8:15pm: I didn't make it to the NICU today but Kristen was able to spend the majority of the day hanging out with Mr. Reid. Much to our surprise, Kristen was able to hold him on her lap. The doctors had tried changing his morphine doses to every three hours (instead of 2), but there wasn't much success on this front. I think the pain is still to heavy for him.

His g-tube stitches came out this afternoon. It was a very quick process, but Reid knew what was going on and cried a little bit, but almost immediately calmed down and then fell asleep.

They also started Pedialyte through his tube today... it wasn't much - 5cc every three hours. It went into his stomach and then would come back out his tube depending on pressures and then would ultimately settle back into his stomach. I believe that when he comes home, after we feed him, we will close the "button" which will prevent this from happening. But for the time being, they are making sure that he is well ventilated to help with the tenderness of his surgeries and also help the air from the high flow ease its way out. Reid no longer has the easy ability to let gas/air escape back through his mouth and I am sure we will face issues when he comes home with burping him. The angle at which his esophagus and his stomach meet has changed and prevents this sort of thing from happening. Long story short, they will start cautious feeds tomorrow assuming the rest of the night goes well for him. Kristen and I are super anxious to get that food in his belly. I guess it has been a couple of months since he has actually had food in his stomach. When fed through his NJ tube, it went straight into his intestines. I can't imagine what it would feel like to never have that "full" sensation.

All in all, Reid had another good day. Various doctors have stopped by to congratulate us and wish Reid well -- I think he has far surpassed many of the doctors expectations. It is hard to get overly excited about the doctors being excited... life in the NICU always throws curve balls and we never know when the next one is coming. So yes, we are ecstatic, but we are trying to not let Reid know this. :)

11:15am: I think Reid had a fairly uncomfortable evening last night. It is hard to tell what he is complaining about as it could be a plethora of different things: hunger, pain, tired of laying down, etc. About 4 this morning, the nurse ended up taking him out of bed and put him in his "chair" and he fell asleep and seemed relaxed. They also took out the IV that was in his foot as we believe this was causing some discomfort as well (it was needed for the blood transfusion).

This morning, he was supposed to start getting fed clear liquids (like Pedialyte) and will hopefully start getting fed milk later today or tomorrow. They want to ensure that his stomach and g-tube can handle the feeds first before they start putting in something like milk. We are anxious to get him food as he has gone over 2 days without any and I am sure he is hungry. When the milk does start again, he will be fed cautiously and will regain full feeds within the next 3 days (give or take a little bit).

Today, Reid is also supposed to get his stitches out fro his g-tube. Not a big deal -- just part of the recovery process from surgery.

And one last thing: I had asked for Reid's measurements so I could start seeing his growth trending. The last date they had a complete set of measurements (head circumference, length and weight) was on 02.28.2010, so I plugged these (head: 39cm; length: 58.5cm or 23 inches; weight: 4.85kg) into a tool I found on the web for premature babies and this is how he compares (click on image to make it bigger - dark black line is 50th percentile):