prem babies

Hey CJ, my DD was born at 28wks. While in hospital she was fed through nasal gastric tube until I was able to fully breastfed, so cant help on switching from bottle sorry! I did worry about not being able to monitor her intake, but our lactation consultant was great and told me as long as nappies were wet at each change and there wasn't any reddish spots in her nappies (for some reason I keep thinkinging its called uric acid, but Im not sure thats the right name.. it sounds something like that), then she's getting enough. I was feeding 3 hourly to start off with.
Luckily for us she started sleeping through the night about 6 weeks after we bought her home, she would have been 2/3 weeks corrected. She did have days/nights mixed up when we bought her home, but when I would get up to feed her in the night I'd just use a small lamp and not talk to her and put her straight back to bed afterwards which seemed to help, it didnt take her long to sort it out. I also found playing soft music quietly (we've got the pink floyed rockabyes cd, which is great!) helped her to get to sleep sometimes, I think you're right about being used to noise and lights while being in hospital, nurses warned us about it before we left.

Feel free to pm me if you have any other questions

Do you use, or have you tried using a nipple shield? DD was born 31 weeks, and as well as the tube feed, she had ebm in bottle and I'd try feeding her with a nipple shield. I kept using the nipple shield when she came home, as well as ebm bottle feeds. I slowly dropped a bottle feed, replaced by bf with nipple shield, until she was fully bf with nipple shield, then gradually removed the nipple shield one feed per day and she got used to, and preferred, to feed without it.

Re: sleeps. At night I left the side table lamp on when I put her down for the night (she slept in our room) and during the day left the curtains open. For all her sleeps we had a little radio with a radio station not quite tuned in i.e. not complete static, crackly voices and noise, with static over the top. Gradually I stopped with the light and noise at night - she was then no prob with the dark and quiet and has been a fantastic sleeper. Day sleeps I stuck with the lit room and radio for a bit longer, but again just gradually removed the radio i.e. made it quieter, further away from her cot and she got used to sleeping without it no prob.

Hope that helps.

urates, thats the one thanks Kali, I knew uric wasn't right!