Better, quieter, chubbier

Maggie and I are of the mind that the only thing, long term, that will get Woody to do better in all facets is to keep him quiet, sleeping, and getting as much calorie content as possible. Babies are generally cuter when they are fatter, and lil' Woody came out without much meat on his bones at all. Cuteness is, of course, not a synonym for 'healthy', but I'm sure there's some correlation between these terms. He was 565 grams at birth (about 1 lb 4 oz), went down as low as 420 grams at his smallest (15 oz), but has been generally on the upswing since then. His weight today is 760 grams (which translates to about 1 lb 10 oz, give or take a little rounding) which is an all time high, and is generally 'good weight'. Good weight is what he puts on in a controlled, gradual fashion, as opposed to just getting heavier due to water that he is retaining, which is bad. Bad in the sense that tiny preemies tend to have any extra water they retain go to the lungs, which makes an already touchy situation worse.

The rule of thumb as it has been explained to us is that a kid can safely gain about an ounce a day. Woody has never gained that much in good weight in a day, but if he continues his current trends he will be over two pounds by this time next week, and may break the kilogram mark by the middle of the week after that. This of course presupposes that he doesn't take any marked downturns that stop his feeding schedules, as happened last week.

The down trending days, which we have come to dread so much, are a sort of feedback loop of badness when the bad test results necessarily beget the need for more tests, which cause him to be more stressed, which in turn causes bad test results, which then start the whole process over again. I sincerely hope that he behaves himself and doesn't get any bad test results anytime soon, so he doesn't have to get bothered, poked, prodded, spindled, harassed, or bullyragged anytime soon. If he can just keep feeding and resting and getting chubbier, he ought to keep getting better and stronger and moving down the imaginary flow chart that can allow him to be discharged.