Making Progress - Feb 4

Well first thing this morning Baby Girl got a workout with the bottle! She only took 3.5 mL but that's because we tried a different type of nipple and she wasn't quite sure how to handle it. The Speech Therapist had the idea to use a nipe designed for babies with cleft pallets who aren't able to create suction (which seems to be her problem with regular nipples, she can't form enough of a seal to create a good amount of suction). This style relies more on compression than suction to get the milk out. So we'll try that one for a few days and see how she does with that. 

She'll also go down for a swallow study on the morning that's more like the first one was so they can see what she's doing with this new nipple. For this study that put a small amount of barium in the milk so it will show up on the x-ray and they can track it from the bottle to her stomach. C and I got to see the film of the last one and it was pretty cool! Anyway, they use this one to see more how she's handling the amount of milk, if she's able to switch between breathing and swallowing effectively and where the milk is ending up. That will happen around 9 in the morning.

Other exciting news: Dr. G thinks we're done with the nasal cannula! She wrote in the orders to drop her down to 1 L for 12 hours then do a 12 hour trial off the cannula so at 11:00 tonight they'll take it off. Which makes this the last picture of her with breathing assistance (forever I hope!)

In other good news, we got the batteries on her mobile replaced - she was without yesterday and every time I would lay her down she would look at it for a couple of seconds, then look at me like "hey, make it go" then back at the mobile... She really likes that thing :)

Enjoy Baby Girl!