Mark's teacher selected him to be "Student of the Month"!! The character trait they learned about this month was love. I thought it was appropriate for her to choose him this month because he really is such a loving little guy! He is very excited and he will be recognized at chapel this Wednesday. This month they learned about American History and how our country came to be. His class led chapel all month, and they put on a short play which was so cute to watch. He is doing very well in school, and he also participated in the art contest. Above is a picture of his art, and below he is with his class during the play. You can see him sitting in the front, smiling at the camera!
Gantt is doing very well! He is growing and growing and growing! He is in the 75th percentile for his age for height, and that's not counting being born 2 months early! When he is standing, he comes up several inches above my knee. It is incredible. He's crawling now and pulling up - getting around very well. He has recovered from his ear infection and illness he had in January, and doing much better. He still goes every month to get his Synagis shot, the shot that ouhelps keep him from getting RSV, which is an extremely serious illness for preemies. He's a beautiful baby and such a joy to have in our family!!
Brett is doing well right now. He gets his monthly Synagis shots as well. He is cutting about 5 teeth simultaneously, which is causing him to be unable to sleep for very long periods of time, but other than that, he's still his happy self. He is enjoying physical activity more and more, and he has a physical therapy session once a week. He also gets developmental therapy once a week. In March we are going to add feeding therapy at my request. Since he is tube fed, he doesn't drink anything right now. He does eat baby food, and also takes his enzymes every 3 hours with some baby food, but it has become evident to me that Gantt's feeding skills have far surpassed Brett's. This is why I believe Brett would benefit from some feeding therapy. I don't want him to get too far behind, especially since eating is such a fundamental and crucial skill.
After our regular 3 week run of IV antibiotics, we went to clinic and Brett's sats were still low. His lungs were in fairly good shape, though, so the docs decided to leave him on antibiotics for another week (not what I wanted to hear!) and add an oral steroid and do a few extra doses of his inhaled steroid to see if it made any difference. That Saturday night, Brett's breathing became so labored that I believed the doctors ought to see him. I thought he needed oxygen because I thought with his work of breathing there was no way his sats were going to be above 90. Rob took him over to UNC and his sats proved to be over 90 indeed - he stayed around 95 during the time he was at UNC. They said we did make the right decision by bringing him in based on how he looked and the limited information we had at home to know how well his lungs were working. Rob just stayed one night with Brett then was able to come home on Sunday afternoon. We hate to spend the night in the hospital, but a few positive things came out of it. First, they did a chest x-ray (which is customary for us in the ER) and it showed that the lungs were clearer than they were even the week before, which meant the antibiotic treatment was effective. Second, that night proved that a pulse oximeter for home use would be extremely helpful! The doctors talked with the insurance company and got the pulse oximeter approved, so now I have one at home, and when in doubt I am able to spot check the sats. This way I have more information and can know whether or not I need to bring him to the hospital or if it can wait. Also, I can always talk to the pulomonolgist on-call about what to do any given night. They are all familiar with Brett and his situation, history and condition. We love them at UNC! Pretty soon I am going to be getting a machine that we will keep on him constantly for 3-5 days and it will collect his oxygen saturation data. Our doctor feels like he wants to have more information on what is going on with the sats and this is one tool we have to get a more complete picture of what is going on in Brett's body. We finished our extra week of antibiotics, which meant he had been on them for a total of 4 consecutive weeks. All I can say is how grateful we are for the central line Brett has so that we can do the IV therapies at home!! There are more details on Brett, but that will have to wait for another post. Thanks for reading!!
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