16 Days Old

My baby is now 16 days old. He is doing so well. But he is not home. I am trying to focus on all of the great things. He is gaining weight extremely well. He gained 14 ounces in his first 2 weeks! Also, he continues to breathe fine on his own and hold his own body temp. The "developmentalist" says that all of his reflexes are normal and that he is doing very well for his age. He just needs to have the desire to eat. Apparently hunger is something that develops in the human brain somewhere between 34 and 37 weeks gestational age. The doctors tell me that at some point it will pretty much just "turn on" and he will begin to root around and get fussy when he's hungry and that will help him make an effort to eat. We've been seeing signs of that the past couple of days.

In the mornings I go up and spend several hours just holding my baby against my chest. After Chancho gets home from work we go back to the hospital. We are so lucky to have a good NICU only 10 minutes away from home. Our evening visits have been really fun the past few nights because Finn has been wide awake. Chancho makes a silly noise with his teeth and Finn smiles. I am not kidding. I know you (and I would say it to anybody else) would say that it is complete coincidence, but it has been the past 3 nights and only when he makes that funny sound. I HAVE to get a picture of it. Anyway, Chancho is pretty darned in love with our baby, too. When its his turn to hold him he says, "Come on, time for some man time."

(check out those huge hands Finn has! haha)

I wish I had a good camera. But still, I love these photos. I think Finn is either practicing his actions to give in a political speech or he is dancing to some Bob Marley.From his personality so far, we can see that Finn is very mild mannered. (Okay just a quick reminder for those of you that I have confused, I use codenames on our blog because my husband insists, so baby's code name is Finn. His real name is Miles Phineas but I'm not allowed to say that any more). Anyway, Finn is so sweet. He really never cries. Last night he was really gassy and he would make some sad struggling sounds but he has really won over the nurses because he is just sweet as can be, whereas some of his neighbors in the nursery are extremely loud!

I feel more and more in love with my child every day and he becomes more and more beautiful to me. I know I shouldn't have, but I really kind of set it in my mind that he would only be in the hospital for 2 weeks, so once it hit last Sunday I felt really bummed out. But all is well. Thank you all so much for your continued prayers on his behalf.

Meg asked for more video clips. I wish they didn't take so long to upload! I don't know if anybody else cares to see them, but I know my sisters will. And, also, I stay up at night and watch them over and over.