Scoot, Scoot, Scoot

Suzie has turned into quite a little scooter! When I put her down for a nap on her tummy, she manages to scoot her way out of her wedgie to the front of the crib. Here is a pic of what I found the other day when I went to get her.

The occupational therapist came to do an evaluation last week. She said that Suzie is developmentally tracking like a 2 1/2 week old baby. Her corrected age is six weeks so they would like to work hard at closing the gap while she is still so little. So they have recommended 2 hours of physical therapy, 2 hours of child development, and 1 hour of occupational therapy every week. With 5 hours of therapy per week we are going to be quite busy! But we are so thankful for this service provided by the state. Two of the three therapists will come to our home to work with her and they said that we can cut back on hours if it gets to be too much. We have to wait for the regional center to approve the hours so hopefully we will be able to get going in three to four weeks.

Also, we went to the ophthalmologist on Saturday and he said that her eyes responded very well to the laser surgery so that is a praise. He doesn't need to see her for another two months!

Everything else is going well for us here. Suzie has some great nights where she will go six hours between feedings. I love those nights:) She has other nights, like last night, where she cries until 4am. But we praise God for a healthy (and usually happy) little girl home with us.

4 Months Old!

Suzie is four months old today! We went to the pediatrician this morning and here are her current stats:

Weight: 8lbs 2oz
Length: 21.5 inches
Head Circumference: 14 inches

Suzie is doing great! She received her four month immunizations which was a very sad thing. She cried and cried and has been conked out on the couch ever since. The doctor said she is a little behind on her weight gain so I'm going to work on trying to get her to eat a little more each feeding. If she does well with that, then he said I can go ahead and let her sleep up to 7 hours a night. The past four nights she has slept for 6 hours straight and I had to wake her to feed her. It is a wonderful blessing to get a little more sleep, so hopefully she will keep it up and still be able to gain weight. She is such a sweet and content little baby, except for her brief fussy time each day.

Our follow up with the eye doctor is tomorrow morning so we'll post another update then!

Praise the Lord!

We have so many reasons to praise the Lord today. Suzie's surgery went better than we even could have hoped. She was an angel all day even though she didn't get to eat for a whole 13 hours! We waited for over five hours at the hospital and when she was finally taken in for surgery, the doctor came out 20 minutes later and said everything went really well. We thought he was joking because we couldn't imagine that they were done already! Because Suzie was so calm, they were able to do the surgery without having to give her any kind of anesthesia. She only received Tylenol. This helped the surgery and her recovery go very quickly. We were able to take her home two hours later and she has been sleeping soundly ever since. The doctor is confident that the surgery worked and we have a follow up appointment on Wednesday to see her progress. Thank you so much for your prayers. We are so thankful to the Lord.

Another praise is regarding our friends Justin and Victoria. Their baby, Moriah, had a critical heart surgery today that was so risky, they had to go all the way to Stanford to even find a doctor willing to do the operation. God is so faithful and allowed Moriah's heart to be healed today. You can read their encouraging story here.

Surgery Day

So it looks like Suzie will be having her laser eye surgery this Friday. We still don't know what time they will do it, but they are trying to fit her in some time in the morning. We will let you know how it goes. Thanks so much for your prayers!

Two Wonderful Years

Today is our two year anniversary! I can hardly believe we have been married for two whole years and yet I feel like we've been together forever at the same time. I am so thankful to the Lord for the gift of a godly husband. There is no one I respect, enjoy, love, or treasure more and I am blessed beyond measure!

On another note, Suzie's surgery will most likely be on Friday. We'll let you know when we have more details!

Laser Surgery

Our appointment with the ophthalmologist on Tuesday went okay. The ROP in her eyes has not gotten any worse but it hasn't gotten any better either. The doctor decided that he wants to go ahead and give Suzie the laser surgery since her eyes are not getting better and she is so far past her due date. We were concerned about a complication with our insurance as I had recently switched groups and wasn't sure if my new group would authorize the surgery. But the Lord is so faithful and He provided for us to be able to switch back to our former group for the time being. So we are waiting to get a surgery date from the doctor, but Lord willing we will get it taken care of some time next week. The surgery is much less invasive than her prior two surgeries. They will give her gas to make her sleepy and she will need to stay in the hospital overnight to have her breathing and heart rate monitored. It will take less than an hour and the doctor says she has an excellent chance of having great vision, although she may lose about 5% of her peripheral vision from the surgery. She will most likely be near sighted and need glasses. God has been so faithful with our little one thus far and there is no reason for us to not completely trust Him with this next hurdle; however, it is of course difficult for us to have to see our sweet little girl go through another surgery. We do appreciated your prayers and will let you know when we have a date set!

On a positive note, our appointment with the Neurosurgeon went great! Suzie's shunt is working well and she is past the risk of infection. He also informed me that he placed enough tubing in her that she will not need any sort of revision unless her shunt malfunctions somewhere down the line (which is a definite possibility). But we are so thankful to God for how well our little girl is doing.

Thanks for keeping up with us! We are so blessed:)

A Big Weekend for Little Suzie

We celebrated Suzie's first Halloween on Friday. Of course, since she can't go out into large groups of people yet, we celebrated Halloween in the comfort of our own home. But Mema got Suzie a Raggedy Ann costume, and although it was made for newborns, it was way too big on our little girl. She still looked so cute in it.

Then on Saturday night, Suzie attended her very first Texas Tech football party! This was her first outing other than our daily walks and regular appointments. Our friends Bryan and Lindsay Payne threw a great party at Chad and Carly Brannon's house to watch the big game where No. 7 Tech played No. 1 Texas. It was a very exciting game and even better because Tech won! Lindsay threw a great party with a tortilla throwing contest, a Texas helmet pinata, and Suzie won the most spirited outfit award. She did great on her first outing and only cried a few times when the cheering was especially loud:)


Other than that, Suzie is doing very well and enjoying her life at home. She is eating a ton and growing bigger by the day. Here are a few more pictures of our Suzie-Q.


Next week is a busy week for us. On Tuesday we go to the eye doctor, Wednesday to the Neurosurgeon and Thursday back to the pediatrician. We'll let you know how everything goes!