4 hours of sleep!

Last night went well... For the last several nights, we have been waking Dane up for his 4am feed. We talked to a nurse from the pediatrician's office yesterday who said that, overnight, if he was sleeping to just let him sleep as long as he would sleep. If he sleeps longer we just feed him a bigger bottle before and after the longer sleep. Well, last night he slept from 1-5:15 (over 4 hours!) which means that Larissa and I got over 4 hours of sleep in one stretch (the longest sleep we've gotten since he came home from the NICU 3 weeks ago). Larissa felt so good that she managed to go running at 6:30 in the morning following our "big" block of sleep. They told us to only make sure he is still hydrated (enough wet and dirty diapers each day...which he certainly is! my oh my is he soiling himself more than often enough...)

Dane is also seeming more awake and aware of his surroundings, at least on occassion. He still has a lot of times, especially during feedings, where he gets cross-eyed and/or one eye closes, but he also has times where he seems much more awake and aware. When we feed him or burp him or hold him we are finding that he often will look at our faces, sometimes tracking us as we move around him. We also got some "art cards" as a gift from Larissa's friend Rachel to give him things to look at. These cards are very cool... the literature says that, at this stage in an infant's development, infants most easily see high-contrast black and white images. So these cards have pictures of animals on them in black and white cartoon drawings. We showed them to him for the first time this morning after his 5am feed. He stared at them for a couple minutes, seeming like he was staring AT them rather than in the same direction as them. It is fun to think that Dane might start being more aware of us. We like to think that he might know our voices and faces.

Larissa's grandma Hilgendorf also sent us an article about preemies, showing how micropreemies (born at between 1-2 lbs; smaller than Dane), turned out successfully. It made Larissa cry, as she's relieved to know that Dane has a really good chance of being successful. One of the recurring themes, though, was that they turned out to be shorter on average than their peers, even into adulthood. Does anyone have experience with this? While we want Dane to have every chance at being "normal", height is probably the least of things that could be wrong. Dane has another appointment tomorrow, for his 2 month shots, so we'll get another update on how much he's grown since the last appointment 2 weeks ago. It's encouraging to see that despite seemingly poor breastfeeding, he's still growing at a good rate. 

Larissa also took Dane out to visit her coworkers at Tyndale today for the first time. There was plenty of oohing and aahhing, and he slept like a champ, through the visit and errands to Target afterwards. He always manages to show visitors and others his angelic side, leaving the screaming and poop blowouts for his sleep-deprived parents. :)