Getting Calmer

The last few days have us calming down slightly. We’re getting more sleep (thank God) and Kaiya is gaining weight. At the pediatrician this morning she weighed in at a hefty 5lbs. 14oz. She’s finally above her birth weight and the pressure is relieved as far as health issues go.

Kaiya also had another Billyrubin test yesterday and she’s back down to a 15. Still not the best number, but the trend is down and that was the important thing.

So impressed was our pediatrician with her progress, that she’s willing to forego the need for a 2 week checkup, but will instead move straight to the 1 month checkup for our next appointment.

Yesterday we had a nurse come by the house to check on Kaiya and Sharon. She gave us some handy tips that we found useful with regard to feeding, cleaning and otherwise getting around with Kaiya.

In addition to the advice and tips given to us by our health care professionals, we’ve come up with a few “ingenious” tricks to make our lives a bit more bearable and Kaiya’s feeding more convenient. First, we have a cooler upstairs in our bedroom for the evenings stocked with all of her bottles and where all of the pumped milk goes. This way we don’t have to go upstairs and downstairs to the kitchen in the middle of the night for these items.

We’ve learned some of the tricks to keep Kaiya eating, even when it seems like she’s given up on the bottle after just an oz. of milk. Simply spinning her bottle in her mouth or pulling it in and out just slightly, keeps her awake and sucking. All good things.

In fact, she was so good, that we were even able to go out to breakfast at The Original Pancake House with her this morning. She had her bottle of milk. I had the potato pancakes with applesauce. Sharon had the chocolate chip pancakes.