1650 grams... almost quadruple his birth weight!

Jake is changing so much now every day. He is now 3 pounds-11 ounces and cuter than ever!!! He is becoming more and more baby-like every single moment. So much has changed over the past 2 weeks I thought I would quickly share it with everyone!


1. He now opens his eyes all the way and looks around the room as if he is checking it all out. He has good eye check-ups and bad eye check-ups still. Even after his laser eye surgery he isn't out of the woods with his eyes. They ate constantly watching the blood vessels in his eyes to make sure they grow where the doctors want them to grow. But he is definitely making eye contact with us and seems excited to see us when we walk up to his crib! It's as if he knows that whenever we show up he will get picked up!


2. Going with the last one he is starting to recognize things and us. We can tell that he loves it when Rory and I get there because he sees us and then starts flailing his arms around and sometimes he forgets to breath he get's so excited. His eyes get enormous. 


3. He also loves his new crib and mobile. The mobile has wild colors with weird looking animals on it that spin around and Jake just lays there and watches it go around and around. 


4. He also has his boppy pillow in his crib now that they can prop him up on so he can see people walk around as he's awake. Jake loves this. He is very inquisitive and likes to be a part of everything. His crib is right by the nurses restroom so everyone always makes sure to stop and talk to Jake on their way in. They have talked about moving him to a quieter location but I wonder if he would get bored anywhere else. 


5. Jake has mastered the art of sucking on a binky even with 2 big tubes sticking out of his mouth. It amazes me. He has now started receiving 1 ml of milk through a syringe every 3 hours. This helps him learn how to swallow and it also wets his throat a bit. The Anderson tube is still sucking out everything in his tummy but the feeding tube that he has bypassing his tummy is now giving him 10 ml's per hour which turns into 8 ounces of hind milk a day. 


6. Jakey is receiving less and less medical intervention each day. The doctors monitor every single thing about him and as he gets older his body is starting to function better and better on it's own. 


7. Jake is also starting to control his body motions. He can turn his head all the way from one side to another and can also push his head away from me as we're cuddling. His neck muscles are getting stronger and stronger. He is starting to have this habit of pulling out his feeding tube and Anderson tube every day which is NOT a good thing. But it is kind of encouraging to me that he realizes that he doesn't like the tubes there and he wants them out. The problem is that the nurses are running out of ways to keep the tubes down his throat. He is finding ways to get the tubes out no matter what technique they use to put them in. 


8. He is also reaching out to hold our fingers and this toy that I bought him. I am so excited when i see him interacting with things. My worry from the beginning was that Jake wouldn't be a normal baby, and that he would have everlasting problems that would cause him to be miserable his whole life. But I am getting more and more hopeful that he could be very normal. 


9. Jake is 2 more steps away from just being on oxygen. Right now he is on oxygen that his hooked up to a humidifier. It stinks because sometimes if we move him before emptying out the condensation we flood water down Jake's nose and then his heart rate drops and it really upsets him. So I cant wait to get rid of the water portion! 


10. Jake CRIES!!! and it sounds sooo good. Sometimes I wait to put the binky in his mouth because his cry sounds so good to me. I like that there are things that make Jakey really really mad! That means that his brain is developing right. It's a really good thing that he knows what he likes and doesn't like. 


We think we're about 2 weeks away from Jake's move to Primary's. That is going to be a huge change for our little routine that we have mastered over the past 3.5 months. But we know that when this surgery is over we will be able to start the long recovery and that will lead us closer to bringing Jakey home. I know September and October feel like a long way away but to me they are coming a lot faster then I ever thought they would.