8 Weeks, 36 Adjusted

This week wasn't as great as I had hoped. No oral feeding and he had two breathing episodes, which made us all a bit nervous. But he hit 5 pounds and improved his sucking skills - so we had some wins as well!

Feeding:

Our goal until this week was to get down to 2 liters/min of forced air support, knowing that once we did we would be able to try oral feeding. Well, we got down to level 2 last week but our boy is just not ready to start sucking. Since birth he's seemed to have weak tongue muscles (it's resting state is out of his mouth) and a weak cry (quiet) which indicates overall weak eating/sucking. Typically in the womb a baby learns to suck their thumb, swallow amniotic fluid, etc. all practice for the outside world. Marco never got that chance, so things will take longer.

A specialist has been working with him the past week, multiple times a day, with the goal of making sucking/eating a pleasurable time for Marco. Until this started, Marco would flinch if you touched his face and push everything out of his mouth - but this week we've made some great progress. The doc is gently giving massages, strokes, calming touches. During feed time (still through a tube), Marco is given a small pacifier dipped with breast milk so that he associates eating with the taste and motion of sucking. The doc is really happy with his progress and thinks we'll be able to try a bottle in the next couple of days. Breast feeding will still be very hard for Marco, but we'll try sucking after pumping so that he doesn't get milk, but he gets some practice.

It's so strange to see the work that is required to get a preemie to do something that is instinctive in full term infants. In fact, sucking is one of the few things babies naturally can do when they are born. So to see him struggling with this is a bit mind blowing for me, and one of the first instances where I'm realizing "preemie" is not something that will go away once we're home. There will be things that Marco needs to work on, or he won't be able to do, simply because he didn't have time to develop the skills in the womb. Development outside of the womb is slower and less natural than what he should have experienced. I knew this, but it's different seeing it real time.

Breathing:

Yesterday, Marco had two "events", or periods of time where intervention was needed. He hasn't done this for awhile, not since the first few weeks, and there were no obvious causes (i.e. feeding) so it made the doctors a bit nervous. Thankfully, I wasn't there for them, because he stopped breathing and the nurse had to intervene to get him breathing again. It happened twice and then they kept a close eye on him for the rest of the day. By the time I got in to see him at 8pm everything seemed fine, he slept on me perfectly happily, and today there haven't been any more events. They ran some tests to see if it was infection related, and those came back clean - so hopefully it was a fluke and all's well. 

On the bright side - he's now 5pds 3 oz! I love seeing him gain weight and watching little rolls appear.

That's all for the week - 2 months next Tuesday!