Day 52, Tuesday, January 4

Everyone needs a day of rest sometimes. Evidently that’s what Tate needed because today he is like a different baby – back to how he was a week ago. All four feedings that Jamie and I did today he was awake beforehand, fussing, crying, rooting and ready to eat! And he stayed awake through the feedings as well.  He is seven weeks old today.

The goal for today was 5-6 bottles. He took his 9 am for the nurse and I breastfed/bottled the noon. He took 36 mls at breast today! I am so happy! Yesterday I’m saying he hardly gets any and today he takes more than an ounce. He latched on right away and did really well today. After about 10 minutes he was starting to slow down so I switched him to the other side and he latched right back on and started nursing some more. He was still nursing at the 15 minute mark so we let him go to 20 minutes and then weighed him. I was really hoping he had gotten a lot, because it seemed like he had done really well, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much. Of course, the scale isn’t the most accurate, especially when a different nurse weighs at the beginning than the one who weighs at the end – you have to make sure you know exactly how the first nurse weighed – blanket on or off, leads hooked or unhooked, wires on the scale or off, etc. But those things usually make a big difference in weight so we know it’s a mistake. So we went with the 36 mls. Then he just had to take 16 more from the bottle and he gulped it right down.

The nurse had planned to gavage his 3 pm since we were taking it slow today but Tate was awake and chomping so she made him promise not to make her look bad and he followed through! He took the whole bottle (52 mls) in about 17 minutes. When we started bottle feeding he was only at about 30 mls and the 52 today seems like so much (The NP raises his feeds 1-2 mls every few days depending on his weight gain). The little bottles only hold 60 so they are almost full now so it seems like we are feeding him a lot. I had to pace him the whole time but he did great and had no choking episodes.


He was still sleeping when I left at 6 but we were already planning to gavage that feeding cause we knew he would be worn out after 3 in a row. But he was mad and hungry when Jamie fed him at 9 and midnight and he took the whole bottle.


They gavaged him at 3 and then he took a full bottle at 6 am, so he made his goal of 6 bottles for the day. I am hoping that they will take it slow for the next few days and keep him at 4-6 to let him get used to that, rather than jumping right up to 6-8 like we did last week. But maybe he’s ready for it this time, or maybe our insurance company is pushing pretty hard at this point so they’ll try 6-8 again tomorrow. We’ll see.