Latest Developments and the Anderson Newspaper!

Last week on Monday we went to the pediatrician for the boys' two month checks. At that time, Chris weighed 7 lb 2 oz, Daniel 7 lb 9 oz, and Nathan 7 lb 10 oz. The doctor decided to get read outs of the boys monitors, so Wednesday the monitor company came by and swapped our machines out. Meanwhile as the week progressed, Nathan seemed to be developing a worsening spit up, even to the extent of losing half his meal 20 minutes later a few times. Also, several times on Tuesday (of course, after the check up) Nathan set off his apnea monitor, which was highly unusual for him. We called the pediatrician about that, and they said that they would look into it on the monitor reports. We concluded that since there were no obvious signs of problems, it was not necessary to bring Nathan in immediately to be seen. Well, after doing some research online, Jeff began to wonder if Nathan had reflux. We began to treat it as such, holding him fairly still after feeding and not laying him down immediately. His symptoms did improve somewhat. Monday morning we got our call back from the pediatrician. He said all three boys showed signs of reflux, and are going on Prevacid. We will see how that goes. If this works, it may help to eliminate the still occasional bradycardia, and hopefully Nathan's recent start up of occasional apnea alarms as well. That will be a huge step toward going off the monitors. We are incredibly glad to have the monitors, as the apnea/bradycardia spells have not completely stopped on their own, and they have helped the pediatrician to identify the reflux.

Also, at the doctor's appointment we got the go ahead to start playing with the boys' schedule, and try to let them sleep longer at night. I'm a great fan of BabyWise (although like anything, you have to be flexible with it). For anyone who's not familiar with the book, the idea is you compress more feeding times into the day in an effort to let the baby sleep longer at night. Last week we did our own "disaster" cross between that and a four hour round the clock schedule. After a week, we started a new daytime 3 to 3 1/2 hour schedule, and we feed the boys as they demand at night (which is generally one time between 11 pm and 7 am.

Saturday, we had a visit from Uncle Lance and Aunt Julie, along with Grandpa and Grandma. This was Lance and Julie's first opportunity to see the boys. We all had a great time visiting together. Julie was in town for her (and my) 10 year reunion from BJU. On that note, we had our first real babysitter on Friday night. Carrie Smetana, a friend of mine from church agreed (I think rather enthusiastically) to help Mom watch Mary and the boys for the evening. Jeff and I enjoyed a supper out at Olive Garden, and a visit over to BJU for a Bible Conference service, as well as my college reunion. I had a great time seeing people again that I had not seen in ten years, and going out on a date with Jeff (which doesn't happen too often right now!)

One final note, the Anderson newspaper, the Independent Mail called yesterday, and wanted to interview Jeff and I for a feature article. We had a reporter come to the house for an interview today. For anyone who is interested, we are scheduled to have an article run in the Sunday paper!