A Shower

On Saturday our friend Jolene, along with other friends from church threw a shower for us. We brought Abby for the first little bit to show her off. We had gals there from church, MOPS and Jolene's mom and sister. It was fun to share our little sweetie with people who have been praying for her and us through all of this. In addition to the fun gifts we also received quite a few walmart and target gift cards. Those will come in very handy when we have to start buying Abby's formula. She has a specific type for low birth weight babies, so I can't just pick up the cheapest stuff.


The pictures I'm downloading are of Abby sitting in her new bumbo chair. She loves to sit up on my lap and with this little seat she can sit up on her own. It was one of her gifts, and there is also a tray for when she has a little more hand coordination. Hopefully she'll like that part too. The other photo is the play mat that she also received at the shower.


So tonight would be a good time to start writing some thank you notes. I'm behind from some other gifts we've already received. I've tried pretty hard to keep up with thank yous, but every now and then I get behind. During this whole experience we've received quite a few surprises in the mail. While she was still in the hospital the Visa and gas cards were really helpful with all of the extra miles I was driving-70 round trip. It's so nice to have that behind me. We've been blessed by many wonderful people, some we don't even know. I'm sure we'll be able to pass on the generosity some time in the future to other families in crisis.

Pediatrician Appointments

Abby's pediatrician is named Jennifer Gilsoul. She was recommended by one of the neonatologists down at the U. The office is only about 5-10 minutes away from home. She's been great so far. Abby weighed in at 12 lbs 3 oz a week ago Tuesday when we took her in. This wasn't a regularly scheduled appt. She hadn't been eating well for the past week. Thankfully she was still gaining more than an ounce a day, but something is going on. She's been gradually eating better, but today she's off again. We'll see what kind of weight gain she's been having at her next appt.

Even though she was born at 1 lb 6 oz they still want her to get onto the chart that other 7 month babies are on. She only needs to get in the 5th percentile, but still, this seems like a crazy goal. Joshua, who was full term and born at 6 lbs 4 oz was in the 5th percentile or not even on the chart at times his entire first year. She's actually only 1 1/2 lbs behind at this point, but we'll see how long it takes to get her there.


A couple of days have passed since I started this post, and we had our appt. this morning. Abby only put on a few ounces, but otherwise seems fine. She's still not eating great. I only have 3 more bags of breastmilk out in the freezer. Boohoo! Then it's fulltime formula for the little girl. We'll see how she does with that. She's now 23 inches long and 12 lbs 6 ounces. Her diaper was actually dry this time so it's probably a more accurate weight than the last few. She'll go back again in another 3-4 weeks for a weight check.

Dr. Appointments

Since Abby came home last month we've been back down to PCMC 3xs to see specialists. We've seen the cardiologist, opthamologist and pulmonologist. She's also been to the pediatrician 3xs with another visit coming up on Monday.

The cardiologist appt. was to address her mild case of pulmonary hypertension. He felt she would be better served seeing a pulmonologist. The pulmonologist prescribed a Flovent inhaler for her 2x/day. Hopefully this will help her get off of the oxygen a little earlier. It is also supposed to give her an extra layer of protection incase she's exposed to a virus again. We're hoping she'll be off oxygen by Christmas. It will be amazing to not have her attached to anything.


The opthamologist cleared her of all signs of ROP (retinopathy of prematurity). She'll see him again, along with many other specialists, when she has her neonatal follow up in mid-August. This will be up in Ogden and she will probably have 3 or 4 appt. over the next few years. They will do a complete overview, then make any recommendations for further treatments.

A Little Overview

So, it's been forever since I've posted any updates on Abby. It's been pretty crazy around here, but seems to be settling down. A little recap here: Abby came home from the UMC NBICU on Saturday, May 3rd on oxygen support. She was using between 1/2 and 1/4 liter of pressure. She was doing well until she picked up Joshua's cold. On Wednesday, May 14th she was admitted to Primary Children's Medical Center with an upper respiratory tract infection called Human Metapneumovirus. PCMC is right next door to UMC, so it was back down to Salt Lake we went. I had taken her into the pediatrician that afternoon and after listening to her and doing an xray it was decided that she needed to be admitted. It's 35 miles away and they didn't want to risk her quickly deteriorating while in the car with me stuck in traffic, so we took the ambulance down.

While there she was taken to the PICU (pediatric ICU) for a week. She was put back on the high flow machine at 8 liters and 80% oxygen. This was incredibly high, but she seemed stable so they didn't want to cause more damage to her lungs by reintubating her or putting her on cpap. She was then taken back to the infant unit for another week as she slowly reduced her oxygen needs. She came home on Friday, May 30th at .4 Liters of flow. While in the hospital she was given multiple i.v.s, poked by so many needles to draw blood, they tried twice to no avail to put in a catheter to run a urine culture. It was really rough seeing her put through all of this. She definitely was unhappy with all of these tests. Oh, and the suctioning! They would actually put a vacuum tube down her nose several inches to do what is called deep suction. This was done repeatedly, especially for the first several days. No wonder she had trouble breathing. In addition to her congested lungs this had to have swollen her nasal passages. I felt so sorry for her. We don't want this to happen again if we can avoid it. Therefore, she's pretty much housebound for the next year.

The Beginning

I've decided to set up this blog to record our experiences and feelings as Abby grows and develops. Our church set up an initial webpage for us, but now that she's home it's time to set up our own personal blog. Hopefully we can keep you updated on the entire family and include more photos too.

What I'll probably do is write shorter posts with specific titles, perhaps several in a day, rather than write one long, drawn out post. So this is the end of this one.