5 stages of "pea" grief by Emily Franklin

Heard this on NPR today and liked the bit by Emily Franklin. The audio automatically starts at 1:30, the beginning of Franklin's piece (which ends at 9:55). Anyone with kids who eat (or don't eat) food will appreciate what she has to say!

De um a dez (from one to ten)

Here's a video of Christian counting to ten in Portuguese. His pronunciation is just a good as it is in English!

Update on Liam

Liam is doing great today! He now weighs 5 lbs 2 oz. That's only a 1 oz gain from yesterday but it's progress. Also, he's much more active today, and THAT is something to be excited about! The nurse said when she came in today she thought, "he's acting like a completely different baby." So tomorrow (Sunday) they want us to do "rooming in." That's where we stay overnight in the hospital with him and they let us do an entire night's routine alone. If we need help the nurses are just in the next room. It's a transition night for bringing home babies that have had difficulty eating, etc. Assuming all goes well (and it should) we'll get to bring him home Monday morning!

And more photos of Liam

More photos of Liam

Liam's cleft palate

Here is a picture of Liam's cleft palate. The cleft is only on the soft tissue so it should be a fairly simple surgery. He will most likely have the surgery when he is about 9 months old. We will start meeting with a team of specialists in the next few weeks. The reason they wait until then is because they want to hear him making sounds (words) to determine if the cleft has any impact on his speech and, if so, to see if the surgery helps.

Something else we've noticed, and you can see it in this photo, is his lip. It looks like his lip maybe had a cleft but then it filled in. And his left nostril looks slightly indented. We aren't sure if his lip and nostril are just that way because of birth (sometimes babies are a little "deformed" when they're born, but they fill out fine) or if it is due to any sort of cleft. We'll just have to wait and see.

Update on Liam

It was weird yesterday bringing Katherine home from the hospital while our baby was still in the NICU. Liam was doing better yesterday. He's getting more aggressive with his eating. And if he keeps up at the current rate he might even be able to come home by this Sunday or Monday.

Yesterday morning they ran a CT scan on him. The scan results indicated everything they were looking was normal. Also, they were concerned about how far back his tongue was attached, but after a closer examination they determined that too, was normal. We're still waiting on some blood tests (for possible infections) to come back but they're expecting those to be negative (that's good).

So, right now he needs to be eating, and specifically working to eat (not just being fed). As long as he does that we should be able to get him back in a few days. His cleft palate in the back of his mouth will be fixed with surgery when he is 9-12 months old. Fortunately it's only on the soft palate, so it should be a minor fix.