Four Months Old

If anyone would have told me 3 months ago that Bri would in a few short months develop a sleeping schedule that I will love, I would have never believed it. (None of the other kids did) But she has....and I do love the fact that I can count on her to crash out for the night by 9pm and awaken bright and cheery no earlier than 7am. No more late, late nights or early morning feedings. (although staying up till midnight watching back episodes of 'Lost' with Barry was enjoyable--that is until the show became to weird for me to follow). Now I'm going to knock on wood because bragging on a baby often brings about sad consequences around here.

All the early intervention exercises are starting to pay off.....she is beginning to arch her back some and kick her legs over a bit; all the beginning moves of rolling over. She's getting better at holding her head up on her own. Sometimes she'll keep it up for 15-20 seconds, maybe even more. She's tollerating tummy time more now. However, at the end of therapy sessions, with intense exercising going on, she's quite unhappy and just wants to be left alone...or eat, depending on her mood.

We had a swallow study done a few weeks ago. The good news is that there is no hole between her esophagus and trachea. However, she has problems with aspirating while she drinks. We now thicken her milk and we'll soon have another swallow study to see if this is working. If this doesn't help her GI doctor is talking about a G-tube to have the liquid go directly to her stomach and bypass the throat. His reasoning is that her lungs need to dry up (he doesn't want her to have scar tissue in the lungs due to aspiration.) She's always gurgling and has a wet breathing sound. The ultimate goal is to get her off oxygen and let her lungs do the job alone.

The speech therapist who administered the swallow study is also concerned that as she gets older she'll have a deficit of caloric intake, meaning that calories she uses to actually work at eating will be used before she's even finished drinking the bottle. As she gets older she'll need more calories to grow with but she will have used them all to have the energy to just eat. It still takes her quite a while to finish drinking a bottle because of all the energy she uses to eat (due to once again....low muscle tone) and she still falls asleep taking mini cat naps during feeding time. I'm not worried about this, my sweet cherub is 15.2 pounds, with lots of cute rolly polly legs to boot. She's a chunker....she's growing just fine.

Her pulminologist says that she'll hopefully grow out of the need for extra oxygen as she develops stronger muscle tone. He doesn't seem overly concerned. He just wants to keep an eye on things and let time and a growing body do it's thing.

As for that cute little growing girl, she's our a treasure. We get lots of smiles, gurgles, coos, goos, a few maaa's and Barry still gets plently of grunts. It's fun to see her eyes light up when he comes home from work and holds her. She now starts the conversations with him...let the grunting begin.

As for me, one of my favorite moments are when she's tired of being held by siblings or my friends and she just wants me. She wriggles and snuggles into my neck, breathes a calming breath and goes to sleep (or sometimes not, as was the case today during church, all she wanted was to be in my arms cuddling close).