UPDATES 3-25-2008

Thank you for visiting our site and welcome to our weekly update on Lauren.

Lauren continues to move faster and faster every day. She crawls very quickly while trying to keep up with us around the house. I wouldn't be surprised if she started walking just to try to keep up with her sister who never stops moving. The good news is that Lauren weighed 15 pounds, 7 ounces this morning, which is her highest recorded weight yet!

On the feeding side, her g tube feeding schedule is hard to keep up with and her severe reflux has not improved. She wants to keep crawling and exploring most of the day and hates being tied to the feeding pump all of the time. This is a good problem to have in many ways, since many children who need to be fed like that are not able to move around at all. We are trying something new now. In the past, she needed to be fed continuously for 8-10 hours during the day and most of the night. The daily feeding goal was pretty much impossible to meet given her therapy sessions, doctor's visits and her sister's preschool schedule. We are now attempting to give her a feeding every hour (during the day when she is awake) that takes 30 minutes instead of an hour to deliver. Then, she can move around freely and not be tethered to the feeding pump for a good portion of the day. Over time, we will shorten the feeding time as her stomach expands to be able to handle it. That is our hope, at least.

We had an uneventful week as far as doctor's visits last week, but this week we have two big appointments for Lauren at Children's. First, we are going to have her g tube site looked at by a pediatric surgeon, since it is time for the g tube to be swapped out and the keloids have gotten very large underneath it. Then, we are following up with Lauren's neurosurgeon, Dr. Tomita, to find out the results of her brain and spinal MRIs. We are really hoping for good news.

Lauren gave us a scare on Easter morning. She decided to start climbing the stairs and made it all the way to the top step before we caught her. Luckily, she called out "momma" to get our attention. Katelyn helped me track her down. Katelyn saw her first and I ran up to get her as fast as I could. Lauren seemed very pleased with herself and was not concerned about the situation in the least. We are now keeping the gates closed at the bottom and the top of the stairs.

Have a great week!