We had an eventful day today! Met with an occupational therapist, who evaluated Will's muslce tone, reflexes, behavior and responses, plus sucking progress. She was able to give me some tips & tricks that should help. Will's night nurse last night gave him a bottle with about 5 CC of milk just to see if he could swallow some and he apparently did very well with it so we're going to evaluate his ability to feed in the next couple days and may be able to start giving him some feedings through the bottle or nursing instead of the tube. He got tube fed during the exam and make a substantial dirty diaper. The therapist was impressed with his eye contact and obvious interest in me, and told me some important cues to watch for that are different from term babies for what he wants or when he's had enough. After the therapist was there I got another session of dry nursing but he was already tired so he put up with that for about 10 minutes before he got the hiccups, a sure sign he's ready to go back to bed. After he'd slept he was almost due for another feeding. I got to give him a bath! He wasn't too pleased with most of that, since it involved a lot of peeling stickers and tape off of him, but once that part was over he enjoyed sitting in the warm water. Then I got to dress him, the nurse picked out an outfit with lots of snaps in a complicated arrangement to make pants and up the front. It took me a while but he put up with it until I figured it out. I held him while he got his tube feeding and after his tummy was full he snuggled up and went to sleep. So we had a busy day! His oxygen is still in the 30s, marked improvement in the number and severity of apnea spells, weight up to 4 lb2.3 oz!
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