Good Thing They're Cute

The day started off well. We had an appointment with the speech/feeding therapist at the hospital around lunchtime. She was glad to hear that things had improved with the new formula. Since James is doing well at night (no spit-ups, not waking up in pain), she suggested trying to give more volume with his continuous feeds (for example, running the continuous feeds for nine or ten hours instead of seven, and going to a slightly faster rate), and then trying to just do bottle feeding during the day when he acts hungry, with a goal of 200 mls during the day (or five feedings of 40 ml each). If that works, it would be great, because dealing with all the pump stuff during the day is really time-consuming. It would also give us a little more freedom if we have to be out and about; right now we only have about a two-hour window between feedings.

I'd fed James a little bit (25 mls) before we left because he was acting hungry. He was sleeping when we were there, and he didn't want to eat when I tried to feed him. But then he woke up a little more, and ate 50 ml for Mike with no problems! That's the best he's done in a while. We weighed him, and he's continuing to gain weight (he was 11 lbs, 8 oz on their scale). So, it was a good visit.

She suggested going up from the slow-flow nipples on their bottles to the regular flow ones, since neither James nor Matthew seems to have trouble any more with drinking too fast and choking. We tried it with Matthew tonight and he did just fine with it.

We also had to do blood work, but the orders for it weren't at the desk, so we had to wait around for a while for them, and then had to wait at the lab, so it ended up being a long afternoon. In fact, I had to leave to go to a meeting at work, so poor Mike had to manage both of the little guys for the last part of the visit. Fortunately, they both slept, so it was a bit easier for him!

This evening wasn't so much fun. James was pretty fussy with his feedings, and at his 9 o'clock feeding, he didn't really want the bottle at all, and then ended up having a small spit-up afterwards. Matthew was a little fussy as well, so between the two of them, they kept us both busy more or less non-stop. Mike was trying to meet a deadline for work, and I just wanted to do a few little things like put a couple dishes in the dishwasher and pay a bill, but it was not to be! The babies are both asleep, finally.