Dr. Appt. Update/Prayer Requests

Well Bruce is up to 14 lbs. 9 oz. and almost 25 inches. The weight part is crazy, but what seems even crazier to me is that in 8 weeks he's grown 4 inches! I mean think about if one of us grew 4 inches in 8 weeks...it's really amazing to me how all this works...the whole baby thing that is!

On the prayer request list goes a few things though. He still has to be on his monitor. I was really hoping we'd go in today and he'd say we could be done with it, but in actuality he said Bruce would probably have it for at least another 2-4 months! Grrr...he has to go an entire month without setting it off at all. When he's setting it off now, it's just a blip and by the time you get there it's stopped. Well, we can't even have any blips... The monitor itself is not that bad and it sure as heck beats Bruce having had to stay in the NICU longer, but it is a big old pain in the butt! It means he has to stay in whatever part of the house he's at...it's not terribly fun to lug it all around and set it up every time I move him so he stays in whatever part of the house I set him up in every morning.

Next prayer request. He apparently always lays on one side and so his head has started flattening and his ears are becoming "off center" (for lack of a better word) from each other. They are currently about a centimeter off from each other, but if they get an inch off we get to do the whole cranial band thing...meaning he'd wear his X-men helmet for 23 hours a day for a specified period. For now, we're supposed to try and make sure he's always looking over his left shoulder when he's lying down to prevent further flattening and see how it goes.

Final prayer request. Bruce is right on cue for his growth, but developmentally he's a little behind. They had warned us this might happen since he was early, and in most things he's right on. He holds his head up well, he can push himself up, he's getting close to being able to roll over, BUT he's still not smiling! He has the occasional flickering smile, but he's definitely not doing the whole "oh look, there's my mom, I love her so I'm going to smile at her." Doctor says he needs to start doing it in the next three weeks or come back in so we can look into other things. Never thought my child would be behind in his smiling!

Bruce also had five shots today which was not fun. I started crying...that horrible "I'm in pain" cry was a little too much for me. And finally, to round out my Debbie Downer post, my office called yesterday and told me that I needed to come back to work yesterday. So I called them back and said, no I don't I'm taking 10 weeks and they said, fine, then take 10 weeks, but this week and next week will either be unpaid, or I have to take vacation time. Uhhh, that's not how they had explained it to me. Of course I got it in writing and of course that email is gone. Office email gets deleted every 30 days and since I got it the day before I went into the hospital I forgot to save it...so I got to spend a couple of hours on and off on the phone only to be told that I have to burn vacation/sick leave to stay home. It's been a frustrating/stressful couple of days. Debbie Downer signing off.