The Countdown Begins

Zachary has made the transition to getting all his food by breast or bottle! Nadia spent over 12 hours at the hospital on Wednesday to try for a full day of breastfeeding and Zachary was able to get all his food without the feeding tube, so that night they introduced the bottle. He did very well with the bottle also, so they removed the feeding tube and he has been getting all his meals without the tube since then. It is great to see his little face without any tubes or tape on it.

He is using more energy and burning more calories this way, so his weight gain has been less steady this week but he is still growing little by little. As of today is he is 4 pounds 12 ounces.

The remaining barrier to discharge is overcoming his bradycardia (dramatic slowing of the heart rate). The doctors want to make sure that he has grown out of that stage while he is still in the hospital and hooked up to a heart monitor, and that he won't have those kinds of issues at home. So the final criteria for discharge is that Zachary has to go five days without a bradycardia.

As of yesterday, Zachary is officially on the countdown to coming home. Today is day one. When he has an episode, the count resets. In theory he could be home as early as Thursday, but with his history the doctors expect to reset the count at least a few times. We have added a counter to the top of the sidebar and will keep it updated throughout the coming days (and maybe weeks).

We finally feel that the end of his hospital stay is in sight. Even though we can't wait to have Zachary home, we want to be sure he is stable and healthy, so we are trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to practice patience.