Long Overdue Update!

Time gets away from you. I can't believe that it has been a month since we have posted an update. I am hoping you all are thinking that no news is good news. In this case it has been. We are all doing great. There have been a few changes though. Lets see..Laney had a follow up appointment with the pediatric cardiologist. They saw some very minor defects in her heart when she was in the hospital. It often happens to babies born so early. Theirs hearts are just not ready to be out in the world. The good news is, that she is fine. She has a minor defect in the way the blood flows through her heart that apparently is very common in kids. They think it will just resolve on its own and if it doesn't she will never notice because it is so minor. Yeah!! Next we took her to the orthopedic surgeon for her final appointment before surgery. She is doing fine but the hip is still dislocated. So we have surgery scheduled for September 24th. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. The surgery is minor but it makes me nervous for her to go under anasthesia. It is a mom's job to worry right?

The other major change we have made is the fact that I have gone back to work. I started the 21st of August. I have only spent 2 weeks doing actual nursing but I really like it. It is definately challenging and hard work. I have enjoyed my patients and the staff has been great. Being away from Kevin and Laney is a different story. They have been doing great! After much work with an occupational therapist that specializes in cranio-saccral therapy we finally got Laney to eat from the bottle. She even took a pacifier a few times! Now she switches back and forth most of the time without much effort. However, she has regressed a little and is back to waking up 2 times during the night. I have a theory that as she is growing she is using more calories but not really taking enough in with just the milk so this week we are going to try a little bit of real food and see how that goes.

As far as other advances that she has made...she has great head control, she is rolling over both ways (it is more common when she is mad) she is almost sitting up, and she is chewing on everything. It is amazing because she has never beena drooler but about a week ago the drool started flowing and now all she wants to do is chew on my fingers. Poor thing. I don't feel any teeth yet but I know they are there. We'll see how long it takes them to poke out.

Last but not least for our big news update...Kevin turned 40! August 30 was his birthday. We had some friends over and had a BBQ with some games and lots of drinking. (I think alot of them realized it is alot more difficult to recover at 40!) A few people stayed the night. We got up the next day (some of them more slowly than others) and Kevin went rafting and fishing with some of the boys. All in all I think he had a good time.

I think that is about it for now. I hope everyone is well!

The Meyer's

Good days and bad days.

Laney has had an interesting week. On Monday the poor kid had to go and get her immunizations. Not fun for any kid (or parent for that matter). She got her shots, which actually went fairly well as far as crying fits go. As soon as I picked her up she was fine. The trouble came when she had to have a PKU test done. This is the test they do in the hospital when babies are born. They poke their heel and fill in a bunch of circles on a special piece of paper. Well, she had to have her 3rd one done! They have to do it 90 days after her last blood transfusion. This will check for a wide range of metabolic and blood disorders. I am glad they do it, especially after all the blood transfusions she had. But, SCREAM, my gosh this kid found her lungs! Poor thing. I felt terrible, like I am sure every parent does. To top it off she was a little dehydrated. We took her to pick huckelberries this weekend and it was a little warm, not to mention it has been over 100 in Boise for the last week or so. So, thank god that is over! That was her rough day this week!

Today however, she had another hearing screen. Third time is the charm, right? It is! She passed. She still has a little fluid in her left ear but it had decreased and they wanted to see how she would respond. She did great! She passed on every tone. We probably will have to follow up with an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctor to make sure the fluid clears soon. Apparently, the audiologist says if it stays in there too long it can start to disintigrate the bones in her middle ear. I am assuming that God put them there for a reason and we don't want them to disintigrate so we will be looking into that and put a tube in if necessary. Whew...glad that is over.

Tomorrow is the NICU BBQ. Every year the NICU has a "graduation" BBQ for all their patients. Not just the ones in the last year but for as long as the families want to come. We are very excited to go see not only other families that we met but her nurses and doctors as well. I know as a nurse it would be neat to see how my patients progress as they grow. This is a great opportunity for them and us. I will let you know how it goes and get some pictures.

I hope everyone is doing well. We are doing great! We love hearing from you all, so thank you!

The Meyer's

What are these??

We have been waiting and waiting. It has finally happened, Laney has discovered her hands! Today she was highly offended that these fancy new things on the ends of her arms would hit her in the face. One second she is facinated by the site of her hands and the next she had a cranky look on her face because her new friends had smacked her in the face. I couldn't help but laugh at her. Which then got me a little sideways glance. I love these little milestones. I feel so lucky to have had all this time to spend with her. It makes me anxious to go back to work but I think it will be good for both of us.

A little progress has been made with the bottle. I have started giving her bottles when she wakes up from a nap. I discovered that when she had been awake for a while and got hungry it just didn't work. She was much to aware of what was going on. By giving it to her when she was waking up hungry, she was still out of it enough that you could sneak a bottle in without her knowing. It seems to take 2 oz. before she figures it out and won't take any more. Hey, progress is progress. Right now I will take what I can get. Hopefully over the next couple weeks it keeps getting better. Now if I could just convince her that rice cereal is to be eaten, not worn!

When did bottles become evil????

The newest challenge at the Meyer household is, yep, you guessed it, BOTTLE FEEDING! Not having any other kids, I assumed that bottles are a natural transition. When you boil it all down, you suck and milk comes out. Bottle, breast, doesn't really matter, right? Not with this kid! Anyone out there who has encountered the challenge of switching a breast fed kid to some bottle feedings (not even all feedings, just a few a day) (and not formula, still breast milk) please let me know any trick you used to make taking a bottle less than a national crisis!

What prompted all this bottle feeding stuff you ask? Well, it is back to the real professional world for Angie. Yes, I got a job. I will be working nights on the telemetry unit at St. Lukes. What is telemetry you ask? Basically it is anyone who has a heart monitor on that is not in intensive care. Mostly cardiac and pulmonary patients. I am very excited to put my education to use but a little melencholy about leaving Laney through the night. In order to make the transition easier we wanted to introduce some extra bottle feeding to her now. What were we thinking? The ironic part is that she gets at least 1 bottle every day in order to give her vitamins. Today, absolutely not! We broke into hysterics many times. Every time I put the bottle in her mouth the lower lip came out and this pitiful, tortured cry came out. When I ignored that drama and kept trying the meltdown quickly ensued.

Really, if you have encountered this problem I would love to hear how you solved it without feeling like you were starving the kid to death.

I guess we will get up tomorrow and try, try again! That seems to be basically what parenthood is. Try, try again.

ZZZZZZzzzzzz.........

Things are trucking along in the Meyer house as usual. Kevin is still working an on and off type of schedule, which is great for Laney and I. It makes getting to her doctors appointments and things much easier. Laney is doing great. She is getting stronger every day. She can hold her head on her own about half the time and she is starting to coo, or as we say, she is "using her language skills". She just looks so intent on speaking. She just talks like she has the greatest story to tell. This is mostly in the morning and it sure is fun to interact with her. She has developed some mild colic in the evenings starting about 6pm. By about 8 or 9pm she has tuckered herself out and ends up asleep. I don't have the heart to wake her up and to be totally honest I am just glad at that point that she has stopped fussing. Unfortunatly, this late nap usually turns into a long one and sometimes she doesn't wake up till sometime between 11pm and 1 am. I have to say I am not at my best at this time of night. But she is happy rested and ready to play. We have tried to curb this habit by trying to keep her awake and not playing with her when she wakes up late. We just try to put her back to sleep. This usually results in the waking up every 2 hours because we are hungry! Ugh! I still have faith we can turn her clock so she goes to bed later but no success yet.

For the 4th of July my mom and stepdad came to visit and we had a BBQ with some friends. Kevin and my mom and stepdad climbed up on the roof to watch the fireworks that they had downtown. Laney and I sacked out in the living room. I was a little concerned because the neighbors had their own fireworks but she never even flinched. One good thing that came from her being in the NICU for so long, she is tolerant of noise!

Other than that we do tummy time and play most of the day. I don't seem to get a whole lot done, but, I have to say, I don't really worry about it much. We just have fun hanging out with her for now. I know the day will come soon when I will have to go back to work so for now we are enjoying every minute!

How did Newton miss this?

I have been battling with a question for a few weeks now. I keep expecting that the answer will just fall from the sky and smack me in the face and it will all make sense. It's not happening so I will send this out to all the parents out there. Why does baby poop defy gravity? There is a big old diaper there that covers a large area but for some reason baby poop defies gravity and goes right up the back. This doesn't seem like the logical option even if the diaper is full. You would think it would work WITH gravity and go down or even at worst out the side of the diaper. Nope. Not this kid. Straight out and up the back. I think Newton with all his theories on gravity must not have had children.
Laney is doing great. The physical therapist is going to be here in about an hour to weigh her. best we can guess she is getting close to 10 pounds! I know...double digits! She is growing so fast. I am guessing this would explain why she has been wanting to eat every hour and a half lately. She is sleeping better. We get up between 2 and 3 and then between 5 and 6 but at that point I feed her and dad takes her and they get to hang out while mom takes 1 more nap.
She still has not passed her hearing screen yet. We are absolutely convinced that she hears fine but we are waiting for some fluid in her ears to clear up before she is tested again. We will know again in a couple weeks.
Our last great endeavour was a BBQ for her. We wanted to thank as many of our friends and family as we could get together. We ended up with about 70 people. Thank god for the big back yard! It was a great time. Laney was exhausted and it took her a day or two to get back on track but she did great. For all of you that weren't here we want to thank you for all of your prayers and happy thoughts sent our way. All of that was used up and now we have a beautiful and happy little girl that is growing like a weed! I need to get moving for the day but if anyone figures out how baby poop has the power to defy gravity I would be very interested to know.

Angie

The Meyer Lemon

We truly are slacking at getting updates out, for that we apologize. Laney is doing great! Last Thursday she weighed in at 7 lbs. 9 oz. She is gaining about half a pound a week. Medically she is healthy as a horse but still is having some complications. Our pediatric orthopedist abandon the hope of having the pavlik harness (torture device) work at putting her hip back into socket. It was deceiving the last week. It would pop in and out of socket fairly easily so we were very optimistic it would work but when we had our check up it was obvious that it was not working. So the next step is surgery in September and she will have to be in a full cast from the waist down for 12 weeks. Uggg. Can't say we are very excited about that but for now we have a normal baby girl with out stuff attached to her and that is an exciting change. I guess we will enjoy it while we can and deal with the rest when it gets here.

The othere check up we had was for her hearing. She failed her hearing test in one of her ears before we left the hospital. Because of that and the particular antibiotics she was on in the hospital we had to do a follow up hearing screen. Well that didn't go so well either. They ask you to bring the kids in tired and hungry so you can feed them and they fall asleep for the test. Sounds like a good idea right? Well not only would she not fall asleep because she was over tired by the time I took her in, but she ended up doing the test naked because of some violent poop that drenched both of us. Because of the electrodes on her head I couldn't put another outfit on her! So we spent hours naked and pooped! She did finally fall asleep but then proceeded to fail the test in both ears this time. "How does this happen?" you might ask yourself. Apparently she has a little fluid in her middle ear on both ears. No infection, just some fluid. We are glad there is no infection but we are frustrated with the fluid. So they tell us we need to go see her pediatrician. Off we go to her pediatrician who needs to see the fluid. We go to his office and say "she failed her hearing screen. They say she has some uninfected fluid in her middle ear." He says," Let me take a look. Yup she has some uninfected fluid in her middle ear." Thanks for stopping by. Pay your money on the way out the door. Nothing they can do. Wait. Come back and see me in a month.

You all know we love Laney more than anything in the world but Kevin and I have started joking that she is out little lemon. Kinda like when you buy a car and one thing after the other goes wrong with it. Thats Laney. She is our little lemon. I guess you could call her our "Meyer Lemon." I am not sure what we will do with our free time when we don't have to go to doctors all the time but we are grateful that she is with us and we have to go to the doctor at all.

She is sleeping better. For a while we were on an every 2 hour feeding schedule. Gotta love the growth spurts! Now she is only getting up about 1-2 times every night. (depending on when I finally get up for the day.

Other than that we are working on her room. I know. She is 4 months old and we are just painting her room. A little tragic, I know, but our justification is that she doesn't sleep in there anyway. I will get some pictures when we are done.

I hope this finds you all doing well and enjoying your summer! I know we are.

The Meyer's