Day 6

Gibs had a good day again. He gained 10 grams last night, so that was good (he was actually 5 lbs 1 oz yesterday--so he's still close to that). He didn't spit up much through the night or day today which was good too! He did however have a big spit up late this afternoon after being gavaged. He was laying on his back and the poor little guy had spit up ALL over his face and chest. So he once again needed a bath. The upped his feedings now to 52 mL and added human milk fortifier to it partly for extra calories but mainly b/c his protein was a bit low today. They said that 52 mL will be the max they'll put him at (8 mL less than 2 oz). He has been having a lot of his feedings gavaged completely. He still is just so tired. The feedings that he does drink part of it he only drinks about 10 mL. It seems ot kind of depend on the nurse if they try to get him to drink from the bottle or not--some like to give him a chance to try drinking but some don't try if he's sleeping b/c they want him to associate feeding as a positive experience and don't want to pressure him to eat. Right now I'm fine with having them gavage it all if it's for the best for him--but eventually I'll want them to try hard so that we can get him home!

The speech therapist came tonight right before we were leaving for the day to evaluate his sucking. He was sleeping pretty sound so they didn't try a bottle, she therefore was only able to evaluate his non-nutrient suck (paci/her finger). She said his non-nutrient was suck was normal. She'll be back on Wednesday and hopefully then he'll be wanting to drink and she'll then feed him a bottle to evaluate how he is with his suck, swallow and breath coordination and whether we should change to a different nipple type or not (the nipple on the bottle:D). She was very imformative. For instance, I didn't realize that preemies don't have their cheek muscles developed yet--that's part of why they often have issues feeding--they're sucking with their lips, not their cheeks like full termers. She knows what she's talking about, she's a speech therapist, but also has been a mom of preemies 3 times to 5 different babies!! She had a daughter at like 35ish weeks, then had triplets at 29 weeks 19 months later and then a year later had a 35ish (I can't remember exactly) weeker!!! Wow, compared to that my 19 monther and a baby should be a piece of cake!! :) Gibs' bili count was down today to 11.5 and it needs to be less than 10 before they'll take him off of the lights, so hopefully tomorrow it will have gone down enough that he can be off of them and we can see his eyes again:). Because he's so close to being at a low enough level they let him switch to a bili blanket instead of the bili bed (the bili bed is more effective/quicker) so that we could hold him and so that he was more comfy wrapped up in that. Hopefully as his bili count keeps decreasing he'll have more energy to drink his bottles!

Snuggled tight in his bili blanket with Dad...

Enjoying Kangaroo Care with Mom in his bili blanket...

Holding Daddy's finger after he settled down after the big spit up episode...