January 30th 2010

30 Jan January 30th 2010

Tiffany and I got a wonderful present this morning, a couple extra hours of sleep!  While it might not seem like much, it’s amazing what eight solid hours can do for you.  So thanks to Grammy for taking the kiddies at 6am and getting them out of the house so we could get some much needed rest.

We left Manhattan Beach for Torrance Memorial around 10:30 for the 11am appointment with the feeding specialist.  They introduced the Haberman nipple to Makoa yesterday.  Apparently it is supposed to be easier for him to get milk and not need to work as hard to feed.  He wasn’t too fond of it yesterday and it was pretty much the same story today.  Once we switched back to the soft blue nipple, he went to town and ate 40 cc’s.  Who knew there was so much to feeding?  We used to just warm the bottle, stick it in the mouth, and then burp them when their finished.  I feel like Tiffany and I could hold a feeding seminar now.

The NICU continues to alternate bottle and gavage feedings.  It’s important that he continues to gain weight so they really need to control what approach they take when the feed him.  I also don’t think it helps that he poops every single time we are feeding him, mid-bottle!  How are you supposed to gain weight when it goes in one end and out the other?

The other bummer is that the feeding specialists are real sticklers about time.  They really want to limit the feeding sessions to 30 minutes.  Makoa is on his own schedule and will have really strong spurts, but he will also rest for extended periods.  Tiffany and I are really competitive so we were pushing back today and saying “he has four cc’s left, he’s gonna get it”, and he did.  Tiff also decided that if it came down to it, she would spend two days in the hospital and give every feeding just to make sure he gets his 40 cc’s at every feeding.  We know that’s the magic number and we were both wondering at what point the doctors say “it’s G-Tube time”.  We think we have under two weeks.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the G-Tube, it’s a feeding tube that they place directly into the stomach.  It’s a much better solution that the gavage tube through the nose and also allows for much more food to be delivered and digested.  If Makoa doesn’t figure out what to do soon, they might need to take that route.  Of course, we don’t want to take him home with a G-Tube in, but the further we go, the more we need to realize this might be a strong possibility.

We’re all praying that Makoa continues to eat well and gain weight so he can come home tube-free. We’re off to church in the morning to spend some quality-time with the Big-Man-Upstairs and do some praying for our little man.  Once again, Tiffany and I are so thankful for everyone’s kind words, we read them to Makoa every night.  We can’t imagine having to go through this alone, and all of your prayers make a huge difference.