Chloe's journey

Feeding Chloe Update  I just wanted to post an update on feeding chloe.  Ever since her heart surgery, she has been eating an entire jar of baby food each sitting!! We feed her 1-2 times a day right now. She's finishing that jar in 20 minutes or less with no puking or choking! This is such an improvement and it gives me hope especially when we resume feeding therapy. As for taking a bottle, no progress but she's 8 months old so I'm not too worried. We will be working with a sippy cup soon though .   Another update is the tube feedings. Before the surgery we we're slowly making our way to bolus feeds but we did put the compressions on hold just in case she didn't tolerate it.  3 days ago I compressed her feeds again and she's tolerating it beautifully .Now she's at a higher rate and gets 6 hours off the tube instead of 4! My plan is to take her off the tube 3 times a day for 2 hours. Before connecting her back to the tube I will first feed her by mouth. If...

Feeding Chloe  As you know, Chloe is primarily tube-fed. We do feed her by mouth after her hours off the tube, so twice a day for now . Chloe's goal set by her feeding therapist is currently for her to eat 15 MLs of baby food and 5 MLs of milk per feeding session. She enjoys baby food more than the milk. Actually she does not understand that she has to suck the bottle, instead she bites it or just plays with it. The way things are, I am not totally confident that she will ever take a bottle enough to get off the tube feeds any time soon. As long as she is at least progressing further with the baby food we are happy because by the time she is able to eat enough by mouth to sustain herself and not need the tube, she will probably be too old for a bottle anyways. Today, Chloe really surprised us! Not only did she meet her goal for the baby food, she ate way more than she ever ate. She actually ate an entire jar of baby food!! Yay Chloe!! I think the reason she ate so much this ti...

Before vs. After Baby Glasses Even just 1 day after getting Chloe glasses, I can see a huge change! Chloe has a very strong prescription-shes extremely far sighted.  Before the glasses, we could never hang toys or a mobile above her, she would blink a lot and start crying. We couldn't get super close to her face or kiss her nose without her blinking a lot either. I would hold the books as far away as possible while reading to her and still she wasn't focused. If we held her on our lap and had her face us, Chloe wouldn't even look at us because we were too close. When we went for walks she got crazy excited about trees because they are so high up she could actually see them! You get the idea.    Today I tried something new....hanging toys above her when she was playing on her mat. For the first time ever, she didn't blink fast or cry! You can see that she's actually focused on the toy hanging and really examining it!   ...