Day 24: Superstar Bottle Feeder!

 Quinlan was visited by the Occupational Therapist Julie today to work on bottle feeding. Since he is doing so well with breast feeding, the team thought it would be a good idea to start bottle feeding him his fortified breast milk. The sooner he is taking all food by mouth, the sooner he can go home. Then the transition to just breast feeding will occur at home with the pediatrician's guidance as Quinlan will need to be weighed regularly and weened from fortified milk once he is at an acceptable weight that he can maintain with breast milk alone.

 Here he is with Julie accepting the bottle very well. He surprised her by taking 30 cc of his 41 cc feed, almost 75%, via the bottle. Apparently this is VERY good for a first bottle feed and one of the lactation consultants was there video taping for their instructional video they are putting together. They even got some good shots of his feeding cues.

  Between this and the footage they took of him latching and breast feeding, I have a feeling Quinlan may be the star of this video!

 Quinlan then was propped up afterward on the Boppy has he a some reflux that was causing drops in his O2 saturation. This is a common health problem in preemies and it is beneficial to keep them in a more upright position to decrease the ability of the stomach acid to travel up into the esophagus.

 Here Quinlan is showing you his "milk coma" dazed look. He them happily returned to sleep after this picture was taken.

  The plan is now to breast feed every other feeding when he demonstrates good cuing.