Caley took 3 full bottles today! And by "full," we mean 23 ml (less than 1 ounce), but it's all relative. She's starting to show physical signs of hunger, like rooting and waking up around the right time, which is good. And she seems to be learning that sucking on the bottle fills up her tummy.
But we're still working on teaching her to breathe while she eats. It's an interesting process. We basically force her to stop eating and breathe. We'll let her take 3-5 sucks on the bottle, then tip it down so she doesn't get any more food until she pauses to breathe. The nurses call this "pacing" her feeding. Eventually, she will be able to pace herself, and we won't have to remind her to breathe. But for now, it's a slightly stressful event for us to feed her the bottle and keep her breathing.
We haven't given a weight report lately -- Caley is up to 1610 grams as of Friday night, which is just a hair over 3.5 pounds. Once she gets to 1700 grams, they might actually let her come out of her "box" (the isolette/incubator/condo) and into a real crib. We're hoping for that in the next week.
Caley is planning to have a party weekend. Her favorite nurses are working this weekend, so we know she's in great hands!
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