November Update

The past 9 months since our last update have been so full of changes every which way that it seems like it's been more than a year. It's been exhausting!
What's been going on with Lily?

Easter

She's doing a bit better with being on her tummy and seems to like looking at herself in the mirror while laying on the Boppy. She finds it uncomfortable to be directly on the floor because of her g-tube, but the padding of the Boppy or her wedge pillow make it bearable for a few minutes at a time. Still working on getting her to put weight on her arms to prop or push herself up. She has to work pretty hard to get and keep her head up. And since we're speaking of it, her head has grown a centimeter! We take what we can get!

Selfie with Biggest Brother

We have been adjusting her seizure medications like it's going out of style. We dropped one while adding another, and then started to add another, but stopped, while adding one that we only use if she's had too many seizures in a day and don't seem to be slowing down, and then adding back the one we stopped while decreasing another. Got all that? And it's not really working. There is one medication that seems to be doing the most good work, the one we started in May. But...she's still having seizures. Sleep seems to be a pretty big factor in it all and so we've adjusted our lives a little bit to make sure she gets the naps she needs.

Just too tired!

Speaking of sleep, in May, when we started the new medicine and dropped the old (which we've since started again, in a very low low dose), Lily's sleep pattern changed dramatically. She used to fall asleep with us rocking in a chair, but all of a sudden she didn't want to. She wasn't tolerating her last feeding (usually around 8 or 9) and would fuss and cry and then most of it would come back up. If you're friends with us on Facebook you might remember that we were having a terrible time trying to figure out what was wrong with Lily. She would wake up and then a half hour later be screaming screaming screaming...which wasn't something that she had done in a long time. We had no idea what was wrong and neither did any of the doctors. And then one day, I just decided that as soon as she started to fuss, (and hopefully before the real screaming started), I'd bring her back to bed, even if she'd only been up 10 minutes. Holy moly. Little lady was just so tired. So very, very tired. After a week of doing this, and her getting more sleep, she was so much more content...and seemed to trust us again. It seems like such a fail to have not seen that this was the problem, but she didn't always scream when she was tired. Sometimes she was just quiet and tired. But the other times....whew. Since we've figured it out, life has been so much better for all of us. She's started to go to bed earlier, around 8, when it used to be 11 or later. She's sleeping great at night and is pretty good about falling asleep by herself, though I enjoy cuddling and having a snuggle for a few minutes with her.
Because of her going to sleep earlier, she's missing her last feeding. There have been a few times when I've tried to give it to her, but she clearly doesn't want it and so we're just going with what she says. She hasn't lost any weight, but she hasn't gained, either. We're going to be starting to transition to a real food blended diet and I am hoping that that will enable us to get her the calories and goodness that she needs.

With Littlest Big Brother

There are some other things that have been going on and coming up but we'll save those for later...for now, we're just thinking about how soon Lily's birthday is! 

Passing out candy on Halloween