Written Thursday, September 7th, 2006

Oh man! Check out these pics. Is she cute or what? We didn’t capture it in any of our pictures, but she also had a little bracelet on! Am I just being a bias daddy or is Abby in fact as adorable as I think she is?

Abby has been doing okay this week. She has had a lot of appointments with various doctors this week and here are the updates. Her feeding therapists have been hoping to see more progress with Abby and her feeding, but she is still at her same pace as last week and there isn’t too much more we can do other than what we’re doing now. Some people have asked me exactly what goes into "feeding Abby," so let me break it down for you. I included a photo of how we hold Abby when we feed her. She is on her side and almost lying on our lap because this allows the milk to pool in her cheek before she swallows. We also put rice cereal in the milk before we give it to Abby to make it more thick, which helps Abby control it better. If we gave her milk with out the rice cereal while she was sitting up instead of lying on her side, the milk would come into Abby’s mouth way too fast and freak her out. She would gag and basically have the same sensation that she was drowning. She does gag sometimes even if she is on her side but not as much. What does happen a lot though is that Abby gets frustrated. She’s hungry and she wants to eat, yet she can’t coordinate the suck, swallow breathe thing so she starts to cry. At that point we try to calm her down and then try again. If she doesn’t calm down, we throw in the towel and put the rest of the milk in a big syringe and slowly push it into Abby’s G Tube. The whole process takes at least an hour. We remain hopeful that Abby will eventually have the stamina to take a full bottle each time she has to feed, but her feeding therapists said it’s going to take quite some time. Once again, we’re on Abby Time. Not to worry though, time is something we have plenty of. Not to mention, her mommy just happens to be the most incredible woman on the planet.

Abby’s G Tube is also getting irritated again. This time it’s due to some leakage of her milk around the G Tube hole in her side. Why is milk irritating her you ask? Because it’s partially digested milk from her tummy and it’s very acidic. The acid is literally burning her skin! We were given some cream that acts like a layer of skin and protects that area from the leaking milk so hopefully that will help. Another hurdle has been Abby’s constipation. She gets incredibly fussy and won’t sleep very well until she goes poop, but this has proven to be very difficult for her. We got the green light to give her some milk of magnesia to help things along which we’ll do tomorrow. I hope this works because when Abby finally gets everything out of her system she is an entirely new baby and so much more comfortable.

On a brighter side, she is still gaining weight. She’s at 6 lbs 14 Oz! We absolutely love having her home. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to us. We appreciate the gifts that have landed on our door step, we appreciate the dinners that have been prepared for us, and we especially appreciate your kind words on this blog site.

Love,
Mommy, daddy and Abby