October 16

Really tired so forgive me if this is incoherent :) Will is improving on breastfeeding, he's made a major milestone and taken several complete feedings from what I can tell, seemed satisfied and went back to sleep for as long as he would of with a bottle feeding. So that's great progress, if he keeps advancing there maybe in a month or two we can get rid of the bottles and I won't be chained to the pump all the time, which would be a godsend and maybe I could actually sleep almost as much as a "normal" parent of a baby his age. I'm not getting much sleep now, it takes me about 2 hours to care for him and me, then I get an hour if I'm lucky or 2 if I'm really lucky before he wants to eat again.. sometimes as little as 10-20 minutes back in bed before time to start over.

He's making progress on physical development too. We've been giving him tummy time on a blanket on the floor almost every day, where he does little halfway up push-ups, lifts his head and looks around a bit, wiggles his legs in a crawling motion and generally tries to act like a normal 3-month old. When we're holding him he tries to stand up, when leaning against our chests he'll push his legs against our laps and bounce a little, and now loves to pick his head up and make eye contact which was very hard for him - eye contact is a lot of social interaction and he's easily overstimulated by it but his tollerance is growing. He's 15 weeks old now, 3 1/2 months, but his corrected age is only 3 weeks. In case I haven't mentioned it preemies are generally judged by the age they should have been if they'd been born on their due date for milestones instead of the date they were actually born, so that means he's doing very well on developmental milestones. The exercises we've been doing from the occupational therapist seem to be doing their job, his hips are more comfortable forward than they were and his arms tend to go less unnaturally far back - he was flattening himself out with his shoulders and hips too far towards the back when relaxing. Not sure if he's making progress with his apnea or not, we've gotten a couple minor alarms in the last couple days, but he's also spit up his medication so the dosage was off. It upsets his tummy, sometimes he keeps down more than others. He has reflux too, so he spits up a lot and often.

Some of his newborn clothes are getting snug, won't be long before most of what he's wearing is 0-3 months. On the foot pic he has a bandage on one heel and a couple toes didn't print but still cute. He was a bit over a week old when that was made, gives you an idea just how tiny he really was. Getting bigger every day! That's life in a nutshell, hope this finds you all well.