She's fat and happy :)

Look who I saw today...

...notice anything different??? :)

I walked in Summer's room to find her in a swing...she spotted me and burst out in smiles...grinning from ear to ear. I guess she missed me too :) I kissed her cute little tape free cheek and she smiled again...they turned her oxygen off yesterday around 3:30 PM and she has been off ever since...she must be so happy not to have the oxygen blowing up her nose anymore! I am just a LITTLE excited about this milestone myself...woo hoooooo!
At this point they had turned Summer's food off again yesterday to give her bowells a rest. She was still stooling a lot and had traces a blood in it. She has been having this for the last few weeks and we didn't know why until now. All signs are pointing to an allergic reaction to breast milk. Is that possible? We asked the same question...apparently it happens. It isn't actually the breast milk itself, but the whole cow's milk protein that is transferred through the breast milk to the baby. Most of the time, the mother's body will break this protein down, but sometimes it is transferred directly without any break down or processing. This is a very harsh protein for some kids to process, so they have an allergic reaction like diarea and blood in the stool. It takes several months for it to build up to this point, but once detected can be taken care of. However, though in a baby with a normal functioning gut, this can be taken care of by reducing the dairy intake of the mother, Summer's gut is a little trickier. There would be no way for me to use the milk stored to feed her through her NG tube and I definitely don't have the ability to reproduce the volume I had a few months ago. I have moooved on, ha ha...The docs feel she benefited greatly for the past few months and was able to heal well while taking it, but now feel the formula is to be her sole diet. Though this may seem like a dissapointment, it is actually a huge relief to me. Just knowing that stupid breast pump was still in my house, caused stress in my life. I have been so happy to provide what I could for Summer, but the lack of sleep and complication from the whole process will definitely NOT be missed :) So, Tom says we need to start our own home dairy or start using it in our cooking.....homemade cheese anyone? I hope you haven't restricted yourself to fat free! EWE...

Summer has been taking 10 ML's an hour of formula for most of the day and doing well so far....maybe she will be home sooner than we think! I will spend the day with her tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed....maybe I could sneak her out in my backpack...no big oxygen tank to haul and she still doesn't weigh much, haha.