I suppose I should finally get around to updating this blog. This summer hasn't been extremely eventful, but there have been a few little things going on.
Zach's g-tube adventure has been going seemingly alright. He gets continuous feeds during the night and then is allowed to eat and drink whatever he wants during the day. He has progressively gotten much better at eating and can eat and swallow just about any food we give him, usually with some sort of liquid wash to follow (takes a LONG drink of water to help him get it down). He's especially good at any of the "hard, meltables" which is things like crackers, cookies, chips, cereals anything that essentially "melts" into a liquid before you swallow. A few of his favorite foods are olives and sunflower seeds, niether of which is able to swallow even with a wash. We are still a long ways away from him eating well and being able to take in enough calories on his own, but his tube has helped take many steps in the right direction. We had an appointment with his nephrologist this week and here's what we found out: he's weighing in at 24 pounds 12 ounces which means over the last 4 months he's lost weight (about 9 ounces). He's still on the growth charts and as long as he starts gaining again, they aren't worried because he gained so much so fast the first 3 months of having his tube. On the other hand he's grown much taller - 0.7 inches in 4 months. He's now just under 34 inches tall. His labs look fabulous, but they increased his potassium dose to see if we can maybe speed up his stomach motility.
We're still working with his speech therapist who lovingly refers to him as "an enigma". She's no longer sure what sorts of therapies to do with him for both his eating and his expressive speech because he doesn't respond to them like most kids would/should. He is his own little unique self and will decide to eat and speak on his own terms. Luckily over the last several weeks his speech is beginning to expand. He's finally starting to label every day items and it seems like every day he surprises us with a new word he didn't say before. He's learned to say his own name and a few of his other new words that have shocked us are "bikes" "grass" "Thomas" "Mavis" "Sorry" "inside" "outside" "bag" an many new ones every single day. He also has finally come up with a name for my mom (we've been trying forever). Much to her dismay he's decided to call her "hey". Just last week I was able to get him to say "Kaylee" and told me Kaylee was in my belly button and quickly changed that to be Kaylee was in his belly button.
Speaking of Kaylee...we are so excited to be halfway towards meeting our sweet little girl. Last week I had my 20 week ultrasound and everything is looking fabulous. Kaylee Jo is due January 6th but mama is hoping for a 2012 baby. I know the earliest they can induce/schedule a c-section at work is 39 weeks, which for me translates to be December 30th. Hopefully if I don't have her prior to this time, my doctor is willing to do a holiday weekend delivery. So far everything with this pregnancy has been going well, despite being vastly different from my first time around. Over the next several weeks we'll be watching my belly growth and fluid levels to see if polyhydramnios will plague this pregnancy also. I'm feeling hopeful that it will be a much easier pregnancy and a Bartter syndrome-free baby, but I suppose if it does happen again, this time around we'll know what we're doing. I've been getting excited to buy little girl clothes and we're slowly making changes to fit another person into our home. Zach is still pretty clueless and continues to insist there is a "woof woof" or a "choo choo" growing in my belly. Boy is he in for a rude awakening!!
Otherwise, we've been having a fun summer with trips to Bear Lake, trips to the zoo and the aquarium and spending a lot of time at home since this pregnancy has been sucking the energy out of me. I'm hoping over the coming weeks to start getting my energy back and being a more fun, proactive mom. Hopefully we can have a lot more fun activities and I'll have more things to be taking pictures of. Zach is such a cute child you just can't have enough pictures!
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