Nutritive Feedings

Lots of good news today!

Sydney is 2260 grams weighing in at 5 lbs!

Ethan is 2350 grams or 5 lbs 3 oz--with cast in tow. The doctors told us that they don't weigh before and after casting, but watch for a trend of weight gain instead. We think it's a little odd, but forgot to ask the nurses to weigh before and after yesterday morning. We were focused on all our questions for Dr. Faux instead.

At 1 pm, we met with Annie, the occupational therapist. She was evaluating Ethan and Sydney nursing to see if they were ready for nutritive feedings. Ethan did excellent. Annie was so surprised how well he did. She was surprised that he is 1 day shy of 36 weeks. Their nurse said, "he just wants to go home." I said to myself, "yes, yes he does." Annie wondered 1/2 way through if he was actually gaining weight and we put him on the scale. He had gained 14 cc! That's nearly 1/2 oz. We kept trying and weighed him again and he gained another 14 cc for a total of 28 cc! His entire feeding is only 48 cc (it went up again today). That is nearly 60% of his entire feeding. If he consistently eats 70%, we will move to the next phase of "feeding on demand" which would be a big step. From what we've seen of other babies, when they move to that they go home in a few days.

Sydney was next and was sleepy again. We tried for a the 30 minutes and weighed her for fun really. She gained zero. Annie approved both of them to move to nutritive feedings even though she didn't do so well. She scored them at 8 (Ethan) and 7 (Sydney) on a 10 point scale for their feeding and latching. She said she never gives 10s (mostly because she doesn't work with well babies). Way to go our superstar babies!

Tonight at 7 pm, Ethan got 18 cc and Sydney a groundbreaking 4 cc (that's 9% of her 45 cc feeding). For the first time, I heard her swallow...and twice. We were thrilled. I love watching them after feedings--they look slightly drunk. Doug and I can't help but laugh. Ethan wore himself out today in his efforts.

Doug and I went to dinner in between to two feedings to celebrate their advancement. Annie comes next Thursday to work with us again. We hope to get both of them ready for feeding on demand by then. We don't want to leave Sydney behind and take Ethan home, so we're going to be praying for her to get over this virus so she can start eating like her brother. Labs are drawn again tomorrow, so we'll see how their while blood cell counts look.

I told them tonight, "teach your sister to eat and Sydney, teach your brother to stop having bradys". Ethan had 2 tonight while we were there. Babies have to be brady-free for 7 days to leave the hospital. So, we're hoping he gets them out of his system in the next few days.

We find ourselves cheering for the other parents in the Special Care. I'll overhear how their feedings go and get so excited for them. A few times I've even called out from behind our while partition to congratulate them. It helps us focus on others successes. The other set of twins are doing well the last few days and we're so excited for them.