Preemie Clinic

Today was Nick's first preemie clinic appointment. We met with a nutritionist, an occupational therapist, a neonatalogy fellow, and a neonatalogist. The nice thing about the appointment, was that everyone, with the exception of the nutritionist, was in the UTMB NICU. So, they all were very familiar with Nick and his history. It was also just nice to see them. These people were such a big part of my life for so many months. It was nice just to say hi.

Nick did really well at his appointment. They all felt that he was right on track. They were impressed with him. Of course, he gave lots of smiles, and flirted with the ladies a bit. The occupational therapist, Jan (who is credited with getting him to take a bottle in the NICU) thought his progress was great. She felt that he was right on track for most things. There were even a few milestones he was ahead of his curve. She even thought that next week when ECI comes out to the house for the initial assessment, they may not feel that further therapy is needed at this point.

While everything was great, we did have one little problem with Nick. His weight. Of course this seems to be an issue for Nick at every appointment. The nutritionist sat down and got a detailed schedule, with amounts of formula, cereal, veggies etc. She felt that he was eating well. We began looking at other issues. For instance, Nick is always in motion. He exerts so much energy, he is just burning lots of calories. We decided that we need to increase his calorie intake. Since he is unlikely to eat more, we are going to increase the amount of calories that he takes in with his formula.

Nick is growing. His height is doing great, however his height to weight ratio is way off. In an ideal world, he should be in the 50% range for height to weight. Nick is right under 10%. The other thing they are concerned with is his weight curve. If he was on the low end of the scale and still progressing up the curve, they would have no issue. He does seem to be leveling off some. This is a common issue is preemies. We are going to try increasing his calorie intake and hope that he can pack on the weight. ( I wish I had that problem)

In other news, Nick's Uncle Brian and Aunt Chrissy (toes) got Nick a GREAT new present this weekend. He has taken full advantage of it:

This is the baby Einstein bouncer. Nick loves it. He bounces, plays, talks. The best part about it, he is eye level with the dogs. His new favorite pass time is watching the dogs.

On another seperate note... Nick's future girlfriends were born last week. Twin baby girls joined the Carter Clan. Congratulations Matt and Melissa. Nick would like to know how old the girls have to be to go out on thier first date!