On Sunday, Jeff set up a mobile. It has a feature that projects star and moon shapes that rotate around the umbrella top. Henry loves staring at light fixtures, so getting a mobile with lights was a must. Jeff also put together the Angelcare monitor. It's a pad about the size of a mouse pad that goes under the mattress. It is very sensitive and monitors the baby's movement. If there is no movement for 20 seconds, an alarm goes off. It is so sensitive that it detects a hand being waved across the mattress. Jeff also made sure that it would go off if there was nothing to detect. We think that this monitor will be preferable to the apnea monitor that we have that requires us to put a strap on Henry. With the Angelcare monitor, Henry can be cord free (except for the cannula) while sleeping.
In the evening, I played with Henry using some rings. I placed his hand on the rings so that he could get an idea about eye-hand coordination. He spent several minutes concentrating hard on the eye-hand idea. He took swipes at the rings. It was fun to see him make some connections. He definitely appears to be right-handed. After our playtime, he was exhausted and fell asleep deeply. Jeff and I moved him to the crib and tried out the Angelcare monitor. It worked out really well. We were able to get some things done around the house for a full hour and a half!
On Monday morning, I had the 4AM shift. I introduced Henry to the mobile, which he enjoyed for over an hour. I woke up Jeff around 7AM to listen for Henry while I took out the recycling. Jeff discovered that one song tends to make Henry active, but the classical music feature quiets him down.
Grandpa visited on Monday morning. Grandma came in the afternoon and stayed until 8:30PM, because I was teaching. Both grandparents worked with Henry on the rings. On Monday, Henry weighed 10 lbs 5 ozs.
We discovered that Henry scratched his face, which we are pretty sure was an attempt to pull off the cannula. Yesterday afternoon, Jeff and I took Henry's cannula off for awhile to give his skin a break. We are frustrated that the pulmonologist's nurse still hasn't gotten back to us about the pulse-ox monitor. Jeff calls her every week. She said that she'd get to it. Then, she went on vacation last week. Jeff left a message with her substitute, who did not return his call. Basically, a pulse-ox monitor would tell us when Henry really needs the oxygen on. We suspect that most of the time, he doesn't need it. He does occasionally dip in his oxygen saturation levels (if he's stressed, for example); we know this based on nurse Michael's pulse-ox readings. But for the most part, the cannula just upsets him. And the oxygen blowing up his nose dries out his nasal passages and makes him snuffly. We will call the pulmonologist again today.
This morning, Henry weighed 10 lbs 6 ozs. He spent time with Grandpa this morning. And Grandma came in the afternoon. He is currently staring at his mobile while I write out this blog entry. He seems pretty content and has been making a wide range of cute noises.
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