This is what a preemie has to be able to do before they can be bottle- or breast-fed. This skill generally develops around 34 weeks gestation.

We arrived today to learn that Shoshanna had been having some non-self-correcting ABDs. They’d increased her flow back to 1L and that helped a lot. They bumped her up to 25% for a little while, but not too long (a couple of hours is all). Despite all of that, however, she gained a TON of weight (ok, not literally) – but she was up to 1442 grams – 3 lbs 2.9 oz! Holy monstrous baby, Batman!

And there was one other major thing: she’s started taking a bottle. Jen gave her one at her 3 am feeding, and she took 18 of her 26 ml from it (she gets the rest through her OG tube). She had another one sometime during the day, again drinking 18 ml of her 26 ml feeding. After that, they bumped her up to 27 ml per feeding. At 9pm, Matthew and I gave her her 3rd bottle in 24 hours, and she took another 11 ml from it, after which she started falling asleep, so we burped her and laid her back down (we were feeding her in her isolette). She was pretty pooped after that – having to work for your food is really tiring when you’ve been used to it either being delivered as raw nutrition directly into your veins or via a tube directly into your stomach. We decided that it’ll probably be better for her to only get 1 bottle a day for now until she gets used to it, so they’re going to hold her bottles until her 9 pm feeding so that we can give it to her. It’s so fun to feed her for real! She’s very enthusiastic about it, too. And advanced, since she won’t be 34 weeks gestation until Wednesday.