I'll take 'no change' for $600, Alex

I usually like to post updates here in the afternoons after Maggie and/or I have heard what happens during rounds and so I feel like I have a good idea of how he's actually doing, but today I got called away all afternoon and couldn't get back to report how he is doing. I was... auditioning for Jeopardy. Yeah, I took the online test a few months ago, and apparently got reeeeeallly lucky both in how I did and that I got picked to do a regional audition, as they only wound up having twenty total people in the room. Apparently they set some arbitrary score as 'good enough' and then randomly selected us twenty to actually come in for an in-person audition/interview/tryout. It was pretty fun, and now I get put into the contestant pool and maybe (no guarantees, they put far more into the official pool than actually get asked to appear) to get on the show later.

But enough about me. Woody is having a remarkably stable day with no big changes, which is absolutely just fine with us. We've been through a couple of rough patches with him, and I know how quickly he can make a turn for the worse, and there is really just no worse feeling than that sinking feeling you get when you walk in his room in the morning and nurse tells you that x test came back bad, or his oxygen needs won't stabilize, or that he's getting put back on the oscillator, or even that she looks worried. So ever since about day 5 I've said to Maggie about every time we go in that "I'll just take 'no change'" and not even to hope for actual improvement.

Although, he does continue to improve in the amount of food he's getting. Every day that he does well with the food, and passes through the appropriate waste products,* and keeps a soft, pliant belly, he is getting an increase of 1 cc a feeding. So now he's up to 4 ccs every 2 hours, which is just awesome. I certainly hope this doesn't jinx him, but despite the problems he's had in other organ systems, he hasn't had much trouble eating and digesting his food. So I guess he is related to me.

Woody is 27 weeks gestational tomorrow, and I am overall quite pleased with the progress and very proud of him.

*I hesitated to put this little detail in here, but this morning Woody had a quite large passage of excretory material. In fact, the official (I swear I am not making this up) "Pee Wee" diaper scale in his room weighed the result at 18 grams. considering that he gains, oh, 30 grams on a good day, that gave me the amusing image of the presenting resident or NP announcing his stats to the doctor on rounds and getting to his weight: "Woody gained 30, I mean 12 grams since yesterday..."

Just another example of the tiny margins a preemie his size deals in.