Day 12 - Out of the blue light and into parents' arms

Today Aidan was relieved to be out of the lights and his blindfold. He's still being fed formula for the time being, and they're slowly increasing the amount to avoid more tummy upset. More poop today - yay! - so the bilirubin counts should hopefully be down even more tomorrow.

Mom tried to give Aidan the 3 pm bottle feeding, but since he was so happy to be out of the box and be held, he just wanted to sleep. Dad fed him with a bottle at 6 and 9 pm with more luck and patience. Even though it's a tiny amount, he likes to fall asleep while eating so he needs a little coaxing and it takes a long time for him to finish. (It's like waiting for Heather to finish eating.)

Mom finally got her first session of Kangaroo Care with Aidan. Kangaroo Care is direct skin to skin contact between either parent and baby and it's meant to help with bonding and many health issues. The name is because it's similar to what kangaroos do with their joeys. This method started in 1978, in Bogota Columbia, as a means to keep babies incubated, but they also figured out it helped preemies coordinate their breathing and heart rate, helped them gain weight, helped them have longer and deeper sleep periods, etc. and seriously reduced the mortality rate in countries where health care was slim to none. Since then it's become an accepted practice around the world, becoming popular in the United States since the 1990's for both premature and full-term babies. For various reasons, but mostly because Aidan's time under the lights, we haven't been able to do this previously, but today we got a chance and he was merrily sleeping before the nurse could say "I wonder if we'll need to move him or he'll get comfortable there." It really was amazing. All pictures of Mommy from the front have been excluded because she got comfortable too and looks half asleep, which she was.