A Great Day!!

After complaining so much in my last post (sorry for venting), I went to the hospital and when I saw my little monkey, my heart jumped for joy!! He had NO feeding tube in!! YAY!! This is HUGE! He took ALL of his feeds today by a bottle!! Woo hoo!! He just started bottle feeding on Saturday & has had 2 per day since then. But today is only Tuesday and they decided he was doing SO well, that they put him on total bottle feeds! And he seems to be tolerating it pretty well! He has a few desats (drops in oxygen) but this is to be expected since preemies aren't born with a functioning sucking reflex. But he really is doing better than I could have hoped for! I even got to watch him take a bottle today. I still can't feed him until they are confident that he has the ability to remember "suck, suck, breathe". He forgot a couple of times today but it was still so wonderful to see him drink from a real bottle! The nurse says that if he tires out, then they will put his tube back in so I don't need to be disappointed if that happens. She also said that he will most likely lose a little weight since he is actually burning a lot of calories drinking from a bottle. He used no calories when the food was fed through his tube, so it makes sense that he might lose a little. Speaking of weight, he is up to 4lbs. 12.2 ozs. Chunky monkey!! We have our eyes on that 5 pound mark!! I'm a little bit better today. Last night I was REALLY down about not feeling like a real mommy. But seeing him eat like a normal baby has really cheered me up! He even burped like 4 times!! Loud!! And I got to change his diappy today! Weird thing to get excited about, but he will be 1 month old on Friday and I'm SO ready to feel like his mommy!! If you get a chance, check out my "Little Miracles" link and see the progress that baby Kayleigh has made since her super-early arrival. She was a micropreemie and she is getting so big! Her mommy and daddy have "then" and "now" pics posted. AMAZING!! I hope everyone is doing well and as always, thanks for the continued prayers for monkey!! God continues to pour his blessings over us! love you all!