Day 39 - New Year's Day

New Year's was quiet in the hospital, especially with all the snow coming down outside. Aidan is growing like a weed and getting heavier every day. As you can see, he's getting close to 6 pounds now.

Some special testing last week found that Aidan has some serious reflux problems. Another one of those things that often happens to preemies. His stomach acid backs up into his espohagus and burns. Imagine your worst heartburn and you get an idea. It causes enough pain that it can disrupt heartbeat and breathing. This means it may be the root of the problem for why he's been having the problems with coordinating breathing with suck and swallow reflexes. It often hits while eating or just after. He's on Prevacid now to hopefully stop this and most preemies outgrow this within the first year.

The occupational therapist also came to assess his eating and has changed him to slow flow nipples on his bottles and told his parents what to watch for in Aidan's reactions while eating. They also changed his eating schedule to every 4 hours instead of 3 hours. She said he's doing fine, he's just young. All of this change came on Friday, December 28. We think Aidan has been doing quite well with feedings since then, but we haven't heard anything from the doctor yet. At the very least he seems to be sleeping better and is more awake during feedings, making things much easier.