Life in Stinkerville

It's time for a little update on how Annabel is doing lately. Remember, no news is usually good news regarding her general health issues! But she recently saw the pediatrician for her nine month check-up. NINE month check-up! That's good news already, right? The doc was happy to see that she weighs seven pounds and six ounces now...and she sure has grown a lot in length...she's up to 24 inches! Perhaps she's made to be tall like her daddy. We are still feeding her via her g-button and so far it's working out great. We get to do bolus feeds now and that means we don't have to use the very slow machine pump anymore. We get to try rice cereal and fruit now and we are trying that daily. Sometimes she likes it, and sometimes she doesn't care for it at all. But we are excited just to try! We are also reintroducing bottle feeds little by little and we'll see how she does with that.
We saw the cardiologist again and her heart is pretty much the same since our last visit. We take this as good news: her heart hasn't gotten better, but we are thankful it hasn't gotten worse, either. She still takes heart and lung medication. And she is still comfortable and pain free. And she smiles all the time! She hardly ever fusses or cries, and for that we are thankful, too! Each day with her is truly a blessing!
Which brings us to our final update..her therapy. Stinker has such a busy schedule with her nutritional therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc. We do daily exercises and she sees specialists once a week. Little Stinker makes progress in her own special ways, for sure...and she is working hard to accomplish little bitty tasks that most babies can do at a very young age. Right now she is working very hard on trying to hold her head up all by herself. Most Trisomy 18 babies have difficulty doing this for a number of reasons: very low muscle tone, in particular. We engage in tummy time in order to strengthen her neck and back muscles. Today she did great. She lifted her head all by herself a couple of times and she was able to hold it up for maybe five seconds before she got tired, each time! It was just Mommy and Stinker when she did it, and boy was Mommy proud, excited and so thankful all at the same time! Of course we made sure the camera was near before we began so take a look below. Thank you for checking up on Stinker and thank you for the thoughts and prayers. And keep on...don't stop! She is still here for a reason!

This is how Stinker looks before we start tummy time. The usual: just laid back, happy and smiling.


Way to go, Stinker! Hold that head up, girl!


And this is how she looks once we are through with the exercises. Just exhausted, bless her heart. Definitely deserves a nice nap!