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Go Ben Go!

Ben has recently been moving to bottling more and more of my breast milk (and having fewer and fewer of his feeds given through the NG tube).  Feeding preemies by bottle is considered more challenging than full term babies since they are still in the process of learning to coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing.  If they manage to not coordinate that well, they’ll either take a big swallow or it goes down the wrong way.  As a result, they stop breathing and their heart rate goes down by 50-75%.

So when we feed Ben by bottle, we need to watch his every suck, swallow, and breathe to make sure he’s got it down.  We need to pace him by letting him suck on an empty nipple when he’s forgetting to breathe.  And when he doesn’t coordinate so well, we have to sit him up and burp him vigorously or have him lying prone in the air to help him recover and get the milk going down the right tube.  It’s exciting to get him to bottle, but also incredibly stressful every time we do it- we don’t want to let him drown in my milk.

That said, whenever he manages to coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing, Lawrence and I are super pumped.  We’ve even been starting to cheer him on during the feeds (as if he could understand what we are saying) and sending him positive mental energy (that might work better than cheering him on), hoping to somehow support him through his feed.  We mean well, but we do look pretty funny doing it.

 


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