Hope is getting to be quite the big girl. She weighed in at 9 lbs 7 oz on Thursday when the home health nurse came. She is acting so grown up too. She grins at people (especially Nate) a lot. She is also reaching for things more and more. She is lifting her legs a lot more, which she hadn't been wanting to do because of all the trauma to her tummy. Then the other day she had rolled way up on her side, which I was very surprised by. She's still delayed, but it looks like she's making up for lost time now that she's finally home and feeling well.

Appointment Summary

Hope had 3 appointments on Wednesday. She saw her GI doc, the urologist, and the opthamologist.

Hope's GI doc was very pleased with her weight gain. She was up to 8 lbs 12 oz. This was up 7 oz from her discharge weight 5 days earlier. She is doing well on the Elecare, but I was cleared to add in a couple of nursings per day, so I've started that. We will see how she does on this combo. If it works, I'll be very happy and feel like we've reached a good compromise. We go back to see the GI guy on the 28th. If all is well and she is continuing to gain weight, he will have her broviac removed. I'll be so excited to finally be able to give my 7 month old a bath!

Hope's appt with the urologist also went well. She has a grade 2.5 - 3 reflux with one of her kidneys. She has about a 60% chance of outgrowing this. We will continue with the daily low-dose antibiotic for now. She has another ultrasound in 6 months and another dye study in December.

The last appt of the day was to have her eyes checked. The doctor was very pleased with how they looked. She was not worried yet about her propensity to cross her eyes. She said that as long as it was not all the time and she was able to self-correct, she was just going to consider it "baby eyes". Good. She did remark that she didn't think Hope was as near-sighted as most babies. This leads her to believe that she may actually wind up far-sighted as she grows. She again reiterated that Hope will likely be one of those little kids that needs glasses.

We were pretty pleased with how things turned out. And I'm pretty excited that we might not be having as many doctor appts as I had anticipated. Life might even start seeming pretty normal. Keep in mind that "normal" with 5 kids is going to be pretty busy, so don't expect posts to be very frequent anymore. We will try to update periodically, but I'm not finding a lot of time to be on the computer at this point. Thanks for continuing to keep us in your prayers.

Guest Appearance By Spiderman

I know it's supposed to be Hope's blog, but we thought she could share it with her big brother for the night.

Guess what?

trial

Hope is doing really well. She is up to 3.74 kg (8 lbs 4 oz). However, when the surgeon came by yesterday he was concerned because she was still here. He is still not convinced that she doesn't have some sort of allergy to my milk. He was concerned that we are tearing up her bowel and he doesn't want to have to remove any more of it. Long story short, we are now doing a trial of formula. We'll see how she does on it versus my breast milk. This is why we are still in the hospital. It looks like we'll probably be home on Friday now. There is some exciting news though. She went almost an entire 24 hours without her cannula. She even took a nice long nap and didn't need it. (Typically her oxygen saturation drops down into the 80s while she's sleeping. This time it only dropped down to 92%.) The problem was that she didn't eat as much that day, so the doc was wondering if she was just tired from working a little harder at breathing. So she is back on it for the time being, but I know her days with that tube are numbered. Such a big girl!