so stressed about this. just want ydd to "chub up." in good news, my previous two kids seemed to react to something in my milk/diet, and I've worked for the past three years to improve my gut health. though I had no indication that it was improving, this baby doesn't seem to be reacting to my milk and seems comfortable - that's awesome!
dd was born RIGHT at 33 wks due to my severe pre-eclampsia. first two were free standing birth center and homebirth, so hospital, c/s, and NICU were new (sad) experiences. but dd was healthy; just very, very small. 3lbs 10oz at birth, which on their chart was 15th centile. only found that out reading her discharge papers almost 3 wks ago. no one ever discussed her percentiles. she was gaining great weight in the NICU - usually one oz or more/day. she was getting my milk but it was first fortified to 24 cal/oz then to 22 cal/oz. i never had my milk tested but it's presumed to be the average 20 cal/oz. the fortifier was called human milk fortifier but it was dairy based. I've heard of prolacta, which i guess is made from human milk, but i never even brought that up in the NICU, and thankfully dd tolerated the fortifier well.
discharge plan was to give her at least two bottles fortified per day and then nurse the rest of her feedings, offering the bottle after. she's still using the nipple shield which I'm honestly fine with and will work on weaning once weight gain is going well. day after discharge, she was 5lbs 1.2oz. the ped (who is natural minded which I really appreciate) was OK w/ us just nursing and not doing any fortifying. so we did. at the weight check, five days later, she had gained 4.5 oz, and was up to 5lbs 5.8 oz. the following week she was up to 5lbs 11.2oz, so up 5.4 oz in one week. ped was ok. I was OK until I looked at the percentiles. at birth, and through her stay in the NICU she was 15th percentile. then once she stopped getting the extra calories via fortification she went down to 11th, then 10th percentile. I'm weighing her on our kitchen scale and she's currently 6lbs 0.3oz. up 5oz from last Wednesday. we've been doing two bottles of fortified milk per day, adding Enfasure to make them just about 23 cal/oz. but I'm not sure that's enough?!
thankfully ped is OK but I'm nervous if we don't keep up w/ the fortification (or perhaps even do more than we're doing?!) that DD is going to keep dropping percentiles... she clearly was on the 15th from birth right through her 25 day NICU stay...
did anyone else struggle w/ weight gain once stopping NICU fortification? what did you do? if anyone knows any links to preemie growth charts other than this one, I'd really appreciate it, also. http://www2.aap.org/sections/perinat...owthCurves.pdf
eta clearly i need to update my sig from 2008; DD1 was born in 07 but that must've been pregnancy brain typing 08. oh my. lol