This Eating Business Makes Me Pooped

Kayley had quite a few changes today. The day started out when Megan called in this morning for an update. The doctor increased Kayley's feedings from 40 cc's to 45 cc's. Not a bad jump in one day's time.

The doctor also turned Kayley's oxygen settings down from .2 lpm (liters per minute) to .1 lpm. This measures the strength of the flow that Kayley receives through the prongs. We were a little surprised they made any changes to this because Kayley will be 34 weeks gestation on Saturday. That means she has to keep her oxidation level above 90%. However, Kayley has been doing great all day on the new setting. Again, that's why we're not doctors.

Kayley's weight from last night was 2310 grams (5 lbs 1 oz) which was up 35 grams. Then tonight, she weighed in at 2430 grams. The nurse even weighed her twice to confirm the huge weight gain. It came up the same both times. We are a little skeptical but I guess the scale doesn't lie (as most people know). That means Kayley is now 5 lbs 5 oz. Given the big jump in weight, we won't be surprised if Kayley loses some tomorrow. She just may have to "pass" some of that weight tonight.

The order for Kayley's bottle feedings also changed today. We are now allowed to feed her by bottle if she is wide awake and shows cues that she's ready. So Megan, Marla, and I got to feed her with a bottle today. I thought maybe I wouldn't get to tonight because she might be pooped out. But there she was, wide awake when I arrived. So, at Kayley's 3 pm feeding, she took 10 cc's from Megan. At her 6 pm feeding, she got around 5 cc's (if I'm remembering correctly) from Marla. And at tonight's feeding, she took 15 cc's from me.

Feeding Kayley is not an easy process. First, you have to give her little indications to let her now a bottle is coming instead of the pacifier. Normally on the pacifier, Kayley sucks pretty hard. We don't want her to do the same with the bottle because she'll get too much milk and start choking. So, it starts will a couple drops of milk placed in her mouth. Then, you have to wait until she opens her mouth wide enough for the bottle. There's no jamming it in. She has to be ready for it. And when it's in her mouth, you have to watch for cues that she is continuing to breathe along with the swallowing. There were many times tonight when I had to give her a small poke in the back to get her to remember to breathe. Sometimes she just forgets. It's all a learning process for her right now...and us too. We also have to watch to see if she gets too much. It's necessary to pull the bottle out of her mouth quite a bit so she can catch up and breathe. And, I'm not sure if Megan or Marla had to do this today, but I also had to stop periodically to burp Kayley...more than with Drew when he was a newborn. She took in a lot of air. When we were finished with the bottle, the nurse checked her tummy. She pulled out 15 cc's of air through the tube. That would have been quite the burp. Anyway, the nurse thought I did pretty well tonight. Megan got a big thumbs up from the speech pathologist today. She said Megan read Kayley's cues very well.

As you can imagine, this new way of life for Kayley is quite tiresome. She is really only use to waking up and stretching. Now, she has eat all by herself. They will only allow the bottle feeding to go on for 3o minutes or less. After 30 minutes, she starts burning more calories than she's taking in and that's not good. A lot of the time, Kayley will just become disinterested in taking the milk from the bottle before the 30 minute mark is reached. Other times, she'll just get too pooped out to continue. So, we will all continue to learn and Kayley will start building up more stamina. She already seems to be getting better from feeding to feeding. This process could take anywhere from days to weeks. It all depends on how Kayley adapts to it.