Pictures galore and an update

My sister Karen and her 18-month old daughter Emma came for an impromptu visit last week. They arrived on Sunday, and then my mom arrived on Tuesday. As you can imagine, it was a full house - but we had a blast, and got lots of great pictures.

The girls are growing so fast (well, at least Makayla is!). Mackenzie had a doctor's appointment last week, and she's grown almost 4 inches since she was born. She weighed 4 lbs, 4 oz...still has a ways to go to catch up!! Makayla weighed 6 lbs, 11 oz at the breastfeeding clinic last week!! She's chunking-up quite nicely! Both girls will see the neonatologist this week, so hopefully there will be some more gain! Mackenzie will also have another cranial ultrasound, to check on her brain bleed.

Mackenzie's biggest issue right now is she doesn't particularly care to eat. She'd go 6 hours between feedings if we let her!! And each feeding is a challenge - first to get her to accept the bottle, then to get her to eat enough. It's a constant battle - and I don't want feedings to become a source of angst for her!! She does love to breastfeed, but she can't suck well and can't latch well, so basically I have to kind of hold my nipple in her mouth and essentially hand-express milk into her mouth. She doesn't seem to mind, but I have no way of knowing how much she's actually getting, so I don't feel comfortable letting her just BF for all her feedings. The doc is not going to be very happy with mommy and daddy if she hasn't gained much!!

Makayla's two biggest issues right now are her apnea and reflux. The first couple weeks she was home, her apnea alarm NEVER went off - only her low heartrate alarm did. But for the last week and a half or so, she has been setting off her apnea alarm a LOT - yesterday I think it went off at least a dozen times; that said, she never had any color change (like she did the one day when she was purple around her mouth a little over a week ago). And her reflux is getting worse by the day, it seems. She can't stand to be laid flat, she cries in pain when she spits up, she is bothered when she gets the hiccups, and she wants to nurse constantly - I think b/c the sucking soothes her discomfort. We're going to discuss this with the neonatologist on Wednesday.