Sleeping in...

6 weeks old!

Our Adelina is growing!  She weighs 9 lbs 4 ounces still fits newborn clothes the best.  Loves to be held and patted.  She sleeps through the night and has since she's been home with occasional quick pats(benefits of the feeding tube).  She sleeps somewhere from 9-11 until 8 am.  Our little Addy has mixed feelings about her pacifier, if she is awake it's great, if she just woke up it is offensive.  Addy loves to make eye contact and watches mommy closely.  We LOVE her sweet little voice with her occasional cooing.  She has just started smiling, yay!  Adelina is getting lots and lots of attention from her adoring fans aka siblings, parents, grandparents and aunt.  We love you Adelina!

Daddy

As I've probably already written, we had to decide where to have Adelina's care.  Houston has a wonderful children's hospital but is four hours from home and no family.  We chose to come to Utah for childcare and family help.  It was a really tough decision because we knew that my husband would only be able to come for visits.  Because of his work schedule and the cost he could fly out every two weeks but sometimes it would be much longer.  After being gone for two and half weeks we were able to be together for the first time as a family over Thanksgiving.  It was so nice!  The kids didn't want him out of their sight and neither did I.  He had to return to Texas on Sunday and I was torn as I always am when he leaves again.  We are so blessed that he is a professor as he has a long period over Christmas where he can work from home.  Can't wait to see him again!

Happy Day!

New experiences

As we prepared for Adelina's arrival I hoped that she would get to experience her first Thanksgiving.  She slept through the festivities but it warmed my heart to have her be part of our family tradition.  This is the first time in years we have been in Utah for Thanksgiving since the break has never been long enough to warrant flying our little family out.  My little ones didn't break from tradition, they still only ate the jello and rolls :)

I come from a large family so "limiting visitors" is a tricky area.  I'm the third of eleven.  Everyone lives nearby and we love big gatherings.  We only had one child over and the rest were adults.  It worked out better than I anticipated and everyone was respectful of our need to keep her healthy.

Today I had to change Adelina's feeding tube for the first time.  She woke up and promptly threw up then a few minutes later was wretching so violently that I had to pull her feeding tube.  I'd assumed that she would pull it out but it turned out that I did.  My mom had watched the video at the hospital so she was a great coach, Addy didn't even cry.  If she had cried it would have been so much harder.

An hour later I was putting her down in her bed and the tape from her feeding tube caught on my shirt.  Yep, you guessed it, I pulled it out again and placed it again, it left her poor little face all red.  I'm wondering how other moms keep it from constantly being pulled on.

Love this girl!

Pediatrician

Adelina had her 1st appointment with the pediatrician.  She will meet with the pediatrician on the weeks that we don't meet with the clinic or the cardiologist.  It was certainly a new experience.  We call when we are in the parking lot, they let us in the back door to the 1st room which has been completely sanitized.  The nurses were extra careful wearing masks, just in case.  Adelina is now 8lbs 10 ounces and is just starting to fit into 0-3 month clothes.  Unfortunately while being examined she threw up for the third time in one morning.  Many kids can't handle the multivitamin so we are going to stop giving it to her and see if anything changes.  It's scary for her to throw up because she doesn't swallow well.  The first time she threw up this morning I was in the kitchen having breakfast and didn't catch it right away.  It's tricky to leave her unattended, even when she's sleeping.

Adelina has started to wake up with a big smile, I'm still trying to catch it on my camera, it just makes my day.  The appointment this morning must have been really exhausting because she slept for seven hours straight when we got home.

We had a bit of a mixed blessing happen while I was a hospital with Addy.  My two year old had tubes put in just after Christmas last year.  Those tubes fell out about a month ago.  In that time I didn't hear her speak very much but came home and found her speech really muddled, she's usually really articulate with a large vocabulary.  I'm not sure I would have noticed if I'd been with her every day.  So, we took her in at the same time as Addy.  We will see an ENT shortly but my guess is she'll need tubes again.