A week of medical attention

Well, in my last post (before James's cheering blog), I posted some news about Owen and prematurely said he was gaining weight. I should have said he had gained weight the last time he was checked. This Wednesday he had another weight check and had gained very little in two weeks and has just about dropped off all of the growth charts. He was 10 lb 9 oz (I know several of you are commenting to yourselves that your babies weighed nearly that at birth! let alone at 3 months). Consequently, we are feeding him a bottle after he nurses and he is taking a significant amount that way. He just isn't good at breast feeding and maybe that has decreased my supply so that he's now not getting enough nourishment. Hopefully increasing his calorie intake will fix the problem and he'll start gaining again. The doctor also ordered some labwork to be done to see if there are any metabolic or absorptive issues contributing.

Thursday we had a big day at the hospital. Owen's ENT doctor had ordered a CT scan and some bloodwork (so, if you're keeping track, that's now two physicians ordering bloodwork from a 10 lb body). We showed up at Children's at 9 AM for the CT. They told us he couldn't eat for 4 hours prior to the scan in case they needed to sedate him. But, they ended up having us get him to sleep and, thankfully, they successfully ran the scan unsedated. That was a big relief! Once the CT scan was completed, they shuffled us over to the lab for his sweat chloride test and bloodwork. The sweat chloride test involves applying a heat stimulus to the skin on his arm and then capturing his sweat on a piece of gauze after 30 minutes. After that test they drew blood and, with several tries, they were able to draw enough from his tiny veins to run all of the tests that had been ordered. The only thing that didn't work out was his urine sample, which we had to collect at home and bring by the lab the next day.

It was a busy, tiring, and stressful day. Kate spent the day with Ms. Tiffany, whom she loves, but was tired and vying for our attention when we brought her home. It was tough on her, too. But, we're spending the weekend at Nana and Grandfather's house in North Carolina (that's fun to hear her say!), so she's getting lots of extra attention.

All this and we haven't even had any appointments for hearing aid fittings, etc. yet. But, it's good to know that we are on track to start getting some answers and Owen is a beautiful little little boy who's full of smiles and loves to be cuddled. I'm so thankful for him!