Day 43, Sunday, December 26

Jamie and I slept in till 9:45 this morning. Wow. That felt like so much sleep! I needed to get up at 9 to pump but I knew if I got up I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep so I let it go a little longer than usual. We had a busy day today because Jamie’s brother and his family got here from Florida and Jamie’s parents came into town.


Before everyone got here Jamie and I went up and I fed Tate his noon bottle and he took the whole thing for me. Had a few episodes where he gagged and took a little bit for him to take a big breath again. He was breathing the whole time (since his monitor never went off I know he’s actually breathing even if it doesn’t look like it) but he hadn’t done what they call “catch up breathing” when he takes a couple big breaths through his mouth and pants a little. I don’t like waiting for that as his face turns red or purple and his eyes start to water. That is why the pacing is so important. If he gets behind it’s scary to wait for him to catch up. After we got over that he did really well and finished the whole bottle for me.

While Jamie was introducing Tate to his Uncle Jeremy they changed his orders to 4-6 bottles a day so Jeremy got to watch Tate have another bottle. Jamie is more confident in the bottle feeding than I am. I still don’t feel comfortable having someone watch because I get too distracted and then he chokes or isn’t breathing. So it will probably be awhile before I invite anyone to come in while I’m feeding.

He took his full bottle for Jamie at 3 pm and then tube fed at 6 pm. Jamie and I came back up and fed him at 9 pm but Tate was totally worn out. I got him to take about half of it before he totally conked out. He was holding his lips shut because he didn’t want anymore.

We’ve definitely noticed that Tate is starting to act more and more like a baby. He rarely cried or even fussed before but the last day or two he’s starting to wake up 20 minutes before feeding time and squirm around. He’s also been crying when we change his diapers and have his clothes off. He’s also starting to root around a lot more. He weighs 5 pounds, 6.5 ounces today.

Jamie’s mom came up to see Tate for a little while tonight too. She thinks Tate looks like Jamie did when he was a baby. We still think he looks like Hudson did – and Hudson looks just like I did when I was young, so we’ll see as Tate fills out more who he really looks like.

Jamie stayed and gave Tate a bath at midnight and tried to feed him another bottle but he was still too tired. He wouldn’t open his mouth at all this time. But overall, Tate took 52% of his feeds by bottle today.  So halfway.  Just got to keep going up, up, up!