Health Updates

We have much to celebrate...

Reflux
This higher dose of Prevacid seems to be working! Elise isn't in pain when she eats (other than if she's gassy at the same time), isn't spitting up as much (an unexpected but welcome change - the medication helps neutralize the acid but doesn't reduce the amount of spit up) and just seems to be feeling a lot better overall. She hasn't spit up a full bottle in a few days!! Her spit up lately seem like "normal" spit up of a small amount of food when she's eaten too much without burping. Praise the Lord!

Weight
We had about three weeks there where Elise only gained 8 ounces. She should be gaining at least that much within two weeks, and the goal is a full pound every two weeks. Well, this past Wednesday she was up to 11 pounds, 3 ounces! That made for 15 ounces in two weeks, right on target. This rebound back to her typical weight gain is most likely due to getting her reflux under control with the new Prevacid dosage. Again, praise the Lord!

Constipation
So this may be too much to share, but I believe I've mentioned that Elise has also had major constipation issues since a few days after she came home. We tried cutting out her vitamins in case she was getting too much iron and tried not giving her the added formula in her bottles of breast milk that we add to increase her calories. Neither worked so we went back to a half dosage of the vitamins and the full amount of formula for calories.

Prune juice was helping a bit with the constipation but was decreasing the amount of milk she ate since the prune juice is obviously voluminous. So we've been giving her Miralax, which simply dissolves in her milk without decreasing her milk intake. That has been helping. I would skip a day or two here and there to see if she might go on her own.

Three weeks ago we started giving her the Similac version (NeoSure) of formula in breast milk rather than the Enfamil version (Enfacare) because it was what the pediatrician had in stock, and she's been trying to keep us from having to actually buy the formula ourselves. Lo and behold, a few days after switching formulas, Ellie started pooping on her own! She even had a couple of days where she pooped twice! I think it was related to this switch in formulas. That said, she's now having troubles again. But her gas has come back and has stayed, which is something she hadn't had since being constipated. All that to say, the problem's not fully fixed, but I think she's getting better in that area. You wouldn't believe how exstatic Kit and I were when she pooped five times in three days...I even called him at work to tell him about the fifth time.

Blood Pressure
On Monday, we visited the pediatric nephrologist (kidney doctor) to have Elise's blood pressure checked. It was 84/54 - higher than the 76/50 she had last time. Despite the slight increase, the doctor still felt that she was doing well on her lower dosage of blood pressure medicine and felt comfortable lowering the dosage again. She tends to be wiggly while he takes her BP and was very wiggly this time, which accounts for some of the highness. We follow up with him again in a month to see how it's doing, but she may be off that medication entirely within a couple of months!

-------

So there you have it! I have many other posts to write. One has been written and awaiting pictures since Sunday...need to get those off the camera soon. Because of that, this post is pictureless.

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten the Hearts - Part 2 post. It's just one of those posts that's near to my own heart (hence the title) and can only be written within the right moments - moments that haven't returned at a time when I could write since I began writing the post last week.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support!