Written Tuesday night, September 12, 2006

Hello from Abby Town,
It’s been a rough few days with Abby again and it all stems from her G Tube. I have to say, whoever said that this G Tube was "no big deal" is nuts. The G Tube is anything but "no big deal." It has been a nightmare. The irony is that the G Tube is there as a means to feed Abby when she shuts down and doesn’t want to suck from a bottle. Although recently, she hasn’t been feeding from a bottle because her G Tube has caused so much irritation. Go figure.

On Sunday morning, we called the doctor because her G Tube was leaking a lot. And by a lot, I mean that her entire little outfit was soaked in milk that poured out over the night. Abby was also vomiting a lot on Saturday night. The G Tube is supposed to stay in the same spot but we noticed that a lot of slack was going into her tummy. To better explain, picture a straw going into a ball and the goal is to get the straw just on the inside of the ball. What you don’t want to do is push the straw too far into the ball. Well, that’s what was happening. The tube part (the straw) was being pushed too far into Abby’s tummy. This is what was causing her to vomit. The fix to this problem was to put some tape like material around the tube to keep it from sliding in and out.

Another problem that popped up again was the irritated and raised skin where the G Tube goes into Abby’s tummy The doctor burned this off again with that black liquid stuff and Abby cried and screamed like crazy. She eventually calmed down and the doctor also gave us some of this jelly like skin for us to put over her irritated area to act as protective layer.
Abby’s dose of milk of magnesia was also increased to get her poops going. She’s been having trouble here lately and that obviously has a lot to do with why Abby is so uncomfortable. Man did that stuff work!

As of today, Abby is doing much better. She is more calm, less fussy and she weighs 7 lbs!
PS - The other baby in the picture is Luke, who was Abby’s neighbor and boy friend from the NICU. Luke was born shortly after Abby and has a similar story as Abby and her sisters. Luke’s mom Laura is in the other picture. We were given the green light by our doctors to hang out since Luke is on the same lock down requirement as Abby. We’re happy to report that little Luke is doing fantastic. There was a time when Abby was bigger than him, but not anymore! Luke is polishing off 90 cc’s of milk each feeding and weighs in at around 9 lbs! Way to go Luke. It was great to see you!