Latest on Camille

Henry went in for his 2 year old check-up today, and took his flu mist up the nose, and his shot on the leg like a champ. The waiting for all that, not-so-much like a champ. He is so not big on waiting. Wonder where he gets that from? Anyway, the most exciting part of that visit was that his height right now indicates that he will be around 6 feet tall when he reaches his full height. Apparently, if you double a boy's height at age 2, that is a very good indicator for how tall he will be full-grown. This apparently does not work with girls--not sure why, but if you want me to Google it, I can. You might be wondering how in the world he would get to be 6 feet tall with parents like us. Yup, us too. Jason doesn't care about the hows or whys of this, though. He was just going on and on about all of the different sports positions Henry could play at 6 feet tall. The first thing he said when I told him was, "That's a high school point guard size! Awesome!"

While I was there at Henry's visit, I told our pediatrician about Camille's continued poor weight gain. I think he actually said something first like, "So how's Camille? Is she getting any rolls yet?" Um, no. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but I hope he was, because if not, I might start Googling his med school education background further. My sweet baby girl is never going to have rolls. We've already established this. But anyway, when I told him that our scale indicated that she had only gained 5 ounces in 13 days, he said to bring her in to weigh her that day, and that he wanted to go ahead and send her to Cooks Childrens in Fort Worth for a GI evaluation with a pediatric gastroenterologist. When I brought her up to be weighed, his scale indicated that she had gained 7 ounces in 13 days, which he said was not terrible, but not great. (As an aside, I have decided that I like his scale much better than ours because she always weighs more on it!). Anyway, he told me again that a lot of babies who are born early and/or small gain 2 or 3 ounces once they leave the NICU, as their bodies are trying to catch up on growth. "Normal" babies gain 1 ounce a day. Camille, on high calorie formula, is gaining around 1/2 an ounce a day. Since this is not a problem with her actual eating anymore (most days, she is eating 2 to 3 ounces at a time, which is a large amount for her body size), we now need to look into other causes. So next Wednesday, September 9, is the big day. We are considering seeing a pediatric geneticist, also at Cooks, on that day as well, if possible, to see if any genetic syndromes can be pinpointed. I don't think we want to do anymore genetic testing right now, but I do think we are ready to have a geneticist evaluate Camille.

It hit me today pretty hard that as much as we would like it to be, it doesn't appear that things are going to be "normal", and certainly not "easy", with Camille, at least not in the near future. That is kind of a hard pill to swallow since I had convinced myself that once we had escaped the NICU, everything would be better. Please keep praying for us. Pray for peace, joy, faith, and of course, good news next Wednesday.