Occupied

They increased James's feeds to 3 ml per hour today (which is still a tiny amount), and so far, so good. We were in visiting him today for quite a while (poor Mike didn't even get lunch!) We both got to hold him, and we were also there for a visit from the occupational therapist. (Bet you didn't think he was old enough to have an occupation yet.*) Some of his nurses had noticed that he had some muscle tightness, basically from lying in a bed all the time, and so the therapist showed us some little stretches that we could do to help him. Baby yoga! It also sounded like the issues that she observed were minor, nothing to be too worried about as far as his muscle development, so that was good to hear.

He was very alert while she was there. He was tracking one of the toys on his mobile, and he also seemed to be very interested in watching his hands. These are about the same developmental things that Matthew is doing, so it was nice to see that James is on a similar path, even though Matthew's now getting a lot more sensory stimulation than James (as my sister put it, the scenery changes for Matthew!) Also, it was very cute. :) He was also sucking on his pacifier a lot, which is good both because it's comforting for him and it means he's okay with having something in his mouth (useful for later eating!)

They got some test results back that allowed them to rule out Hirshsprung's disease as the cause of his digestive problems. Of course, we're still hoping that going slow and using this gentle formula will help him tolerate feeds.

Matthew's weight gain got the seal of approval from the pediatrician; he's now 6 lbs and almost 5 oz.

[Top photo is James with his awesome nurse; bottom photo is James looking at his hands, or alternatively, conducting an orchestra -- your choice.]

* This reminds me of when we were in Vienna visiting with some distant relatives of Mike's. We spoke only a few words of German and they spoke only a few words of English, but we were getting by pretty well with a German-English dictionary and drawing pictures. Mike wanted to ask one of them what his job had been before he retired, so he looked up occupation in the dictionary. The relative then started telling Mike about the Nazi occupation of Austria! Not quite what we had in mind -- but very interesting nonetheless.