Day 63

Day 63

Jack got a bath today from Mommy. He was wide awake and didn’t cry at all. He actually seemed to enjoy his bath this time. Next time, we should be able to give him his bath in a basin.

He also got a visit from his eye doctor as well and we finally got a chance to have a word with him. It turns out that he didn’t have any additional news on Jack’s vision prognosis, but otherwise reiterated that only time will tell. Boy have we heard that a million times. He said that he did see patents with the optic nerve atrophy that hardly showed any signs of vision impairment. That was good news for us. He also said that it was very good that Jack responds to light, which is basically the only indicator of Jack’s ability at this stage in his life. It is far too early for him to follow objects or even really focus on anything. That will come a month or two after he is home. All we can do now is try to stimulate his vision by placing objects of high contrast in front of him. We are already doing that as anybody can tell by looking at all his stuffed creatures.

Jack also got a visit from the feeding team, who are basically occupational therapists. The assessed Jack’s ability to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing while being fed. They did find that he does have an immature suck-swallow response, but that is due to him being so young. They set strict feeding guidelines and restrictions such as only feeding him for 15 minutes at a time from a bottle. The rest he will have to get from his feeding tube. They’ll continue to monitor his progress and help us take the necessary steps to get him 100% on the bottle. Of course this is one of the major milestones that he must reach in order to come home, so we are hoping that he does this in a few weeks