Pedialyte Trial - Day 8 (Thursday 12/11/08)

Weight 6.865 kg (15lbs, 2.2 oz)
Oral Intake 18.5 oz (woot! woot!)

Sofie had such a good day today. If you remember from yesterday I took out her NG yesterday morning. By last night it seemed like she was eating a little better, so we opted not to put it back in last night and just see how she'd do today. I think it made a huge difference for her to not get anything at all by NG. She was much hungrier today. She wanted to eat every couple of hours, and ended up taking 9 bottles today for a total of 18 1/2 ounces!! That's a new record for her.

On the downside her weight was quite a bit less today, 4 ounces less than yesterday actually, which was a big drop from one day to the next. However, a big percentage of that can be attributed to not getting the pedialyte last night and losing some water weight. I watched her carefully today for signs of dehydration. She still had 6 wet diapers and a big poopie diaper, so no real changes with any of that. Her mucus membranes were all still moist and she was again very playful and energetic all day. In fact, the last few days she seems to be feeling better than ever.

Not only is she feeling better and eating much better from the bottle, she's also doing better with solids the last week. For her afternoon snack she ate about 1 1/2 tablespoons of pureed pears. She was gulping it down and letting me shovel it in with a spoon. She helped a few times, but was more than willing to let me feed her. I was scraping the bowl at the end - something I've never had to do before. So I was really happy about that too.

One of the best things that's happened is that she actually enjoys drinking her bottles now. She doesn't have to be sleepy to take them. She wants them even when she's wide awake, and she'll look around while she's eating and play with her hair like she used to when she first came home from the NICU. She actually gets mad if you take the bottle out of her mouth before she's done. This is not just due to the Pedialyte trial. We've been working on positive associations with food and eating for months and I feel like that work is paying off now.

I gave her two biter biscuits to chew on while I was baking cookies this afternoon and they both disappeared. There's no way she could bite any of it off, let alone eat the whole thing because they're huge. I thought she had just dropped them down in her lap in the highchair, but I took her out and looked for it the first time and didn't see it, so I got her another one. A few minutes later I noticed her hanging her arm over the highchair feeding it to Gracie, so I'm pretty sure that's where the first one went too!

Even though her intake today was fabulous, we didn't want to risk her getting dehydrated, so we put her NG back in to give her some pedialyte tonight. I tried to put her old size (5 Fr) NG tube down instead of the size she's had (6 Fr). Even though it's only one size difference, it really is a big difference. The 5 is so much smaller and softer. It went down without a problem, so we're going to stick with that size for now. We're giving her a little extra pedialyte tonight to make up for last night, so hopefully it won't zap her hunger tomorrow.