great news!

We headed out early this morning for Seattle Children's Hospital. Arrived an hour early, which worked out perfect. We checked in and fed Brant and played a little in the waiting room and then was called back early. We met with the nutritionist first. She is very happy with his growth and weight gain. She said he is gaining & growing at exactly the right rate and closing the gap from where he is currently and where a full term baby would be with his age.

After that we had to wait in the exam room for about a half hour while his doctor finished up with another patient. After she came in and got caught up on what's been going on she listened to his heart and then took the oxygen off to see how he would do. He did great! They also changed the settings on his monitor so that the alarm won't go off while he sleeps anymore, YAY! His heart rate drop numbers are normal for how big he is now but the alarm setting was too high so that is fixed. After talking for quite a while we then went and got some blood taken to make sure he can handle weaning off the oxygen. The goof smiled and "talked" during the draw. The last time he screamed so that was a pleasant surprise! AND the blood tests came back normal so we got the go ahead to start weaning. We will start with 15 minutes twice a day only while he is awake. And then every few days slowly start adding onto that time until eventually he just has it on during feeds and sleeping then we start that weaning process. His doctor guessed another 3 months until he is totally off.

After that we headed to UW to visit the NICU and return some equipment. We only saw the front desk person Emily and then nurse Lael. Emily said right after we left they got slammed and are currently at full capacity and super busy so we headed home fairly quickly since they were so busy.

His next round of appointments are in August. That is going to be an overnight trip. On the 28th he has his High Risk Infant Clinic appointment at UW in the afternoon and then the 29th he has his next pulmonary check-up at Children's in the morning. So I think we will check into a hotel and stay down there that night. I do NOT want to do that drive two days in a row. Its so exhausting!

Will post pictures from today a little later- he thinks he is starved right now!!