Adventures In Growing Up: Where does the time go?

Please excuse our lack of blog posts over the last two weeks...as you can imagine going back & forth to a hospital takes precedence over writing! The downside of this is that I haven't been able to document as many milestones as I originally wanted to. So, let's take a look at some of the bigger things that have happened over the last 10-14 days:

Sept 1-8

Two weeks ago we had kind of a rough weekend. We went to see her on 9/1 and they had put her on a nasal cannula (the two tubes that deliver air into your nose). They did this because her respiratory rate was getting a little high, especially when she ate. This probably meant that she was using a lot of energy to digest her food, so the extra help breathing meant her body could concentrate on feeding & growing as opposed to breathing and regulating her temperature. This was a bit of a regression in Mom's eyes, but after a few days she got better at eating and they took her off of it.

Look at all my tubes! But, I am wearing a shirt now because I am good at regulating my body temperature!

We've been working hard at taking a bottle. It takes a lot of energy for her to suck/breathe/swallow at once. They began by trying 3-4 times/day and she was only taking about 8-15 ml of her 33ml via bottle. By the end of the week, we just weren't making much progress. Well, we had a nurse whose philosophy is to only try once during a 12 hr shift...wouldn't you know she took the whole bottle! We were now eating more volume from the bottle, just not on a consistent basis.

Mmmm a delicious bottle!

They took her off of caffeine Tuesday 9/4 (has it really been that long ago?!). She hasn't had any 'true' bradys since. Apparently if the heartrate stays above 70, it's less than 7 seconds & they bring themselves out of it then it isn't a 'true' brady. I actually don't recall the last time there was a 'fake' brady, so that is such great news! The machines are still very nerve wracking of course. Every beep makes you look up to see if it is your machine or someone else's...

Sloan also got some special visitors this week. Her grandparents, Mimi and Go Daddy, came into town to visit! They were pretty surprised at how small she was - it's so hard to tell in pictures - but they really enjoyed the time they had with her...and of course she melted their heart at first sight!

Finally, Sloan wore another awesome gameday outfit. She heard the Missouri Tigers were talking smack about 'Old Man Football', so she decided to show them what Baby Dawg Football was all about. She is now 2-0 :)

Sept 9-14

Somewhere this week we hit 1800 grams. We've been so distracted by getting her to feed from a bottle that the weight gain has become secondary (actually tertiary to the bradys). As of today she was 2030 grams (4lbs, 8 oz)!! She really is getting so much bigger! Pretty sure there is a little bit of fat on her arms.

There still have not been any bradys!!

Feeding has steadily gotten better. She will take her feed from a bottle for the majority of her feeds, but sometimes she gets tired (read: stubborn) and decides it's not for her. Mom and Dad have both given her full bottles now, which was a pretty exciting milestone. Even more exciting, Mom got to try to nurse her yesterday. The first attempt went really well, but the second not so much. We tried again today and got the same result. So, I'm going to learn from last weekend's nurse, and only try once tomorrow. I think it has just been too much, too soon. But, the good news is that the other feeds have pretty much all been via bottle and not her feeding tube.

Now a few recent photos!!