How long after starting to feed to coming home?

[dancestomyowntune]

My dd is three and a half weeks old after being born ten weeks early. She has had no set backs, was ventilated for a few hours and on cpap for about a day. She has been on caffeine but that has been stopped today, and she has taken 15ml of milk from a bottle today, for the first time (I'm sure she would have taken this before but the nurses haven't offered it her before!).

She is now in a cot and maintaining her temperature, she is gaining weight. As far as I can tell, the only thing stopping her from coming home now is the feeding. So my question is, how long did it take your preemie to establish feeding and how long did it take them to discharge?

I'm so desperate to get her home

From the moment she took a bottle of ebm, it was 2/3 days until discharge. She was only offered a bottle then because she ripped her ng tube out (although she was being tried on a cup when the nurses had the time...) and that particular nurse on duty suggested it. She was in the neonatal unit for 4weeks 2 days overall. I believe if I'd of wanted bottle feeding more over bf then she would have been discharged earlier although that's just my opinion...she only got the hang of bf once cosied up at home when we were both more relaxed (without constant beeping and loads of strangers around!!) Good luck!

Can I ask how early she was? That's exactly what I wanted to hear! Thank you. I'm thinking my little one might be able to come home by next weekend.

hi dances, DD was born at 34 weeks and was in SCBU for 3.5 weeks, I reckon the last 2 weeks of that was just due to feeding. However I wanted to BF and DD was very bad at BF (much later we realised she had tongue tie), so that's why it took so long - if I'd been happy to bottle feed I think we'd have been out much much earlier as sparky says.

She was 34wks 2days but a tiny 3pd 3 at birth. I remember well how frustrating it was not having a fixed date of when she was coming home but it ended up being one week before her due date, so anything around then is good I suppose. Good luck!

My 30 weeker was in for a couple of days shy of 7 weeks. They don't try to offer bottle or breast properly until after around 33 weeks as preemies tend to have problems with sucking/swallowing successfully which can lead to choking. It takes quite a while for them to be strong enough to be able to take a bottle for every feed as they just can't stay awake long enough. It may be at least a couple of weeks before it is even conceivable to offer a bottle at every feed - at this level of prematurity they have to be fed every 3 hours and it wouldn't be helpful to wake them every time. Our NICU had a minimum weight requirement of 2.3kgs before being allowed home and a week without feeding tube to ensure that weight gain was stable at around 180g a week so it might be worth asking if there is a similar policy where you are. In our case we left hospital weighing 2.32kgs and having 7 feeds a day (6 x 70ml of expressed milk with an additive to boost the calories and 1xBF) and we were allowed to switch to EBF when he reached 4.5kgs. So glad to hear that everything is going well and hope you don't have many more weeks to wait.

My DS was born at 31 weeks and was in NICU then SCBU for 5 weeks. It was about 2.5 weeks before he was tried at the breast and bottle. They had three requirements before letting babies home: feeding well established, weight above 2kg (iirc) and obviously all monitors removed. So it was another 2.5 weeks after we started attempting feeding without the ng tube to being discharged.

His tube wasn't removed until one or two days before we left though. The remainder of feeds were popped down the tube if he got tired bottle feeding when the nurses did his night feeds.

Thanks everyone. She has only just started taking bottles (first one on Friday). She was offered the bottle twice yesterday and three times today, the second bottle feed today she took the lot, but then the third one (the one I was there for) she only took about 10mls and her sats kept dropping.

Her weight gain is excellent. She is 1.9kg today and has put on 200g since Friday. I'm just so desperate to get her home .

It doesn't help that yesterday I had a letter from the gp with the appointments for mine and dds 6wk check on the 18th. I'm trying to work out whether she will even be home by then!

Sounds like she's doing well! Don't be disheartened by the decelerations, any activity/handling is hard work for them so she's bound to tire sometimes. I know it feels like forever when you're constantly on SCBU, I can't believe, having written '5 weeks' earlier, that that's all my DS was in for! Felt like months!

I'm sure she'll be home soon enough. But better they're sure she is ready first!