Marek

I'm not sure whether I've mentioned this before, and I think I haven't.

Stella has a foster child (Pflegekind) called Marek now, who will be staying with us indefinitely. (Fairly surely at least until the end of January, but quite possibly longer, without a set end—depending on how the mother is doing.)

He's about five months old, but he was born about three months prematurely (at 27 weeks and about 900 grammes/32 ounces), so I tend to reckon he's two months old "net", since that's a better indicator of his progress (or in other words, his progress is more comparable to full-term babies two months old than to those five months old).

He came to use on a day-care basis twice a week or so at first, around the time that his scheduled birth date was, but they had already said that it was possible he might move on to a foster child relationship in the future, and that happened a week or two ago now.

So you might well be hearing more about him in the future.

It's been surprising seeing the progress he makes in a short time, such as gaining quite a bit more control over his hands' movements: he went from flailing around to being able to grasp things in just a week or two. He's also much more awake and alert now than at the beginning.

And we discovered another advantage of nursing compared to bottle-feeding: nursing lets you have one hand free so you can eat yourself while the child is feeding! (Or, if you use a cushion, you can even have both hands free to read a book. But bottle-feeding pretty much needs one hand to hold the child and one hand to hold the bottle.)

He's got some issues related to his premature birth (e.g. having to inhale medicine regularly and go to physical therapy), but he's making good progress and that won't be forever.