7 pounds!!!

This jumbotron is the view from Danielle's new room.

Danielle is now just over 7 pounds! This is very exciting as she keeps growing strong. The other BIG news for Danielle is that she has begun to bottle feed and is doing GREAT with it! Friday night I spent the whole night with Danielle. This is when the doctor had told me earlier in the day that despite her being still on the high flow nasal canula that she would like me to introduce the bottle to Danielle so we can see how she will do. Well when I got to the hospital just before 8:30 she was wide awake and looking all around. I have not seen her this wide awake in a long time, weeks probably. So this was the perfect opportunity for her first bottle!

So she is now getting 2 ounces of food every 3 hours, still breast milk w/ fortifier. She did so great with the bottle and was cautious, sucking about 5 times in a row, swallowing and the pausing to breathe and starting over. This was wonderful news. She took almost 1/2 her feeding in about 10-15 minutes before she started to not be too interested anymore. I was SO excited! So we NG fed her the rest and when we put her back in bed she was still rooting around looking for the bottle, it was so cute. I then tried to give her the paci and she was so mad because there was nothing coming out. We didn't want to push her though and try to give her the rest of the bottle so we continued to NG feed the rest.

So I think that Danielle thought we were having a slumber party with mommy because she was wide awake ALL NIGHT LONG! It reminded me so much of new born babies and how they love to be awake at night! Mommy only got between 1/2 and 1 hour sleep total! But I took full advantage of spending the night with my girl. I held her and since the new room has a TV in it, I introduced her to TV and politics by watching the debate and then a little football. I was exhausted on Saturday but it was well worth it. So Saturday morning I gave her bottle #2 and again she did great! This was after a bath and she was still WIDE awake from the night before. She took just shy of 1/2 of 1/2 of a feeding, so less than the night before but she still did great. So finally just after noon Danielle decided it was time for a nap, thank goodness!! So of course she slept then all day and most of the night. So this morning mommy, daddy and Dylan went to see Danielle. Dylan immediately said 'baby' when he saw Danielle. It was precious, she peeked her eyes at the sound of his voice. The doctor who is on right now actually use to work at St. Lukes and had Dylan when he was there. She was able to see Dylan today and was so encouraged by him. We are very happy that she has Danielle now in Iowa City because we feel very comfortable with her and the care she gives. So Danielle got the 'ok' to get 1 bottle per nursing shift. So today she had her 2 bottles and took 1/2 of her feeding each time. So we will continue to move very slow with the bottle and give it to her only if she is awake for the feeding.

We are so happy she is now 7 pounds and getting so big. She is in newborn size clothes now, only 1 preemie outfit still fits her. Today is the first time she wore a newborn outfit and it just happened to be that the nurse put her in the newborn outfit that her Great Grandma Holub gave her just the other day!!

We pray that Danielle continues to keep growing strong and knowing that we believe in her every day of her life.~