Week 35, Day 4, Hitting the Bottle

Hannah is doing great today. She got her first chance to drink from a bottle today and surprised the nurse by draining it. They'll give her one bottle a day in place of a tube feeding, and gradually replace tube feedings with bottle feedings until she's off the feeding tube altogether. Tomorrow at the 3pm touch time, Carla will get to feed her for the first time. What are the odds I'll be in the office tomorrow afternoon? Not so good. :-)

On an unrelated note . . . I was filling out a form for the Social Security folks, because preemies by definition are disabled and eligible for some government benefits. In our case, insurance covers almost everything, but for uninsured parents, this is probably a great program. Anyway, I came across the following example of amusing government bureaucracy in the list of things I had to confirm in order to sign Hannah up for these benefits (click the image to enlarge).


All I have to say is . . . those inner-city preemies must a lot tougher than the ones I've seen out here in the 'burbs. And I wasn't aware that our house is an institution, and that Hannah has been living here since birth. Or that Hannah expects that to change. I think the only things she "expects" at the moment is that there will be noisy blobs hovering over her and putting cold things in her orifices and armpits every time she wakes up. And that maybe she might poop in a bit.