9-10-14 Spencer Update

The five stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Over the last six months, I feel like I have gone through the stages of grief for a number of things. Loss of a normal pregnancy. Loss of a normal labor/delivery. Loss of a normal newborn experience. And now loss of our hope that Spencer would be home by 40 weeks.

I think that last one has been the toughest. I didn't realize how much stock I had put in the assumption that Spencer would come home by now. It's been a tough 10 days where I have had to come to terms with the fact that Spencer is not coming home, yet. I have felt a lot of anger and depression. But, I have moved to acceptance. The storm has faded and I feel a little better now that I am "through" it.

And so I made my peace with it. The hospital is where Spencer needs to be right now, so I have to give him the time he needs until he is ready to come home.

Spencer has had a rough week himself. He hasn't been meeting his "minimums" on ml for feeds and has been very upset at a lot of his feeds. None of us could figure out what is wrong, until today. Turns out he has a yeast infection in his mouth (Thrush) as a result of his acid reflux issues. Poor guy has sores all over his mouth and throat. No wonder he hasn't wanted to eat and no wonder we haven't been able to stay "on track" for our discharge day. They put him on some antibiotics and hopefully we should see some improvement in the next few days.

Once we get him back on track with his feeds, hopefully we can continue to see him improve on his endurance, hunger cues and weight gain. Basically that is what is keeping him at the hospital. He really needs to master the bottle before we can leave, so that we don't end up back in the hospital in a few weeks for weight loss issues.

His breathing continues to be really good - still off oxygen and at this point we are planning on going home without a monitor!

Current weight - 7 lb 11 oz

Today Spencer had his hearing test. They put these little ear phones on him and measured his brain activity as they set off these little signals. It's painless and they did it while he was sleeping. Matt was holding him at the time and said this was Spencer's first official 'selfie'. As you can see, he needs some work. Definitely not the most flattering of pictures, but still a cutie.