Cruisin'

Our little rockstar is cruising along!  He gained 47g yesterday, putting his weight at 5lbs 7.6ozs.  It seems that each day now, he is making great strides towards coming home.  Yesterday was a big milestone day for Axton because he began trying to take one of his feeds from a bottle.  Babies don't really develop the "suck" reflex until around 34 weeks, so it is hard for them to eat from a bottle much before that time.  Coordinating the action of "suck, swallow, breathe" is difficult, not to mention, exhausting for them.  So, at this point, anything that they can take by mouth is a great accomplishment!

Big boy eating from a bottle for the first time

 Axton rocked his first attempt at bottle feeding.  His feeds were at 25mL yesterday and he took 18mL.  Little dude was exhausted afterwards, but he did it!  This morning he did it again :)  So, they have now upped his feeds to 35mL every three hours and two of those feeds will be from a bottle.

Here he is before his 5pm feeding tonite...wide awake and ready to give it a shot.  I got to feed him this time and he did so great!  He took 17mL for me before he got the hiccups, so we gave him a break and put the rest in the tube in his nose.  So proud of him :)

He got to sport one of the hats I made him today as well!  It won't be long now before we can start putting clothes on him...yeah!  He's starting to look less and less like a preemie, and more along the lines of a baby that you wouldn't be scared to take home.  Keep it up buddy :)