Feeding Ali

Alegria had started really learning to bottle feeding well right about the time we transferred from Parkview to Lutheran Hospital. When she started having difficulty breathing though, the doctors at Lutheran restricted her to gavage (tube) feeding only so that her body heart and lungs could rest more. They were very confident that she would pick the bottle back up quickly once she was stronger...

Well it has been significantly more challenging than what I anticipated. As we were still dealing with breathing difficulties and then projectile vomiting when we came home, we again felt it best to let her body get stronger before pushing her to take the bottle. So she had only been trying the bottle once or twice every day day or two the first two weeks we were home. On last Thursday, I started working with her to take the bottle at every daytime feeding. She did NOT like the idea the first day. Then Friday and Saturday she kept improving, but she would only take 7.5-10 ccs (of the 75 ccs total she needed) each feeding. I had been using the Pigeon bottle strongly recommended by the speech pathologist, but I noticed that she was taking in 4 times as much air as she was milk (very easy to measure when she is on a feeding tube).

So today I decided to go back to the Haberman bottle she originally did so well with, and Alegria took almost 25 ccs from the bottle (1/3 of her total feeding) and she took in hardly any air with it! I was very excited and encouraged!