Feedings....

What an interesting past two days! Alexander is doing very well with his oxygen, but his respiratory rate has been fluctuating, so doctors are watching it. The main focus now is his feeding, which is going okay. I say okay, because he's losing weight :( but he is getting better with taking the breast and tolerating his feeds through his NG tube.

Yesterday, the doctors said to start bottle feeding him... As much I as I prefer Alexander getting used to the breast first, I really don't want to go home with the NG tube and he's going to need the fortified formula for his calorie intake. So I said okay. So, to start the bottle feeding, the doctors said to have Alex breast fed 5 minutes before his feeding, then to bottle feed for several minutes, then to continue with the feeding through his NG tube. What a mess that was!!  He went from my breast (where he can control the flow), to a bottle (where he had NO CONTROL and milk was just pouring out of his mouth), to his NG tube, where he doesn't have to do anything. After all was exposed, he vomited when the tube feeding started! :(
During the next feeding, OT arrived  and said NO to feeding breast and bottle at the same time..it just confuses him (which I completely agreed with!). So it was decided that during the night, Alex would be fed by bottle 2 times, out of the 4 feeding sessions throughout the night and during the day only breast feeding and tube feeding. Yesterday's positive was that Alexander is completely off the morphine and can be given Tylenol if needed, which he hasn't! :) He also got to see his daddy and both his grandmothers too!

This morning,started off pretty good, with Alexander doing very well with latching during the breast feeding. During rounds, I found out that the bottle feeding never occurred over night because it wasn't in the case notes!!!! They have told me that it will be started tonight ...we shall see.
 During each feeding today, Alexander latched and with each time, he latched for longer periods of time! We are up to about 7 minutes now without taking long pauses! I'm very pleased and hoping we can still prove the NP wrong. Tomorrow I will be inquiring what the plan will be if he continues to lose weight, why his volume hasn't been increased (we are still at 40 cc's) and when the feeding tube will be removed. Especially since they are estimating that our discharge date be March 15th-next friday!!!! I'd be happy to leave next week, but i don't want the feeding tube to go with us! Hopefully I will get some answers.

I also got to give my baby boy a bath today! First time bathing him and first time seeing him with no lines!! Very happy moment! Since today was a better day than yesterday, I hope that tomorrow is better than the past 2 days and it leads into a great weekend!