Joel - 8 weeks, 5 days

Well, once Joel did well on his swallowing test, they wasted no time trying him on bottles. I got a call just before lunch today to come down to the hospital to watch his first try on the thickened milk. They had 2 bottles made up-1 very thick and 1 medium thick. He downed 5cc (1/4 of his bottle) of the very thick bottle pretty quickly with really well coordinated sucking. Then, the speech therapist (not sure why it's called speech therapy...should be oral therapy or something!) decided to try the medium thick bottle. He fell asleep during the switch and never really got back into it. He got the rest of that feed and his afternoon feed through his feeding tube.

At 5, speech therapy came back to try again with the medium thick formula. He ate the whole bottle in 10 minutes! Then, this evening, I got to feed him for the first time. He took the whole bottle again! It took 20 minutes, but that little guy never gave up. Any time we thought he needed a break and tried to release the bottle from his lips to burp him, he pulled it in harder and started swallowing again! Somehow, I think he likes his bottles! I suppose after weeks of pacifier teasers, it's nice to be rewarded for all that sucking!

He's growing, too. Joel is 1,490 grams (3lb, 5 oz). I'm such a proud mommy! He's got a way to go before he takes a whole bottle at every feed, but that's pretty nice progress for one day I'd say!

Look at me, drinking my bottle like a big boy!

Oh, so delicious.

This is how I felt after all that work and yummy milk.