The Penny Family: Will's First Bottle Feeding

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Will's First Bottle Feeding

Saturday, March 17th Will had his FIRST bottle feeding. We are only allowed to bottle feed him once a shift (day and night shift) and we get to pick the time and his other feedings he will get fed by his feeding tube. So yesterday I walked in his room to be with him and begin our skin to skin time and was immediately told by his nurse "well the doctor wrote the order to begin bottle feeding once a shift. Would you like to do that instead of skin to skin?" Well I think you know what my answer was after I caught my breathe and picked my jaw up off the floor. So I immediately texted Doug (who was outside doing yard work and mowing the grass) and told him that I was going to bottle feed Will at 2pm and to see if he wanted to join us for that FIRST feeding. Doug immediately said yes (it was 1pm when I texted him) and within 45 minutes Doug arrived at the hospital for that first feeding. Given that we live about 20 minutes from the hospital, I've never seen Doug move that fast for anything. But I guess when it comes to your son, you will immediately drop everything you are doing and will do anything to be there for those FIRST moments.

So Will took his first bottle like a champ. They warned us at the beginnning that most babies only take less than 5mls the first try. Well not our son, Will. He took 15mls the FIRST time and got mad because he wanted some more. The problem is he gets mad, raises his heartrate, wants more milk, and then falls asleep as we try to give him more. So later that night we gave him another bottle at 8pm and he took 18mls that time. He is LOVING his bottle. He gets really fussy about 15 minutes before his feedings and then gets so relaxed when the bottle hits his mouth. I have a feeling I might have an eater on my hands.

So we are definately enjoyed giving Will his first bottle. I will begin nursing him tomorrow at my scheduled feeding time and Doug will give him a bottle tomorrow. I'm excited about the bonding time I will be able to spend with Will tomorrow and hopefully he will nurse well.

Now for an overload of pictures. We took almost 200 pictures and no I am not going to post them all. Just a snippet of such a special moment with Will yesterday when he had his first bottle. Enjoy!