Between Thursday and Friday, Kinley managed to set a new record of seven successful bottle feedings without needing to gavage any. And then things got, in the words of her mother, “all jacked up.”
For the last week, she had been on a flex feed schedule that worked like this:
- Consume 27 mL or less by bottle and the nurse would have to gavage the rest until she received a total of 38 mL.
- Consume 28 mL to 38 mL by bottle and she got to skip the gavage.
- Consume more than 38 mL by bottle and she’d earn an extra hour of sleep between feedings.
Over the course of her streak, Kinley always awoke hungry and was able to get down between 30 and 35 mL.
The streak ended when she was only able to get down 20 mL before she started to fall asleep. But, at the same feeding, the nurse practitioner dramatically changed her flex feed schedule. Now she had to consume at least 40 mL, one way or another.
At her next feeding she only took 25 mL before we ran into her 30 minute time limit. She was wide awake at the end, but uninterested. Three hours later, she did not want to wake up, so we gavaged. Two hours later, she woke up, acting hungry, but still was an hour away from being allowed to eat.
Our night nurse heard our concerns and called up the nurse practitioner on duty. She agreed that the jump was a bit much and readjusted the schedule to make it more incremental. 35 mL is the new minimum and 45 mL earned her an extra hour of rest.
Coincidentally, Kinley finished her next 50 mL bottle.