A new plan to wean the NG

Kevin and I are still trying hard to wean Kinley off of the NG tube. She is still doing pretty good, but Jami, Kinley's OT from the Infant-Toddler program wanted us to make some changes. Today was Kinley's regularly scheduled biweekly OT visit. It went pretty well from what I was told, but again I had to miss the appointment, so this is just what I have been told.

First of all we were told to increase the rate of Kinley's night feed. We were giving her milk at a rate of 55 mls/hr, but we have been told to increase that until we are at the point where we can give 200 mls/hr. Giving a faster tube feed should allow us to give Kinley more bottles during the day. When the night tube feed ran slower we had to start it fairly early in the evening to make sure we got it all done in time, some days the tube feed would last for 8 hours or more. Now the goal is to add 2 extra bottles during the day, one earlier in the day and one later at night. Hopefully by shortening the length of the night tube feed (by increasing the rate) we will be able to get those extra 2 bottles in. We were also told that we have to stop feeding Kinley when she falls asleep. This is a bummer since Kinley did some of her best eating when she was only half awake. Jami said that if we continue to feed Kinley when she is basically asleep we will have problems down the road. We learned from an earlier visit with Jami that falling asleep when eating is a baby's way of refusing the bottle and we could run into trouble down the road when Kinley is able to speak her mind about refusing bottles. Lastly, we were told to limit bottle feeding sessions to 20 minutes. That should not be too hard since Kinley does most of her eating in the first 10-15 minutes anyway. By adding in those 2 extra bottles, which would mean that Kinley would get between 6-7 bottles per day, the goal is to get Kinley taking around 600mls by bottle. The rest of the milk could be given over 1 hour at night if we get up to the 200mls/hr rate. Sorry if this is kind of confusing, or more detailed than you are really interested in.

On a side note, and having nothing do to with feedings, Kinley rolled over several times today by herself! I can't believe I missed that too, but I had to work. That darn work, if only there were fewer bills to pay I would not have to work as much. Oh well, at least Kevin was there to cheer Kinley on.

Seems like I had more to post, but just can't remember right now.