11 Weeks Old Tomorrow

Wow, its hard to believe that Katie will be 11 weeks old tomorrow. Her cardiology appointment went well Friday. There was no echo but they checked her sats (90% boo yah!) and the book that we use to keep track of everything about her, including how much formula/breast milk she takes in, weight/number/type of diapers, oxygen sats, her weight gains/losses, and anything else we feel is noteworthy each day. They are happy with her weight gain and have even given permission for her to have two 1 hour breaks a day from her continuous feeds, since she is now up to three 15ml bottles a day and keeping them down pretty well. Slowly but surely she is working on gaining freedom from The Food Pole (said with distaste). They have also given their blessing for Phase II of breast milk reintroduction, but are leaving the final word up to the dietician, whom we will see on Wednesday. Phase II is to replace the centrifuged breast milk in her formula (240ml Enfaport to 27ml skimmed milk) with refrigerated skimmed milk (left in fridge long enough to separate and then scoop the cream off of the top). Since this will have more fat than the centrifuged milk, but will still be getting rid of quite a bit, we feel that it will be the logical next step in working her up to whole breast milk safely. On another note, Katie-bug has long struggled with extreme gaggy-ness/throwing up/spitting up. Even when her stomach was empty she would throw up bile - a lot. The good news is that she is getting better at holding her lunch in (literally now that she has some feeds by mouth) even though she still gags quit a bit. However, here lately she has been working very hard on learning how to suck her thumb... except that her thumb is not what tends to make it into her mouth. She has been sucking on her index finger, which guess what... makes her gag! We keep telling her that its the wrong finger, but so far she is not taking our advice on using her thumb instead. Silly girl.