Hello All,

It has been a busy week with visiting Claire twice daily at the hospital.  The current goal is to work with Claire so that she can learn to coordinate suck/swallow/breathe activities.  She is a little trooper and doing well.  She fatigues pretty quickly but is very alert and wide-eyed with the entire process called nonnutritive sucking.  She is showing more interest and latching on so her progress is great.

Claire is up to 20cc's with her gavage feedings and the IV is slowly weaning.  She will start bottle feed supplementation when she has demonstrated that she can tolerating her gavage feedings.  So far her tummy is doing well and her residuals have been small. 

Alan and I continue to provide more cares as we visit.  Hopefully the IV will be discontinued within the next few days which will free Claire from one more monitor.  Speaking of monitors, we are beginning to become accustomed to the chiming but it does give you pause.  Thankfully Claire's monitors have quieted as she is stable with few issues.  Typically they will alarm due to positional issues. 

Claire is no longer the smallest baby in the NICU.  She is still the senior resident but she is doing fabulously.  We hope she will be able to come home by Thanksgiving (we are keeping our fingers crossed) but are ready for an early December date if the additional time is needed by Claire.  We will post a new blog tomorrow
when Claire has reached 36 weeks gestation.

Love,

Denise and Alan