It was a lovely day. We got to hold her lots and have got the hang of getting her in and out of cot without setting off the alarms. The line in her femoral artery was taken out and she has a canula in her left foot now. Because her fluids are down she has had better blood results: she is losing less electrolytes and sodium and her creatine hasn’t gone up anymore. Her blood pressure has also come down.
Since she was born she has been fed my breast milk through her nose on a continuous feed, so today’s main goal was to get her used to feeding through her mouth. She didn’t like it much this morning when they tried a bottle and vomited. However, this evening we gave her a dummy dipped in glucose water and put it in her mouth. At first she didn’t like the idea of having something in her mouth but soon got the hang of it and was trying to eat it. With any luck she can gradually get weaned off the tube and begin to feed orally. In this way she will learn to recognise when she is hungry and establish regular feeding patterns.