Mascara & The Baby Era

Friday, March 13, 2015

Big week next week!

Cooper has his first button change next Tuesday!

Once he has his first change, depending on how comfortable I am with it, I may be able to do them from here on out, so we will see after Tuesday how I feel!

Wednesday, Cooper is finally being seen for feeding therapy!

And it turns out the woman doing the eval is a friend of the family!

YAY!!

FINALLY we will be working with a therapist for Coopers eating issues, and not just using occupational therapy for tactile issues!

We will finally be working on the main issue, not just a secondary problem!

Thursday Is the rehearsal for one of my best friend's wedding!

I am so excited for her and can't wait to stand up with her and support her as she marries her best friend!

Friday is the wedding!

I can't wait for her to experience marriage! She is going to be a gorgeous bride!

Spring Training

Our little family loves to go out and do things, so yesterday we went to a spring training game.

Cooper had a blast in the grass seats, and he basically stole everyones hearts.

He is a little baller!

(See what I did there?)

He snuck into 2 sets of girls pictures in front of him, and they ate it up!

Also, Will Ferrell came to the game to support and raise money for some great causes!

Stand Up to Cancer and Cancer for College

To read about his day, where he played for 10 teams in one day, check out this link here!

You can also search Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #ferrelltakesthefield

If you want to join the cause, click the links below!

To donate to Stand Up to Cancer, click here then click, donate on the right hand side.

To donate to Cancer for College, click here!

Cooper sending snapchats

Stealing hearts on girl group at a time

Baller

Boss

Monday, March 9, 2015

Seriously kid, we have enough Hospital bands already... I promise we don't need any more.

Yesterday Cooper decided he wanted to add to our hospital band collection.

So we wound up in the Emergency Room.

When I was giving Cooper a bolus feed, nothing was going in, and blood was coming out of the tube pushing the formula back.

I called the surgeon, but since it was after hours I was transferred to the after hours line.

I gave our information and explained what the issue was, then we were told we would get a call back from the Surgeon on call, who happened to be Cooper's surgeon.

If we didn't hear back within 15 minutes we were to call back.

She called back in 10 minutes and asked what the issue was.

We told her and she sent us to the Emergency Room.

This was the first time Daddy had to sit in the waiting room of an emergency room.

We have had plenty of practice from Cooper's first 2 months of life, but since Jeff was deployed then, he never went through any of it.

I'm so glad he was there this time.

After waiting for almost 2 hours, we were taken back into our own room.

Someone please explain to me how the rooms for actual patients admitted are very small and shared, but the ED rooms have tons of space and are individual??

Any ways.

We waited for a doctor to come in.

She checked the button to make sure it wasn't dislodged.

From feeling around and moving the button, she said that wasn't the problem.

She then wanted to flush the button with water directly into it with a syringe, then pull back and see if more blood came out and to get gastric fluid to ensure it was positioned right.

That took quite a while for them to get back in the room to do and to find the right syringe to fit the button.

But when they did, it was clear.

There wasn't any blood, and there was gastric fluid.

They don't know what exactly caused the blood.

They said it could have been an irritation in the stomach lining.

But his button was functioning properly now and there wasn't any more blood, so 5 hours of travel and an ER stay later, we were sent home.

Always keeping us on our toes, Little Man.

Formula going in, blood coming out.

The pink is a mixture of the two as they were combining

All the bands from the first hospitalizations, ER visits, surgeries and procedures , and all the cards from the different doctors he was seeing, until Cooper was 2.5 months old.

Adding to the collection since then.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Farm date

On Saturday, We went to a farm with a few parent friends!

Cooper had so much fun!!

We went on a hayride tour, picked our own veggies, and bought some delicious all natural from the farm honey!

Cooper has just learned how to really jump and jump well. So for the entire length of the hand picking area of the farm, this is what he did.

"1,2,3 jump"

"chik'in. bawk"

He seems a little aggressive with his "baaa's"

2nd follow up with Surgeon

This week we also saw the surgeon so she could check out the granulation tissue.

We got there and were called back quickly.

I made sure we had cooper down to his shirt and diaper for an accurate weight check, and gueeeesssss whatttt???

HE GAINED WEIGHT SINCE THE TUBE!!!!

He is now up to the 4th percentile and 23.3 lbs!!!!!!!!!!

It may still be small, but he is growing!

I finally have validation that we are doing the right thing!

Then little man had a Dum Dum.

The allergist said he can have them because they are made in a allergen free facility and Cooper doesn't have issues with Food dye since he has fruit snacks.

I kept telling him to stand up, but in "two year old fashion" he said no.

Allergist

This past week we saw the allergist!

We were there early, and it took over an hour from our appointment time until we actually saw the Doctor.

Do you know how hard it is to keep a 2 year old entertained and happy when it is close to their nap time?

( I planned it so we would be driving home from the appointment during his nap time but because of them being so late, we were a little crabby)

So the doctor decides to have us have blood drawn to see if any of the foods we are thinking of adding to his diet were allergens.

the thing about G tubes is you assume, Hey now that you can feed him all the nutrition he needs, this should be so much easier.

It isn't yet.

We are still adjusting with times during the day to get 4 bottles in.

And now Cooper isn't interested in eating solids because the formula is keeping him full.

So now we have the same struggles as before, but there are amplified.

We also have the problem that when he eats solids he doesn't want to drink a bottle.

and the solids he is eating at this point are not nutritionally equivalent, so that is what we went in to the doctor with.

I asked to have more high caloric foods so when he does eat, we can take on of the bottles out of his intake.

I also wanted things of different textures so we can work with them with our OT.

SO the foods we decided we are going to try if they come back as non allergens from the blood work are:

Avocado

Buckwheat

Eggplant

Turkey meat

Pork

and Coconut

( so we can use oil in other meals to bring the calories up and flour to make more spongy/ cake-y foods for him to eat like banana pancakes)

We will know in a couple of weeks what we can add.

We went and had Coopers blood drawn after the appointment.

Again he was a champ. Even when they couldn't get him to bleed into the tube. He had to sit there for a while and he still was so good!

This process also took over an hour.

At this point he is good and cranky, and tired!

I was starving so we went and had lunch and Cooper had a tube feed.

He is so good with them.

on our way home we were driving on the freeway.

There was a large metal thing in the road that I couldn't see because of the person in front of me. I was changing lanes so when it did become available I didn't see it because I was looking into the next lane and I hit it.

And my tire popped.

then 5 other cars in a matter of a few minutes did the same thing.

WE had to wait for AAA on the side of the highway.

They had to change my tire.

So this added 50 minutes to my day.

Then we had to go get a new tire.

Luckily before Jeff deployed we were considering selling his car and he needed new tires. So we had a warranty on the popped tire, but the rest weren't looking so good. So we had to buy a second tire so the back wheels would be the same 32'.

This also added over an hour to our day.

I swear to you, nothing is ever easy!