Look Mom - No Tubes!

Carter is getting closer and closer to coming home each day! This morning I was told that he is on "at liberty" feeding. Meaning that at EVERY feeding he can either breast/bottle feed - and only needs to be tube fed if he won't take a bottle. I don't know specifics - but I remember a few days ago the nurses saying that if he can take EVERY feeding by breast/bottle for 24-48 hours, the tube would come out. He's also up to a maximum of 46ml (prior to today it was 37) with a minimum of 33ml per feeding. At 6am he took 31ml by bottle, 9am he took the entire bottle, and 12pm and 3pm he did a combo of breast/bottle feeding. 6pm was 35ml bottle, and 9pm was another combo. So far, so good. Yesterday and today he's had a lot more "wakeful" periods as well. Hopefully this is all a good sign. When I returned to the NICU for the 9pm feeding, I noticed that Carter didn't have his feeding tube in. Apparently he decided "heck with waiting 24 hours, it's coming out now!" And since he's feeding well - they will leave it out unless they need to put it back in. HOORAY!

I'm anxiously waiting for them to tell me to bring in his carseat for the carseat challenge (baby must be able to handle 1 hour in the carseat) - as this means he is ALMOST ready to go! A set of twin girls who were in the NICU with Carter had their carseat challenge 2 days ago - yesterday they told the mom she could spend the night to test it all out - and this morning they were discharged!

I really don't know how parents do this for MONTHS when their baby is even more premature than Carter was. After only 2 weeks, this is starting to get overwhelming (yet I feel unnecessarily guilty if I'm not here ALL day). Although it won't be easy having a "newborn" baby at home, I honestly think it will be easier than spending all this time in the hospital.