Moosen

This video was a cute one that Alisha took when Roscoe was in his moose outfit. It's one of her favorite outfits to put him in because he looks so snuggly:

To me he bears a strange resemblance to a character from one of my favorite movies of all-time:

Jumping Jacks

Here's a little video of an exercise that Alisha does with Roscoe. She holds him steady upright and lets him bounce, using his own leg strength. His core strength is where he'll be weakest (as most preemies are) but his legs are pretty strong for his size. If a nurse is new, they're often surprised at his strength because they're not used to a 6lb baby having developed his muscles outside the womb for almost 5 months.

Chugging a half gallon of milk

Roscoe has now increased in size more than 500% from when he was born. That's pretty amazing to think about, since in the past 4 months I (hopefully) have increased 0% in size. Part of that is due to how much he's eating. At just over 6lb he's eating 75mL about every 3-4 hours.

Using my super-math-that-actually-ended-up-useful-from-college algebra skills, we can get an idea of how much he's eating. Taking my weight of 150lb, it would be like me drinking 60oz (almost a full half gallon) of milk every 3-4 hours. Over 1 day that would end up over 3 gallons of milk. No wonder he's getting so big! If I had to drink that much milk, I'd wear a diaper too.

Milk does a body good

Our Little Convict

Here are some fun pictures of Roscoe in a striped outfit. With the strips and his beanie hat (or as they say in Texas, "toboggan") he looks like a little jailbird.

Waking Hours

Roscoe has been sleeping a lot. He alternates between being very alert like this:

and very sleepy like this:

Either way, he's pretty fun to watch!

Eating & Bostentan

Roscoe has been eating more volume lately, although most of it is still delivered through the feeding tube. On average he'll eat 20mL from a bottle and then the remainder of his 75mL feeding through the tube. Alisha and I think he might just be lazy!

On Saturday we were there during the time when the nurse administers Roscoe's bosentan/tracleer, which is the medication that UCSF approved to treat his hypertension. I think it's ironic that the nurse has to put on a splash shield and mouth protector when injecting a substance into a little baby's mouth.

Today Alisha said that Roscoe measured 6lb 5.2oz, so he had a small amount of growth. Our main areas of prayer are for him to grow and for his breathing to improve. His breathing is the major holdup for him being able to come home, because he's still got to get down to 21% oxygen and transfer to another machine (nasal cannula/vapotherm) before his mandatory 7-day pre-release stability period. We're now thinking it will be at least another month until he comes home (due to lung progress) so we are probably looking at April.

Comfortable and Happy

Alisha and I returned from our anniversary, where we went to Lake Tahoe for 2 days and 1 night (we stayed here). Roscoe has seemed much more comfortable for the past few days since he's ramped up to full feedings (75mL). He has a feeding tube in, but his PICC line is removed. He eats anywhere from 10mL to 40mL by mouth, then the rest of his feeding they deliver through the feeding tube.

Overall he's seemed much less cranky and generally more comfortable. He's even been sleeping for longer stretches, which is a "big boy" behavior. Through the night sometimes the nurses said he'll sleep for 5 hours, then during the day he'll take 2-3 hour naps. This is a great improvement over his previous pattern of only sleeping 1-2 hours at a time. The more he sleeps, the more he'll grow! His last measurement showed him at 19.2 inches long and 6lb 4oz+.

Today we'll be going to the hospital to catch up on some time with Roscoe, so we'll hopefully get some pictures and videos to share.