In the first few days of Julia's life she was unable to take a bottle. We fed her a tiny bit at the time with 1ml syringes. After a few days she was able to take in more and more of these formula filled syringes at a time. And one day, we noticed that she was developing a suck reflex. This was huge for a baby with trisomy 18!!! At that time we decided to try a preemie bottle, and to our great surprise, she began to successfully feed from a bottle! The bottles contained tiny amounts at first but she did it!! She continued to slowly increase her intake throughout her sweet little life. I am very thankful for the responsiveness little Julia showed -- especially in those early days when we didn't even know we could have hope. She gave us that hope. And so much more.
What a precious picture!
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