Day 40, Thursday, December 23

I spend every afternoon up at the hospital with Tate. Which means I don’t ever spend the afternoon (or usually half the morning as well) at home. I would love to have a day that I can just stay home all day. I could get so much stuff done. Work on Tate’s room, catch up on laundry, organize the office, wrap Christmas presents, finish some sewing projects…maybe even cook a meal for my family. But I can’t stand the thought of not seeing Tate for a whole day. So I keep going…however, we did switch up our schedule today which allowed me to spend the entire afternoon at home. All I got accomplished was taking a nap with Hudson which was time well spent. :)

I went up at 9 this morning to meet a new speech therapist. Because the NICU is closed from 7-9 am from rounds they didn’t let me in till 9:15. The speech therapist waited for me and let me feed him while she observed and gave me some pointers. Again the first few minutes I thought he was doing good but when I checked the bottle he had only drank 1 ml. I am definitely doing something wrong for him because no one else is having that problem with him. After the first 15 minutes the speech therapist took him and got him to finish the bottle. She said she had to push him really hard to finish it but she thought if we could have started right at 9 am when he was more alert we would have had an easier time getting him to finish it.

Since I stayed home this afternoon Jamie went up to feed Tate his bottle at 3 pm. Tate took the entire bottle (42 mls) in 10 minutes. And the nurse said he probably paced him too much because Tate was doing a good job on his own with his breathing. They increased his bottlefeeds to 4 times a day already. Halfway there! We still can’t do back to back feedings so that he doesn’t get too tired so we are doing every other one. That means he’s eating at 3 am and 9 am and 3 pm and 9 pm. Jamie and I are able to do the 3 pm and 9 pm feedings but so far we have let the nurses do the other two. We want to be here for every one but the 3 am is not very feasible (so we at least get a little sleep) and the 9 am doesn’t work well since they are usually running late with rounds and they won’t let us in right at 9.

Tate had his picture taken with Santa Claus today. I’ll post the pictures once I get a digital copy of them. They posted the signup for the pictures about two weeks ago – and me, being superstitious, didn’t sign him up in the hopes that if I didn’t sign him up he would be home by now. But as it drew nearer I realized we’d still be here so a few days ago I put his name on the list.

I went up for the 9 pm feeding. This was a big test for me since I was the only one who hadn’t got him to take a bottle yet. The first ten minutes he looked like he was doing good but then still only took a few mls. Nurse took him and got him started and we decided I wasn’t actually putting enough milk in the nipple. So I took him back and put more in and he finished all but 5 ml. (He’s at 42 mls now.). He probably could have done the whole thing if we hadn’t wasted the first ten minutes doing it wrong.

The nurse thought I probably paced him too much because he was doing a really good job with his suck, swallow and breathe. But it’s hard to not stop him and make sure he’s breathing…so I have to get better about watching for his breathing and his cues instead of stopping him every 4-5 sucks. She last saw him Sunday night and said he was like a whole different baby with how well he’s doing on the bottle today!