Day 39, Wednesday, December 22

Jamie wanted to watch speech therapy feed Tate too so Hudson spent the night with my mom so that we could get up and go to Tate’s 9 am feeding. Their plan is for speech to feed him once every day, Monday thru Friday, but the time will vary every day. We arranged with her to be there at 9 am. We went up together last night and actually left early (around 11 pm) so that we could get a little more sleep since we had to be up early to be there at 9 am.

We were eating breakfast and getting ready to leave at 8:15 when Tate’s nurse called to tell us that speech couldn’t come at 9 am and would be there at noon instead. Ugh. We could have slept in and got a little extra sleep. But at least they let us know before we drove all the way over there. So instead we used the time to work on one of my many project for Tate’s room. We didn’t get too far with it since we had to go to Lowe’s to buy some materials, but at least we now have what we need so maybe we’ll get to it soon. Problem is it has gotten so cold here lately and all the tools we need are in the garage. Neither of us really want to work on it in our spare time (what little of it there is!).

So we went up at noon to meet speech and she fed Tate again and again he took the whole bottle from her! She did the same things she did yesterday and he drank it right down. She put a paper on Tate’s crib that explains the methods we should be using to feed Tate. The problem is all the nurses have their own methods they use and don’t really pay much attention to the directions she gave. She told us to really watch his tongue placement because he was probably keeping his tongue up and over the nipple (again to protect himself) which is why he’s not actually swallowing any milk those times I have fed him and he hasn’t taken much.

I hung around for the afternoon and kangarooed him at 3 pm. He wasn’t very interested in nursing today. The NP did give some new orders though today. She increased his feed to 42 ml and said it was okay to now do 3 bottle feeds a day but at the nurse’s discretion. So as long as she thinks he has rested well and is alert and ready to try a bottle. I asked her about spacing the feedings, since right now we have to do one every 12 hours and she said not to do them at back to back assessments but at least skip one in between.

Jamie went back up at 9 pm to try it again. He couldn’t even get Tate to take the bottle in his mouth. After 10 minutes of trying the nurse came by and said “let me try.” He proceeded to take the bottle, stick it right in Tate’s mouth (without really waiting for Tate to open for it) but Tate did then take about half the bottle from him. But the nurse never paced him, just let him take half without pulling the milk back out of the bottle or sitting him back up to let him breathe. But he said he was doing fine without pacing and that Tate was putting his tongue up over the nipple to stop the flow when he needed to breathe (which I don’t think we want him to do – sounds like a defense mechanism since we think that's why he didn't take his bottle from me yesterday). Then Jamie tried again and still wasn’t getting anywhere so the nurse took it again, stuck it in and finished off the bottle. So he ate the whole thing in a span of only 10 minutes when it’s always taken the full 30 minutes before. Jamie was pretty frustrated with this because he did everything against what the speech therapist had suggested. When he told me about it I said I wanted to just go back to breastfeeding because then I’m the only one who can do it. It’s very frustrating that each nurse has their own way of doing it and their own opinions about how to do it. We feel like speech knows what they are talking about and should follow their suggestions but then maybe it’s better for Tate to just take it however so that we can get his daily feedings increased. The more feedings we can do the more we can all practice.

Tate gained about 2 ounces today and is now….drum roll, please…..5 pounds, .8 ounces!