Little piggy

Age: 23 days
Gestational Age: 31 weeks 2 days

Rylee has been doing SOOO well! She is up to 3 pounds and an ounce or two now!!!

Today they started testing her without the nasal cannula to see how she does without it. She still needs it during holding time, but for long spurts during the day today she didn't have one at all!

I love seeing her little face without tubes all over it!

Shortly after this picture, she had to have the cannula put back in. She also graduated from the larger cannula to a smaller one hooked up to less equipment! In the beginning, she was getting about 3 liters of oxygen a minute and was breathing upwards of 40% oxygen. It slowly went down... and now she is at 21% oxygen (which is basically room air, and what we breathe) and at 1/2 a liter a minute! She is no longer getting air that is being warmed. It pumped into her nose from a little machine that warmed it and basically acted like a humidifier, but it sometimes pushed little water bubbles into her nose and she hated it! Now it's just room temp water being used to filter the air so no more bubbles!

Original oxygen machine. The humidifier is the little grey and blue thing
at the bottom with the bubble on top.

And here's the machine she's on now! WAY less clutter and less wires
and tubes going every where!

She also took her first bottle today, and yesterday I was able to start trying to breastfeed!! For now, they are going to try one bottle and one breast feeding attempt per day. The boob time yesterday wasn't with much success, but she did swallow little drops of milk. She was just too tired and kept falling asleep. Today she did much better on the boob, trying to suck a little more but never latched on. Still progress!

The bottle feeding however, was a completely different story! She did amazingly! She explored the bottle at first, tasting the milk and licking it, then dove right in and sucked it all down like a little pig! I'm so happy she is progressing in some areas so quickly! Hopefully tomorrow will be better with boobie time and she will continue to do well on the bottle so we can get the stupid feeding tube out!!! Breast feeding with the feeding tube in is hard because it gets in the way of her tongue and prevents her from sucking properly.

Here's a quick little video of her taking the bottle like a little champ! :D