Life at home

Magnus has been home for three days now, and maybe it's just because I got a solid 6-hour block of sleep last night, but things are seeming more manageable all the time. We are lucky that Magnus is, other than his health issues, such an easy baby. He rarely fusses, and when he does, it's easy to comfort him.

The tricky part is that he has to be fed every three hours around the clock, and each feeding takes about 45 minutes. He still has his NG tube in, but we start out by either bottle or breast feeding him as much as he will eat, and then he gets the rest through the tube, which takes a while. Plus, in addition to breastfeeding, I am pumping every couple of hours. And then there are his medications, although luckily we only have to give those three times a day.

I am hopeful that the feeding regimen will become less onerous before too long. At the hospital, they told us to stick with what they'd been doing for at least a week, which we are doing, but I think eventually we will try harder to wean him off the tube. He hasn't made much progress with taking larger volumes by mouth, but I think that's just because the volume of food we are giving him through the tube every three hours is so large that he's never really very hungry. The most important thing is that he continues to gain weight, which he seems to be doing. He's puking a lot less at home than he was in the hospital, and at his pediatrician's appointment on Friday, he was up 70 grams from his discharge weight (which may just be due to a difference in scales, but we were happy, nonetheless).

Anyway, between all that, we are pretty busy. Luckily, my parents are here helping out, so that has been a huge help, allowing us to do things like go to the grocery store and take showers! We even finally went out and got a Christmas tree this morning.