Baby Gray Update

As most of you know, Gray is here! He was born April 12 after hanging in there for 8 weeks while I was on bed rest at the hospital. He was one day shy of 32 weeks. Because he was so premature, he will be in the NICU for several more weeks.

I’ll go into details of his arrival soon, but for now, I just want to give everyone who has been waiting ever so patiently an update on how he’s doing.

First let me say, he’s doing great!

He has never required oxygen, which means he’s been breathing on his own since birth. His heart looks great, along with all other major organs. He had a brain scan when he was one week old (all preemies have one) and there was no bleeding on his brain…Praise God!

The doctors all say he looks perfect. His only trouble has been gaining weight. He was born at 4 lbs 4 oz and got down to around 3 lbs 10 oz. When they feed Gray my breast milk, they add calories to give him an extra boost. The problem was he wasn’t tolerating the increase in calories very well and kept spitting up. Everything with his stomach and digestion look normal, they just said his little premature body isn’t really supposed to be handling milk this early, so it could take him some time to get adjusted. Thankfully, after some tweaking with the calorie amount and feeding time (he’s fed through a tub in his nose), he is starting to gain his weight back. Today he was 4 lbs 0.7 oz!

The big prayer right now is that he will continue to grow and gain weight every day!!!!

Right now Gray is still in an incubator, but as they have turned down the heat inside, he is regulating his body temperature well and will most likely be moved to a bassinet in the next few days!

No one can tell us exactly when we can expect to bring him home. They usually say with babies as young as Gray that they can go home at their original due date (June 8: 40 weeks), but one of the doctors said if he continues to do well, we might get to take him home around 37-38 weeks, which would be sometime mid-May. So we’re looking at potentially 3 ½ - 4 ½ more weeks.

I pray he will continue to have great days filled with new achievements, growth and development so we can bring him HOME!!!! I hope these next weeks fly by so our new life as a family can truly begin…hospital free!!!

I’ll leave you with a few pictures of our precious Mr. Gray: