A happy note for today: Noah ate his rice cereal like crazy tonight. He has really taken to it the past couple of days which is great! Jonah isn't doing badly either (although he was a bit fussy tonight but we still got his bottle down, it just took more time and more convincing). We're hoping with good practice they will be ready for solids in a few weeks.
The formula front is still marching onward. The boys are eating better then when they first came home but they still need to be eating more calories. The higher calorie was probably the culprit for Jonah's vomiting last week as we stopped both that and the Probiotics and he is back to no spit ups the past couple of days. However, the calories will be missed! Noah was so constipated Monday that we cut his calories back to 30 cal/per ounce (Jonah is 27 cal/ounce). Noah has been a bit fussy and is chewing on everything and HARD (watch out for fingers)! So his days of eating like a horse last week (one day he ate 26 ounces, I thought I had died and gone to heaven) have proven to be numbered as the past two days he has been harder to feet. His extra calories made up for it though. Still, the boys are only eating maybe 500-600 calories a day and I know they need to be eating more like 800-900 to really catch up with growth.
I am grateful for where they are at, Jonah has to be near the 13 pound mark and Noah is for sure over 12 pounds and has grown length wise (his feet are getting so big!) I keep hoping we will be lucky enough to get them to 15 pounds or more by their first birthday. That would be fabulous......can you imagine that? Some people would laugh at that because their baby probably weighs in the 20+ pound range come their first birthday but considering they weighed 1 pound 7 ounces (Jonah) and 1 pound 9 ounces (Noah) at birth they are doing AMAZING.
Next week is our first GI Clinic appointment. It took forever to get in to the clinic and I have a list of questions to ask about poor Jonah. We have got to figure out why it is so hard for him to poop! He does not poop like a baby but like an adult and that is not right. Even on the Probiotics he was still passing hard poop and crying through the whole experience. He is still grunting and straining every time he poops, I just feel so bad for him. I'm sure there will be a slew of tests to do for us to figure out if he has absorption issues, allergies, narrowing somewhere in his GI tract or worse case scenario some kind of obstruction we don't know of. I just hope we can get answers!
We are counting down to Jonah's surgery on the 17th. I hope we'll see a big difference and that it will change some of his behaviors. He gets so startled sometimes over noises and I keep wondering, could it be because he can't focus right and see what is happening? It could be sensory related too as many, many of these micro-preemies have sensory issues. Hopefully not. =)
Well, pray for our boys. We are fighting, fighting to get them eating well and the big SOLIDS is lurking over us. I'm actually dreading this next phase because this is where I'll have to start packing as many calories as I can in to as little volume and counting every stinking calorie that goes in to their mouth (I thought calculating cc's/ounces was rough, calorie counting and estimating intake is going to be worse).
Thank goodness I have my Yahoo! group because our #1 topic we discuss is feeding and calories. I have lots of great ideas on how to give my boys as many calories as I can for the small amount of food they may eat. Now, whether they tolerate or agree to eat that food is entirely up to them. =) Too bad I can't control much of anything right now. We'll just have to leave it up to blood, sweat, tears and the Divine.
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