Look Ma, no lines!

Today was a pretty good day! Cooper is now done with his antibiotics and off TPN, so they pulled his PICC line! This makes it so much easier to handle him and give him proper snuggles. 🥰

I spent much of the morning/early afternoon with the lactation consultants, and we managed to find a somewhat unwieldy solution that will work for us at least in the short term to get him breastfeeding. It involves pumping for a minute to get the milk flowing and then quickly transferring to the boob with a contraption called a nipple shield which helps him grasp on. It’s probably not a viable long term strategy, but it works for right now. He nursed twice today and got an estimated half ounce each time. We were all happy with this progress today but I’m not convinced I could pull off the whole maneuver without their help. We’ll practice again tomorrow and hopefully I can get more comfortable with it.

Coop is not quite up to his goal feeding rate yet, but hopefully within the next few days he’ll get there. He’s eating about 50% by mouth and 50% by tube. We’re working to increase that but he just gets soooo sleepy when he’s eating. It really takes a ton of energy for our teeny little man. His oxygen saturation has been pretty good! He only dips when he’s super relaxed, and he’s been able to quickly bring it back up. He’s been on strictly room air for about 36 hours now!

Tonight was a little stressful for Mat because the nurse was a float nurse who wasn’t used to working with neonates. Mat felt like he was practically teaching her what to do! After Mat gave Coop about half the feed through the bottle, the nurse gave him the other half through his tube, but instead of spacing it out with the pump, she squirted it all in at once! Unsurprisingly, he spit up almost immediately. Poor little guy. Mat told her that she needs to use the pump to space out the feedings for him and she apologized and agreed. Hopefully she’ll do ok overnight. 

And that’s the Coop Scoop for today!