June 3 - Night

23:15 – Max is looking comfortable and calm tonight. He's been on his stomach, but not swaddled. He's kept a pacifier in his mouth without help for over half an hour. His affinity for the pacifier gives us encouragement that he'll take to the bottle more easily once he finally gets off his feeding tube.

I got to give him a bath again tonight and he really seemed to like it. He normally doesn't like to be handled and manipulated too much – probably because it usually means that someone is coming at him with a sharp object aimed at his tender skin. I also took advantage of the photo op without all of his apparatus. While the nurse was changing his bedding, I got to hold him without his CPAP and without swaddling. It was like being a normal dad for 10 minutes.

After his bath he got a feeding. His feedings have been shortened to 30 minutes, so now he's getting 70cc of formula in only half an hour. They're trying to get his stomach ready for bottle feeding; otherwise he may get quit before he gets enough to eat. After the feeding he gets phenobarbitol (for both liver and sedation). The phenobarb is injected quickly into his feeding tube, and I guess that it was just too much, too fast on top of the newly big and fast dinner. He spit up the medication along with his feeding tube. After cleaning him up, his nurse said that she'd leave the tube out until his next feeding to give him a chance to recover from the gag reflex sensitivity.