Good and bad news

In a few days (on 8/4) Kaitlyn will be officially 10 months old or 7 months adjusted.

I've been so busy the last few days, with work and of course medical issues...here's a quick update on Miss Kaitlyn - some good and bad news.

1. Kaitlyn started rolling over!!!!! Now, babies that are 4-5 months should be rolling over, and Kaitlyn just learned yesterday. But she IS a preemie and we knew she'd be delayed - we are ecstatic that she's figured out how to roll, now the problem is that she no longer likes to lie on her belly at all, she rolls right off her belly to her back. She can only roll to one side - but it's so cute to watch her go!!!

2. Kaitlyn seems to have found a "voice" - Now, before you get too excited.....this isn't a "voice" like you'd expect a baby to have. Her vocal chord is still paralyzed. The noise she is making is like a sickly quacky duck noise...I'll do my best to get it on video for you all to "enjoy". This noise she makes is a bit "disturbing" so that if strangers were to hear they would say or think, "wow, what's up with that baby?" That already happened the other night - I guess I have to get used to it. I however think her "voice" is music to my ears! It's so wonderful to hear her make some noise!! I've been waiting a LONG time.

4. Due to the amazing generosity of our family/friends, we now have a LOT more breast milk. So much so that today I switched her back to almost entirely breast milk, and as soon as we switched back her vomiting seemed to decrease. Good thing, as the last few days of vomiting have been HORRIBLE. We’ll see what the next few days look like. I try not to get too excited over less vomit anymore, as it always seems to be followed by more vomit.

Thank you again to:

Elissa – Brian’s sister who sent us maybe 700 ounces of milk!!! Her daughter (Kaitlyn’s beautiful cousin Stella and my niece is just over 3 months old now - they live in CT).

Thank you MacKenzie – boy did we have some problems getting her breast milk. Isn’t FedEx supposed to be the most dependable no matter what – well, on this EXTREMELY important shipment of frozen breast milk, Fed Ex “forgot” to get the package on the outgoing plane from Texas, so instead of getting to me within about 10 hours, instead it was well over 30 hours. Sadly some of it did defrost, but not entirely, and from what I understand if there are any ice crystals in the milk, it’s still ok to refreeze. None of it had completely thawed. MacKenze sent us about 300 ounces of milk from Texas.

Thank you Lisa – Lisa lives locally by me so we didn’t have to deal with shipping – Lisa has given birth to 2 preemies and is so amazing to give us her precious stash as she’s said she’d keep pumping for her son…

I’m SOOOOO incredibly touched by the gifts of this liquid gold for Kaitlyn. My words really can’t express enough how touched I am by this. MacKenzie was a TOTAL stranger to us, introduced by another NICU mom, and I had only recently met Lisa. Elissa had to go back to work and is pumping while she’s driving to and from her job (now she did get that hint from pumping and driving from me, as I used to do that all the time – it was a lifesaver!) Now these amazing women will truly be a part forever more of miss Kaitlyn.

5. Now for the bad news. A few days ago, and we confirmed it today, Kaitlyn has started having "coffee grind emesis". What is that you may ask? Well, when a person has an upper GI bleed (or stomach bleed) it comes out as vomit (emesis) that looks like it has coffee grinds in it. So yes, Kaitlyn is vomiting blood. This isn't good obviously. So today I ran around calling her doctors and getting blood tests. This was her first blood test since she left the NICU, which wasn't very pleasant for either of us (Kaitlyn or her mom), but she did really well. I ended up taking her to the hospital as they have better folks there to draw an infants blood. (This was on fantastic advice by Kaitlyn's doctor who arranged it for us). Have I mentioned again how much I love Kaitlyn’s Pediatrician?

The blood work was to check to see if Kaitlyn was anemic, which meant that she was likely bleeding a lot – good news is that her blood looked GREAT according to her doc, and for us to watch and see what happens this week. The GI doc is hoping that it’s just irritation caused from her GI feeding button. But because her blood levels looked so good (not anemic), they weren’t too concerned at this point. If it continues for another week, we’ll get another blood test and compare, then the next option would be a scope down to her stomach – obviously no fun at all. So we are going to be in a waiting mode.

Tomorrow is Kaitlyn’ 6 month NICU follow up developmental appointment – thank goodness she’s learned to roll-over before the appointment!!!

It is now after 1am, so I’m going to bed!!