Leaps and Bounds!!!!!!!!

kay I will give everyone one guess after you check out Addison's latest pics..............can you see anything different????? See if you guys are more observant than her own mother was, ahhhhh.

Okay, okay I cannot hold it in any longer.....if you look closely at our munchkin's little nose you will see that she is minus two prongs in her nostrils. Yep Addison is free of oxygen!!!!! We are so proud of her. What a fighter. She managed to get down last week to a flow of 10% and oxygen pressure of 21, which is actually room air. The nurses left her on this for the night on Thursday the 15th and then took her off early Friday morning. Mom did not even realize when she walked in at first, till nurse Deb pointed it out. What a big girl. Mommy had tears in her eyes and could not believe it, (once she finally clued in!) Addison is doing very well and is managing no oxygen, even with a few little spells. It is so wonderful to be able to walk around with her to the bath and breast feeding room, free of yet another tube and wire. We still have her connected to the heart rate and respiration monitors just to be sure, but these get disconnected when we have to weigh her etc. Ohh what a wonderful feeling!!!! Poor daddy missed it as he was home painting and getting the living room ready and free of dingy old carpet, but he was ecstatic on Saturday when he walked in and saw his little girl. Way to go ADDY!

So another week of great leaps and bounds for our little girl. On Tuesday the 13th Addison was reviewed by the physiotherapists and got a great review. Addison is sitting at about the 30th percentile for her weight, size and behavour, which overall is not to bad for her early arrival. Addison did well at tracking with her eyes and ears and can really hold up her little head well. Mom and dad have been given instructions on some exercises that need to be done to assist Addison with improving her posture and the utilization of her hands and feet. Addison's shoulders remain a little stiff and rounded up from sleeping on her back and she needs to strengthen her muscles on the left side of her neck as she seems to favour her right side. She also needs to improve on her midline posture as Addison does not quite know that she has two hands and feet. Since Addison was born she has been laying splayed out and her hands and feet have not really had any boundaries, which she would have had more laying in mommy's womb. We need to pull Addy's arms and legs in more and start doing Pattycake to get her introduced to her outer limbs. Daddy is very diligent at these exercises and practices them daily with Addy. Our kind nurse Deb also purchased Addy some cute socks and hand wrap puppets that we can place on her hands and feet so she will get interested in the toys and start doing these exercises hopefully on her own. She is still a little to small so right now they sit in her crib with her on the Sleep Sheep along with her new Ladybug dog book that Deb also gave her. How appropriate for the little princess.

Addison continues to feed well and continues to feed both orally and by her NG feeding tube. Mommy is finally feeling way better and we continue to work on Addison at breast. We believe we caught the Mastitis before it got to serious and mommy has started Gentian Violet for the Yeast infection, thus poor Addison's has purple lips from her breastfeeding attempts with the medicine. We call them Kool-Aid lips!! No worries though the nurses say it will only last a few days and it will eventually wear off. Addison continues to go to breast quite well, but is still not strong enough to complete a full feed so she has to receive the remainder of her feed by tube. We have to keep her very regimented on feeds every 3 hours, so we cannot allow her feeds to really extend past the hour mark when we work on breast or bottle so that Addison will continue to digest and be hungry for her next feed. On Thursday Daddy got the treat of his life and got to feed Addy himself, and gave her his first bottle. He was soooo excited and Addison did fantastic and finished her whole bottle in 15 minutes. We are utilizing a speacial nipple on the bottle called a Haeberman nipple (created by some brilliant mom) that allows us to control the speed of the milk through the nipple for Addison so we can avoid any choking and aversion to oral feeds. We have found that Addison needs a controlled environment for feeding, which includes skin to skin contact, low light and noise. This allows her to remain relaxed and concentrate on her ability to suck, swallow and breath all at the same time. She still is not to sure on the whole burping process after the feed and scares herself quite often. Addison has never experienced this before being feed by a tube so it scares her so much sometimes she actually stops breathing. So we continue to work on her feeds as the goal is to have all 8 of her feeds orally and the NG feeding tube removed for a period of 48 hours!!! Mommy and daddy are required to be at the hospital now for most of the day so we can do breast and bottle, and the nurses can do bottles with Addison when she cues that she is hungry through the night. A lot of work for Addison but we know that she will do it, and all at her own pace.

So with all her success at feeding Addison is really packing on the pounds, with her last weigh in coming in at a whopping 6 pounds and 10 oz. She reached the 3kg mark at 3005 grams. She has finally outgrown her preemie outfits and is now filling out the newborn ones quite nicely. She has the most adorable pudgy legs and arms now, it is so wonderful to see. We have even moved on to our third hospital ID bracelet on her ankle, as she just outgrew the second one!!

This Tuesday Addison had a followup head ultrasound done and unofficially the report was good. We still wait for official results however, after our last one that showed a strange area that may have been old bleeding. Addison also had a followup eye check done today and results were good, so much that she was given a follow up date for 4 weeks down the road at the clinic. Clinic I said to the nurses does that mean they are predicting Addison will be home and out of hospital for that appointment???? Well the answer was yes and no, meaning Addison will either be home or in hospital in Sarnia, meaning we may be receiving some transfer papers in the future. Mom and dad have mixed feelings about this but realize this may be inevitable. Our nursing and medical staff is wonderful at St. Joseph's and with Addison being close to going home, we feel we may be starting over again with a transfer to Sarnia. So close but yet so far. So we will keep you all posted.

On Saturday the 17th, Mim, Aunt Danielle and Aunt Betty hosted a fabulous baby shower for Addy in Chatham. Despite horrible snow conditions family and friends made the trek down and spoiled us rotten. Addison received many beautiful things and some adorable outfits that we cannot wait to dress her up in. Thank you so much everyone for all your wonderful presents, we love them all. We are truly blessed with great family and friends.