All Right, All Right. I Know It's Been A Long Time

I'm finally getting around to another post. Here are some more pictures and another small update. Kayley continues to do very well except for her feedings. A couple weeks ago, we switched her medicine from Axid to Prevacid. It's a stronger medicine that actually decreases the amount of acid produced in the stomach. Hopefully it does the trick.

Last week, the developmental nurse came to the house to examine Kayley. She still has no setbacks to speak of except, of course, her feeding. The nurse weighed her and she was 10lbs 9 oz. That's around a 1/2 ounce gain per day since she was last weighed. It's acceptable but we are really hoping for more. Megan phoned the results into Kayley's pediatrician. She said she's happy with the weight gain but Kayley should be gaining more to catch up to what she should be according to her actual birth age. So, she is going to calculate an increased amount of calories to start giving Kayley so we get more bang for our buck for the amount Kayley does eat. If Kayley doesn't start gaining weight more like she should, the alternative would be to put a feeding tube back in. We really don't want that to happen so we're trying everything we can.

It doesn't help that Kayley now sleeps through the night. She started doing it last week. I feed her one last time late at night between 11:30 pm and midnight and then she sleeps until 8 am or 9 am in the morning. That's great for us but it cuts out another feeding during the day.

On Friday, we had a small revelation. We really liked the BPA-free bottles we got for Kayley and she seemed to take to them right away. However, we wondered if maybe she would like a different bottle better and start eating better. Luckily we had another type of bottle at home and we were able to try it Saturday afternoon. The only thing is that I had to do some handy work to make the hole in the nipple bigger for the cereal to come out. After we got everything ready, Kayley went to town. Evidently, she loves the new nipple on the new bottle. Saturday night she was taking around 90 cc's easily instead of her normal 70 struggling cc's. Then on Sunday, she continued on her new streak and averaged over 90 cc's per bottle. Instead of taking an hour or so to feed her, she was finishing the bottle in 15 minutes! We are so relieved right now. Hopefully this continues and it turns out that the bottle was the major issue. The nipples are very different and she just seems more comfortable now. The old nipples must have just worn her out. Megan picked up some more bottles today, so hopefully we got it right this time.

It's also worth noting that the Prevacid could be starting to work too. The directions say it could take 2-4 weeks for it to start to work. We're just past 2 weeks now. I can't imagine that it would make that much of an impact in one day but who knows. We'll chalk it up to the new bottle and the Prevacid for now.