Jac has been making good progress drinking from the bottle, and it really showed today -- he must be having a growth spurt today to make up for the zero-gain day yesterday!
He drank from the bottle twice this morning before we visited him this afternoon. For his 3pm feed, we asked his nurse to bottle feed him so that we could observe her technique. He drank 15 ml in less than 10 minutes. From watching the nurse, we learned to start the feed with the nipple unloaded until he makes a few sucks; and to keep the nipple in his mouth more than we have been in the past.
Jac and I had a nice nap from 3:30 until around 5.
When he woke up, he was clearly hungry again, and sucked furiously on the pacifier! Taj and I decided that this was a good opportunity to try getting Jac onto her breast. At first, Jac didn't know what to do with the breast; but after about five minutes of getting a few drops of milk in squeezed into his mouth, he rooted around and then latched and sucked a couple times. It wasn't much (probably less than 2 ml, total), but he clearly sucked on momma's boob. His first successful breast feed! Well done!
For his 6pm, I fed Jac with a bottle and got him to take 20 ml and then we gavage'd the remainder (31 ml total per feed). Then by 7:45, he was again clearly hungry and managed to take 15ml from Taj in under 5 minutes. Had we had more milk at the ready, he probably would have taken a full feed's worth in one sitting!
We decided to give him (and ourselves) a break for his next feed, and had the nurse gavage his feed at 9pm. We thought he would sleep through that, but he was unhappy with reflux and gas in his tummy. He flailed around for a while, started crying, and wouldn't calm down even after three attempts at swaddling (which normally works).
Jac finally calmed down when I picked him up and then set him back down for another attempt to swaddle him. Before I actually swaddled him, he just suddenly stopped crying and looked very calm. I decided to let him be unswaddled, and then started talking to him. Jas was apparently distracted from his tummy discomforts from the "conversation" followed by some singing. It took a while, but we finally got him to fall asleep by about 10:30 or so.
BTW, he pooped a lot today. A testimony to his big appetite for the day. It'll be interesting to see what he weighs in at tonight.
It turned out that she behaved very well. She was curious, but otherwise fine with Jac. Paula was even well behaved when the respiratory tech was at the house. At one point, the respiratory tech stood right over her -- and she didn't mind it. In fact, she even licked him a couple times when he was close to her.
Jac had a busy morning as we went through the final process of getting him home. We started by verifying his ankle ID bracelet against Mommy's ID bracelet to confirm that Jac was in fact our baby. After cross checking the ID numbers, we removed his bracelet (more of an anklet), the ECG leads and the SpO2 (pulse ox) sensor. Finally, we disconnected Jac from the hospital oxygen supply and put him on a portable oxygen tank.
While Mommy gave Jac his final meal at the hospital before hitting the road, Daddy gathered up the rest of the stuff that we had brought to the hospital -- a tub full of bottles and pumping kits, the bottle warmer, the baby wipes warmer, preemie clothes, blankets, the Amby Baby hammock, foam mattress, camera tripod, wi-fi router... We accumulated a lot of stuff in the last month and a half!
Jac took his car seat challenge tonight -- one of the final checks to make sure that he is ready to go home. Getting him strapped in was a little disconcerting at first -- as we weren't exactly sure how tight to make the straps. At first, it seemed like Jac was struggling against the straps that may have been too tight; but loosening the straps seemed like they wouldn't secure him in an accident. Our nurse showed us that there should be just enough slack to slip two finger beneath each strap. We waited an hour to see if he had any saturation problems. Jac passed without any incident.
In fact, about 15 minutes into his test, Jac fell asleep in the car seat. At the end of his test, we decided to leave the car seat on the ground with him in it, so that we wouldn't interrupt his sleep.
Jac got a new bed today - from Australia.
Typically, there is a 5 second window when the old diaper is removed and not yet replaced by the new diaper. Jac has successfully exploited such windows of vulnerability more than once...
He drank from the bottle twice this morning before we visited him this afternoon. For his 3pm feed, we asked his nurse to bottle feed him so that we could observe her technique. He drank 15 ml in less than 10 minutes. From watching the nurse, we learned to start the feed with the nipple unloaded until he makes a few sucks; and to keep the nipple in his mouth more than we have been in the past.
When he woke up, he was clearly hungry again, and sucked furiously on the pacifier! Taj and I decided that this was a good opportunity to try getting Jac onto her breast. At first, Jac didn't know what to do with the breast; but after about five minutes of getting a few drops of milk in squeezed into his mouth, he rooted around and then latched and sucked a couple times. It wasn't much (probably less than 2 ml, total), but he clearly sucked on momma's boob. His first successful breast feed! Well done!
By 2:30pm, Jac started looking hungry -- since it was only a little while before his next scheduled feed, we decided to try the bottle again. While Taj warmed up the bottle, I pulled Jac out and gave him a pacifier.
With all the fussing earlier, and then the work of drinking the entire bottle, Jac was pretty exhausted and fell into a nice sleep. Sleep is good. Sleep = growing!
