Abby update

Good Morning Abby Heads,

So, where did I leave off? Wednesday huh? Okay then, here we go.

Wednesday was a good day for Abby. She was doing great with her bottle feeding. She was alert and looking around and things were peachy. Kelly and I went to dinner and came back at 8PM sharp because Kelly gets to bottle feed her now at that time. But we were stopped in our tracks! Abby’s nurse, Jamie told us the Eye Doctor was coming by in a half an hour to check her eyes. What??? Why so soon? No clue. But he was coming so we held off on the bottle feed and waited for Mr. Eye Doc to show up. Of course now we’re nervous. Did the laser surgery work? Will Abby be able to see down the road? Our minds were racing. And because this guy was late, Jamie had to put drops in Abby’s eyes to dilate them twice! The drops don’t hurt, they just kind of blur her vision apparently. Anyway, Mr. Tardy Eye Doc strolls in close to 9PM as opposed to 8:30PM and does the eye exam. It’s a horrible situation. A couple nurses held Abby still while the doc put this clamp thing to keep Abby’s eyes open. Kelly and I were across the room and could barely stand it to hear her cry and scream. But it was over after about 5 minutes and the eye doc was happy to report that so far, everything looked good. He gave the following analogy; "The laser surgery’s job is to block the forming of any more blood vessels, like a wall of sand bags blocks rain in a storm. You stack up the sand bags and hope that the stack is enough to do the job. We’re hoping that the laser surgery is enough to do the job with Abby’s eyes, and block those blood vessels and keep them from growing." So with that, he said he’d be following up with Abby next week as well as the week after that. While each eye appointment will give us a better idea for how well the surgery worked, we won’t know for sure if she’s out of the woods for about a MONTH! What stinks is that Abby doesn’t do well after these eye exams. She was NOT in the mood to take a bottle at all after the exam. And that clamp thing irritates her eyes so they get swollen. It’s a pretty bad deal all around so we’re not looking forward to these eye exams in the weeks to come. It’s a necessary evil though I suppose.

Alright, so on to some good news. Abby seems to be responding well to the vital stim treatment to help her feed from a bottle. Even though she hasn’t taken as many cc’s of milk in the past few attempts, her quality of bottle feeding has been a lot better. She’s more calm, she’s awake, and she swallows the milk better after she gets it in her mouth. The developmental therapists have increased her bottle feeding attempts each day to give her more opportunities to learn. It will take a while they said, but she is making some good progress.

We’re definitely on Abby Time here. We can only go home when she can feed from the bottle 100% and only Abby will tell us when that will be.

One thing is for sure though, she’s more cute than she was yesterday and I’m sure she’ll be even more irresistible tomorrow than she is today.

Have a good weekend everyone,
Ryan and Kelly