As the songs goes, “what a difference a day makes”, and it’s been a day of ups and downs.

After going back into hospital, Lucie was fitted with a feeding tube – this is a tube that goes down into the stomach via the nose. After a good feed, she was “topped up” via this tube. Yesterday, this tube was removed after she started happily feeding from a cup.

Anyway, after a Doctors visit this morning the Hospital seemed quite determined that Lucie would leave that day. However, when she was weighted later it was found that she had LOST weight again (they decided to weigh her AFTER they’d taken a lot of blood from her for various tests). Never-the-less, they were still talking about sending her home.

Thankfully, there’s a very nice midwife who’s been dealing with us and after a chat with her, we decided upon a new tactic.

My wife has been quite determined to breast feed. Unfortunately, that’s also been the problem – because there’s no way to determine how much Lucie has been getting from that, it’s impossible to know how much more she needs to be “topped up” with via the cup. Yesterday, for instance, she had a breast feed for 10 minutes and then was cup fed 40ml (she’s supposed to have at least 47ml) – although a lot of this ends up going down here.

So, we made a joint decision. Lucie is now being bottle fed. And for her first feed, she gulped down 60ml within 15 minutes (the best feed she’s probably ever had). Before her next feed was due she wanted more and happily took another 50ml. All extremely positive. But that’s not to say we’ve given up on breast milk, as we’re adding as much to the bottle as she can – in fact we’ve hired tonight the same “industrial strength” pump that the Hospital uses!!

The plan is for both to return home tomorrow.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for possibly my last good nights sleep for some time ;o)