First Bottle

First Bottle, a photo by Lukasmummy on Flickr.

Credits: Layered template (November Template Challenge) by Sas Designs and Baby Mine Girl and Baby Mine Milestones both by Jen C Designs. Font is DJB Cursive by Darcy Baldwin.
Journalling reads: When your baby is in special care, everything is a milestone. But there aren’t very many, that are quite as exciting as when you are allowed to feed them their first bottle. That first bottle is the first tiny step away from being a premature baby who needs to be fed with a tube, and starting the long road to coming home. Most babies born as early as Leia don’t have a very good sucking reflex, We were very lucky that she didn’t have that issue. We were mostly just waiting around for the amount of milk per feed to be enough to put into a bottle. She had been changed onto 2 hourly feeds 2 days earlier, and with her weight gain she finally reached a high enough volume of milk. When the nurse asked if we would like to try the feed during our visit with a bottle, we were thrilled. The goal was simply to try and see if she was able to take the bottle. We had a 15 minute time limit, whatever was in the bottle after that was to be put down her tube so she didn’t get too tired from the effort. The nurse made a real fuss over Leia’s 2oz bottle, she hadn’t seen one so small before. We used the same size ones with all of our boys in the hospital. It was an amazing feeling for me. Leia not only managed to drink the whole bottle, but she did it in just over 5 minutes. We were so proud of her. What made it an even more special experience was that Nan got to be there.