22 November

Back to putting on weight - up to 4 lb. 5.3 oz.!

Probably helps that I've been doing better with my feeds, especially with the 90 minute delivery time.  Holding steady at 38 ml per feeding.

Mom and Dad came by this morning to see me try eating from the bottle again after I had some success yesterday.  An OT was there again to help, but this time Mom fed me herself.

I was pretty sleepy when we started which made the initial going kind of rough.

But eventually I woke up enough to give it the old college try.

I wasn't able to take quite as much as yesterday - only 10 ml instead of 18 - but the OT and nurses still seemed pretty happy about that and considered it a success.  After all, this was only my second time ever trying to eat with my mouth!

After the feeding Mom burped me which was not much fun (I think my expression here says it all!):

But after the feeding and burping was done, it was nice to have a little quality time with Mom while I was actually AWAKE for once.  I showed off some of my new facial control, which she was duly impressed with.

Pretty clever of me, huh?  I'm still working on a couple other expressions but those are the ones I've got down for now.  After she held me a little longer I got tired so they put me back in my crib to rest.

I got some good sleep and had a pretty uneventful afternoon.

Then Mom and Dad came BACK in the evening to hold me and Rory again - I guess the nurses want us on some sort of twice-a-day contact schedule, although I have to say that's quite a bit of interaction for me for one day!  I tried to wake up and say hi, but was pretty much dead to the world after all the excitement of the morning.

Nevertheless, Mom was supposed to let me try nuzzling at the breast and gamely did so even though I was not real awake to try much of anything.  I did my best, but got tired and went back to sleep pretty quickly.  Luckily for me Mom's comfy!

I had a few minor desats while I was sleeping on Mom, but no major disasters.  She held me for about an hour and a half while I had my evening feeding and it was a nice little visit - especially for me, since it's nice to sleep on a warm body rather than just in the crib like usual!

Busy day overall but I think a good one.