10 WEEK UPDATE

WEIGHT AND STATS

Kelsey is slowing down in her weight gain. She weighed in at 13 lbs. 5 oz. this week, up only 2 oz from last week. In some ways that is good since she gained weight so fast there for awhile.... The doctor did say her weight gain would even out over time. BUT, she hasn't been eating well at all, so I didn't really expect her to gain much if any at all. If she continues not to gain much over a period of a few weeks, I will start to worry. Also, I am watching her head closely, and to me it seems to be getting worse. From the side, her head looks kinda cone shaped or a bit elongated if that makes sense. I am really trying to have her take naps on the sleep positioner to keep her head to the left, but I am wondering if that is really going to help or not anyway.

EATING

This area is a struggle. She just doesn't like to eat. If I DO get good feedings out of her she vomits. So, maybe she just doesn't need a lot of food? I don't know. She is only getting about 20-21 ounces a day on a GOOD day.

SLEEPING

Kelsey had some great days of sleeping this week and some not so great. She always, and I mean ALWAYS wakes up or stirs or something between 45 min. to an hour into each and every nap. The difference, though, on a good day, is that she is able to fall back asleep rather quickly without my intervention. And sometimes, I think she is just even stirring in her sleep and not actually totally awake. (This is where a video monitor would come in handy!) But there are other days when she cries and can't get herself back to sleep. I usually have to reswaddle her or pat her tummy or something to get her back to sleep for the rest of her nap. She also started crying/fussing for 5-10 minutes or so when I lay her down. I'm wondering if I need to tweak her waketime lengths between naps. Maybe keep her up 5 or 10 minutes more? I don't know. If she gets overtired, her naps show it, so I don't want to mess it up too much.... She has been having about 60 minutes still of waketime. Maybe I'll start with 65, then 70, and see if that helps at all. Nights are still good yet frustrating at the same time. She isn't necessarily always sleeping through her dreamfeeds anymore, which makes it kinda tricky then to get her settled again after eating. Also, I still always hear her anywhere from 3:30 to 6:30. Most of the time, she is not really awake but just restless and fitfully sleeping. Sometimes I can reswaddle her and she'll sleep better. Even if she seems to be awake when I go in, she is yawning all the time, and her eyes open and close, trying to go back to sleep. But she usually keeps squirming herself awake or at least enough to keep her from getting back into a deep sleep. I am thinking that she is waking from gas, hence the pulling up of the legs and squirming about. I have been tempted to feed her again a few times this week when I go in, but then she always does eventually go back to "sleep" fitfully until I get her up at 7:30. So, even though she goes from 10:30 to 7:30 without eating (and never seems extremely hungry still at 7:30), I'm not sure I can say she is sleeping through the night until then......at least not on her own without help and without periods of waking and / or fitful sleep.

REFLUX

Well, we've had some rough days with the reflux this week. (Her rough sleep always corresponds with these days). She vomitted again twice this week all over the place. It's weird. She never really ever spits up. With Morgan I had to have a bib on her at all times, but Kelsey doesn't do that. She just saves it all up and gets it out all in one large quantity, I guess! The doctor did up her Prevacid again to 30 mg, or 2 tablets per day. I can't say I can tell yet or not if it is helping. We also got a referral to see the pediatric gastrointerologist at the end of the month. As I've been researching a few things online, I am beginning to wonder if she DOES have the milk allergy like Morgan did, since a lot of the symptoms mirror reflux. I also read that about 56% of reflux babies end up having a milk allergy as well. Her symptoms are different than Morgan's, which is why maybe I haven't really thought about it yet. And I've also just chalked a lot of it up to her reflux, but in reading through a list of milk allergy / intolerance symptoms, I could check off 10 of the 12. Her stools have become mucousy, loose, foul smelling, a lot more frequent this week as well with definite black streaks in a lot of them. (Blood?) That is what Morgan's were like for the first 10 weeks of her life, so though Kelsey is just now displaying that symptom, I'm wondering if that's what it is. It will be interesting to see if it continues or not. If it goes away, then maybe it was just something upsetting her tummy, but if it continues, then it just might be the allergy. I am wondering if we haven't noticed it as much with her since she has been on Nutramigen for most of her life. Morgan was on that a bit, too, since that is the first thing they try with milk allergy babies, but she ended up not being able to tolerate that long term either. SO.... I guess time will tell, and hopefully our appointment at the end of the month will give us some answers. (I wish we didn't have to wait that long to see the doctor!)

SCHEDULE

Nothing has really changed about our schedule this week.

OUTINGS

I've noticed that too many outings and going places really messes up Kelsey's routine and gets her all out of whack. So, we stayed home as much as possible this week, missing mom's group and church. We did have to go get shots on Wednesday, which actually went well, and didn't seem to bother her too much. But then, we went to Hero Days downtown on Saturday. I hoped she would sleep in the stroller during it, but of course not. So, that disrupted her day, and her night that night showed it. (Hence, we stayed home from church after that rough night hoping to get back on track. She still had trouble, though, for naps on Sunday, too.)