Ella slept great last night until 5am. From that point forward, I was out of bed every few minutes. I was very out of it, so I think I kept hoping that she would really go back to sleep so that I could too….oh well.

Josh was nice enough to wake up at 8am and watch her for a couple of hours until his work day started. This allowed me to catch some zzzzs.

Ella did seem a bit fussy throughout the entire day. At moments, it just seemed like nothing made her happy. I’m not sure if she was just overtired because at other times, she seemed like the happiest baby ever born.

Ella did pretty well at our first try of oral feeds at 12 noon, by taking 20ccs. After that, she didn’t seem too interested the rest of the day. The OT was here and confirmed that adding rice cereal and sugar to the bottle has seemed to help her take more via bottle. Also, he mentioned that we may want to get the next flow for the nipple. This is because he is thinking about thickening the formula even more and we will need a larger hole in the nipple to allow any flow (not because Ella is necessarily ready to swallow more flow). The thickening of the formula is what he thinks is making the huge difference.

Since we tried rice cereal solo for a few days and know that she does not have an allergy, the next step was to try messy bright orange sweet potatoes. It didn’t go great, but it went better than any of the rice cereal. That gives me hope!

Instead of the spoon, I also tried putting it on my finger and letting her take it that way too. She helped to keep my finger in her mouth. Since the sweet potatoes taste half way decent, I could taste them with her. I think it helped her to see me eating them too. I’m hopeful that she may decide that sweet potatoes aren’t that bad after all. As a side note, boy…those are messy!

We were able to set up an appointment with the physical therapist for next week. Ella has not had any PT since we left the NICU back in January. She needs it really badly. One of the top physical therapists here in Gainesville does not make house calls, but we have decided that driving to that appointment is worth it.

As much as feeding has been a challenge, I am sure the physical therapy exercises will be trying too. Ella is very weak, gets tired fast and begins to fuss anytime we make her work. I’m hoping we can learn good distraction techniques to make it seem like fun!

Please pray that Ella begins to take to oral feeding better and that she is gaining weight. We want to have a good check-up with Dr. Kays next Tuesday! Also, that her lungs are getting stronger.

Thanks for the continued prayer support.