I've posted before about my nephew,LittleBitty. Well,now the adoption process is nearly complete thank goodness. They've terminated the rights of the birth father (birth mother terminated hers at delivery)and now Jess and Brian are almost the parents of Little Bitty free and clear. Since that's happened, the lawyers (or whoever) have decided it's ok for family and friends to visit Little Bitty in the hospital and we got to see him for the first time last night.
He seems to be doing well..he's off all the machines except for the feeding tube. They monitor his heart and respiration of course, but other than that, he's got no strings on him.

He's learning to feed from a bottle and he has to be taking at least 8 feedings of like 2-3 oz per day before they'll let him go home. Jess said he's worked himself up to 2 feedings per day by bottle and the rest via feeding tube. It's kind of touch-n-go as far as the bottlefeedings because he hasn't learned to coordinate sucking and breathing all at the same time. If his oxygen saturation level goes down (they monitor that too),they make Jess stop feeding him until they go back up. If they dont go back up quick enough, they'll stick an oxygen maskover his face until it goes back up.
Anyway...we got to see him live and in person for the first time last night. We had to go in with Jess one at a time and Brian sat with the other person out in the NICU waiting area. Oh my gosh is he TEENY WEENY! He could barely wrap his tiny little fingers around one of mine. He's so wrinkled he looks like a very old little man and his feet are just..well..tiny can't even begin to describe it. One of his feet lengthwise was no longer than about half how long my hand is wide and I don't have very big hands. I got to hold him for a few minutes and it's amazing how light he is compared to James. Little Bitty barely weighs four pounds and James is now a little over ten pounds (oh btw..we went to the doc's yesterday. He now weighs 10 lbs 1.5 oz and is 22 and 1/4 inches long

The green sticky poop is caused by lactose intolerance and now we're on lactose free formula which stinks even worse than regular formula if that's even possible.

) I was just amazed at how tiny this kid was and I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn't even supposed to be born yet.
Jess is such a loving,caring parent. She didn't freak but she did look concerned every time his numbers went down and kept encouraging him to eat more, to remember to breathe while he sucked and so forth. I knew before I saw him that she was going to be a good mom and that she and Brian deserved to be parents but this just proved it even more.
TOV