February 3, 2011 - Blizzard

Caden watching the frontloader move snow off the street
Bundled up to play.....

Fun in the fort - thanks to neighbor Jill!


It's crazy to thing since my last post over a month has gone by. Where time goes! Some of my days seem like such a blur trying to do just "normal" things on such little sleep can make for some challenging days. I'm hoping soon little Griffin will go for longer than some of these 2 hours stretches needing to be fed then things will start to get much easier (which is slowly starting to happen).

When Griffin was released from the hospital on day 4 he dropped below 10% body weight so it was recommended we supplement since my milk hadn't come in. When we did this, Griffin's "suck" changed and needless to say I couldn't continue breastfeeding because I was in so much pain. So, seeing I had such difficulties with my milk supply with Caden I was excited I at least could produce enough milk for Griffin by pumping. Although I'm disappointed I couldn't make it longer than a week, I'm happy I can at least still produce milk for him even if it means even less sleep for me. David and I are thrilled to just be doing normal baby things, with no hospital, filling syringes for medicines, and the constant worry everyday that occurred with Caden. We are thrilled we have the opportunity to have a "normal" baby experience and everything that comes with it.

Speaking of hospitals......how is Caden? Caden is doing good. His oxygen saturations are still on the low side 76-78% . We have a cardiology appointment in early March and at this appointment a decision will be made regarding more surgery or not. In the meantime, Caden is still going to speech therapy once a week. I feel like we haven't made much progress but I guess I'm the one that needs to be patient. The therapist is currently working on Caden and his tongue placement. By using a sucker she tries to get Caden to move his tongue to both sides of his mouth which he currently isn't doing. She said this could be contributing to some of his speech delays. It is possible that his vocal cord paralysis and being right side fed for the first several months of his life might have contributed to this. Either way, we are making very slow progress and with time hopefully more words will come. Right now his only words are momma, dada, baby, Elmo, eat, go, bye-bye, and a few others.

Caden is hovering around 25 pounds where he has been for the last 4 months. The new things he enjoys doing is running, dancing, and imitating his Dad. He does this by holding David's cell phone walking around blabbering something that makes no sense and sometimes even puts David's earpiece in his ear just like dad does. It's so cute!

Hopefully all of you in the Chicagoland area enjoyed the snowfall and managed to dig yourself out. I'll close this post with some pictures of the Blizzard of 2011 and the 18+ inches of snow.

Love -
Melissa