Pediasure Works!

We are growing again! The pediasure seems to be working, although it is quite expensive, I thought we were getting a break when we finished with formula, little did I know… Wednesday night at baths Annabel weighed 17lbs 2ozs, Madelyn 17lbs 14 ½ ounces, and Johnathan 18lbs 11ozs! Wednesday Annabel appeared to be feeling even better - eating more solids, smiling a lot when singing to her, playing on the floor more and even sitting up with my help for awhile, and I was able to do some stretching with her. Yesterday she was even happier, even sitting in her chair to play for awhile (my Mom said that when she turned her music on this morning Annabel’s lit up with excitement!). I took her to the pediatricians this morning for a weight check and follow-up and she’s now up to 17lbs 5ozs, she gained 2ozs every day!! Dr. Gessner was very happy with her weight gain (she has a nice blip on the growth chart) and with how well she’s doing. The plan is to keep her on pediasure as her source of liquid, continuing to feed her the usual solids until the next weight check/follow-up (where we’ll hopefully see her curve back to normal) February 12. Dr. Gessner and I will then create a new plan, hopefully getting her back to whole milk, maybe just supplementing with carnation instant. I am going to look in to this calorie-wise in the meantime for the other two as it is much cheaper than pediasure. So hopefully we are on the right track to getting back to normal!

I did call her neurosurgeons office Wednesday to update them on how she’s been the last few weeks and I learned that sometimes a shunt malfunction can be intermittent, with it eventually failing. So that could explain what we’ve experienced with her shunt work-up at the hospital not showing any signs of failure, it may have been working properly at that time. So, if Annabel starts going down this path again we will be taking her to the ER and they will hook her up to a machine that can read the pressure levels to see if they are varying, indicating an intermittent failure and will schedule surgery. Obviously we are praying that this is not shunt related at all but it is reassuring to now have a plan in place in case it is.

I have speech evaluations scheduled for Johnathan (February 13) and Annabel (February 20) to determine if they need extra speech therapy outside of Early On. I also called Leaps and Bounds and am getting an OT evaluation scheduled to begin Annabel in water therapy (thank you Laura for informing me of this) once a week. In addition I have e-mails in to the local hippotherapy places to see if we will begin that this spring/summer. I know, I’m taking on a lot and will be busy but in my mind our miracles fought so hard just to begin their lives that I want to do everything possible for them to help them live as “normal” and “easy” of lives as possible. They deserve every chance possible to fully develop! I am so proud of them already and just can’t wait to see what these other assistances can do for them!

Here is the long overdue slideshow of pictures from the past few weeks. Enjoy!



09JAN09