8 weeks

As of the day after Christmas, Arie weighed 7 lb. 10 oz. He's a happy, healthy, growing baby!

Seven Weeks Old

Wonderful news---Arie is home! God answered our prayers and sent Arie home with us last Friday. It's wonderful to have him with us all the time, every day. He is really a sweet little guy and is thriving in his new environment.

Arie is doing great himself. He came off of tube feedings about two weeks ago and is nursing so well now that he'll soon be done with bottles! His apnea improved enough that the doctors were willing to send him home on a monitor and caffeine (stimulates the brain so that he remembers to breathe). The monitor is working well and things are going great. He's hit seven pounds now and is getting chubbier every day!

Some of you may have heard that a few days before Arie came home he had a routine discharge brain ultrasound that showed some unexpected results. Arie has what the doctors call cystic PVL. This means there are little holes in his brain that were caused by a lack of oxygen to his brain while he was in the womb. In another routine exam the doctors found that his optic nerves appeared to be smaller than they should be, especially in his right eye. Arie's doctor ordered an MRI to get a better view of his head and we met with a neurologist last Thursday to discuss the results. The neurologist had very positive comments. He said the MRI showed minimal damage to the brain and that the optic nerves looked fairly normal. The doctor's prognosis for Arie is minimal vision difficulties or quite possibly no problems at all. There is still some chance that there may be other complications, but the neurologist thought that would be fairly unlikely.

After being in the NICU for almost seven weeks, we are so thankful to God for bringing our whole family back home. God has answered so many prayers during this time and has shown us His goodness. Although it's been difficult, we found out doing research on PVL that if Arie had stayed in the womb any longer than he did, he quite possibly could have died. Praise God that he came early and is doing so well!

Not too long now!