This summer went by quickly. It seemed as though we were plagued with constant sickness. Ali had pneumonia in June, surgery in July, and constant respiratory infections in August. Thankfully while many of the other children have been battling coughs, colds, and allergies in September, Alegria has remained practically healthy!!! This is such a huge praise!
Ali being healthy has made it much easier to focus on other things with her. She has developed leaps and bounds this summer. She got very tired of just sitting still, but she did not have the coordination needed to sit or stand by herself. She finally has the head control and stamina to spend a lot of time in her exersaucer! This has been great for her. She doesn't get so bored over there with over a dozen attached toys to play with. It has also worked on strengthening her legs. She often tries to scoot off my lap when I am holding her now by throwing her hips and scooting her behind. Today after she tried to scoot of my lap, I placed her arms on the side of the exersaucer for support and I just helped her to keep her balance. She stood there for a few minutes, and you could tell she thought she was a big girl too :-)
We have also switched to a completely blenderized diet (meaning real food processed through the blender and then fed through her tube.) She is doing much better! For the first time in months she is tolerating her feds fast enough to switch back to a bolus fed instead of having to be constantly feeding her at an extremely slow rate!!! This is a BIG praise too!!! It is healthier for her and gives her more freedom during the day! Ali has also been enjoying "playing" with her bottle. She isn't drinking much yet, but we are having fun trying. She is still trying to steal my cup whenever I get drink while holding her.
She is a very curious little girl and loves to explore anything new. She also gets bored easily with old things so we have to switch up which toys she is playing with frequently. :-)
Ali's granulation tissue has completely resolved and her stoma looks great!! Unfortunately we have had more episodes of Ali's g-tube getting pulled completely out of her stomach in the last month than ever before. I could not figure out the cause, other than her being more mobile. THEN I realized we have been using a special clamp to keep her extension tubing connected to her feeding pump bag. This is because she is so mobile and kept pulling the two apart causing her to lose all her stomach contents... ughh. Without the clamp though when the tubing gets pulled (or occasionally yanked on), the connection between the two tubes will disconnect before her button get pulled out. With the clamp on, that is impossible and all the tension goes directly to the button. Well hopefully with her no longer needing to eat constantly, this will be less of an issue again!
Biggest prayer requests:
With all the sickness this summer, Ali has lost weight again. I am hoping and praying with the new changes to her diet that she will quickly regain the weight she lost and continue growing bigger and stronger!
Please pray also that she continue to remain healthy. The past couple weeks have been such a blessed respite which I hope continues for quite awhile!!
And last but not least, our new baby is due in December. We are very excited, but this also brings with it some unique challenges. One we are still working out the details on is who will help us with Ali when the baby is born. We are hoping for a home birth as I love home births and it would also simplify things greatly! But we still want to be prepared for another birth center or hospital birth. I have never left Ali with anyone for more than an hour or so. This makes everything a bit challenging. We have several ladies with a medical background from church who have volunteered to help in the evenings, but we aren't sure yet that we have the day time covered.
Thanks,
Jill
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