Working Hard

I went up to the hospital this morning to work with the Occupational Therapist on the boys bottle feeding. Trying to eat from a bottle is hard work for the boys. They are working on developing their sucking, swallowing and remembering to breathe. Michael has better sucking reflexes than Thomas, but he was forgetting to breathe. Neither of the boys took their entire bottle. What the boys don't finish will be fed to them through the tube in their nose. The nurse and occupational therapist informed me today that boys in the NICU tend to be lazier than girls when it comes to all the hard work of bottle feeding. It seems to take the boys a little longer to get the hang of it all.

Both boys are continuing to gain weight, Thomas is about 3 lb 14 oz and Michael is about 3 lb 15 oz. They are also beginning to be awake and alert more often. This morning for example they were awake at 7:00 am and Thomas was still awake when I left at 9:00 am, Michael had just fallen asleep. It was nice to see them awake and alert while I was at the hospital.