Weston's first week continued

Weston has high bilirubin levels, the cause of jaundice, and must undergo photo-therapy.  Bilirubin is produced when the liver breaks down old red blood cells and results in a yellow-ish coloring.  Weston has not yet turned yellow, but is very red and ruddy looking.  The photo-therapy should help prevent much of the yellow coloring, but, most importantly, help lower his bilirubin levels.

Here you can clearly see Weston's lanugo, the fine hair covering most of his body.  The mask over his face is used to protect his eyes from the bright light of the photo-therapy allowing him to sleep.

Just a fun picture of Weston's foot compared to Kendra's hand.

 Here you can see Weston's food tube.  The orange and black striped tube enters through his left nostril and feeds directly to his stomach.  He is still taking most of his meals through the tube.  Before feeding him, they will use a syringe to pull the contents of his stomach out through the tube to see if he has digested all of his last meal.  Any food remaining is referred to as "residual."  This is how they figure out if he is ready for more food.  As long as he does not have any residual, they will continue to up his meal amounts on a daily basis.  More food = more growing = come home sooner.  The feeding process is the most finicky portion of his recovery.

 Weston is hooked up to three electrodes for his heart and respiratory rate, a temperature sensor on his chest, and this oxygen saturation sensor.  Here he has it on his foot, but it moves when his IV moves.  Currently he has an IV in his foot and the O2 sat sensor on his hand.

 Here Kendra is standing outside his original "incubator."  This is one of the nicer and newer ones.  The top lifts and both sides drop entirely to provide greater access to Weston.  Weston has now inherited an older casing where the top does not come off.  He had to give up his pimp-palace for a set of quadruplets that showed up a few days after his birth.

 Weston has continued to progress with eating.  We were originally told he would not be able to nipple-feed, either from a bottle or breast, until he reached 34 weeks.  When they reference age in weeks, the doctors and nurses are referring to gestational age, not actual age.  Weston was born at 32 weeks and 6 days.  When he reached 33 weeks and 1 day, the doctor let him attempt bottle feeding twice a day based on Weston's performance with the pacifier.  Weston has done well so far and is now nipple-feeding 4 times a day.  Here are a couple of pictures of Kendra bottle feeding Weston.  He still needs a little more development before he can successfully breastfeed.