Day 29: Difficulty Digesting

 So, Quinlan continues to do well with his feedings and is still growing with the change to "cue based feeding." Quinlan is no longer being feed at 3 hour intervals, but instead is being feed when he indicates hunger with feeding cues. This could be 2 hours after his last feeding or longer, however, we wake him if he goes longer than 4. He has been resting longer in between the bottle feeds and waking up sooner after breast feeding, but he is still gaining weight so we are doing well.



Here Quinlan is showing you one of his feeding cues: sucking on his thumb or hand.

And here he is gnawing on his outfit.


     Currently while he is feeding well, Quinlan is a little constipated on the fortified milk. The teams tells us that this is common as babies are designed to digest the pure breast milk and their immature systems struggle with the added calories. Where this becomes an issue is the discomfort and extra effort to digest. Sometimes this sends Quinlan's heart rate above 200 bpm and his oxygen saturation below 80%. It only happens for brief intervals and self-resolves, but it may cause Q to fail his car seat test. He is not allow to drop his O2 sats below 80 for 1 hour while in the car seat. The team has prolonged doing this test as they do not want him to fail, and they have lowered his total calories and started him on prune juice to help with the issue.

    They will likely need to do the car seat test tonight if he is to go home tomorrow, or he may be delayed on discharge till this is more resolved. We will keep you posted.