Doctor Appointments

Since our walk, things have been a bit slow (as new information goes...not watching after Karsie...that's never slow). Kevin had to drive back to Bakersfield for work and Michelle stayed in San Diego until Tuesday for Karsie's G.I. appointment. This made for an extra long drive for Kevin as he drove from Bakersfield to San Diego, picked up the girls after the appointment, and drove back to Bakersfield in a day. Needless to say, work was interesting today for him.

The G.I. appointment was good. She weighed in at 15 lbs. 8 oz. That's totally nude with no food in her belly. They said that she has done excellent with weight especially after the tummy bug, and she continues to be on the growth chart. Still a tiny little thing, but she's on. Her length is 26 inches, which isn't much from last time, but she's still right in the middle of the growth chart for her birth age.

The topics of conversation mainly revolved around moving her toward oral feeding and away from the G-Tube at least during the day. We talked about starting to reduce her Reglan (which is next to nothing anyway, but that's the first to go). Then the plan is to start and reduce her day time feeding and let her start to rely on her oral eating. She has currently picked up her breast feeding to about 4 times a day (up from once or twice on a good day). She has also started to eat rice cereal 2 or 3 times a day (up from nothing). On top of that, we've started to feed her to gravity, which is basically filling up an empty syringe with her food. What used to take an hour now takes 4-5 minutes with that. And she's handling it. With her rice cereal we have noticed her taking to vegetables more than fruit (we mix in a fruit/veggie with her rice cereal). We will start to introduce meats and such soon. She is starting to get the solid foods (a la rice cakes) eating a bit more. All of this was good with G.I. but they want to start to change one thing at a time. We figure, with the plan they gave, that we may be done with the day time G-Tube by her first birthday (is it crazy that it's only a couple months away?).

Today Karsie had her pediatrics appointment here in town. Dr. Suen was very pleased with her development, and to celebrate he had his nurse give her two shots. Her weight here was 16 lbs. 8 oz. So we're somewhere between 15.5 and 16.5.

We get about a month off before we go back in for more G.I. stuff, so Karsie gets a little break. However, she gets to start back with her PT and OT appointments again, plus speech therapy tomorrow. Lucky girl.