Not in the mood ...

I'm really not in the mood to post today, but instead of making a bunch of phone calls and sending off emails, I would rather cover everything in one post. Most of our family and friends read this blog anyway so it's the cheater's way of informing the masses. I'm exhausted from taking care of a sick baby all week, and I myself am recovering from a doozy of a cold so this will have to do.

I've mentioned in several of my posts over the past month or two that The Chubs has not been eating well. It's gotten to the point that getting her to even eat 18oz a day is a challenge. Today, we visited a GI specialist at Children's Hospital. I won't even go into the bad memories that surfaced as I entered the building again. As many of you recall, this is where our daughter spent the first 2 weeks of her life hooked up to oxygen, breathing and feeding tubes and a million different monitors that liked to go off every few minutes.

I had to attend this appointment alone because The Hubs has been super busy at work this week. I figured it would be a fairly short appointment but we ended up being there for over 3 hours. This meant that the little muffin missed her morning nap, which under normal circumstances is bad, but considering she's still sick, it made it even worse. I won't go into all the details but they are going to order an upper GI X-Ray to make sure her small intestines look ok. They also drew blood, and collected a stool sample. She is now wearing a urine bag to collect some urine which I will need to drop off at the hospital later when there is enough in there.

They are ordering some genetic and metabolic testing to see why she isn't catching up with her growth. They also suggested physical therapy for her because they don't think her upper body strength is where it should be (not sure what this has to do with GI related issues, but it was a passing comment). Her little legs look great and are extremely strong though. No concerns there. We are also going to see an occupational therapist to have them watch a feeding and see if they can pick up any clues as to why she isn't eating well, and refusing the bottle after a couple of ounces. And instead of using polycose to add calories to my milk, they want me to switch to adding formula because it is richer in vitamins and protein. She had her blood taken last week to check for allergies, and we still have heard no word on that. In the meantime I'm not eating any dairy because it is the most common allergy.

The thing that really shook me up was the discharge forms that stated their diagnosis for this visit. It read:

• Failure to Thrive
• Lack of Normal Physiological Development
• Lack of Coordination

When we were at Children's the first time around we were constantly given the scariest scenarios. I feel like we're back in this same place again. I know they need to cover their bases, but sometimes it's just too much. This has been the longest, most exhausting week and it is definitely ending on a low note. My head is spinning and after watching my sick and tired daughter get poked and prodded all morning long, and trying to console her, I need to mentally check out for a little bit. I will be back to post updates as we receive them. Thank you for your prayers.

Hoping for more, but still happy

We just returned from the doc with a cranky little Chub Muffin who is now sleeping soundly in her crib after a very busy and chaotic day.

As you might have read earlier, today has been really off. She was cranky before we even got to the appointment, so you can only imagine how things turned out after she got her immunizations. She was fussing really hard even before they stuck her with the needle. It was not a good scenario.

I was really excited to see how much she weighed. I was thinking she would be over 10 lbs. since last time she weighed in at 8 lbs. 13oz (however, that was with her clothes on including a baby sweatshirt and pants + onesie & diaper). This time she was totally nakey. Since she was about 4 oz behind what she usually eats by this time of day, that didn't help either. Her weight was 9 lbs. 4.5oz. I was bummed. She probably gained a pound since the last weigh-in a month ago since her clothes probably were several ounces of extra weight, and had she eaten normally today she would've weighed in at 9 lbs. 8.5oz, but still the number bummed me out. She is now 21 1/2 inches long which is around what I expected. Don't get me wrong, I love having a tiny little baby that people still think is "brand new" (despite the fact she tracks everything she sees, giggles and smiles and is super interactive). I guess it's hard not to put the blame on myself for her not growing as fast as I think she should be. The doctor keeps telling us she'll catch up and find her own growth curve, however, she has yet to do that. She's still >3% for height and weight (but her head is 5%... I had to laugh at that one).

But on to the positive. She's looking great, very healthy and she scored above average on all aspects (especially social and fine motor skills). Her gross motor skills are only slightly behind which include having better head control and being able to push herself up for longer than 5 seconds without letting her head crash to the floor. I attribute this to her loathing for tummy time. I think once she starts liking that more, she'll make more progress. Right now all she can think about is how she can get out of it (rolling over would be a great solution but she's just not there yet). I talked to our pediatrician about swaddling as well, and he says it's fine to still swaddle until she's done with it and that it won't delay her development. That made me feel so much better! He also gave us the green light to introduce solids. I'm not sure we'll be jumping on that right away, but probably within the next month. We have some trips coming up and dealing with solids would just throw one extra thing in the mix to remember to bring and deal with while we are there.

So that's about it. I'm praying she'll take a good nap and not wake up howling like she did last time. Not fun, not fun at all.

One of those days ...

Every once in a while Senorita Chub Chubs has a very "off" day. Today is one of those days. It's pretty bad timing considering we have her 4 month check up this afternoon which includes her immunizations. Big bummer.

The Chubs is very schedule oriented, and I think this all began at Children's hospital when they had me on a strict 3 hour feeding routine. The Little Muffin got used to eating every 3 hours which naturally put her in schedule mode and made it easy for us to create a consistent routine. This has been great in some ways, but hard in others. Keeping her on a schedule has made her a very happy baby that is well rested and has a very predictable internal clock... most of the time. It's nice to know when she'll be eating, napping, going to bed and waking up etc, but it is also very limiting especially since she can't stay up more than an hour and 15 minutes before she turns into a pumpkin.

There are however, days (such as this one) where the schedule is just thrown out the window and for one reason or another The Chubs is in a funk. This morning she woke early (about an hour before her ideal wake up time), but then didn't eat nearly as much as she usually does. She seemed overly distracted with her surroundings. There were many head jerks in the direction of the ceiling fan, then more side glances and head turns toward the quilt on the rocker. Add in a dozen smiles and intense thought-provoking stares and you have a recipe for a bad eater.

I put her down for her nap as usual since she was getting fussy and was clearly tired. She whined for a couple minutes (like she usually does) and then passed out (like she usually does). 15 minutes later... not even the usual 45 minute sleep transition disruption, but 15 flippin' minutes later she's wide awake again and then proceeds to fuss for 45 minutes. I let her go this long because she almost always falls back asleep again, but this time she didn't. So I went up to feed her, and it turns out her fussing was more of a social call. She smiled at me brightly as I entered the room. I picked her up (more big smiles) and then tried to feed her again thinking that because of her poor eating this morning, she would be hungry again. NOPE! She continued to smile, look around, suck half-heartedly and shoot a load in her diaper (a pretty large one, I might add).

We're about to head to the doctor in 30 minutes with a tired baby that is just too interested in the world around her to get some shut-eye or eat a decent meal.

Over-tired child + Poor Eater + Immunizations (will surely) = A very long day for mom.