Great news: Sol has graduated to Step Down NICU. This means that he’s now a “less urgent” baby. Woo hoo! Unfortunately, this also means we are moving on from the neonatologist who I really admire, but we’ve already worked with his new doctor and know she’s stellar.

Sol received his final dose of Phenobarb today. We are keeping all fingers and toes crossed over the next few days as the drug completely leaves his system. As long as he remains seizure-free, we’ll really be able to focus on the next milestones: feeding and bidding adieu to oxygen support – the latter happening as early as tomorrow. Sol is also going up on his feeds – from 55ml/3 hours to 60ml/3 hours. He’s still on the small side, so we’re trying to fatten him up a bit.

We had a great visit today. We started by reading Hairy Maclary (a new book!) and then we had some serious snuggle time. We attempted some OT time with Michelle, though Sol was a little too grumpy to accomplish much. Our feeding session with Melissa was productive: although Solomon still has some issues with the bottle, he happily had about 5ml from a syringe. This showed us that he can be fed by mouth, to some extent. The hold up with the bottle seems to be a sluggish swallow reflex, which could speed up once the Phenobarb is completely out of his system. Hopefully the bottle feeding will improve over the next few days.

Hanging with Dad

Snoozing

Snuggling with Mom

Time with Papa!