Progress

Yesterday we went back to school for the first time in a few weeks because we hadn't been able to with all of our doctor visits. Well, there was a guest speaker who I wanted to hear, but it was going to be out of the classroom, so I knew that would be difficult for Mia since she is so attached to her Mommy. But I thought, let's just give it a try and see what happens, they can always call me and have me come back if she has a major meltdown. I was probably just as scared as she was, maybe even a bit more...my heart was racing, my hands were getting sweaty, I just wanted it to be ok for her. Well, after 30 minutes of no phone calls, I thought, hey, this might work, that would be amazing! It did, 2 hours later I came back and she was just fine, so happy to see me, but just fine. They said she did great! She cried right away, for about 10 minutes, and was getting close to making herself throw-up, but they distracted her with something and she got through that and was fine the rest of the time. So, praise God! I feel like that is a major accomplishment for us. And I'm going to try to take more of a hands off approach at school, even go out for a walk outside and just let her get adjusted to being there by herself or with other people. Eventually when she is 3, I can't go to school with her anymore, so now is the time to start working on it. Baby steps...

Peanut and I are at the doctor's office, I just drank the orange glucose drink and I have an hour to wait until they draw my blood to check for diabetes. So now I have plenty of time to update the blog. :)

Yesterday we went to LA to see Mia's surgeon and to follow up with the NICU clinic (they will follow Mia until she is at least 3). Mia's surgeon was very pleased with how everything looked, we will follow up in another couple of months with him. We continue to stretch her bottom every couple of days and hopefully we will be able to lessen that in the near future. Mia still doesn't control her bowels, but we will keep giving her time because this is still very new for her, so we will continue to pray for full control with that.

After that visit we followed up with the NICU staff, that's always alot of fun because they enjoy seeing her so much. There was an immediate concern about her weight (which I was thankful for because I needed advice). So, they called up the dietician and we made a game plan to get Mia back on the growth curve in the next 3 months. Her goal is 1200 calories a day, around 250 calories for each meal/snack. We are going to go back to mostly pureed foods with lots of extra fat in them. The dietician said it's much easier to eat pureed foods and chewing tires kids out, so let's work on beefing her up over the next 3 months and make it easy for her, then we will go back to working on regular foods. So, lots of pureed meet and gravy and oil...and veggies that have higher calories, a meat and potatoes girl she will be. Please pray that this would work.

They told me that delays in development are linked with poor weight gain, so hopefully beefing her up will also help her to progress more developmentally.

Overall they thought that Mia was doing great, we will follow up in 3 more months with them. Our goal is to gain 5 pounds between now and then. Thanks for praying!

Sick

Somehow we all managed to get a cold at the same time. It hasn't been very much fun at our house this weekend. I hope we get over it very soon, I am supposed to take Mia to LA tomorrow.

On a side note, Mia's bottom looks great, Praise God and thank you for praying!

Today we went to LA to see Mia's neurologist. He was so impressed with how well she is doing, he said he never imagined her looking this good when we left the hospital back in the end of May 2008. What a testimony to God's healing power! Praise God! Anyway, we are going to do another EEG of Mia's brain when she is awake and asleep and then depending on how that looks we might start weening her from her seizure medicine, which is so awesome to me! We don't have a date yet for the study, but I will let you know when I know.

Yesterday was Peanut's first doctor visit. Everything looks great so far. Since Mia had so many complications, I'm considered "high risk", which means that they'll have the specialist actually do all of my ultrasounds because he knows exactly what he's looking for. And we've opted to have early blood work done to see if there are any indicators of complications with Peanut. We didn't do that with Mia because in my mind, I felt it didn't matter because we were keeping her regardless (likewise with Peanut), but looking back, it might have been helpful to prepare myself beforehand with knowledge rather than right before and after delivery. So, that's why we are opting to do some more blood work with this little one. We would love a healthy baby, that's what we keep praying for, but ultimately, we trust God to form this baby, just as He pleases, and ultimately for His will, but we'll keep praying for that healthy baby! I was 8 weeks yesterday, which puts my due date at August 25th.

Since I had a C-section with Mia, depending on how it was performed (we have to look at the surgery notes), I may have an option to have a normal delivery with this one instead of a C-section...but like everything there are risks with that and there are risks with a C-section, so pray that we'd have wisdom on what direction I should go. I have mixed reservations toward both options. :) Maybe the stork can just drop off this new baby instead???