First attempt...failed

Last night was the first attempt to thicken her formula, add cereal, and feed it to her by spoon. I learned that is not going to be possible. For one thing feeding a baby 6 ounces of formula by a spoon would take forever but the main reason is because it would not get thick enough. I added the correct amount of thickener and then added a TON of cereal and it still was not thick enough. I tried anyways to feed it to her and she would not swallow it. She needs thickness and texture to feel it on her tongue to swallow it. The milk just kept running back out of her mouth. I decided to just go ahead and put it through her g-button. I have to bolus 3-60cc syrings slowly into her tummy. Anyways, after 2 syringes she was throwing a fit sucking hard on her paci and kept wiggling around. I thought maybe she was getting full so I put the 3rd syringe back into a bottle because I wanted to see if that is what she wanted and if she was full or not. As soon as the bottle hit her mouth she did a death grip around the bottle and sucked it down it just a few seconds. Her little fingers were turning white because that is how hard she was clinging to her bottle. It broke my heart because that is what she really wanted. Just by putting it in her belly was not satifying her--she wanted to be able to suck it down herself to fall asleep. I would want to taste by food as well so I can't blame her. I am also trying to get her off needing a bottle at night and so last night she went to sleep at about 9:00pm and started wiggling around at about 3:00am so I changed her diaper and gave her the paci and she went back to sleep until 7:30am. While she was getting her breathing treatment I started bolus feeding her. After her formula feeding I fed her some cereal by mouth and she ate just a little and was full. It worked well doing it that way this morning so I will see how she does again tonight. If she keeps wanting a bottle at night to help her fall asleep then I may button feed her 4 ounces and then let her take 2 ounces by bottle so she can go to sleep with it. We'll just see. James and I have also decided to not turn up her breath rate on her vent at night to see how she would do. She is doing great so far--I think the extra breathes were actually making it worse for her because the vent would take a breath for her and then she would right after and then I think she was getting too many breaths and then desatting some. The first night she went ALL night without oxygen and did not beep once. Last night she did great until about 5:00am and then needed .25 liters of oxygen until she woke up this morning. Our pulmonlogist will just love that we changed things ourselves but I think he is use to us taking over and doing it how we want because that is how we would do it in the hospital. We know our daughter better than anyone else. :)

Last night I had a nightmare that Autumn was in the hospital and we were gone and when I came back a nurse had left her in this tub seat and she fell forward and was drowning. I walked it and saw her and had to start CPR on her and then suctioned all this water out of her trach. The rest of the dream I was trying to figure out which nurse was responsible and was on a mission her get her fired. I think I had the dream because I feel bad leaving Autumn with other people and not being the one taking care of her all the time. I think it also has to do with my control issues thinking I'm the only one who can take care of her the way she needs to be taken care of. Well, off to feed Autumn her noon feeding--hope it goes well.