An Unexpected Beginning: January 2015

Wow...so I guess we came home from the hospital and things got busy! I have thought about updating everyday, but thinking is about as far as I have made it.

Eli came home on December 23, which put him at a 17 day nicu stay, most of which was spent getting this eating thing together. He was seeing an occupational therapist for his sucking and a lactation consultant for his breastfeeding. I swore my poor boy just wanted a tube in his nose forever. He finally got it together just in time for Christmas at home!

I have to say this transition has been much better than when we brought Kaycie home. LJ wants to help and some days I am still not sure Kaycie stịll doesn't realze she is no longer the baby. Matt was home from the time Eli was born until January 5th. It worked great because he got a week paid fmla and then his usual holiday days off. My mom then came in the afternoons until bedtime for the next 2 weeks to help out! On January 8th, the week Matt went back to work, I had to have a wide excision minor surgery done on an "ugly" mole on my shoulder that they found while I was pregnant. That said, it was in a really bad spot and I was told not to lift anything for 2 weeks while the stitches healed. Needless to say, the stitches never healed and I now have a nasty sore on my shoulder because when they removed them, the wound opened back up...it will make for a good battle scar for sure. Good news is that we got it in time. They had told me that if I left it, it would have been melanoma. So just a psa...have your annual dermatology exams! Funny enough, the first doctor I went to told me it was nothing and ignored it. It made me nervous and when I went for a second opinion was when they biopsied it.

Eli has been pretty laid back. He never spits up...this is wierd for me! I didn't know what it was like to smell like spit up all the time! They did send him home on 3 high calorie formula bottles a day...we are supposed to do it until his 2 month appointment, but I have to say we have been fudging a little. I am giving him the same 5 oz a day we did at discharge. It used to take 3 feedings and now it takes 1.5. I came home mostly pumping, but since I failed at breastfeeding LJ and Kaycie (I exclusively pumped with them for 10 and 8 weeks), I was determined to nurse Eli. It has been tiring since in the nicu they start them on bottles, and some days I have wanted to quit. I got mastitis right after he got home, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. We are still figuring it out. I was at my final straw this week because I cannot handle the pain any more, so I had another visit with a lactation consultant who confirmed what I was thinking, that Eli has a lip tie....she also said he has a tongue tie, which can greatly affect nursing. We have an appointment with the ENT that has works with all of Kaycie's hearing issues next week to get it revised. Besides that, my little squirt is now 9 lb 3 oz and growing out of his newborn clothes.

Kaycie is doing really well! She does not stop talking. Some days I have to pinch myself because it was less than a year ago that we were at our wits end with trying to figure out why she was so miserable! She is just so happy with a bit of crazy mixed in! We have stopped counting her words (her deaf mentor says that is a good sign that she has too many to count), she puts a couple of words together, and she has really started signing many more just in the past few weeks. We have noticed that some sounds are left out....they are the sounds she doesn't hear, but those should come in time. She still fights her aids if she doesn't have a hat on, but if she has a hat on, she is doing better. She can stand on her own for brief periods from a sitting position. She tries to take a few steps on her own, but her balance balances is still off. She has not missed therapy through all of this craziness because we have tried so hard for their schedules to remain a constant in their lives. She is so proud of herself.

LJ is still LJ...he is a goofball but also takes life very seriously. He will talk to anyone any time, but he just fears things. He is afraid we will leave him, he is afraid to get sick (thanks to Sunday school...they had a lesson on the leppers), he is afraid of bad dreams, of being left alone. We are trying to be very encouraging, and we have learned to be very purposeful lin everything we tell him. We have just signed him up for spring t-ball, and he is very excited!

In my last post I had mentioned getting Eli's and Kaycie's thyroid levels done again. Good news is that they both came back normal this time...crazy how that works. When they did Kaycie's, they ordered a full metabolic panel too. Her alkaline phosphotase levels came back absurdly high. That could mean a wide variety of things about her liver or bones. After yet another round of bloodwork, they discovered that it is only that her vitamin d levels were very low. Praise God! She is now on a vitamin d supplement a d we will recheck in 4 months.

I will leave you with some random pictures from the past month!