As of Tuesday our little Samuel had only been receiving nutrition through IV fluids. He had dropped some weight (pretty much every baby drops some weight, regardless if they are term or premature), but the doctor said when he starts getting my milk he will start gaining it back. The other "fun" thing he will get to start doing is pooping!
So Tuesday, because things seemed to be going well, they decided to start Sam on my milk. I had produced a bit of supply by now, so I was excited that all this time I have been spending pumping and kicking people out of Sam's room so I could pump was finally going to be put to use. Besides that, by him taking my milk, I feel like I am contributing more!
Some clarification on what it means for Sam to take my milk... He has a line that is run through his mouth into his stomach. The milk he receives will go into this line and directly to his stomach. That means he doesn't actually drink it and he does not need to be on the breast to get it, he simply receives it passively in his stomach.
Also by starting him on milk that does not mean he will no longer get IV fluids. They start these premies on such a small amount and only slightly reduce the fluids. Most of his nutrition will still come from the fluids until they up his amount of milk. Tuesday they started out by giving him 3mL of milk a feeding (which happens every 3 hours). Eventually 3mL will go up, but they have to make sure he is taking to the feedings well. They do that by checking and seeing how much of the last feeding is left over before giving him a fresh one. As long as less than half of it is in there, then he is taking them just fine.
So I got to excitedly watch an unexciting event of him taking my milk (kind of anticlimactic, because all he did was lay there while they ran the milk through a line). Yet it still made me happy nonetheless.
Tuesday I also got to kangaroo with him again and yet again I just stared at him in amazement that he is my son and he is already here!
All the families in the NICU do something called family rounds once a week. Our day is Tuesday for family rounds. What this means is the whole team of people that are working together to get Samuel strong meet and discuss his progress over the previous week and the goals for the next week. The parents are invited and encouraged to join in on the rounds as much as possible. So Ben and I were there and ready for our first set of family rounds.
The team that is working on Samuel is quite large actually, it includes the following people: doctor, nurse, dietician, lactation consultant, family liaison, social worker, physical therapist and I think I got everyone??? Basically the outcome of the first set of rounds was pretty much what we expected.
Goals: keep an eye on the ventricular hemorrhage, slowly up his dosage of milk. And I am sure they were more, but most of the goals just dealt with keep an eye on how he is doing with different things and just get him through his first week of life safely. They say he is the most fragile during the first week.
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