bottle feeding!

Brooklyn has had a great last few days! More good progress. Had to go back on some sedative briefly on Wednesday as well as increased oxygen. By Thursday she was improving again and adjusting to weans on both. She is on some nutrition by IV as well as some oral heart medicine and a tiny bit of fluids. She looks great and her numbers look great.

The big news right now...we started trying bottle feeds yesterday! She did really well with the first drinking a whopping 12ml of breast milk from the bottle. :) She gets the remainder of her current feed amount through her NG tube. We are almost halfway to the ideal amount of 60ml. She is tolerating the milk SO well. The speech pathologist was here for the first feeding and will return on Monday to coach us through more bottle feeds. Though I've been through plenty of newborn feeding with Ab and Em, I learned a lot from our speech path regarding what to expect with our sweet heart baby. The one thing that struck me the most was how quickly she tires out from something as simple as eating. We have a long way to go on switching over to bottle feeding, but we knew that would likely be one of our biggest challenges when we start transitioning toward home at some point. For now, she is proving to be such a little fighter, and I have no doubt that she will make great strides in eating through the coming days.

In other big news, we were moved from the main CICU floor down to an "annex" room that's sort of a transition between intensive care and "the floor"/"step-down." This was a bit of an unexpected move as they needed Brooklyn's room right away for a more critical patient. But, as our cardiologist said, "it's good to be the patient (especially in a FULL CICU) who is doing the best and is ready to be moved to a different room." Brooklyn is still considered in intensive care, but with our move we have already experienced a shift in taking on more responsibility with her...diaper changes, soothing and now feeding. It's SO exciting to be doing those things that seem so simple but are a big deal when it comes to a newborn who's been through as much as she has already. I've never been so excited about changing poopy diapers! :)

Here are a few pics from Brooke's first couple of bottle feeds...and some sisters that were very excited to see each other after being apart this week. We're off for more family fun today!

buddies :)

Sigh... I could watch her sleep all day/night long...