Stop... Bottle Time

Now that I've put up a whole bunch of pictures, let's get caught up on Ayden's progress. Several things have occurred since you last really heard from one of us on Monday (besides the pacing study not happening).

The more observant members of our readership might have noticed that some of the pictures I posted featured Ayden sans feeding tube. On Monday the decision was made to give him a break from it. He wasn't going to be getting any food until sometime the next day (because of the scheduled pacing study), plus he'd had a tube up that nostril for pushing three weeks, if not longer. If the feeding tube was the cause of the blood in his stomach, hopefully taking it out would help with that, as well (it turned out the end of the tube was covered in blood). At any rate, the pacing study didn't happen Tuesday, then the GI folks said to start feeding him again. Allison and his nurse, Anna, decided to see what he would take from the bottle before the feeding tube went back in. He took all of it.

Since then, he has done exceedingly well with eating from the bottle. He is supposed to have 55ml every 3 hours. He typically gets anywhere from 52-59 at a sitting. The feeding tube is back in (right nostril this time), just in case it's needed to make up any difference that he didn't get from the bottle. We've had to use it very sparingly over the last few days. He is even taking all of his medicine directly from the syringe, rather than into the feeding tube. For a little one that has had the type of surgery Ayden's had, all of this is really awesome and puts him in a small minority (if he goes home without a feeding tube, my understanding is that he would be the first hypoplast from Vanderbilt to do so in almost two years). We are so proud of him and so thankful to God for this blessing.

 

After the jump is some video evidence of his bottle feeding prowess.