Flip Flopping

After 7 days off Jordan is back at work – sleeping, breathing, and eating. They took him off of the vent yesterday and he lasted the entire night. They also have him eating nearly an ounce of formula over 2 hours. He isn’t on the IV fluids anymore, but when he had that bad day last week, they started him on antibiotics. His cultures didn’t show anything, but the proper dose of the medicine is 7 days, so they’ll finish out the week. Besides, have you ever seen a doctor who didn’t believe antibiotics were the solution to every problem? Once he is done with that, they’ll take the last needle out of his arm. He has also stopped swinging as much. He still has ranges, but not so big and not so sensitive. I spent 90 minutes with him yesterday and only desatted once, he usually does much more. He is up to 1287 grams – 2 pound 13.5 ounces! The nurses say that babies usually start gaining weight even faster after they hit about 3 and a half pounds. I am surrounded by larger babies every day in the hospital, but I have trouble seeing Jordan bigger. I know he will get bigger, but he is already so much bigger than he was. I don’t compare him to the other kids, I compare him to the little baby that I met on July 10th.
Jordan has started a little game that his parents call ‘flip-flop’. Jordan calls it ‘You can kiss my skinny little butt! We’re going to do thing my way or I will kill myself trying!’. I prefer our name better. When he was first put on his belly, it was pretty simple. He would be wrapped up in his swaddle, on his belly, in the fetal position with his legs and arms tucked underneath him. Now, he prefers to literally lie on his belly. He will kick his legs straight out behind him and will push hard enough to either move himself up or the swaddle back. Look at the picture from last weekend and you can see what I mean even though he is on his back. He made it clear in August that short of handcuffs – he will decide the proper position for his arms and it will either be at his sides or in front of his face. Yesterday he did a flip flop. When we arrived he was fidgety and moving around a lot. The nurse turned his head from the left to the right. The nurse turned around to write some numbers down on her chart. Jordan said, “Chick, you must have lost your cotton pickin mind!”. Then he turned his head back to the left. I know that full term babies can do this after 2 months, but his due date isn’t for 8 weeks! I nearly jumped up, the nurse had seen him do it before, and the mama Ali thought it was the most adorable thing she'd ever seen. I know it wasn’t a fluke because on 2 other occasions he lifted his head onto his face, could have turned back to the right, but did not. When he lies down on his belly now, he decides where the legs go, he decides where the arms go, and he decides where the head goes. If you don’t like it you can kiss his skinny little butt!