NO TUBE!!!

So as I told everyone before Raef is having some feeding issues. When we left the hospital he was on a feeding tube, and has been until this past Friday. He is on such a strict schedule with his eating during the day and has a continuous night feed that he never had the opportunity to be hungry, so putting the bottle in his mouth was nothing short of annoying to him. He can suck and swallow.... so why wasn't he taking more from the bottle??? I would give him the bottle before I start a bolus feed and he would only take 5 or 10ml when he is supposed to have 6oml every 4 hours. He loves his passy, but when the bottle would go in his mouth the milk would come out and just wasn't the same. So on Friday I took his tube out and let him get a little hungry he did okay the first couple days but not where he should be at all. I was so nervous he was gonna loose all kinds of weight and thought I am just gonna put it back in since he isn't getting it. So I called my cousin Krystyna who works in speech pathology and she told me it took him 2 months to not eat from a bottle, so he isn't gonna learn to eat in 2 days. So I have stuck with it feeding him from a bottle every 2 hours and now.... he is eating 25 to 30ml. Which equals out to about 60 every 4!! He still has quite a bit of work to go with this, but he most definitely knows what hungry is and knows that the bottle is what makes that feeling go away.I am so happy, so hopefully it will continue to go this way. Keep him in your prayers because if this doesn't work the cardiologist recommended we surgically put a tube in his belly...and I don't want that at all!!!