Hannah’s Progress

NICU Day 10

Lots of small milestones being reached here at the NICU. 

IVs were all removed a few days ago, we’re on room air, but Hannah seems to pant a little bit - her heart works a little harder with breathing. Continuous feeding through her NJ tube [the green one going in her nose] has been stopped and we’ve started feeding her in a combo of bottle attempts and G-tube. 

Not only does she not know how to suck, she doesn’t know what hunger is yet [because she was continuously fed] and she also gets very sleepy during feedings because not only is she still probably healing from surgery, but again, her heart is working a little extra harder. 

Yesterday’s bottle attempts were simply attempts. If she sucked on the nipple, we’d tip the bottle and she’d receive milk. This AM she did very well and actually sucked down 3mL which Speech and Occupational Therapy were very happy with. We put her remaining 7mL in her G-tube. The G-tube is a direct line to her stomach - it makes me a bit squeamish but I’ll get used to it. 

12pm feeding was unsuccessful - Hannah was sleepy and disinterested. So I put her entire 10mL in her tube. We use a big syringe to get it in there - it looks like this:

Crazy, right? 

Her surgeon said it would be out at 3 months, so most likely she’ll come home with it. I’ve heard anecdotally that it makes for super easy night feedings and you don’t have to wake your kid : ) 

So tonight they’ll probably bump up the feeding to 15mL and we’ll just continue to up, up, up. We’ve heard her criteria for dismissal will be “full” feedings… that number varies on her weight, so as of NOW, that would be 33mL. Slow and steady wins the race, right? 

Mommy’s first bottle attempt with Hannah - what a peanut!

NJ tube is capped! Hopefully oxygen airflow won’t come back...