35 Weeks

Andrew’s gestational age is 35 weeks today. When I arrived this morning, the nurse was feeding him a bottle. He had taken his entire feeding (43 cc.) at the previous feeding and he was wide awake, so she decided to give him another bottle. I finished the feeding via the gavage tube because he was just exhausted. We then met with the lactation consultant and I was a little nervous because he seems to be tired after working so hard on his bottle feedings. The nurse said he must have wanted to show off. He did great! She weighed him before, during and after the feeding and she said that he was taking about 1 cc. per minute. She said that this is something that a baby who is ready to go home would do. Now he’s not coming home yet, but it was a great day feeding wise. Since we were able to get an estimate of his intake, they can reduce how much he gets via the gavage tube. So he won’t take the entire 43 cc. of milk after I feed him. Hopefully this will help the reflux…he may have been getting too much milk in the past few days. He took the entire bottle for the next feeding and then did really well at the evening feeding. When we left for the night, he seemed pretty tired. It’s a lot of work in the NICU, especially for such a little guy. Tomorrow (Tuesday morning) he will be getting eye drops to dilate his eyes before his visit with the ophthalmologist. All preemies have eye exams when they are four weeks old. Please pray that everything will be fine.