Yummy

Today has been a really good day for Grace. She rested extremely well, in fact she has only been awake for maybe two hours all day. I hope that doesn't mean she'll be awake all night.

Gracie's big accomplishment today was drinking from a bottle!! At 11:30am the speech therapist came to work with us on how to feed her, but Grace didn't want anything to do with the bottle. So we left her alone and planned on trying it again later; but before we tried, we turned her feeds off for an hour to hopefully make her hungry and then the gave her a flavored formula. Its the same formula she has been on--ellacare, just vanilla flavored, it smells like cake batter. Though it was some work for both Gracie and I she drank 16cc!! What an accomplishment!!! As she finally latched on and drank I was so happy tears filled my eyes, 12 1/2 weeks after birth and she is finally experiencing eating for the first time. Every day she does more and more baby things instead of spending all her energy on healing and growing.

Eating is really hard for all heart babies--it takes so much energy and coordination, so the plan is to have Grace on every two hour feeds. So she'll get 46cc every two hours over the course of an hour tonight. Then in the morning we will give her a bottle again and she will have the opportunity to drink as much of the 46cc she can in 10-15 minutes (depending on how tired she seems) and whatever she doesn't finish goes through her feeding tube. Then the next two feeding she'll just be fed through her tube and then we'll try the bottle again. We're just hoping that her belly can handle having so much volume at once.

Other milestones for today--Grace wore her first dress today and looked absolutely adorable. Its a dress Jason picked out and bought and all Grace's were impressed with how well he did on the purchase :) Morgan also came to visit and loved seeing Gracie, she even got to go for a ride with her in the wagon. We loaded Gracie in with a portable monitor and walked around the unit--though Grace was asleep she liked it because whenever we stopped she would start to cry. What can I say the girl knows what she likes and knows how to get others to accommodate her.