No More Pacifier

I have been making every excuse, all very good excuses I might add, to not take Lauren's pacifier away. I know the longer I let her keep it, the harder it will be to take it away, but it is her off button. I am able to get a good nights sleep because of it and everyone, including her, is just happier. Well, the time has come to say goodbye to the pacifier and I am very sad to see it go. I had told Paul that when Lauren turned two I would take it away, then I made another excuse saying that we needed to wait until her 2 year doctor's appointment just in case she got shots. So, she had her two year doctor's appointment today, which went great, so now I must let the pacifier go. I told Kristen today after the appointment that Lauren was no longer going to have a pacifier because she is getting to be a big girl. Kristen said "Sissy doesn't cry anymore because she is a big girl." I told her no, that Sissy would be doing a lot of crying now, but just like when she cries and doesn't get a pacifier, Sissy wasn't going to get one either. Nap time was our first trial run without the pacifier. She was crying when I left the room, but the washing machine and dryer were going, the television was on, so I don't really know how long she cried because I was doing other things and she still is a softer crier than most kids. Tonight will be the real test when the house is quiet and she is crying. We'll see. It had to be done, so I guess it is better sooner rather than later. Oh, and I had another excuse ready today just in case I didn't follow through with it. Here is a tribute to the faithful pacifier.

Lauren's BIG Birthday Party

Yesterday was Lauren's BIG birthday party. Not as big as last year, but we still had 10 people from our immediate family plus us 4. It was nice and went off without a hitch. We wanted to make this as simple as possible so we could all enjoy ourselves. I think everyone had a good time. It was an Abby Cadabby themed party. I made the cake and really enjoyed making it. I am now ready to make another one. Lauren enjoyed herself and got lots of cute clothes, bath toys, books and toys. When we sang "Happy Birthday" to her she started crying. She didn't like it at all. I guess it was probably odd to her to have a bunch of people looking at her belting out a song. That was the only thing she didn't like. She really wasn't all that interested in opening her presents yesterday either. I think for Christmas I am just going to buy her a bunch of wrapping paper and boxes, since that was all she wanted to play with. Here are some pictures of the party.

Busy Birthday

Yesterday was such a busy day for us. I started off the day baking some cupcakes for Lauren's little party we were going to have for her yesterday evening. I was hoping to get the cupcakes decorated before Lauren's doctors appointment, but that just didn't happen. Lauren had an appointment with her GI doctor. She is 17 pounds 4 ounces. She has been on Enfamil Enfacare formula since she was about 5 weeks old. While she doesn't get it during the day now, she does get it during her night feedings. We were mixing it up the ready to feed with the dry formula to make 26 calories per ounce instead of the regular 22 calories that it is. Her GI doctor has now switched her to Pediasure with fiber. There are a lot of pluses for the Pediasure. She will now be getting 30 calories per ounce at night, it has fiber so we hope it will help with her constipation and we can get the enteral Pediasure which is thicker so it will hopefully help with her acid reflux. We did have Lauren's bed elevated and she would then be strapped into a Dani-sling at night to keep her from rolling to the bottom of the bed. Now that she is older she no longer wants to just sleep on her back plus she learned how to un-Velcro the Dani-sling and would roll to the bottom of the bed. We ended up taking the Dani-sling out and lowering her bed back down. She has done good with it. Some nights she does have more reflux problems than other, which would cause me to stop her feeding, so hopefully the thicker consistency will help with that. Speaking of reflux, way back, when we were being seen by the feeding clinic, I asked if Lauren's acid reflux medicine could be switched. She was released from the hospital on Pepcid, but there isn't a generic for Pepcid, so it was rather expensive to get it filled. We also had to get a 3 month supply at a time since it is considered a maintenance drug through our insurance. I had asked if we could possibly be switched to something that had a generic and the feeding clinic said that because of her extreme prematurity, she needed to stay on the Pepcid. I didn't push the issue since it was obviously something she needed. Prior to her appointment I knew she needed a new prescription written so I decided to talk to Dr. Kessel about switching her. She said she didn't see a problem and wrote her a prescription for the generic form of Zantac. It isn't as strong as the Pepcid, so she needs 3 doses at 1 1/2 ml during the day instead of the 2 doses at 0.8 mls of Pepcid. So, I was happy about that change and it is much cheaper. So, overall it was a very good appointment. We don't go back until November, so I am hoping for a good weight gain then. Our home health company called today and said the Pediasure should arrive by early next week.

So, after the appointment we went to the NICU to visit our old friends. Well, let's just say we were a little disappointed. The front desk lady wouldn't let us back, but they did call the NICU. One of the nurses that only had Lauren maybe twice answered. I knew she probably wouldn't remember us because right after Lauren was born she went out on Medical leave for the duration of Lauren's hospital stay. Anyways, she ended up coming out to the main waiting room to see us. I was surprised that she did remember us and even asked questions specific to Lauren. She was our nurse when the doctor told us we needed to consider signing a do not resuscitate on Lauren and she remembered that. She said that they were having a problem with a family in the NICU not following the rules. Can I just say...WHY WOULDN'T YOU?!? All of the rules the NICU puts in place is for the benefit of the babies in the NICU and for the parents to not follow the rules just makes me mad. Anyways, so they currently were not allowing anyone that wasn't a parent or staff back to the NICU. She said once that certain family was discharged things would go back to the way they were. Overall, it was a good visit with her. We do miss every one of the nurses in the NICU. They all hold a special place in our hearts. So, after the NICU is was pizza for dinner and on to decorating the cupcakes, which didn't take too long.



After that we ate our decorated cupcakes and opened some presents. Kristen kept saying all day, "It's sissy's Happy birthday." Lauren wasn't as enthusiastic as I thought she would be at opening her presents. Kristen sure was though. All in all her birthday was hectic but good.









After the kids went to bed I started baking the cakes for Lauren's BIG birthday cake. Well, not to big, but bigger than cupcakes. The cake is a 10 inch cake with a 6 inch on top. I decided since Lauren loves chocolate to try something different from the pound cake I normally fixed. I looked up a recipe online. When the cake came out I cooled it in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes like it called for. I then tried to get it out of the pan. The pound cake I use just pops right out. Well this didn't. Some of the cake stuck to the pan so I couldn't use it. I was so disappointed because it was 9:00 at night and I really wanted to get my cakes baked, cooled and wrapped up and go to bed. I ended up having to go to Food Lion to get extra baking ingredients, because I had just enough to make two cakes. So, to make a long story short, at 2:30 in the morning I had two chocolate cakes I could use and was finally able to get some sleep. Today has been an equally busy day. I decorated the birthday cake, which took me around 3 hours, not counting the time it took to make the icing. Went and ran errands and tidied up the house. I am very tired and my bed is calling my name.

Happy 2nd Birthday Lauren

These past two years have been the hardest and the most rewarding two years of our lives. Lauren came into this world fighting for her life and us not knowing what tomorrow would bring. I remember a time when I didn't think we would get two minutes with her. Now, two years later she has grown and accomplished so much more than we ever expected. She has developed her own strong-willed personality. She is walking and talking. Instead of just a few words, she is now attempting to say everything. The best gift God has given us is to hear her say "I love you." She loves her big sister and will try to copy anything Kristen does. She likes: dancing to The Wiggles, blueberry cereal bars, chocolate, getting into my purse and chap stick no matter how many times I say no, climbing the stairs, putting diapers on her baby dolls, books, shoes, bath time, and brushing her hair. She brings so much joy and so many smiles to our family. We are so blessed to have her in our lives and we thank God for every day He has given us with her.

Released!!

Lauren went to see Dr. Monasterio (her developmental doctor) today and was released from services! This has been a good week and we praise God for all of the good news. It was a very short visit. He watched her walk, although she was very upset. She doesn't like strangers, so as soon as I put her down away from me, she just started crying. She finally walked, well actually partially ran to me and buried her head. That was it for her. She wasn't going to participate in the appointment at all after that. He said he was very pleased with her progress and felt good with letting early intervention and her pediatrician to continue monitoring her progress. We have occupational therapy tomorrow and a GI appointment on Thursday. Still lots to do to get ready for the party.

ENT Check-up

So this week is going to be a very busy week for us. Lauren has 3 doctors appointments, occupational therapy. On top of that I have lots to do to get ready for the BIG party on Saturday. Grocery shopping, house cleaning, cake baking and decorating and throw in Wednesday night prayer meeting at church along with a dinner at church tonight, laundry and trying to get in a few hours of work. Whew! I get tired just thinking about it. All I can do is set goals for each day and hope to have them all accomplished by the time I go to bed.

Our first doctors appointment of the week was with Dr. Johnson, Lauren's Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. I had thought prior to taking her that this appointment might just be a waste of time. We knew her vocal cord was paralyzed. We knew surgery could be done but not for several more years and other than getting him to look at her upper lip frenulum, I thought there really wasn't much point in going and seeing him. For some reason (a God reason) I kept the appointment. When the doctor was checking her, of course Lauren was crying. He said that he wanted to check her vocal cords again, because she seemed to sound a lot better than last time. When she went last time she would only make a little noise when she started crying, after that she was crying her eyes out but you couldn't hear anything. God just amazes me. How undeserving we are of such blessings and He still keeps blessing my family immensely. I can't thank Him enough. The doctor said that Lauren's vocal cord was still paralyzed, but that her other vocal cord was overcompensating and actually going all the way across and bouncing off of the paralyzed one. While he has seen this, he doesn't see it very often. He said that as her laraynx grows, her sound will become clearer and as long as that one vocal cord keeps overcompensating there will be no need for the surgery when she gets older. PRAISE GOD!! He did check her upper lip frenulum and said that since it isn't causing her any problems he didn't see any need for doing anything right now. If it was causing any sort of problems with feeding he would. He said it would be something that would be done when she got older and mostly for cosmetic purposes. I already figured this, because my peditrician had said much of the same. It isn't bothering her and even if we were given the option of doing it, I don't know if we would have.

Tomorrow we see Dr. Monasterio, her developmental doctor. We should be released from his services tomorrow since she is walking.

Pictures

We took Kristen and Lauren today to get pictures taken for Lauren's birthday. They turned out very good considering Lauren cried most of the time. Here are some of the 102 pictures they took. I love Portrait Innovations. They really do a good job.