Animal Print Friday

What do you do when the weather is dreary?

Wear animal prints of course!

I love playing dress up with Elle. This was actually her second outfit of the day because outfit number 1 was the victim of a major blow out. She has a few animal print outfits so I save those for Fridays! Every Friday Elle gets to spend a very exhausting hour with her occupational therapist, Mrs. Yvonne. She is slowly but surely improving with the bottle. We have exercises that we do with her on a daily basis to help build up her mouth muscles. The goal is to strengthen her mouth muscles so she can hold the pucker position longer and not tire out so quickly. Right now she is still maxing out at about 20 cc with the bottle (she gets 120 cc with every feeding) but she isn't working so hard for those 20 cc. We've also noticed that even though we have increased her feeding amount, she is still getting hungry between feeds. She will take a bottle between feeds better than she will when it is actually time for the feeding. Hey - it's whatever works!! After seeing Mrs. Yvonne - we have a one tired little girl on our hands! She only got to nap for a little bit before it was time to see Dr. W, her cardiologist. Thankfully, Mrs. Yvonne and Dr. W are in the same location so I didn't have to drive downtown to the med center in the horrible rain. After a chest x-ray and taking all her vitals, Dr. W came in and said that it was time to start talking to the surgeons. He is going to be taking our case to the surgeons next week to discuss possible times for surgery. Since she isn't extremely critical yet, I asked if we could hold off until she gets bigger. He told me that holding off is getting close to a very fine line. We don't want her oxygen saturation levels (amount of oxygen in her blood) to get so low that it is an emergency to get her to the operating room but we do want her to be as big as possible. He will be calling up next week to tell us what the surgeons say - his feeling is that surgery will be September or October. Let's pray for God's perfect timing and that whatever the surgeons decide will be best for Elle. Yesterday was also a big day because we found out that Elle's hearing aids are in! The countdown is on for August 11 when we will take her for her fitting. I am so excited to see her reaction to being able to hear what is going on around her! In other news...I may or may not be adding something to my already extensive wardrobe. I found out on Thursday that I fractured my right foot (doing what - I have no idea). I've been in pain for about 2 weeks and Wednesday night was the breaking point. I was about 2 seconds away from going to the emergency room - so I broke down and made an appointment to see my doctor. She sent me for an x-ray and 30 minutes later I was looking at my x-ray with the tech pointing out the fracture. So...depending on how this weekend goes and how much pain I am in come Monday - I might be wearing a walking boot. The fracture isn't in a place where a cast is an option - so the boot is the only way to go. It is super painful but my doctor gave me some really strong anti inflammatory drugs (which also means pumping and dumping for the next 5 days...what a waste). The meds seem to be helping (even though the side effects are pretty gnarly) and if I'm not in too much pain on Monday - we will just let my foot heal on its own. Having a fractured foot definitely makes caring for an infant a little more difficult. Yesterday loading her and all her stuff into the car in the middle of a horrible rain storm was a wee bit interesting. By the time I was finished, I was soaked - but she (and all her goods) were relatively dry. Oh the life of a new mom - no two days are the same and you learn something new everyday ( like maybe it's time to clean out the garage and start parking in there)!!!