Ruby Hope McKee Starling

I wanted to answer a couple questions first.  Ruby is on 27 calorie fortified breast milk.  We are using Carnation Good Start Gentle Plus  formula.  Regular breast milk is 20 calories per ounce.  Her feeds are pretty calorie dense.  She's been on that since mid-June.  She is gaining weight well.  I'm assuming we'll stay on the higher calorie formula for some time.  The nice thing is due to the NG tube our insurance pays for the formula. 

We have been really lucky as far as health insurance goes. Both CHOP and Texas Children's (had we chosen to go there) were in network.  Ruby's lifetime maximum is 3 million, she's used up over half of that.  We did have to pay a deductible and we have copays for every office visit.  In the big scheme of things though we've been really lucky.  Throughout all of this it has been wonderful to not have to worry about we were going to pay for her various medical needs.

Now for the fun stuff! We had fun Friday night at our house. 

We've been working on letting her experience different textures of foods, spoons, and toys.  Our speech therapist gave us a Nuk brush and we use it to eat  and play with.  I usually dip it in whatever food we're working with.  I then roll it on her arms and cheeks before putting in her mouth.  To make things even messier we let her dip her hands into the food also.  This is another way for her to feel the texture and hopefully get used to it.  As you can guess this makes for one messy baby.  Usually by the time we're done everyone is covered in whatever she's eating.  Last night was a pear night. 

We also use a baby spoon as well.  Her speech therapist recommended one with a thick handle and wide shallow spoon part.  I also ordered some spoons with bumps on the underneath side. 

We also let her play with the spoons and nuk brush throughout the day even when she's not eating. 

We've also been practicing taking the bottle while in the high chair.  This is mostly becasue during the swallow study she needs to take at least 10ml while sitting in a chair and facing me.  The bottle just added to the mess last night.

I also figured it would be easier to take her from her highchair to the bath.    Before her bath and since Chris and i were already covered with pears we had a dance party in the kitchen.  It was Friday night after all.

After all that it was time for a much needed bath and bed.