Hurry up and wait

We spent the weekend hurrying around and preparing for Spencer. It was fun and exciting to anticipate our little guy coming home.

But today I got a call from the doctor. Spencer is basically "flunking" on 2 of his bottles each day - not finishing enough of it for it to "count." The team of doctors and nurses agreed it would be best to slow down the feeding process and give Spencer time to rest. This means he was moved from 6 bottles/day back to 4 bottles/day. This will allow him to take every other feed by tube so he can rest between bottle feedings. I am not going to lie. It was discouraging. It took a lot of time and effort to get Spencer to the 6-bottle mark and now he has to earn it all over again.

But, we of course want whatever is best for him and apparently he just doesn't feel strong enough to take multiple feeds in a row by bottle, so we slow down and try again. This means Spencer isn't coming home for awhile. They tell me I should plan on the end of September, and if he comes home earlier, it will be a nice surprise.

Another tweak they made was to take him off of the fortifiers they currently put in his milk and just give him straight breast milk. This is part of the process they go through when a baby gets close to going home. This will do a couple of things for Spencer. First, it will slow down his weight gain, which is JUST FINE, because our little guy weights 7 lb 9 oz today! He is currently gaining about 2-3 oz per day, so he will be just fine with the change. The other thing it does is make him hungrier for his next meal. The fortifiers fill him up and could be part of the problem with why he isn't taking full bottles - he just isn't that hungry. By taking him off the fortifier he should be more hungry, thus hopefully more interested and able to take a full bottle. We will see if there is a marked difference in the coming days.

This 'glitch' in our plans really shouldn't come as a surprise. Spencer has always operated on his own schedule and now is no different. He will let us know when he is ready to come home. In the meantime, we will TRY to wait patiently and be thankful for all the great things he is doing - like remaining off oxygen!

Thank you for your prayers and we will keep you updated as things progress in the coming weeks!

Carter is demonstrating how Spencer lays on the pillow to eat =)