I am a NICU nurse and LC and am wondering if any of
you have any suggestions to help me with this.  My
next door neighbor and good friend had a baby one
month ago.  Unfortunately, a blood vessel in his cord
or placenta tore at birth and he was resuscitated for
16 minutes before he had a heart rate.  As a result,
he is severely neurologically impaired, has no basic
reflexes (ie: suck, swallow, Moro) and is on Phenobarb
to control seizures. He had a g-tube placed prior to
being discharged from the hospital.  He has been home
5 days now. His mother is a wonderful person who is
very committed to providing breastmilk for this baby.
She has three other children that she breastfed each
for 2.5 years.  She was a schoolteacher but stays home
with her children now and homeschools them.  The baby
is currently on bolus feedings q 2 hrs of 45cc
breastmilk during the day and on continuous feedings
at night of 30cc an hour x 11 hrs.  Right now the
family is receiving 12 hours of home health nursing
care at night, but it will decrease weekly.  The
problem is this:  we are using a syringe pump to
infuse the continuous feedings at night, but because
of the fact that the largest syringe available is a
60cc syringe, they cannot hang more than 2 hours worth
of feeding at a time.  This is okay while the home
health nursing continues, but I don't know how this
mother is going to get any sleep in the future when
she loses nursing care, and when the baby goes up more
than 30cc an hour on his feedings the syringe changes
will become more frequent.  We don't want to use a
kangaroo pump for the continuous feedings because of
the adherance of the milk fat to the bottle and
tubing. The baby is having trouble with weight gain as
it is.  Does anyone know of any other type of pump
that might be out there that would be suitable for
infusing breastmilk over a 4 hour period, and that
would require a low priming volume? I would appreciate
any suggestions! Thanks     Kathi Negaard, RN, IBCLC

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