The Burlingames

Today has been such a wonderful day. The doctors have stopped the continuous nose feedings and have him eating from a bottle every few hours. Now he gets to experience what it feels like to be hungry, so far he is doing a great job with the bottle feedings. His speech therapist will be pleased to know that he is eating most of his bottles, leaving only a little bit for his feeding tube. This is a huge ‘praise God’ moment, we are that much closer to bringing him home. Yay!!

Eli is also in a new room. They moved him up to the third floor to the Pediatric Intermediate Care Unit (IMC). The IMC is much nicer that PICU and NICU. Eli now has his own room with a TV, couch/bed, closet space, recliner and his own bathroom. He was so excited about the transfer that he slept through the entire thing.

Eli’s new room number is 3128 and the phone number for this room is 612.874.4978.

Eli is continuing to progress at a rapid rate. He lost a few more lines the last couple days and is down to just a few things. The doc gave us an estimate of 3-10 days remaining in the hospital, depending on how well he eats.

Megan went back this afternoon to hang out with the boy. While there, she gave him a bottle and he ate it quite well and quite fast. There’s talk of him possibly moving out of the PICU tomorrow to his own recovery room upstairs. Here’s hoping.

Eli started our visiting time this morning by sleeping, but, before long he was wide awake. We had a great time holding him and pinching his chubby little cheeks. He was also practicing his smile. Here’s a look at one of his smiles. The timing of the photo wasn’t quite perfect, so his smile looks a little funny. Trust me, it was a very good smile. You’ll also notice that he’s finally wearing clothes. Yesterday was the first day he didn’t spend naked.

Eli came off the ventilator and feeding tube today. He actually has a face under all that stuff. We haven’t seen him without something in his face since he was born. He’s a pretty good-looking kid. I’ll post some more video tonight after work (and visiting the boy). For the time being, here’s Eli. The first is of Eli right before they took out the tubes. The second is his face.