though. He has been seeing his hospital occupational therapist since discharge, but tomorrow, he will be evaluated by the local Birth to Three program who will hopefully keep working with him on bottle feeding as well as muscle development.

We are very happy to have him home. It's so nice to not worry about getting through downtown Seattle traffic every day and having to make it to the hospital for his care times. We set the schedule. I'm slowly adjusting to being a stay-at-home mom for now. It's quite exhausting, especially emotionally, but I'm planning on returning to my two-day-a-week job at the zoo in about a month so I can have some away time in a job I enjoy. Every mommy needs some mommy-time, right?

We will be posting some short Gabriel updates, some long ones, but at the very least a monthly update for those that want to keep following his progress.