The feeding challenge

Feeding and gaining weight is the most important goal right now. Santi needs to get enough, by mouth, without working too hard to get it.

In an effort to keep up with Santiago's feedings I have stayed with him the past few nights nights. As a result, the blog has suffered (sorry!) but his feeding has improved everyday.

He eats every 3 hours starting at 12:30am then 3:30am, 6:30am and so on. We started nursing (or trying to) on Thursday afternoon. He did okay. He has pretty good suck and swallow coordination but he didn't quite "get it" at first. Which everyone assured me was normal.

I nursed him through every feeding on Thursday night/Friday morning. He was only taking roughly 10cc's from me, then he would be so exhausted he'd fall asleep. The rest, up to 45cc was given through his NG tube. That's the feeding tube that goes into his nose, down to his tummy.

On Friday our nurse rigged a "paci-trainer." Basically a pacifier with a tube and syringe of food attached. This was to help him put together the idea of sucking and getting the reward of food without having to work as hard as he does while breast feeding.

So we alternated breast feeding and the paci-trainer Friday night/Saturday morning. He did GREAT with the paci-trainer and a little better at nursing.

On Saturday morning he got a new nurse with a new plan. She wanted him to started eating from a bottle. I didn't love the idea, but the most important thing for Santi is that he gets my milk, by mouth and he gets enough of it. I have never fed a baby from a bottle, so I had some training. It started kinda rough, but overnight he really started to pick it up. This morning he finished his 55cc bottle in no time!

Since gaining weight is a major goal, my milk is being fortified with 24 calories of formula. I didn't love that idea either. But if he doesn't gain enough weight or learn to take his entire feed by mouth, the future alternative is a G-tube. A feeding tube straight through his belly. This terrifies me and we'll do whatever we need to to avoid a G-tube!