Contact Lens

Chloe got her contact lens yesterday morning! She wore it all day and I swear I can tell that she sees better. I'm so excited for her to finally have vision in her left eye!


It's kind of difficult to get it in and out (she screams and kicks and squeezes her eyes shut) but it's sooooo worth it! She was happy and smiley all day long. I'm still giving Chloe two drops a day of her post-surgery eye drops. Next week she'll be down to one drop per day. The contact has to come in and out every day while she's on the drops. But once we completely wean her off the eye drops I can leave the contact in for five days.

Update 1: I wrote this post Thursday. It's now Friday and I put Chloe's contact in this morning. She didn't even make a sound. Such a trooper! I love her!

Update 2: It's now Monday and I still haven't published this post. I'm soooo lame! Chloe's doing great with the contact except that she popped it out twice today while I was making dinner. Fortunately, she was in her swing and I found the contact stuck to her cheek both times. At $250 a pop I don't really want to lose these things!!!

Solana's Birthday

Solana turned 5 in April. She chose a butterfly theme for her party. I only took a few pictures since I was running around like crazy during the party and they were all crappy. Most of these were taken by Angela, whose two butterflies joined the party, as well.

We turned the four seasons room into a party room.

I made the cake. It was totally easy (parenting.com) but I'm still proud of it. :-)

The girls decorated their own wings and had their faces painted to look like butterflies.

Happy birthday to my sweet 5 year-old.

We had a scavenger hunt. The clues were photographs hidden in various pieces of furniture. The photograph showed the next piece of furniture they needed to search. They ran screaming back and forth through the house going from one clue to the next. They loved it and found their goodie bags at the end. The only rule was that they couldn't scream near the master bdrm, where my friend, Kim, was rocking Chloe to sleep :-)

Swarming the pinata candy. I didn't know butterflies swarmed...?


After a long day of partying! Turns out Solana's friend next door is only 4 days older than Solana. Their parties were on the same day so they went from Solana's party straight to hers. Whew!


Her actual birthday was on Tuesday. She woke up to birthday pancakes. I stole this idea from a friend on facebook and just added pink food coloring - think it might become a tradition.



Chloe update in the works!

Not enough?

Isn't my fabtastic wordsmith-ing enough for you girls? Do you really need pictures? I would think my descriptive writing paints enough of a visual image for you... Hehehe. I'll post pictures tomorrow. We have a long day ahead of us today. Cincinnati this morning (we want a release from that Dr!) and hopefully opthamologist this afternoon for a contact lens. Wish us luck!

P.S. I decided I'm too narcissistic to quit the blog. Plus, my mom and SIL guilted me into continuing ;-)

She's ba-ack!

This past week and a half has been rough. Chloe was not herself for a good ten days. All she wanted to do was sleep. And when she wasn't sleeping she wanted to lay in my arms with her eyes closed. The weird thing was that she didn't show any other signs of being sick. She was eating, peeing, pooping, no fever. Nothing. I just kept telling myself she's growing and healing from surgery. Yesterday she finally snapped out of it. She's back! Smiling, interacting, playing, you name it. What a relief! She even has a couple of new tricks. She likes to hold her feet and she laughed and giggled when I was playing with her yesterday. Solana, Dave and I were freaking out! Such fun...

We went to Cincinatti for a surgery follow-up on Wednesday (almost two weeks ago) and her eyes looked good. Yeah! The doctor wanted us to keep Chloe on some pressure relieving drops (Pred Forte) and come back after two weeks. I wanted to start the contact lens process but the doctor said, "not yet." Two days later Chloe's top and bottom eye lids swelled up. After a very frustrating series of phone calls and being put off by the doctor in Cincinatti, who said her eye was fine two days ago, and her pediatrician I finally got a local opthamologist to see Chloe. Note: I'm dumping her original opthomologist because of his inability to communicate with me and asked the new one to see her. Boy was I glad I did that! This new Optho is AWESOME! He's been her doctor for a whole week and he's already called me on the phone four times! This is a BIG deal! I never get to talk to other eye doctors - only their techs and nurses. This guy takes the time to really get involved in his patient's cases. I like that. The only annoying thing is that I learned HE could have done Chloe's surgery here in Dayton. The old Dr. that I dumped obviously didn't want to refer me to him because he knew he'd lose a patient. That Dr referred us to Cinci implying that she couldn't have the surgery in Dayton because of her small size. Grrrr. The great news was that her sollen eyelids were a perfectly normal post-surgery symptom.

Awesome Doctor is very anxious to get a contact into Chloe's eye - as am I. (Reminder: her brain is still developing connections to her eyes. Without vision in that eye her brain may decided it's not worth the effort to connect to it - leading to lazy eye.) Had he done the surgery a contact lens would be in place by now. Unfortunately, we're stuck with Cinci Doctor for at least a couple more days. Awesome Dr. did comfort me, though: if he thought the extra days without a lens would have a detrimental effect on Chloe's vision in the long run he would certainly take over her case without a release from her surgeon.

Lesson learned. If you're unhappy with your doctor. Check out others. There is probably one out there who's a better fit for you. And don't assume the referral given is your best/only option.

In other Hendrickson news: Solana turned 5 on Tuesday the 27th. She had a butterfly party and was soooo cute! I'm loving my new combination of SleepyWrap and B tank. I can carry Chloe in the SleepyWrap and put her new little oxygen tank in a little backpack and Voila! We're mobile! You may wonder what happened with the whole, "Chloe-can-come-off-oxygen-Hip-Hip-Hooray!" thing... Well, nothing has changed. As anxious as I was to disconnect Chloe from her little leash I decided to wait until after surgery - no reason to push her while she's healing. She could probably be off oxygen by now. I'm actually the one holding her back. I'm just so scared to do it! It'll happen soon enough, though. I'm sure of it. I've started taking her off for meals. Baby steps.

Update

EYE

Surgery went well last week. We go back tomorrow for a check-up. I've been giving Chloe two different eye drops four times a day. One to prevent infection and one to reduce pressure in her eye. I fancied myself a talented eye dropper the first three days. I got Chloe to open her eyes nice and wide by waving musical toys above her head and quickly snuck the drops in before she even knew what was happening. No longer am I smarter than the baby. She caught on to me. At least I went three days without having to pry her eye open. It's not as bad as I feared, though. Chloe's fairly tolerant of me and puts up with a lot of crap - even gives me a smile here and there... She seems to be doing fine and her eye looks good. I can still see where they cut on her eyeball and that's kind of freaky but they gave us a hard shield-type eye patch to keep over her eye as protection. Unfortunately, she's really really good at grabbing and ripping it off so she's been swaddled and/or mittenized all week. Even then I've stepped away only to retun and find her eye patch off and both hands vigorously rubbing at her eye on a couple of ocassions. Little stinker.



MILK

After consulting four different lactation consultants and several webites and lay persons I've come to the conclusion that high lipase milk isn't all THAT uncommon. There's no study proving that the frozen stuff is safe for babies but everyone agrees that it probably is. So I'm still giving it to Chloe - at the rate of two bottles per day. She's still taking it fine and doesn't seem to be having any side effects. Fingers crossed that she continues to take it! I'm happy with my three to four pumpings per day schedule and my production is holding steady at a respectable, if not impressive, 15-18oz per day. If I can keep that up and supplement with 2 bottles from the deep freezer I'm golden for the next few months.



BLOG

On a side note, I'm seriously considering stopping the blog. As I've mentioned many times, writing is not my talent (although I'm not sure what my talent is.. ;-) and I just don't have time for it these days. It's almost midnight now and I'm only staying up in order to write this. Seriously, though, it takes like an hour to write one entry. And if I proof-read it three times to make it a smooth read then maybe an hour and a half. And now that Chloe's out of the hospital I really don't have all that much to report on a daily basis. I really love the idea of documenting important and fun family information, though. It seems like a great tool for when I finally start scrap-booking again. Plus, we live away from our family and it's a great way to keep my mom, sister, and SIL up-to-date on our goings on. I'm thinking of just starting a family blog for those two purposes but haven't decided for sure. Anyway, I wanted to mention this because I know that some kind souls out there have been following and praying for Chloe since she was born and feel a sense of...I don't know...obligation. (It somehow seems like it would be rude to just stop...) Decisions to come. In the meantime I give thanks for all the support, prayers, and friends I've received through blogging. It's been tremendous.

Cincinnati tomorrow

We leave for Cincinnati early tomorrow morning. Chloe's cataract surgery is scheduled for 9amET. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Smiling and Snoozing

I know these three pictures are virtually the same but I couldn't decide which was cuter so you get all three! :-)

I noticed a picture on our wall today. It's of Dave laying on the couch with infant Solana asleep on his chest. It ocurred to me that he never does this with Chloe. Granted, she's older than Solana was in the picture. I mentioned it to him when he got home from work today and here's the result.

I guess it works for Chloe, too. She looks pretty darn comfortable!

I should also mention that this happened right before dinner. Dave didn't want to disturb her so I ate my dinner and then came over and fed him while he played mattress to the little princess. Solana thought that was just about the funniest thing ever. We were all cracking up so hard I don't know how he didn't choke or, at the very least, wake up Chloe!