May 15 Update

It's official: Carrick has a belly button! Jenni and I got a good look at it today. He's still on the CPAP, which is a great 3 week present for his parents. He's also still on dopamine. The doctor listened to his heart today and ordered another heart echo because she heard a larger murmur; his PDA has probably opened up more. If the echo confirms that then they'll give him the medicine again to close it. They're giving him caffeine everyday to stimulate his brain so he remembers to breathe. Even so he has moments where he forgets to breathe, he stops breathing, his heart rate drops, they go in and poke him a little, and he remembers to breathe again and everything comes back up. It's a little frightening to me, but the nurse just said it's normal for preemies his age. Oh, and we have a correction to his length. Apparently 12.5 inches was a mismeasurement or typo or something, and his actual length is 11.75 inches. He's grown three quarters of an inch since birth. The bleeding in his brain is still the same, but he's past the point where it could get worse so now we're watching to make sure it doesn't affect the fluid in his brain and normal functioning like that. But he's doing good. This week is a good week. Definitely better than last week. Thank you for all your prayers. More to come.