My mom mentioned that some of her friends have started calling her to check in since I haven't updated the blog for a while. Can we just establish a rule now that says "no news is good news"? :)
I'm pleased to report that Miss Olivia is doing fantastic. Like I mentioned in my last post, we tried new asthma meds and it helped a little bit but didn't fix things entirely. The pulmonologist ordered a swallow study in early December. We were lucky to finally able to take Olivia off oxygen the day before her swallow study was done. I went into the swallow study fully expecting this little girl to have some swallowing problems but she proved me wrong. She swallows liquids and solids perfectly. I was pretty surprised and frankly left a little boggled about why she was still wheezing and rumbly. The speech therapist indicated that she felt Olivia's reflux was the cause of her wheezing. She suggested that we switch Olivia from Zantac to Prevacid to see if the stronger reflux med helped. Sure enough, it did!! Can I just tell you how nice it is to have this little girl breathing normally without having her tethered to oxygen?!
Today Olivia had a cardiology appointment. Her cardiologists were both very pleased with how she looks. Her chest x-ray looked a little "hazy" but Dr. G says that has been fairly typical for Olivia and could still be some residual from the respiratory issues these past few months. For now it isn't anything that he is terribly concerned about. Overall they thought she looked great and said we don't have to go back again for 6 months! That's definitely a very good sign!
She weighed 16.3 pounds and was 25.75 inches long today. She's now at a whopping 4% for her age. :) Relatively speaking, she's still tiny but everyone that saw her today commented on her sweet baby chub.
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The picture is blurry but you get the idea. And yes, she's chewing on coband. It's her very favorite hospital "toy". |
Baby girl is starting to hit some milestones. She started sitting on her own during her hospital stays in October. She used to hate tummy time with a passion. Now she tolerates it for about 2 minutes and then decides she is done. Her little arms still aren't strong enough to hold her up and she's not entirely convinced that bearing weight on her legs is the best idea either. But I'm noticing that she's starting to stretch farther for things from a sitting position and she's finding herself reaching far enough that she topples over onto her tummy more and more. She's also starting to bear a little more weight on her legs. Clearly she's working on her own timeline but she really is progressing by leaps and bounds. She plays patty cake now and will sometimes cover her eyes for peek-a-boo (melts my heart every time). She is eating solids now too. I waited until after her surgery because she just didn't have the energy or desire before. It took a few months after surgery for her to reach the point where you could tell she was visibly interested. Now she is happily eating 3 meals a day. :) She's entering into the phase where she gets into everything. Or at least into everything that her current mobility level allows her to reach. The other night I was literally pulling things out of her hands left and right while I was trying to get some work done on the computer. She's decided my computer mouse is the golden ticket and she is determined to snatch it anytime she can get it. Last night she was doing her own little modified crawl/lunge to get to it. It's only a matter of time before everything clicks and this girl starts crawling.
I would have to say that at this point Olivia is probably the healthiest she has ever been and it's so nice to just sit back and watch her grow and take things easy for a bit. Of course I wait with baited breath for the other shoe to fall but for now I'm trying to just enjoy things slowing down in the medical world. Fingers crossed they stay that way.
1 lovely thoughts:
what a cute little doll! Glad she is making progress!
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