Taking bottles!

When Brooks was weaning off respiratory support I felt like we were making progress daily...and we were. Then we kind of got to a lull where he just needed to grow...and he did. Now we're moving right along to the next steps. They discontinued his caffeine today. I figured it would be soon since he hadn't had any recent episodes, plus his episodes have all stemmed from reflux or spitting up which the caffeine doesn't really help for, but they left it on a little longer just in case. Let's hope he does tolerate being off the caffeine. His weight was only up 2 grams today, but he had gained so well the several days that he is up 200 grams for the week, which is ideal and right on target for him.

I talked to his nurse practitioner today about his plan, she was gone yesterday so just a little catching up and she wanted to talk to me about stopping the caffeine. She said the plan is to stop the oxygen flow this weekend or Monday, exciting, but a little scary. I just hope he tolerates it. She did say at this point she doesn't think it's doing much and I know they wouldn't do it unless they thought he was really ready. They just didn't want to do too many things at once today with stopping the caffeine. We aren't going anywhere at this point so it's no big deal to wait. We talked about the bottles and I guess so there is no confusion they have to actually have a certain type of order for the nurses to give bottles so she was going to change that. She said once he is taking 75% of his feeds by mouth they take out the tube and then he eats as he wants to eat, but no longer than 4 hours. 

So this morning I came in and talked to his nurse a little bit. She asked if I had been doing bottles. I explained how he had been sleepy when I was there the last couple of days so we hadn't done much. She said his night nurse said he was up with each feeding last night! Little turkey. They were kind of waiting for me to do the first bottles, but I told her I don't want to hold him back and if he is ready (awake and rooting) when I'm not there then to go ahead and try. He was sleeping when I got there and still sleepy for his noon feeding. Therapy came at 2pm and not just for a massage, but for developmental therapy and he still slept through the whole thing! By the time his 3pm feeding came and I changed his diaper and his outfit because he had spit up, he woke up. He was really awake and showing those signs that he was ready to eat so we got him a bottle. I could not believe how well he did! I was teary eyed watching him because I was completely amazed. Age wise this is usually when they take bottles, but it was his first real bottle and he paced himself, he stopped to take breaths, he tolerated it with no gagging or increased work of breathing, no dropping his oxygen-it was perfect! He took 16ml which is almost half of his feeding. That was actually in 15-20 minutes and he has 30 minutes to eat. I didn't want to push it though because he started pushing it out of his mouth and didn't seem interested anymore. They can get an aversion if you try to force it when they're not ready. Now this isn't to say that every feeding will be like this and they said sometimes they regress a little before they fully get the hang of it, but just to see him do so well made me so happy. 

After he has mastered bottles, he will still need a car seat check and circumcision before discharge. We also have to take their CPR class. I am CPR certified, but they said it's still good to take their class specific to infants.

It's still hard to believe this sweet little boy is coming home with us. Bringing a baby home has been a dream for 5 1/2 years since my miscarriage. I look at this precious little boy and all I can think about is how much we love him and how afraid I am that I might lose him.