Feeds = having 3 - 4 goes on the breast per day and not getting tube top ups, up to 55ml per feed.
Baby steps for a baby girl.
So the plan at the moment is for her to get off the fortifier first, this will almost defiantly happen tomorrow because she will be over the 2.5 Kilo mark at tomorrows weigh in. This will unfortunately mean a check in her rate of weight gain but is a necessary step towards getting her home. Then they will start trying to wake her for every feed and see how she goes with that, this seems like a big leap to expect her to make as at the moment she only managing up to 4 feeds a day from the breast and so will be almost doubling that at a stroke, I guess we wills see though. Also those that have read the article that Rach so kindly linked us to in her last comment will know that breast feeding works much better when it is demand driven. I don't know whether they intend to keep her strictly to the 3 hour schedule she is on now when they start waking her or not, I certainly will be quizzing them about it. It might be that as she will be getting tube top ups at every feed all of the well referenced evidence referred to in the article might be irrelevant to her situation. For those of you who missed the article, click HERE it is well worth the read.
One other thing of note is that she has been started on Iron supplements, not because she is known to be iron deficient but rather as a just is case, something they do for all the premmies apparently.
We bathed her tonight, not a daily occurrence (on advice from the Nurses) which she really seems to love. It seems to be a great way to wake her up too, not that that was the main objective but a welcome side effect nonetheless. She just LOVES bathtime already, she seems really relaxed and alert, kicks around the place and is a generally an all round gorgeous, active, engaging, sweet little girl. It makes me very happy to see it, a glimpse I hope of what she might be like all the time when she is older, I can certainly envisage a time when we have to pull the plug on the bath to get her out of it! A tactic that had to be used on me once upon a time.
I can't wait to see what colour her eyes are going to be. She will be beautiful either way of course and we can make a fairly good guess that they will be brown but the genes for blue are in her pedigree so who knows. It is quite a strange thing that the eye colour should take so long to come through. I suppose I will just have to wait.
More pictures to come.
I wouldn't worry too much about the 3 hourly feeding. It may take a while to adjust to it for all involved, particularly in the prem situation which I am not familiar with. But I did limit Tristan to 3 hourly then 4 hourly feeds when he was a baby on advice from others, and I found this to be very handy, especially to plan daily chores around (and sleeping!). He seemed to be a very settled baby. Tayla on the other hand, who I demand fed, was a lot more unsettled, and because of the irregularities, made me more unsettled, which as you know reflects on the young ones and agitates them also. But in all seriousness, I wouldn't think of timed feeding as a negative. I am sure that whatever you guys run with on returning home will be the best option. Afterall it's whatever you are comfortable with and whatever works for you. You'll all do great!
ReplyDeleteHi Chris, It is great to hear that Sophie is doing so well it will be great when you can all be home and settle into family life. Oliver is still breastfeeding at 28 months and shows no signs of wanting to wean and through those early days and even now I found La Leche League invaluable. They run monthly meetings on the 2nd Tuesday of every month at St Andrews Church and they give great advice over the phone(the number is the book under La Leche), they also have books you can borrow. I still go to the meetings and they are a lovely group of people. From what I can tell each baby is so different and you just have to find out what makes you and baby happy. Keep growing Sophie. Thinking of you all. Marie
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