Caitlin Update

We took Caitlin on Tues afternoon for her 9 month check up (CAN YOU BELIEVE she is already 9 mths! Where has time flown!). She is doing really well... growing and doing everything she should do. Dr. Tammi said it was really good that she is already saying (and associating) Dada and Mama at this age... She stood for a few seconds for Dr. Tammi too and she said that was great and it would be a matter of time before she just takes off! I don't personally think she'll take the few little steps, I think when she is ready she is going to just GO... she isn't really interested in doing "steps" now but she LOVES to just let go and stand for about 30 seconds and really good at bending down and coming up without falling!

She is now 15lbs 3oz, 26 1/2 in long and her head is 16in... I think she said her weight is still along the 10 percentile and height is like 50 percentile (on the growth chart) but all going well and at the rate they should!

She didn't get any shots and didn't get her iron re-tested since the other doc did blood work on Monday, she was just going to call and get their results so we didn't have to stick her twice two days in a row... turns out, I don't think they tested her iron but I know it showed some results (we got a copy of it today @ surgery) so hopefully she'll be able to tell something from it, otherwise we'll go in and just have them test it one day in the next week or two. She said if it's not as low, we could talk about switching her to the polyvisal but a prescribed one with extra iron... but we'll see. I'd LOVE for her to be off her iron supplement though - it's not as bad as the OTHER one she was on but this one still makes her poop stinky!!! LOL!

Now onto her surgery today... she did really well!!!! THANK GOD!!! And shockingly enough she did really well without eating! I was surprised about that. We got up at 6am this morning but let her sleep till about 7:30 (right before we had to leave) and she had a little juice (I had nursed her at bedtime around 10:30pm Tues night). She woke up in a great talkative mood which was nice. Got to the hospital early (no traffic like we thought there would be) and finally checked in at 9am. The next 3 pics are of us waiting downstairs for Nana & Papa to get there. See how tired she still looked... poor thing, she wasn't ready to wake up but thankfully was in a good mood!

They took us to her holding room and talked about stuff and went over some paperwork and then came to take us back around 9:50? (early) for surgery. We got down to the holding area (10am?) and waited till about 11:30!!! Turns out the kid that was before us in the OR had to be moved to the ICU and they didn't have a bed there, so they couldn't move him out without having an open bed. Thankfully though Caitlin fell asleep on us after FIGHTING to stay awake, so she slept like 10:30-11:30 and woke up just in time when they were about to take her back so she didn't have a chance to be awake and realize she was hungry! The next 5 pics are of her BEFORE finally crashing in the holding area and then 2 of her sleeping on me... sweet girl, gave me some special bonding time with her. I'll admit, I cried... Notice her HUGE gown, she hated it. We rolled the sleeves but of course it wasn't really enough, it still fell and kept her from doing the things she wanted to do! :) And of course I get her back there and forgot to grab a diaper out of my bag, so we borrowed a Huggies (not what we normally use) and she squeezed into a ONE! Guess Huggies run bigger then Pampers because she wears a 2. I bought her little socks downstairs when we first got there, I didn't think about it that her little feet might get cold! Glad Daddy thought about it... they say "thank heaven" and will now go in the baby book :-D

We went to the waiting room with Nana & Papa (they had to stay in the waiting room) and waited... they have a really neat system where they have a monitor in the waiting room that shows the status of the patient. When they got to the OR (shows a little scalpel, stitches and bandage) and then shows when they were moved to recovery so all together I think that she went to the OR at 11:56am and got out like 12:25pm? NOT bad at all... they told us it would be about an hour. Dr. Barcelo came to talk to us and said everything looked great and we waited another 5mins or so and the anasteoligist came and told us we could go back and said she was taking a bottle of apple juice & pedialyte great... then she forgot I nurse her and rushed me back thinking I'd need to nurse her. She was fine though with the bottle, she didn't really want me when I offered her to nurse. Which was fine with me, as long as she was happy. She was a little out of it though - she closed her eyes a lot and just seemed a little drugged still but overall really well! She finished 6oz fine and rested on me and then just perked up and was talking and happy as can be! The last few pics are her in the recovery room... and her incision area. It looks worse in the pics then in it does in person. It just looks purple, doesn't look swollen or anything though. The "YES" is a legal medical requirement... we had to put that on her when they first admitted us. And I have yet to be able to get it off! :)

Still has the tired eyes...

You'll notice she is a little out of it here... just resting on Mommy.



Moved out of recovery a lot faster then expected too! They then took us to the waiting room we were first in around 1pm and the Nurse said she'd check on us at 1:45pm and do her stats and if everything looks good, she could go home. She does have 1 little stitch that you can't see and will go away on it's own and they put a dermabond (like superglue) on the area so she can't mess with it and it will go away on its on in 7-10days. We follow up with Dr. Barcelo on Aug 6th... they had scheduled it for next week but after we spoke to him today he said to call and push it back a week so that it gives the dermabond time to go away and he can check the area out. Anyway, 1:45pm came around and everything looked great (other then her wanting to get the IV out) and so she was discharged! She slept the entire way home and when we went to the bank, post office and picked up her meds... woke up in a good mood and took a good 6oz bottle. We had to pick Hailey up at Shawna's the rest of the afternoon and she did well... took a few naps and I was sure to stay on top of her meds every 4 hours. I notice when she is getting sleepy & I think it starts to bother her, she started to tug & hit at her ear... poor thing!

Soooo... thank you for anyone that prayed, it went smoothly. I knew it would... I was just nervous about her being put to sleep. What Mom wouldn't be though? :) She is doing well, just went to sleep without a fight and hopefully will stay asleep all night!

I'll keep everyone posted maybe tomorrow afternoon on how she is feeling.