a good day

Welcome to Charlie's blog! We're hoping this will make it easy for people to stay in touch with Charlie's progress, and easy for mom and dad to keep the updates coming. Big thanks to Libbie for suggesting this, and to Brent for getting it set up for us!

Charlie had a good day yesterday! His eyes are open for the first time - the nurse says they're the typical newborn blue/brown, but we think they're perfect, of course. He's now getting fed every 3 hours (up from 12 hours before) and started getting breast milk around 2 yesterday afternoon. That's something we were eagerly awaiting, as it apparently has lots of magical healing qualities.

Until yesterday, he's had an internal line through his umbilicus so that they could more easily draw blood, but since his gas levels in the blood have continued to be good, they no longer need to draw blood as frequently, and have removed the line. Every tube is at risk for infection, so removal of the line is a good thing. And he can lie on his tummy! It means they'll need to poke his little heels when they need to draw blood every 12 hours, but considering he's not going to be walking anywhere anytime soon, this shouldn't cause him much pain.

Our little guy is still putting up quite a fight. Every so often, they have to take out his breathing tubes and remove the tape on his face, give him a little wash and suction him out, and then replace the whole mess. Yesterday he was NOT in the mood for all this, so we watched/heard him yell and cry and beat at the nurses with his little fists. While it wasn't fun to see him that unhappy, we were impressed to see how fiesty he is and how hard he fights!

We're really proud of him for making it through his first week, and getting a little stronger every day!