At 7-month-old, our first triumph and miracle!

The round-the-clock tube feeding at 3-hour intervals had given Daniel a slightly chubby look.

Tube feeding was a temporary solution. He couldn't possibly be tube-fed for the rest of his life, could he? Eventually he must learn to eat without choking. That was one of our concerns.

Thus began my son's long and arduous journey to learn to do the things that normal people have taken for granted.

He was 4 months old when I started to give him a milk-and-cereal mix by spoon so that he had the chance to learn to eat orally.

I propped him up on a pillow supported with bolsters at an incline so that gravity would help the cereal and milk to stay in his mouth and flow back to his throat for him to swallow. It was difficult. Most of the food was spilled. Every so often he would choke trying to swallow.

Off and on I also tried to give him milk from the bottle without success.

One night when he was 7 months old, we had just returned from my mother's place when I discovered that the feeding tube had become 'undone', probably due to his cheek rubbing against my shoulder.

It was night and we did not have any sterile feeding tube at home to use. The pharmacies were all closed. What was I to do? I was upset.

I prepared just 4 ounces of milk. My son would have to try to drink from the bottle. I wasn't going to give up.

Lo and behold, my son drank from the bottle! He was hungry. He drank all one ounce of it and then he stopped, tired and panting. I let him rest for some minutes and then I gave him the bottle again. And he drank another ounce and then he stopped to rest. Thus, resting in between, we finished 4 ounces of milk without choking once!

Oh the joy. You don't know how happy I was that night. I was so very proud of my son. You don't know what it was like to hold an empty milk bottle in your hand. I wanted to announce to the world that my son drank a bottle of milk all by himself. I didn't of course.

Next time you see a newborn baby sucking contentedly at a bottle of milk, you don't realize it but you are witnessing a miracle.