1-2 December

Got a little bit of catching up to do again, so let's get right to it.

On Thursday, December 1st, I was up to 4 lb. 12.9 oz., which continues a nice trend of increases over the past week.

I think it's also helped by the fact that I've gotten a LOT better with my spitups - no major ones for a couple days in a row now!

Dad came by in the morning.  I was asleep.

Since it was time for my feeding, though, he took me out to try bottle feeding me, and as soon as the milk hit my lips I was ready to go (I was hungry!) and started chowing down.

After about 12 ml, though, I slowed down and needed to be burped.  Dad got a good burp out of me, but (as usual) I decided it would be a lot of work to keep eating from the bottle, so asked if I could just have the rest of my feeding through the tube like normal (okay, to be perfectly honest, by "asked" I mean "refused to open my mouth so Dad couldn't get the bottle back in", but the net effect was the same).

Unfortunately for me, Nurse Sandy was there and showed Dad some tricks to make me open my mouth and start eating.  Foiled again! 

Once I realized I had been thwarted in my efforts for a tube feeding, I went ahead and finished the rest of the bottle so I could go back to sleep, but as you can see I was not too happy about the situation:

Mom came by in the evening and bottle-fed me again.  This time I did a little better and took over 20 ml without any coercion.

The next day, Friday December 2nd (can you believe I'm 7 weeks old already?!?) was a great day for me.  I put on a little more weight for starters, up another half ounce to 4 lb. 14.2 oz.!

Second, I did great with my feedings, taking my entire feeding via bottle twice today.  Go me!

Third, I put on a cute outfit (okay, Nurse Brittany put it on, but that's just semantics...).  It's a sleeper that says "Dad's best friend" and has a matching dog-face hat:

 

Is it the most manly thing?  Perhaps not.  But it certainly made me a fashion icon - all the nurses loved it when I was out for my 2:30 p.m. bottle, and I was wide awake soaking up the attention - I like being social when no one's disturbing me or trying to make me do any work!

Dad and Mom came by a couple hours later and found me exhausted from being awake for so long earlier.  Dad did my temperature and diaper and I helped as best as I could without waking up:

Since I had already done two full bottle feedings earlier in the day, they wanted to do the 5:30 feeding through my tube, but Dad still was able to take me out and hold me while I was eating.  I got nice and cozy, but am learning not to relax TOO much, and didn't have any bradys the whole time I was out!

We had a nice little visit - I even opened my eyes and looked at him for a little while before falling back asleep!  Mom didn't get to visit too much since she was feeding Rory, but had a chance to say hi once I was back in my crib afterward.

She thought my hat was really cute too.  What can I say - I'm a hit with the ladies!

Supposed to try moving up to three or four bottle feedings tomorrow so we'll see how that goes, but if all goes well they might start dropping my feeding times down a bit, since my tube feedings are still going over two hours to minimize spitups.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!