The Final Countdown!

OK, admit it. Upon reading that headline, you’ve got synthesizer intro from the 80’s hit by Europe going through your head, don’t you?
Today is day 52 in NICU land. He had a tremendous feeding with me last night – 75mL without any incident! He repeated that performance twice with his overnight nurse last night and again with me at lunch time today. For reference, 1oz is about 30mL. So it was no surprise when his nurse, Carol, said to me that the doctors have completed their rounds this morning and feel comfortable discharging Jeffrey on Friday evening. That will be 1 week without incident, and also give him time for his RSV vaccine, Synagis. We also had to make a circumcision decision today, in order to give enough recovery time before he comes home.
So the question you may be asking yourself is… where do I stand in the contest? Well, here are the standings so far:

Difference Name Guess
173.94 Jen & Mike 1871.06
132 Connie 1913.00
70 Meme 1975.00
69.1 K 1975.90
57 Sheila 1988.00
41.52 Mom 2086.52
107 Roger & Bonnie 2152.00
155 Sue Fisk 2200.00
166.26 Nikki Johnson 2211.26
175 Amanda from Ohio 2220.00
320 Heidi Newberry 2365.00
320 Professor Beaton 2365.00
336 Joanne Macek 2381.00
365 Kurt 2410.00
384 Marc Newberry 2429.00
423 Aunt Kate 2468.00
456 Liane Welsh 2501.00

Latest Measurement 2045 (3/1/2006)
Current Leader: Mom

If Jeffrey were coming home today, Grandma Lelah would be the winner. But his trip home isn’t until Friday. He may even lose a few grams as they’re discontinuing his calorie supplement today. It’s still anybody’s game. Except for Liane… you’re just way out there!
Tomorrow afternoon we’ll conduct his car seat test. Britax sent us a Low Birth Weight insert for his Companion infant car seat. It allows his body to lay a little more reclined than usual, and it can be removed from under the fabric once he is over 7 pounds (3.175 Kg). The folks at Britax were very helpful over the phone and getting the insert to us quickly. And of course, I had the seat professionally installed and checked by a Certified Child Passenger Seat Technician while I was on duty at the ambulance last night. Thanks, Diana. This is a (usually free) service offered by many ambulance agencies, fire departments, police departments and even some baby specialty stores, and I encourage every parent out there to take full advantage of it. As many as 82% of car seats are installed incorrectly!
What will parenthood hold for us once our son is home with us? We’ll soon find out. It sure is looking like baby around here, though! His feline siblings are eagerly awaiting… not really. They’re cats and frankly they don’t care about very much at all.
Vitals: 2045g today at 6 PM. I’ll update this post when I get home tonight. Ad lib feeds continue and intake increases daily. He’s starting to show signs of being able to stare are Dani and I, which is pretty good for 37 weeks…