A Day In The Life...

Many of you were wondering if I plan to keep up the blog now that we are home. My answer is yes, as much as I possibly can I will update you on how things are going with Logan. Life is busy, and other then weighing Logan weekly, there won't always be many changes, but I will update you all as best that I can.

So for starters we've been home now for 13 days. It's crazy how fast time has gone! Although with it being Christmas and all, things have been even crazier. When we are home Logan seems to do fairly well with his feeds as long as we feed him and lay him down again right away afterwards. As our dietitian pointed out, this is very weird as usually if you lay a baby on that tummy when its full after a feed, they will vomit. However Logan is different. Brad, our dietitian, says that Logan is no text book baby - he's unlike any baby he's worked with before! He does everything the opposite that the doctors would expect a "normal" baby to do. So Brad doesn't compare Logan to any other baby, he figures that we just have to figure out what works best for Logan, and do it! We know that Logan tends to vomit up more of his feeds when we are busy & not at home, so we are hoping that after the business of Christmas we will hibernate for a little while & keep him in somewhat of a routine at home in hopes of helping him keep the food in & gain weight. When Logan is sitting up watching what's going on or being passed around, it doesn't help his situation. It's best after feeding him to lay him down and let him be. I know this is hard as alot of people want to see him and even hold him, but at this time it's probably best not to transfer him around too much. He's learning to be quite content laying in his bed watching his mobile, or in his swing watching his siblings, and of coarse just laying anywhere sucking his fingers. It's taking a bit to get him out of that habit of being held all the time at the hospital, but we're getting there.

Logan is very slowly gaining weight. He has gained roughly 7 ounces since we left the hospital. Maybe even more! (I say this because our dietitian was unable to weigh him this week due to having the flu, so we won't find out until next week at his next appointment). He's fluctuated up & down as well, and continues to vomit. As long as he still continues to gain, the doctors will be happy, but if he plateau's for too long or loses excessively we will need to take him back to Mac for sure. We are hoping that will not be the case. We've also seen our family pediatrican since being home and he assured me that things look promising as far as Logan's weight gain. He thinks it will take a bit to get Logan to where he needs to be, and when he does he may finally take off in weight. After all Malachi had the same thing and he's perfectly fine now! On average they hope to see 30 grams a day in weight gain and Logan has been doing between 30-35 grams per day, so this is great to see!

Things are still crazy over here, but we love having the kids home & the kids love that daddy has lots of time off this Christmas...ok, mommy loves this too! He will still be off until the middle of next week. However he has been snow clearing for over 24 hours as we speak, so we are hoping that he will be done with that soon! We are looking forward to not being so busy & settling down into somewhat of a routine in the new year. We will be busy will appointments & Logan's needs, but I am sure this will all just become part of a new "normal" life for us. We will be heading back to Mac in early January to re-evaluate Logan's condition and see where to go from here. Until then we will just keep doing what we are doing & hope for the best!

I know people have been wondering too, how often we are really feeding Logan, what's all involved, etc. Sometimes its hard to understand a day in the life of someone else until you have stepped in their shoes for a moment. I thought I would share with you the schedule we've made up for Logan that is posted on our fridge. We have a timer that is also on the fridge (or often clipped to my jean pocket) that is set to automatically go off every 2 hours so we don't get too busy and miss a feed. That timer has controlled my life lately, and I can't wait until the day that I never have hear the thing again! I will post this schedule so that you can pray how to support us, grasp why we might be a little tired and cranky (please forgive me if I am!), or to understand better what's really going on. :)

5:30am - Give medication, (Domperidone & Omeprazole)
5:45am - Boil water, measure out & mix a special high calorie formula
6:00am - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
7:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
8:00am - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
9:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
10:00am - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
11:30am - Give medication, (Domperidone)
11:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
12:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
1:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
2:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
3:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
4:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
5:30pm - Give medication, (Domperidone & Omeprazole)
5:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
6:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
7:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
8:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
9:45pm - Make & warm up bottle
10:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
11:30pm - Give medication, (Domperidone)
11:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
12:00am - Feed 90ml, burp him & lay him down
2:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
3:00am - Feed 90ml, burp him & lay him down
5:15am - Make & warm up next bottle
5:30am - START ALL OVER AGAIN.

It takes me about 30-40 minutes by the time each feed, changing diapers, etc is done - which only leaves about 1hr 15 min inbetween feeds. As you can tell this doesn't give me much time to get alot of other things done, much less SLEEP! Our dietitian has been telling us that we can push Logan to do 110ml every 3 hours, but this ended in an epic FAIL. He vomited more because he couldn't handle the bigger volumes at once. Instead we now try to get him to go every 3 hours at 90ml, but he usually cries for his next bottle after 2 hours because he's so used to that schedule. I feed on demand pretty much now with the max time that he'll go every now & then being 2.5 hours. Soooo, if you ever feel up to staying over for a night to try the night feeds with Logan the door is always open! ;) Nah, in all seriousness I give credit to Adam, who tries his hardest to get out of bed to do the 3am feed! For anyone that knows Adam, it is VERY hard for him to get out of bed, but he's doing surprisingly well when it comes to getting up to help feed Logan.

So, if someone you know, is ever in a situation like this, walking around, looking like a zombie... now you know why! :)