Carter is making leaps and bounds! He had two bowel movements yesterday, which indicates he is digesting his food. His feeding tube is now in his nose instead of his mouth and they forced an amount of formula into his stomach that would simulate the amount he would take in during one feeding. Until now, they have been giving him food but just letting it trickle slowly in so as not to overload his system.  And normally when you have a baby at term, your body is ready to breastfeed. Not so when they come early, so that has been an issue, but we think things are working good at this point.
The nurses have told us that now that he seems to be stable and doing well, they don't want him stimulated any more than necessary. They are trying to mimic the womb and keep his incubator covered most of the time, and only touch and hold him at feeding time. Doing that will allow him too sleep most of the time and let his body concentrate on growing and maturing.  They gave him a binky and he sucked on it really well - another good sign. We are so thankful that he is doing as well as he is. One nurse told us that statistically, white male babies do the poorest of all, but that Carter is changing that stat!
Getting ready to go up today.
Courtney walked from the parking lot all the way to the nicu yesterday- a great feat for her! This is a good thing because I was fired from steering the wheelchair after running over Cole's foot and banging into a few walls!  Thank goodness I don't drive that way!