Today's News

Today's GI appointment (at a location almost an hour's drive from our house) answered a lot of questions...and gave us two more appointments to schedule. Sigh. I'm exhausted already, and we still have one more appointment for Verity and a three-day speech and debate tournament for our oldest two this week.

Nutshell:

• Loved the GI doctor. He said his family homeschooled awhile using A Beka curriculum (not our curriculum, but showed us he's a kindred spirit!).
• Tonight will be our first try with continuous feeding using the feeding pump. HOORAY for not setting my alarm for 11pm and 2am!! (Or just 2am when I don't make it to bed before 11pm. Ted has done the 5am feedings.) Instead of 50ml every 3 hours, Verity will get 15ml an hour over a 10-hour period. I'm sure there will be wakings, but still...we are hoping and praying desperately that we can get some decent rest.
• The doctor ordered a swallow study--it is not something he could do right then and there at his location. So, it's good to know it's in the works, although we likely won't get in until toward the end of April. After that is conducted, we hope to get the green light to try bottle feeding. I continue to attempt nursing, but honestly, the times I am free to try are extremely limited; Verity needs to be awake and calm, and I need to have my hands free without other people pulling at me. The stars do not align all that often...I do want to try, but the fact that she has not latched at all since about a week before we left the hospital is rather discouraging...but I am totally okay with the thought of bottle feeding, and she does take a pacifier. 
• The feeding tube...that hated, 30-day feeding tube. I was SO hoping that we'd be able to switch it out today for the smaller ones and that we'd learn how to put them in ourselves and not live in paranoia that this unwieldy tube will come out and send us back to the ER. Unfortunately, this is, apparently, something that the children's home health provider network was supposed to set up for us when we received the feeding tube to begin with. So...I get to make more phone calls. I'm hoping they will send a nurse to our house with the tubes for the training...but if not, hey, I'll be at the children's hospital twice a week at a minimum this month. 
• We will follow up with this GI doctor in two weeks, and at that appointment he will have a dietitian along as well to evaluate Verity's levels and decide whether she is ready to increase her feeds at that time. Meanwhile, I've been instructed to ask to get an accurate weight measurement BEFORE the next set of casts are placed, ha!

In other news, I've learned it's entirely possible for a full-time pumping mom to deal with blocked milk ducts and possible mastitis. Yay, me. Actually, yay for my essential oils for already giving me relief. I'm hopeful that tomorrow will be a better day. At least I don't have to go anywhere before dinner time...