Busy day in the NICU

There was a lot of activity last night in the intensive care unit. Sam was visiting Calvin when they (the staff, not Sam) were told to get ready for two new arrivals. She said it was interesting to see what it must have been like when they were preparing for Calvin -- and the three other early babies that were born that day. It's almost a full house in there now.

Today went well- they took Calvin off the CPAP machine while changing him, and left it off for a while to see how he'd get on. This let us have a look at his face without tubing in his nose. Blood tests seemed to show that he was doing fine without it, and when I left he'd been breathing on his own for six hours or so. They're guessing that he'll get tired or otherwise need to go back on it later, but he's started the process of taking care of breathing independently.

He hates getting his nappy changed (we'll probably call them nappies just to fit in with the healthcare people, but I don't like the word), kicking and screaming to the point of the nurses warning each other. It's not an effective tactic since he has about half a pound of muscle, but it leaves him agitated. Fact I did not know last week: you can apparently calm down preterm babies with great success via a hand on the head and a hand on the rump, and a hand on the head works with Calvin:
Also, his hands are still small, though the signs are pointing toward him following the Nick tradition of long, graceful, almost aristocratic fingers: