Sunday

Today was a BIG day for Eli. I came in, in the morning and the nurse was like I have a plan for Eli, he's going to get a bath and a new isolette. I said ok sounds good, he had a bath on Thursday and he liked it. So the nurse says ok well we can still do the bath or you can try to breast feed  but he can't do both, it'll be too much for him. So clearly I'm like lets try breastfeeding!!!

So being a preemie, the baby doesn't have the suck, swallow, and breathe thing down pat. This whole thing doesn't really develop until about 35 weeks. Right now hes 33 weeks and one day. However he is showing lots signs that he is ready to start breastfeeding: rooting, sucking, sticking his tongue out. So when you start trying to breastfeed, they don't really expect too much right away. They also expect the baby to possibly require oxygen and that he can choke or even stop breathing and turn "funny colors". This is all normal, but also its normal for a baby to latch on right away, do well for a few days and then stop. So today he tried it out for about 15 minutes. He latched on pretty well did get some milk.. Spent some time just kinda looking around but did well and didn't turn any funny colors.  So now he gets to try every day, per dr's order.

Eli got to see all four of his grandparents today. He was especially glad to get some cuddle time with Gramma and Grampy. Grampy even read him a book. We are so thankful for our church family who brought us food from the Thanksgiving fellowship dinner. And for Leslie, who made us a few dinners and sent some super cute baby clothes. Going to try to get him in one of the outfits tomorrow or the next day :)

He weighs 3 lbs 12oz and getting 34cc's of milk every three hours. Starting to get where they are saying he will be to big for preemie clothes very soon!