I wanted to take a moment to talk about the genesis of Brennan’s name, and how we feel that his name was chosen for him by his older brother.

Let me preface this post by stating that I am not a spiritual or religious person.  Neither is B’s Mom.  I have a really practical/analytical personality.  New age, spiritual, mystical, power of prayer, etc. are things that I basically roll my eyes at, so it is difficult for me to talk about Brennan’s name in the way I’m about to.  I don’t believe in guardian angels, divine intervention, and so on and so forth.  I am, and will always be, a skeptic.

Yet I know with absolute certainty that Finn had a hand in choosing Brennan’s name.

After the second ultrasound with Brennan, Chief Medical Officer Mom was still concerned that everything was going to fall apart and needed reassurance.  As we were leaving the clinic, we drove past a red truck in the parking garage with a license plate that said, simply, “Finn” – no numbers even, just the four letters.  All winter, the CMO had said that every cardinal was a sign of Finn, and I’ve come to associate the color red with him as well.  It’s difficult for me to describe my feelings about this occurrence – wanting to believe in a sign, but looking for rational explanations.

As the pregnancy progressed, we began discussing names.  As I once talked about Finn’s naming on his blog, so I will link to our spreadsheet of possibilities here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QMCWHxAMJIePJujFgdcn7dQMoS1JGArZBaYEoVONXGE/edit?usp=sharing

After the anatomy scan, we began earnestly “testing” out various male names we had compiled.  We gravitated towards Irish surnames as we had with our firstborn.  We really liked Alistair quite a bit, especially Alec as a nickname, but kept getting hung up on the exact spelling of it (and that it was not Irish in origin).  Brennan was one of the names we liked initially because Cheryl referred to the fetus as “Baby B”.

In mid January we had the following conversation:

After Alistair, we tested out Brennan towards the end of January.  On February 8, I received the following “like” of my work homepage:

I had never heard of this company before, which is a construction business that has nothing to do with libraries and isn’t even located near where I live and work.  There was no reason for them to “like” my work page.  After this email, I was convinced that we had our name, although the CMO needing more convincing.  She would get it.

After this incident, I had an issue with a catalog record at work that I had to send to the CMO to fix.  It was for the “Cedar Cove” television show, and one of the actors was Brennan Elliott.  I feel that Brennan is an uncommon enough name that it was fairly significant that I had to send her a record with this name attached to it within a week or so of the Facebook occurrence.  Later, I would run into another issue with this very same DVD when another library contacted me about having one of their patrons request it even though we weren’t putting it on interlibrary loan yet, as if to dispel any doubt about Brennan.

I suddenly kept seeing the name everywhere.  However, there were two more significant events that finally convinced the CMO that Brennan was it.  My sisters like to reference the movie “Step Brothers” to each other, and  because of this, one week the CMO decided to borrow the DVD from the library.  One of the brothers is named Brennan.  Shortly after that, the CMO drove home from work one day and noticed a chiropractor office she hadn’t seen before: The Brennan Family Chiropractic and Nutrition Center, which is located 1 mile from her job (http://www.brennanhealth.com/).

I don’t know why I believe Finn reached out to tell us Brennan’s name, and to let us know everything would be fine.  The rational part of my brain explains that these are just coincidences, however improbable.  And perhaps my own healing from this last year comes simply from a need to believe in something like this in order to survive and continue on, so I seek out the random coincidences.  For the first time in my life, I am comfortable with this “spiritual” thing, and I know that Brennan’s name was chosen for him, not by his parents, but by his brother, the Mighty Jedi Finn.

Admiral Dad

If you don’t want to read stuff, skip to the bottom for the TLDR and pictures.

I haven’t been posting much lately.  Raising an infant is really exhausting, and I haven’t been able to muster much energy to post.  I guess you always hear how tiring it is, but it’s one of things that only once you experience it can you finally understand it.  As I’ve heard many times lately, the days are long, but the years are short.  I can’t believe it’s been 7 weeks now since the Captain was born.

Tomorrow is Brennan’s “due date”, and he is now just over 8 pounds.  He will be 7 weeks, 1 day chronological, but 0 days adjusted tomorrow.  What do I mean, he will be 0 days adjusted?

For premature infants, they have two ages until about age two or three.  The first age is his chronological age – calculated from the day he was physically born, and when he will legally be allowed to gamble, vote, and drink alcohol (always responsibly, of course!).  The second age is his adjusted age (also called corrected age) – calculated from his original due date.

Typical developmental milestones for a preemie are viewed from their adjusted ages.  For Captain B, milestones such as rolling over, reaching for objects, sitting up, babbling, etc. will happen much later in his chronological development.  While a term child will begin sitting up between 4-7 months, for example, Captain B will begin this in 6-9 months based on his actual birth date (May 25).

Some characteristics will still develop partly from experience, such as the ability to eat (food in digestive tract speeds up its maturation), and familiarity with language due to earlier exposure.  But a general rule of thumb is that his development timeline will occur based on his adjusted age of July 14.

It’s really difficult to get others understand the difference sometimes, as they think a baby is just a baby.  I’m not saying B is “special”, but I think it’s basically hard for people to get the fact that we have had 7 weeks of abnormal bonus time to our parental experience.  It truly has only been the last few days as if CMO and I have felt like we had a regular baby, and we have been able to tell he’s acting more “normal” at last.  I use the term “normal” loosely, because every baby is different anyways, regardless of chronological maturation.  Some babies walk or talk sooner than others, just because of various biological and environmental factors.

The best analogy I have is thinking about how vastly different a 14 year old is from an 18 year old.  But as people mature, that same gap effectively closes as you get older.  There is little difference between a 60 and 64 year old, but obviously the difference between a 1 year old and 5 year old is much greater.  If you continue to think along those lines, two months difference at birth is a much larger magnitude than you have probably thought about.

There is no magic or scientific rule for when B will “catch up” exactly, but his noticeable chronological developmental delays should begin to smooth out around age two or three. B is most likely going to see slowest development in physical or motor skills, as preemies are weaker due to abnormalities of muscle tone that may make it longer for him to develop sitting up or rolling over skills.  At this point, only time will tell.

TLDR; You adjust a premature baby’s age based on his due date, and refer to that as his adjusted age for assessing development milestones, such as walking or talking, which makes B “born” tomorrow.

‘I’ve been thinking for a while now about doing a series on the “differences” between having a premature baby and a term baby.  Mom and I find that most people don’t really understand what a premature baby means, and some of the things it entails having to deal with.

One of the bigger pieces in our current routine is having to track weight gains and caloric needs.  I know that there is a bit of a “debate” on the whole breast milk vs. formula thing. For premature babies, breast milk is emphasized due to the nutrient content as well as antibacterial properties that help out preemies from lack of development time in the womb.  However, in order to help preemies gain weight, a formula mix is recommended to boost calories, as well as provide vitamins.  It’s a bit of a conundrum.  In particular, iron is needed for parts of brain development that occur in utero in the last couple months of gestation.

Before leaving the hospital, a nutritionist put us on a plan that requires a mix of formula that provides extra calories.  Breast milk is about 20 calories per ounce, and we are upping Captain B’s intake with a special 30 caloric formula that gets mixed in with his milk.

For a goal in calories and volume, his weight in kilograms multiplied by 160 is a general rule of thumb for his total daily intake (in Milliliters).  So, for example, if he weighs 2.9kg he needs about 464 mL per day (2.9 x 160).

This also gives us a rough approximation of when he takes a bottle of how “long” he can go before needing fed again.  As you can see from the picture in this example, if he takes 58mL in a feeding, it is a decent approximation of how “full” our baby is, and when he will want (or need) to eat again.  In this case, 58 is about 3 hours.  It is all a bit tedious, but Admiral Dad loves numbers so he rather enjoys doing this sort of thing.  It’s part art, and part science.  I like to think of it like eating a meal myself.  Am I full after two cheeseburgers and some fries?  Yes.  What about if I only had 1 and 3/4 cheeseburgers?  Also yes. I’d still be “full” and I probably couldn’t tell you which had made me “fuller”.  B is probably “full” whether he takes 58 or 62mL every 3 hours.

Once B hits his “term” date (July 14), he can move off the special mix and just do breast milk (or regular formula) only at that point, but in the meantime he needs the extra caloric intake.  The major goal for his weight is to get to 7.5 to 8 pounds by July 14.

I’m sharing via Google Drive some stats I’m keeping for his weight (current growth projections show his weight gain is on target for 7 pounds, 12 oz by July 14).  Special note to Fleet Admiral Grandfather: you can go here to get updates when I’m not answering your texts on his weight gains.

Weight Tracker
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IIWjN5u2j24jsVyIHy2ravnT5azk_0sr6MFKWY31gJQ/edit?usp=sharing

I thought it would also be interesting to share out how we keep track of his feedings.  Chief Medical Officer Mom and I keep a log book that we record his feedings in.  This helps us know how much and when, as well as keep track of some things like how many “wet” diapers a day he has to make sure he’s doing all right.  I apologize if this is TMI, but reading this blog is of your own free will.  Mom has also devised a “system” for tracking B’s poop.  It’s sort of one-upmanship competition to say that you got to change a diaper that was rated a 9 instead of a mere 1.

Feeding Tracker
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ksuu05_DsYfkipLVGxIC9A6vLWg0_cJwzXJiqVHY5AM/edit?usp=sharing

I hope that was both enjoyable and informative to read.

Admiral Dad

PS – WHY can’t we use the metric system for everything?