Day 86. Naked tummy time.

Now that Vinnie is a big boy (by NICU standards) he is starting to do a few more normal baby activities like tummy time - which is he loving! Must be kind of nice losing the nappy for a few minutes each day. He is also enjoying his baths and loves his musical toys that play the nursery rhyme tunes (a big improvement on me trying to sing these to him!).

Vinnie has been doing really well these last few weeks and now has only two weeks to go of the steroids. The high flow oxygen has also been weaned down to 1.5 litres and is dropping to 1l tomorrow... once we get down to 300ml he will be on low flow oxygen which he can go home on - yipee!!!

The only thing we need to sort out still is the feeding. I was starting to get a bit despondent about the lack of progress in this area, but it seems as though he is having trouble coordinating sucking and swallowing... something that we just take for granted. Some babies with chronic lung disease often have weak airways and it can take them a long time to learn to feed. When they try to swallow the milk often ends up in the airway and is aspirated in to the lungs... not a good thing at all. This may mean that Vinnie will be feed through a tube for a little while longer until he gets bigger.

I had a really nice Mothers Day yesterday. The NICU nurses made these gorgeous cards for all the mums that had our babies footprints on... really sweet. Cam also helped Vinnie with a card and gift for me :-)

Definitely feels like we are on the home straight now. Hopefully we'll have the little guy home sometime in June without having to spend time in Starship. I guess it all depends on what happens with his feeding over the next couple of weeks. It does look as though his breathing is getting better, but he will still be sent home on oxygen.