Happy First Birthday!

Gabriel just celebrated his first birthday. He's come such a long way from that teeny tiny child covered in tubes and wires; he's developed into a vocal, playful little boy. His official day-before-birthday weight is 18 lbs., 6 oz. That's miles ahead of the 1 lb., 6.9 oz. we started at!

 We had birthday Skype calls with the out of town grandparents and his younger-older cousin (Heidi was supposed to be born first, but Gabriel stole the show), and yesterday we had a family birthday party at the in-town grandparent's house. There was cake and everything, but since he can't have that yet, Gabriel's favorite part was the tissue paper from the presents.

We have come out of our RSV seclusion and we take Gabriel quite a few places now. Church, stores, other people's houses... It's really nice to relax the hyper-vigilance we've been practicing since the fall. He is quite the social butterfly and is very good at flirting with the ladies. He has one of my co-workers completely smitten and is able to distract the entire church choir with his antics. Being so social also means that he's becoming more attached to us. When we started, he was okay being held, but sometimes you really did have to just go put him down and leave him alone to get him to settle. I think this may be a throwback to the NICU where he spent a lot of alone time because the nurses have several charges and he probably had to learn to self-soothe. Now, he gets upset if you put him down to play and don't get down on the floor to play with him. And he likes being held more and will raise his arms when you go to pick him up. He is still a slippery squirmy little dude -- being held is still playtime, not sleepy/quiet time -- but he seems to enjoy it.

Over this past month, I have been feeding him more and more "real" food. Since we are supposed to keep up with the formula, it means feeding him 7x during the day, but I am trying to show the dieticians that he does best on solid food. And he does. Very rarely does he throw it up -- maybe just a small amount once a week if that. The formula still comes up at least once or twice a day, but since we are on an hour long pump cycle and I've added probiotics into his daily regimen, it has decreased in volume. We bought a magic bullet blender so we can start making our own baby food/blends.

Both his therapists are super proud of him. He's doing crawling precursors (i.e. on hands and knees and rocking) and is good at manipulating baby toys which bodes well for his fine motor development. He will have an official review next week. He is also becoming much more vocal and varied with the sounds he makes. Playing with his "throat" sounds -- growling, yelling -- is his new thing. Yeah, those lungs are going to be just fine.

I've saved the best news for last...over the past several days, I've seen an increase in having him voluntarily take the spoon without trickery involved. Today was especially impressive. I would put the spoon to his mouth, gently hold his hands out of the way and say his name and click my tongue to get his attention, and after a little bit, he OPENED HIS MOUTH, LEANED FORWARD AND TOOK FOOD OFF THE SPOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Several times!! I am floored. This is awesome. I hope this behavior keeps going!

For the animal trainers and behaviorists out there, here's some other info. When he took food off the spoon he would gag about half the time. So, I started demonstrating what you are supposed to do with food: holding my mouth closed and saying "mmmmmmmmmmmmm" very loudly. Initially, he would take food into his mouth and hold his mouth open, not knowing what to do with it, so this method eventually helped him figure out how to close his mouth and suckle the food back to be swallowed. Now, even though he closes his mouth, he still gags sometimes like he forgot how to deal with the food. So, I am combining the startle response I use with the dog with the "mmmmmmmmmmmm" to get him to combine all the parts of taking food into his mouth and swallowing together. When the dog does something incorrect, I use a loud "uh-uh" to startle her out of the behavior and get her looking back at me. It works quite well. When I say "uh-uh" now, she usually immediately sits and looks at me like "what did I do?" Anyway, I've been doing this every time the baby gags, followed by "mmmmmmmmmmmm", and, believe it or not, it works! He quits gagging and swallows. Ah, the principles of behavior modification in action.

We have our next GI appointment next week and we'll also be meeting the new pediatrician. I will definitely be talking to the dieticians about moving off formula -- maybe moving onto fortified cow's milk? I don't know, but I do know I will be doing more real food with him, even if it means keeping up with the extra feeds to do it. We've also re-applied for Medicaid, and hopefully they'll take our monthly medical expenses into account, otherwise we make just a little bit too much to re-qualify.

Right now Gabriel is napping and so will no doubt be singing along with the choir during tonight's service. Baby's first Holy Week and Pascha! What better way to celebrate Christ's Resurrection than with His little angel miracle baby.