Weight Checks

After a fantastic and crazy long vacation, we can now start back to school on Monday! More on our trip a little later. The picture is my sweet baby enjoying her first trip to the beach. Looks like she loved it, doesn't it??

As par for our course these days, our vacation both began and ended with doctor appointments. Last Tuesday brought a visit with our favorite cardiologist. Caroline was up to 8 pounds 9 ounces. I was ready to celebrate until Dr. Romp came in and burst my balloon. "Well.........she's not gaining weight as quickly as I'd like..." were the first words that he said. Bummer. He must not have seen the party that I was throwing in my head. I am now pumping full-time and giving Caroline a bottle of breast milk to which I add formula. It bumps the calories up to 24 per ounce. Did you know that all the work that goes into breast feeding and it's only 20 measly little calories per ounce??? Who knew?? Anyway, we return to the cardiologist in about 3 weeks and at that point it looks like he'll schedule the surgery. We're now probably looking at surgery during the first half of September.

So here is my new list of prayer requests...

1. That Caroline would take to bottle feeding quickly and that feeding time would be both effective and efficient. It really took us 6 weeks to really "get" breastfeeding down well. I can now nurse Caroline just as easily as I did the other 3 girls. Now that we've finally mastered that, we're switching programs on her. It now takes me anywhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour to feed her 3 ounces from a bottle. After I'm done, I still have to pump and then turn around and repeat the process every 3 hours. It's really not a bad deal if you have nothing else to do... I'm nervous about what this looks like once Scott goes back to work (another story) and the craziness of school begins again.

2. Well, I guess that's it. :) I had thought I'd have others, but putting weight on Miss Caroline has now taken priority over everything else. We'll stick to that.

We go back for another weight check with the pediatrician next Thursday. I'm hoping for 10 pounds. :)