Time to do the happy dance!

I just heard from Apria, and our insurance has authorized coverage of Adele's formula! Oh, happy day! We'll get 9 cans, delivered directly to our door, at the low out-of-pocket cost of $24. Yay!

In other news, we had our well-baby check-up yesterday and all was, uh, well! This was our third trip to the doc this week, unfortunately. The one on Monday was a weight check, Wednesday was because A had spiked a fever the day before and today's was her regularly scheduled appointment. Anyway, she's 15 pounds on the nose, 25.5 inches long (weight puts her at 25% for full term 6 month olds, and 85% for 3 month olds--not bad, I say!). Doc wants to see a bit more tummy time to encourage her neck/arm strength, but overall she's doing fine. Poor baby had 3 vaccinations, and then her first flu vaccination at the Health Department later that afternoon. They tried giving her the oral Rotavirus vax, but after a few drops she promptly threw up her last meal all over the exam table, so they decided to delay this one for a few weeks, and she'll get it when she gets her RSV shot on the 26th.

And YES, I still owe you pictures. They are coming, I promise.

A positive post, for once

I realized that I've been posting so much negative, whiney stuff lately, and really aside from the food stuff, things are going really well with Miss Chubby Cheeks. So, this post is about that.

Everything she's doing is normal baby stuff, but it's so much more exciting when it's your own baby. She's been smiling for a long time now, but lately she's been chuckling too. I expected a more outright laugh, but I suppose it's still early for that. What we do get is a "heh-heh-heh," which is very cute too. Maybe we're not nearly as entertaining as we imagine ourselves to be? ;) She's got great head/neck control and can pretty much sit upright on her own if you hold her hips or she's sitting in your arm while you're standing. Unfortunately she's in the stage where she's prone to random flops forward or backward so we do have to keep our eyes on her. On her tummy she can push her chest up off the surface while on her elbows, but only for a little bit. She's rolled over from back to tummy just once (witnessed only by Steve), so we're still working on that. She can put her full weight on her legs and stand upright while you hold her, and sometimes even tries to push herself up by stiffening her legs. She loves reaching out to grab faces/noses/clothes--anything within arm's reach. Her eye/hand control is better too--she's moved beyond batting toys in her bouncy chair to being able to grab them and hold them for a second or two.

I do owe you an overdue update on her weight. When we took her in after my last post, she was back up over 14 pounds, which was odd since she'd been eating so little. We're not sure, but we think that the nurse who weighed her and got the 13-pound weight (the .5 pound loss) may have weighed her incorrectly, because there's just no other way to explain how she could have gained it all back in less than a week. Anyway, we had another check yesterday and she's 14 pounds, 14 ounces, which is just fine. Her regular well-baby/check-up is Friday, so I'll have more info then.

We're still wrangling with insurance on getting her formula paid for. We've turned in a letter of medical necessity, a prescription and yesterday a record of all the food she's tried and what reactions she had. The Caring Bridge site came in handy for that, as I was able to look at all my old journal entries for exact dates and reactions. Now we're just waiting to hear if we have more hoops to jump through and whether they'll accept or deny her claim. I'm sure they make the process difficult in the hopes you'll just give up!

Today we were supposed to have gone to CMH South to their OT/ST clinic (we were able to get in there sooner than at the regular CMH), but Adele woke up with a fever and was obviously not her happy self, so we had to reschedule for next week. She's been sleeping all day, and is pretty cranky and tired, but her fever seems to have subsided, so that's good. We'll see how she does overnight.

I owe you a new round of photos, so watch for those!

Food Fight

Who would have thought that any daughter of MINE would be stubborn? Pshaw. It'll never happen.

We're still working with (and by "working with" I mean pulling our hair out in frustration) Adele and her feeding issues. She did OK over the weekend, but not stellar. Some meals she'd eat 4 or more ounces, other times we struggled to get 2 in . Doc Murphy decided after all to refer A for more testing, so we'll be heading up to CMH again to visit their Occupational/Speech Therapy clinic. The appointment isn't until December 6, so good thing this isn't, like, a really important deal or anything. Sigh. Anyway, we hope they can tell us if her suck is OK, and if not how we can improve it. Also, I'm starting to think Adele is developing some serious oral aversion issues (actually pretty common in preemies, I'm finding out, especially those who spent a lot of time on tube feeds AND had eating difficulties with the bottle. Hmmm...sound like anyone we know??), and that would explain the sudden refusal, disinterest, etc. The Tiny-K folks worked with her a little bit today and gave us a few suggestions for holds/positions, techniques that may help, although when I tried them this evening Adele was having none of it. Sigh. My main concern at this point is daycare. We've been able to average about 20 ounces a day (still well below her recommended minimum), but that's with either Steve or I feeding her, and giving her all our time and attention. I just don't know how things are going to go tomorrow, and I'm really concerned. I just hope she'll eat.

We have a weight check Wednesday morning, so I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, I'm going to eat the calories she should be eating, but only in the form of Fun Size Baby Ruth bars. It's a sacrifice, but I'll manage somehow.

Better

Things are better here. Adele ate 19.25 ounces in a 24-hour period (from 5:00 pm Wed to 4:15 Thur), which is almost double what she ate the previous day. She's doing okay so far today too. She's still under her max of 4 ounces from the end of September, but she's averaging around 3 ounces per feed every 3-4 hours and that's better than nothing. I think she should be somewhere closer to the 5-6 ounce range, but she is getting a higher calorie formula mixture so that helps too. I just did the math and if you go by the 2.5 ounces per pound of weight rule she should be eating 33.75 ounces per day. We're no where near that, unfortunately.

I'll call the doc at 1:00 today and give them another report. We have an appt for middle of the week next week so we'll check her weight then. In the meantime, I'm in the middle of a conversation with the sitter to help determine ways to make mealtimes there more productive. Hopefully we can get that figured out, or I'll just go over a few times a day and feed her myself.

So, we're getting there. The situation still isn't perfect, but it's better and better is okay too.