Little Wiggler

She is now starting to show an interest in her stuffed animals and toys. Mostly in trying to get milk out of them.

Veej went for her first sit in the bumbo! We found it highly amusing.

We had a great meeting with the cardiologist today. The 22 calorie formula worked like a charm and Veronica gained 9 ounces in 1 week!

Weight-wise, she started out at the 50th percentile, then dropped to the 25th, and when we had her weighed last week she had dropped again to the 20th. But with this huge weight gain this week she is back up to 25%. As long as we stay on the 25% arc, everything is good. The doctor is very pleased and we are going to continue with this high-calorie formula plan. She is still getting breastmilk too but after seeing such a dramatic difference in the formula versus breastmilk, we may start the weaning process and break out the freezer stash. By using pumped breastmilk we can add extra calories to it so that she is consistently getting high calorie meals.

Her murmur is still a grade 4, meaning that her heartbeat is very loud and has a “thrill“, which is a tremor or vibration that can be felt. If you ever get the chance to put your hand on her heart, you should do it.

The excellent news is that the cardiologist feels that Veronica is now in a holding pattern and that we can be more conservative regarding her surgery. We can go back to waiting a while so as to give her brain more time to develop for going on the heart-lung machine.  Her liver is still enlarged and lungs are too but he feels we are still better off in the long run waiting as long as possible to decrease the surgery risks. We will do another weight check in 3 weeks to see if she is still doing well on the food plan and we will see the cardiologist again in May to make sure she is still doing ok.

On a funny note, Veronica was referred to as being ripped today. (The doctor was commenting on how he has a few patients with her long and lean body type and how they don’t have the rolls and cellulite like other babies, but instead have six packs by 1 year of age and are doing pilates.)

Girl clothes sure are fun!

My friend Brittany gave me this sweater at my shower and I’ve been impatiently waiting for Veronica to grow into it. Looks like we still have a ways to go but with this being one of the last cold weather days (hopefully) in sight for a while, I just had to put it into the rotation.

Veej is so alert now that it’s hard to get her to sit still long enough for a picture!

Her hair is starting to come in a little more:

Chris still cannot figure out how to get her clothes to match:

and Nigel approves of the glider:

Pretty exciting stuff.

We took VJ out for a stroll today in the gorgeous 50 degree weather (Uncle Matt in Florida is shivering right now reading this). She was a bit pensive about the idea…

but once we got her out, she was her usual cheery self.

I had a long telephone conversation with Veronica’s cardiologist yesterday to discuss her weight gain problems.

If you’ve spent any amount of time with us you know that we are constantly feeding her. This isn’t an issue of not eating enough, it’s just that her heart works overtime and her body burns the calories she needs to be storing up.

We have a plan of attack. We’re going to put her on 22 calorie formula. Basically it’s a way of concocting the formula so that each ounce has 22 calories instead of the usual 20. We will take her in next Friday to be evaluated again by the cardiologist. If she doesn’t improve, I assume we will go up to 24 calorie milk and so forth and so on until we see improvement. Right now I am still breastfeeding but for the time being she’s going to be receiving more formula so that we can plump her up.

Here’s a real time pic of what Veronica is doing now and plans to do for the rest of the day. Poor girl got three shots in the leg and 1 to drink. She was not an easy patient and really took the opportunity to work out her lungs.

For her weigh-in, she needed to weigh at least 10 pounds, 10 ounces in order to be gaining 2/3 of an ounce a day. I went in to the appointment pretty upbeat, feeling good about her weight gain just based on how heavy she is getting. But apparently I’m just very weak. She only weighed 10 pounds, 4 ounces and has dropped another 5% in the percentiles. So she was born at 50%, then dropped to 25% and now is at 20%. She’s making up for it in height, though. She’s in the 75% range for that.

Other than the disappointing weigh-in, she’s doing great. Now she just has to sleep off the pain of the shots. Oh, and she didn’t get her synagis today, she gets to go back for that tomorrow.

Doctor visit stats (bear in mind she was 3 weeks behind for her appointment so these are for a baby who is almost 3 months old):

Weight: 10 pounds, 4 ounces
Height: 23.75 inches

Click on thumbnail to see full sized.

File this under Cute Overload, Time Waster, and My God She is Obsessed with Her Baby.