Day 19

This morning's feed was kind of disappointing--he only took 11 ml. He was awake and calm and seemed agreeable to it, but somehow he just wasn't sucking hard enough or frequently enough to get what he needs. I was trying really hard not to feel discouraged, but it's hard when I feel like he has this deadline hanging over his head--like if he doesn't catch on by the Care Conference on Tuesday with the doctors and therapists and us, surgery looms. Then I remembered an awesome principle from Elder Andersen's recent conference talk, "Faith is not only a feeling; it is a decision. He would need to choose faith." I decided to choose faith; we are doing all we can to help Dexter learn to eat, so there's no point in doubting.

By the time I came back to Dexter, I was feeling both faith and hope. And he did really well with the bottle--for the first time, he didn't desat once, meaning he was doing a much better job remembering to breathe and pace himself. In fact, he seemed to be doing so well that I was surprised that at the end of 35 min he had only gotten 18ml. It really seemed like he'd swallowed so much more. But he did well. He'll learn to eat.