Miscommunications

Ah, the feeding fiasco continues. Actually, we finally were able to do a little finger feeding with Ethan last night and it went very well! With the fever and fussiness, the feedings kept being delayed. By the way, his fever is gone and his heart rate is back to normal. Dr. Nau continues to believe that they were related to the diuretics. Hopefully we have found the balance between keeping his lungs dry without drying out his whole body.

So yesterday we came to find out that the nurses and doctors thought we were planning to do a whole feeding with finger feeding. Apparently the OT report wasn't particularly clear in that area. What the plan is really supposed to be is just to create a positive feeling and get him used to being in a curved position at breast (on his left side to reduce risk of aspiration). We put maybe 3cc of Ethan's 30 calorie milk in a syringe, connect it to a feeding tube, and tape the tube to my finger. Ethan sucks on my finger, and when he is sucking appropriately I would squirt a few drops of milk into his mouth. Essentially we are giving him positive reinforcement for good sucking (he gets no milk for a poor suck or biting). The milk makes him happy, improves his suck, and keeps him calm. His regular NG tube feeding is going on at the same time, so his belly gets full too. Hopefully all of this will get associated together for him to make feeding time a good time. Whew. That's all we really want. Maybe if everything works out particularly well we will get to try actual breastfeeding. Perhaps with a supplemental nurser, perhaps not. There are logistics to be figured out and questions about whether it will even work. The best case scenario is that maybe one day Ethan will get to breastfeed a couple of times a day. So, I guess I'd better go out and get more bottles... (Actually I think we have plenty, but you know what I mean.)

On that note, I don't know if I mentioned that Allison doesn't have to have bottle supplements any more. Whew, one less thing to think about for now.