Thank you - Update & 10 Months Old

Today is Evan and Cameron's 10 month old (7.5 month adjusted) birthday.

And what a great birthday gift for the boy to have all of you thinking of us. Thank you to Stephanie and everyone who has posted their well wishes for us! We are so thankful and incredibly touched by the outpouring of love and support from everyone. We love hearing your stories and reading your advice, keep it coming! It has helped a great deal. Even my husband is floored by all of this and is amazed again and again by this awesome community of ladies who keep a look out for us.

As of right now the boys have had a modified barium and swallow test as well as an upper GI EGD (endoscopy)biopsy to determine the severity of their silent reflux and if they have allergies to the milk proteins. While it's still too early for the GI EGD to show the results we are certain they have severe GERD up to the top of the throat with allergies but anatomically they are normal and do not need surgery at this time. They do have an NG tube because they refuse to eat (Evan especially, though we have convinced Cameron to take a few swigs of a bottle post EGD procedure.) They are sleeping better because they have full tummies from the NG tubes but they are fussy because of the tubes and the IV they had to put in to do the EGD. Cam has kept his feeds down but Evan is throwing up a bit still.

The doctors agree with us that for now we will not do the G tube as we want to see how they fare with dropping the Zantac and adding Erythromicin (sp?) for motility and trying to convince them to eat the nasty Elecare formula. If we can't get them to eat that then we will try some other formulas. If we do end up doing the G tube it will be because we are spinning our wheels more than we have been trying to get the boys to eat, but they feel the G tube is a minimum a 6 month to a year commitment, hence our hesitation to proceed with it. They want to monitor how well the boys will eat by mouth three times at day, which at the moment is not at all, and continuous feed by NG tube at night, and hopefully we will get the Erythromicin and Prevacid to work to allow them to eat.

The thing about all of this is that every parent struggles with making the decisions to do or not do something in hopes that it helps their child feel better and grow better. And after a year of constant worry and anxiety and sleep deprivation you really get out of sorts with worry. There is no right or wrong answer, and isn't that the kick in the ass? And it's even more stressful when you have more than one baby because you can not, no matter how hard you try, be in two places at once and listed to three different conversations with screaming babies. I am so thankful to have an awesome husband who has been by my side every step.

I will continue to post updates, but the internet connectivity here is spotty. Eventually I will get I around to posting the details of our stay and tell you all the oh so not wonderful things about this place and the psycho lady who keeps trying to come into our room. Again, to everyone, we just can't say it enough. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.