Friday and Saturday

Yesterday, Olivia weighed in at 5 pounds 9.9 ounces and today she's a rocking 5 pounds 13 ounces! She was eating 53cc at every feeding yesterday and with the weight gain, she is up to 55cc at every feeding. She remains at 30cc by bottle at feedings and then receives the rest through the ng tube. The only change that did happen was that yesterday, I was talking with the nurse practitioner about how Olivia will sometimes wake up 30-60 minutes before her scheduled eating time and will get upset and cry and move around. She will stick out her tongue and put her fingers in her mouth, so I thought those were cues to let us know that she is hungry. But sometimes she would do that for the 30ish minutes and then when it was actually time to eat, she had exhausted herself and didn't eat a lot. The nurse practitioner agreed with me and said that while Olivia is scheduled to eat every 3 hours, if she is giving us those cues, she should be able to eat. So, she is now ordered to eat when she is hungry, but to not go longer than 3 hours between feedings. Hopefully that will help her get more out of each feeding and get her to the 40cc mark! 

A speech therapist also came by yesterday to see if there is anything else we can do to help Olivia with the feedings. She recommended a different type of bottle, so we've been trying that for the last 24 hours or so. Olivia is doing better with pacing herself (she would race through the first part of every feeding and sometimes forget to breathe) and is getting slightly more with each feeding. The speech therapist said they look for babies to have a routine of suck, swallow, breathe when they feed and Olivia's is more like suck, suck, suck, swallow, swallow, swallow, breathe, breath, breathe. So it could be that Olivia is just exhausting herself and not knowing how to correctly pace and eat. The majority of her bottle feedings in the past 24 hours have all be 20cc or more, so we're hoping to see some more increases soon!