That Darn Heartburn

Sitting up in her Boppy

That darn reflux and heartburn are the evil of all evils.  Kalista can contribute her baby acne and fits of fury to the severe reflux she gets after eating.  With "O" babies, this is a very common condition because of how weirdly placed their organs are in their abdomen and the loose sphincter muscle at the top of their stomach.  Last night she woke up crying in what looked like some intense pain and her face started sweating. We placed Kalista upright in her Boppy thinking that it might be reflux related and that would allow the stomach acid to move downwards due to gravity.   We think it worked because she settled down and looked more comfortable within minutes.  She eventually fell asleep in her Boppy at 1:00 am.  (*yawn*)

I Love My Toys

We had our occupational therapy session this morning.  Kalista worked on arm stretches and positional changes to get used to different views of the world.  We also played with our mirror and made funny faces.  Kalista loves looking at her pretty self.

The best part of the session is playtime with her rings.  She loves those things and holds on to them very well.  She has amazing grip!

Kalista playing with Dad

Dad trying to get the rings back in her hands

She's not letting go of her rings

Kalista with her occupational therapist

She loves checking herself out in the mirror

No News Is Good News

Everything is status quo with Kalista.  She is now a whopping 4.05 kg (about 8.91 lbs).

We have added a few new things to the blog.  Since we started this blog after all the drama from Kalista's first few weeks of life, we made a photo montage of the moments you all missed.  Trust us...maybe you wanted to miss those moments.

Visit the album (Birth- 2 months) at the side of the blog and away you go down memory lane!

Roar At the Lion

Kalista is at it again with her crib toy!  Here is how it all plays out:

Kalista is quietly looking at her crib toy and listening to the music

She tries to give fist pumps to the polar bears

She gives the dolphin a thumbs up

She finishes off with a roar to the lion 

(which you can barely see on the far right of her toy)

Happy July 4th!

Oh yes...it is that time of year again when folks break out the illegal fireworks and kids run around with sparklers in the night.  We are quiet folks and are enjoying a nice little BBQ at home.  For being sunny San Diego, it was definitely not sunny today. It felt more like Bay Area weather in the winter - overcast and gloomy.

We went to visit Kalista in the early afternoon and plan to go back later this evening.

Kalista enjoys her soothing crib toy

Kalista is now up to 70 mL full feeds through the NG tube.  Her next swallow study is going to be in two weeks or so to see how she does when she swallows fluids.  Cross our fingers, hopefully she can swallow both thin fluids and thicker nectar-like fluids.  If you can recall...we didn't do so well on the first round of testing last month and found out she was a silent aspirator..hence the NG tube for feeding.

Kalista has been sleeping and resting quite a bit when we visit.  Her "waking up" routine is pretty cute with her stretches and face rubbing.

Kalista waking up from her beauty sleep

Update on Jen:  She went to her primary care doctor on Friday since Kalista has the yeasty beasties (thrush) and found out that she is clear and not affected.  Yahoo!  Good job mama! So we can continue our "dry" breast feeding sessions (meaning Jen expresses milk with the breast pump first and then has Kalista go to the boob).  Kalista has been doing very well with latching on and sometimes seems eager to get the job done with our sessions.

Update on the dogs:  Yes...we have two dogs, Joey and Bella and they are doing well.  Joey is a Shiba Inu and Bella is a chihuahua-pug mix.  Today is Joey's 12th birthday.  He's an oldie but goodie.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOEY!!!!

Joey enjoying his peanut butter ice cream

We feel bad sometimes since the dogs don't get to go with us to visit Kalista and they don't get out as often as before since we are away for most of the day. We're glad they have each other to play with though. Their highlight of the day is when we bring Kalista's blankets and items home to be washed, we make sure they sniff them. Joey and Bella are getting to know her scent better every day.  Joey goes to town when he sniffs and digs his nose in there.  Bella, on the other hand, likes to lick everything we hold in front of her face. We heard it is the best way to introduce a new baby into the house and make the transition of adding another member to the pack a lot easier.

Hope everyone has a great July 4th!  Have fun and be safe out there!

It's Grandpa's Birthday!

Happy Birthday Grandpa David (Yeh-Yeh)!!!

We wish we could be up in the Bay Area to celebrate grandpa's birthday.  We will send birthday wishes from a far instead.

 Birthday Wishes

Kalista is doing well and is just hanging out. It's one of those resting days.

Here is a typical day's agenda:
Her surgeon, Dr. Saenz, stopped by this morning to change the dressing around Mr. Bumpy and said that the area is healing up very well. Since he is happy with the direction we are heading, we just wait until more skin grows.

She got a bath after playing with her occupational therapist early this afternoon...then fell asleep.

Asleep after a long play session

We typically end the day with a reading session before bedtime.

Quality reading time with papa

Night night everyone!

If It's Not One Thing....It's Another

Oh my..what a life!

She's not sticking out her tongue in this picture above, but when she does it looks like a white cloudy mess.  We thought it was a milk stain at first, but when it was swabbed with a Q-tip it didn't budge.  Gross!!!  So this was a good indicator that she has thrush.


For those who don't know, thrush is an overgrowing of yeast in her mouth, similar to a yeast infection, ladies. Ewww!!  It was most likely caused by a bout of antibiotics she had to take a few weeks ago and probably the cause of her crazy diaper rash a few weeks back as well.  Because Jen has been working on dry breastfeeding with Kalista, it means she has to get checked out too and make sure she is not carrying this crazy yeast.  Oh my, if it's not one thing, it's another.

Kalista has to take a medication called Nystatin to treat the thrush.  It is a lovely yellow liquid that smells like Robitussin cough syrup (original flavor, not grape) and gets swabbed every six hours over her gums, cheeks and tongue. It doesn't taste good, from what we hear, but Kalista doesn't seem to mind.

 Kalista is tipping the scales.

Because we were there and had a few extra hands, the nurse decided to put us to work and perform Kalista's daily weighing.  She is now up to 8 and a half pounds.  Yahoo!!!  They continue to bump up her feeding amounts and she just went from 65mL to 67mL in the last week. As of today, she is at 68mL.  I know....so technical huh? Food is food.


 
We decided to take advantage of her heavy deep sleep and give her a manicure.  She didn't have a clue what we did, but wanted to show everyone what a great job her parents did.


No folks...we are not teaching her gang signs! She learned them on her own from the other babies.  Such bad influences!

Dad wanted to show off his beautifully manicured nails as well.  How pretty!!!





 

We just got updated that our friends Melissa and Donny just had a baby boy.  (If you two are reading this...Congratulations!!!)  Could this be Kalista's future boyfriend??? Hmmmm...

I'm Not Fat!?!??!

Good morning everyone!! 

It was a pleasant surprise to find out that our pediatrician, Dr. Berent, came by yesterday morning to visit and see how Kalista was doing.  His office is close by, but it is a bit of a trek from his office to Rady Children's Hospital by foot.  Did you know that finding a pediatrician is actually a pretty tough job in itself?  Jen interviewed five or so different doctors before Kalista was born and made the final decision that this was the man to take care of her.  We hope he doesn't intimidate her too much since he is a tall guy at a whopping six foot, four inches...but babies don't know any better, right?

Kalista's personality is starting to blossom.  She is a very observant gal and likes to be in everyone's business.  She peers at the other kids or more like kid now (just one neighbor) to see what they are doing.  Kalista also keeps track of all the nurses to see what they are up to around the room.

This is her new area in the NICU Pod C.

Kalista was a bit of a naughty girl two nights ago and took out her NG tube from her nose.  Her little fingers are so mischievous sometimes and her strength in her arms are like gladiator's. When the two combine...we have incidents like this.  No worries because the nurses are great at replacing them.  Kalista did not like that and cried as they put in a new one.  Poor thing! Now, we are up and running again.

So the latest medical news about Kalista is that she is not gaining enough weight as they would like.  Did you know that babies are supposed to gain about 0.3 grams a day?  Kalista weighed 6 lbs, 10.8 oz when she was born and now she is 8 lbs, 3 oz. How fast is everyone else's babies growing?

She gets her daily dose of vitamins in addition to her other medications (Reglan and Prilosec) for her reflux to keep the food from giving her "heartburn" and (Actigall) for her digestion. The only side effect of Reglan is that it is a true laxative.  This hinders the process of food absorption since it flies right through her intestines and out of her bottom faster than it should.  The doctors decided to beef up her calorie content and help slow things down by adding in a bit of formula and some rice cereal to the breastmilk...YUM-O!  We hope this will thicken things up and help her retain the food better.  She's not fattening up like a butterball turkey...but she is a little chubs and that's what we like.

So we end this morning with a little baby snooze after a good meal.

We're Moving On Up

Kalista's OLD bed

 Kalista's NEW bed

She graduated from her isolette incubating bed to a crib style bed (as seen above). Awesome!!! This all means that we are heading closer towards "Operation Homecoming".

Kalista has also shown that she is a "big" girl now and moved into the NICU's Pod C.  This is where the stable babies go to grow and recover.  We were in Pod A originally, which is the main NICU area.  Bye Bye Pod A!!!

Pod C is equivalent to a penthouse in baby world.  She has gone from a busy, noisy baby city with 29 or so neighbors to serene, spacious baby suburb with about 7 neighbors.  Big difference!!  She also has a window to gaze out of from time to time.  Not the best view of anything, but it is an upgrade.

 

Her hearing test from last night came back and she PASSED. It amazes me how they can test a person so small and get accurate results or at least confident ones. 

Oh...the simple things in life that makes us so very happy!!

From this look on Kalista's face...we're not sure if she was happy with the move.

Oh wait...she looks much more happy with the move since her toys and pacifier came with her.

We settled in well to our new home and we even got in some good bonding and snuggle time.

Mom got to hold and snuggle with her.

Dad got to hold and snuggle with her.

We all got to snuggle with her.

(Too bad she wasn't looking at the camera)

Mr. Bumpy is what we will call her "O".  He is healing up nicely under all that gauze they wrap so nicely around him.  We had to do a little reduction surgery on the blue foam ring that goes around Mr. Bumpy today, since it was gigantic.  Imagine a huge foam ring that surrounded your belly button and the farthest edge of the ring went up to your collarbone. Every time we changed Kalista's diaper, her legs would hit the bottom of the blue foam and the top part of the foam would sock her in the face.  She looked so stunned every time it hit her.  Poor baby!!!

This is the new and improved blue foam ring.

Same 'ol Same 'ol

Boy...where are these days going?  I can't believe how I've been slacking at the blog.  My apologies!

Kalista is holding up her end of the bargain by being a saint of a patient.  All the doctors are pleased with the progress of the "O" healing.  New granulation tissue is growing and covering the area slowly each day.  She has not resumed bottle feeding for the time being because of the risk of aspirating fluid into her lungs.  The doctors are a little concerned that she has not been gaining appropriate weight.  I think she's a little chubkins, but who are we to judge.  They are going to supplement her milk feedings with a calorie buffer.  So instead of her getting 20 calories, she will be getting 22 calories.  She has gained a little over one pound since she started breastmilk two weeks ago.  I would say a pound in two weeks is pretty good.

She is also scheduled for a hearing test this evening as a regular check-up for the post-one month old exam.  Her most recent lab tests all came back normal.  Overall we are just waiting for her "O" to grow more skin and pray that nothing changes, since we are in a good spot at this moment in time.