Nuzzling, Nursing and No More Canula!

Time has just been flying past!  I feel like I had just posted yesterday, but alas... it's been a whole week!  There have been a few developments since last Monday, mostly dealing with eating.  :-)

For the Moms' planning on nursing their babies they encourage doing something called nuzzling once the baby is showing to be awake more and the need to suck on something.  Basically you position the baby as if you were going to nurse, only you had pumped out all the milk you could just before this.  You don't want to have too much milk there, because the point isn't to actually swallow the milk (though the baby might do a bit of this too, just the nature of things when you are constantly producing more milk), the point is to simply get used to the idea of being there (of course sucking and licking is encouraged!).

So last Tuesday we were given the go ahead to start nuzzling!  Basically Samuel's spent most of the time just hanging out there making occasional sucks from time to time, but last Saturday he was going to town!  He was eager to suck as much as he could!

Today I came into the NICU and was informed we've now been given the green light to start nursing!  Yippee!!  So basically starting today we are going to try to nurse one feeding in a 12 hour shift.  There are 4 feedings each shift.  As many of the nurses and lactation consultants have been good to warn me, this part of the NICU experience can be the most frustrating.  Yes, it's not fun to see him hooked up to a bunch of machines (which right now he's hooked up to practically nothing), but I think this is frustrating because Moms have expectations of the baby simply taking to it quickly when this is rarely the case with preemies.

So I have decided that whatever happens happens!  Which has been my attitude with Samuel pretty much the whole time.  I clearly can't control what happens, if I could have he wouldn't have come out in January!  This morning was our first attempt and lets just say, he was not really up for it.  I think he was more awake about 10-15 minutes before we starting trying to nurse, by the time we started finally he was falling back asleep (our nurse got called away briefly and that threw us off, that's ok though because as we do it more I will feel more comfortable to take ownership of just going for it).  We are about to try again this evening and he is usually very awake at this next feeding time, so we'll see if he's up for it this time.

In other news we took Samuel off his nasal canula last weekend!  This means he is doing great with his new oxygen parameters.  Ok, great might be a slight exaggeration, but he's doing good enough not to need it, he has his great moments with oxygen and then his not so great moments.  Next weekend when he turns 34 weeks gestationally, so I won't be too surprise if he's back on a nasal canula within the week, but that is all a part of being in the NICU!

We thank God every day for the amazing progress and growth Samuel has been having!