OK, now my kid sucks too much.

First up is the breathing. He has pretty much stopped swinging as much as before. When he eats and stools he needs a little extra oxygen, but otherwise he’s fine at the current level, so they turned him down from 3 liters an hour down to 2. He has been on it for a good 12 hours by now, so we know he can handle it at least in the short term. Other than that, the breathing is fine.
Jordan actually feeds too well right now. He sucks, and sucks, and sucks, and swallows, and sucks, and so on. If you notice the pattern, he sucks really well, and swallows good too.

Sometimes he sucks so much, he doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t totally stop, but we actually have to pull the bottle out and let him catch his breath. They even have to give him a special nipple. The preemie nipple would give him so much milk, he would keep sucking until the milk when down the wrong tube. They have to give him a low flow nipple, but they only have it for regular infant size. There aren’t a whole lot of kids under 4 pounds who suck too much. He is so vigorous that they have already upped him to 2 bottles per day.

I met my new favorite nurse last night. Generally speaking, the doctors say the treatment will be X, and the nurses do X until the orders change. Last night the nurse decided to go above and beyond the call of duty. Jordan’s feeds are at 33ml. He gets 2 bottles per day and the other 6 are through the tube. If you had a toddler who was eating broccoli and the kid wanted seconds, do you deny him more broccoli? Well last night, the nurse put 50 ml in the bottle just to see when he would stop. He made it up to 38ml! His fourth bottle ever and he can get up to 38ml. He isn’t yet 4 pounds and he’s up to 1.25 ounces per feed. If not for that thing he did to his mother, he would have gained another couple of ounces yesterday.

This is a family blog, so I won’t go into too much detail. However, I will say this about diapers (Stop reading if you don’t like reading about poop). When you are a regular person, you see bowel movements on a regular basis – as a noun. When you’re the parent of an infant, you see bowel movements on a regular basis – as a verb. And I do mean SEE it as it happens. Also, when you’re a parent of an infant you use words like poop and bowel movements. Those of you who know me have never heard me use the term bowel movement before July 9th.