Weight Woes

While Dan was in the NICU he was weighed every day. The first thing I would do when I went to his room would be to check his weight card. Losing weight would be disappointing, no change was acceptable, gaining even a few grams would be cause for victory. His birthweight was just 680 grams, or 1 lb 8 ounces. His lowest weight was just over a pound at 520 grams. Every gain was so important.

While he was in the NICU he was on a strict feeding schedule. In the beginning, all of his nutrition came through his IV. As he stabilized he was started on fortified breast milk through his NG tube (the tube that went from his nose to his stomach). In the beginning he got a scant 0.5 ml every three hours - that's 1/10th of a teaspoon. Slowly, he grew. 

At discharge he was bottle feeding 2 ounces every three hours. Quite an improvement from the drops he started with! This was 50% breast milk and 50% formula, with the hope that when we got home we could work on increasing the amount of breast milk and reducing the amount of formula. 

After our initial pedi visit we were scheduled for a weight check this week - this would be the true test to see if breastfeeding was working! He's now 8 lbs 6 ounces! Unfortunately, he hadn't gained enough weight and we're going to add in another bottle of formula to try and up his weight gain. Dr Q wasn't terribly worried, he did gain weight from his last visit, it just wasn't enough. Our big goal is to get him as big as possible by the time RSV season starts this fall - the bigger he is, the more lung tissue he'll have. The lung tissue that grows won't be affected by his BPD, his preemie lung disease, so the more new lung tissue he has the better off he'll be. 

We're still giving breastfeeding all we've got, and hopefully we'll both get better at it. But for now we're going to try and chunk up our monkey with extra formula and nursing sessions. 

- Jen