The Cubby Chronicles XXXVIII

Note: Jacob Raymond Walker was born 12 weeks prematurely at Duke University Hospital the morning of Monday, May 19 2008. The following are updates, notes, & observations on his growth & development.

Jake's been home three weeks & counting and its hard to express how excited we are to have him here. After a stressful summer of driving back & forth to Duke and constantly worrying about his health, we've really settled into what could be considered a 'normal' home life.

There's no blood pressure checks, heart rate monitors, or pulse oximeters; just a little guy that likes his tummy time & looking at his panda (check out the video below). He's now up over 6 & a half pounds & is steadily gaining weight. For the past few weeks we've been feeding him non-stop every three hours which is about as exciting as one might imagine. Especially at 3 in the morning.

At his last visit to the pediatrician, we got the news we've been waiting for. We can now let him decide when he wants to eat overnight--that is we won't wake him to eat (well, we would after 6 or so hours) and instead let him wake up when he's hungry. This hasn't bought us a ton of extra sleep as he seems to be wake up every 4 or hours or so but the process overall is much better.

Since he's choosing when to eat we don't have to deal with any grogginess when feeding him & its infinitely more pleasant to let him slowly wake us up versus setting an alarm. Not to mention that now we've got 4 hours between feedings which means a good 3 hours of sleep. That's key if you're like me & believe in the concept of 90 minute sleep cycles.

As you can see in the world-exclusive video below, Jake is like most babies in that he really likes looking at black & white pictures. He's especially fond of looking at the above picture of a panda bear in his favorite book, Baby Animals In Black & White. Feel free to play along, does the picture do anything for you?