Long Overdue

It has been a while since I updated on Kinley's day to day progress, so here I go.

The good news is that Kinley is really doing well with her bottle feeds. She has not needed an NG feed for over a month now. At this point, the occupational therapist said that we are basically done with the NG!! We still have the NG supplies at home, but we won't use it unless Kinley goes several days without meeting her minimum volume. If she has one day where she is a little short on oral intake she usually makes up for it the next day. It is nice to be able to look at the big picture now and not focus on each bottle. Kinley will usually take between 4 and 7 ounces at each bottle and will eat anywhere from 4 to 6 bottles a day. Kevin, Kinley and I have all really enjoyed being NG free this year!

Kinley still needs more practice and encouragement when it comes to spoon feeding. She likes to put everything we feed her in her mouth, but then she just moves it around in her mouth, makes some funny faces and then spits most of the food out. I am sure it would be really funny if it was not so frustrating. So far we have found that Kinley likes sweet potatoes and bananas the best. This does not come as a huge surprise since I ate a lot of bananas while pregnant with Kinley. Kinley is still seen by the occupational therapist from Infant-Toddler twice a month to concentrate on her spoon feeding.

Since Kinley has not needed an NG feed overnight, she also does not need to sleep with her apnea monitor on. Kevin and I decided a while ago that once Kinley did not need those two things anymore she did not need to sleep in our bed overnight. We have been working on transitioning her to sleeping in her crib overnight and it has been a challenge for everyone. We moved her crib from her room into our room so it was not as big of a change all at once. We moved her Tucker Sling into her crib (that is what allows her to sleep at an incline to help with her reflux) so that she had some consistency between our bed and her crib. The transition has gone as expected. We used to be able to put Kinley to bed and she would just lay in bed silently until she fell asleep. Now she just cries until she falls asleep. There are some nights I put her to sleep in my arms and then transition her into her crib and that works pretty well. I guess we were pretty spoiled when Kinley would just go to bed without a fuss. We know in the long run that this will be better for her. It will just take her a while to get used to the change.

As far as Kinley's development goes, she is rolling all over the place! She can't quite crawl, but it looks like she is trying. Kinley can sit on her own and she loves playing with all her new toys from Christmas.

Last week we had a quick visit at the pediatrician's office for Kinley's flu shot booster, but other than that, no real appointments which has been nice.

Kinley continues to drool a lot, but still no teeth.

I think that pretty much covers it. All in all Kinley is doing really well and we are very happy with her progress!!