Finn is 60 days old today, and will be 34 weeks gestational age tomorrow.

It’s been an eventful past week-and-a-half for our (no longer quite so) little guy. On Monday, September 12, Finn switched from the Hudson prong CPAP to the far less bulky RAM CPAP — picture moving from a tube apparatus the size of a roll of Life Savers, attached to a skintight hat with safety pins and rubber bands, to just a small nasal cannula. Finn was still pulling at the RAM CPAP — this is, after all, the same baby who pulled out his breathing tube when he was a sub-two pound two-week old — but he seemed much more comfortable overall, and despite the slightly less steady flow of the new device, he saw no real drop off in his oxygenation levels. He even moved to a CPAP pressure of 5, the lowest level, on Friday, September 16.

But Finn wasn’t done there.  Mom and Dad arrived on Monday afternoon, September 19 to find that Finn was still on a nasal cannula, but this one looked a bit different… it was just providing oxygen. The CPAP machine was gone!  We’re now more than 48 hours into life without breathing assistance, and Finn seems to be coping just fine.  He’s undoubtedly being helped along by the tapering course of steroids he’s receiving, but he’s also getting bigger and stronger each day, which means his lungs are getting bigger and stronger too.

In addition to his hydrocortisone course and his normal cocktail of Vitamins D and E, Iron and Sodium, Finn is also currently in the midst of a 7-day course of antibiotics (oxacillin).  When Mom was in for a late night visit on Saturday, September 17, she and the nurse noticed that his left arm, from his upper arm down to and including his hand, looked red and swollen — when it had looked perfectly fine earlier that day during Mom, Dad and Dermot’s visit.  X-rays ruled out any sort of fracture, blood cultures came back negative, and an ultrasound showed just a small pocket of fluid on the back of his left hand.  It started to improve almost immediately, and the current antibiotics course is being seen out just in case this was some sort of cellulitis (which does seem unlikely).

That blip aside, it’s pretty routinely been steady progress for feisty Finn. On Sunday, September 18, he crossed the 4 pound threshold for the first time, and he weighed in last night at 4 pounds, 2 ounces. He’s hung out with his older brother Dermot three times now… well, if you can call Dermot only spending about 10 minutes in the room and otherwise rampaging through the NICU “hanging out”.  All in all, Finn still has a long way to go before he’ll be ready to come home — his due date of November 3 is the earliest he could conceivably graduate from the NICU — but he’s made an incredible amount of progress in his eight-and-a-half weeks, and we are so very proud of him.

Finn’s recent milestones include:

• On Monday, September 12, Finn switched from Hudson prong CPAP to RAM CPAP.
• On Friday, September 16, Finn reached 1 ounce per feeding for the first time.
• On Sunday, September 18, Finn tipped the scales at 4 pounds for the first time.
• On Monday, September 19, Finn graduated from his CPAP machine.