Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Give me patience

Today was just one of those days. You know the kind. Everything just seems to go wrong. I was a grouch. Ben was being a little stinker today! He didn't have pre-school and was cooped up inside because it was raining. Sometimes I could swear that boy is just being naughty for lack of anything better to do. He followed me around the house being my "helper" by un-doing all the work I did. By bedtime the family room was a bigger mess than it was when the day started. Then when I get angry with him, he looks up at me with his great big brown eyes and tells me that he's sorry and he loves me and I lose all my steam. It's really hard to stay mad at such a cutie. (He still lost privileges for tomorrow though, I'm not that much of a softy!)

Anyway, enough complaining. Elaina had a pretty good day. I changed bottles yesterday to the Playtex nurser drop ins. I'm hoping that she'll get less air with these. I've tried a few other bottles that are supposed to help reduce colic and air, and all of them cause the formula to foam when she's eating. I don't see how her ingesting the foam is going to help with gas.... So far she seems to be doing okay with the new bottle. The nipples are a little different, so there is an adjustment that she needs to make, but all in all she seems to be eating more of the bottle than she was before. She's still spitting up the same amount though. I talked with her doctors office today about feedings. She's getting 67 cc's (30 cc is 1 oz) of fortified high calorie formula at each feeding. She's on such a small amount because of fluid restrictions with her heart. Since we want her to grow and have sufficient hydration, she is being fed every 3 hours, even at night. (No sleep for Mom!) We were thinking about putting her on a continuous feed through her NG tube at night. When I try to feed her in the middle of the night she just doesn't want to wake up and take the bottle. She'll nibble 10-20 cc's and then she's done and I'm putting the rest through her tube. I've ended up not even trying to wake her for her 3 am feed and just putting it all through the NG. Well, with all her reflux and spitting up, it's probably not a good idea to do the continuous feed, so I was advised to give her 77 cc's during the day and just let her have the longer period of sleep at night. This way I can get a little sleep too, but she's not missing out on essential nutrition! So tonight I start. I'm on my way to fix her last feeding and then get a few precious hours of sleep before I start all over again at 6am. I'm praying that a little extra sleep will also give me a lot of extra patience with Ben tomorrow.

1 comment:

likeschocolate said...

We went through this with our son Roman, and I changed to feeding him every 2 hours during the day. Then spacing it out a little longer at night. He also didn't want to eat at night time. I think it all works itself out; however, I understand how you feel when you are trying to reach that certain goal weight. Hang in there, it gets better.