first weekend home

We have been very busy with the girls since Whitney came home last Wednesday. Whitney has been sleeping A LOT. We hope it is because she still has to recover from her surgery. She still seems to breathe heavily. Again, we hope it is because she has to recover from the invasive surgery. We are concerned, yet remain hopeful. Whitney does have her color back. Before she was so pale and ashen looking. Now, she definitely has some color....particularly when she loses her pacifier. She gets REALLY mad or frustrated when her pacifier falls out of her mouth. Before the surgery, she couldn't even hold a pacifier in. Now, I keep thinking she's going to suck the thing straight to her stomach.

Whitney still needs the NG tube to eat. We have worked with her swallowing issues by giving her eye droppers of this 'witches brew' that consists of organic formula, breast milk and prescription formula combined with some sort of anti-gas drops. We give her a few drops of this mix to test her swallowing to see if it will improve, and she seems to do OK sometimes. Yet, sometimes she just spits it out like "I'm not going to do it, dad." Then we just give the rest of the mix to her through her NG tube. The formula she takes WREAKS.....let me assure you. If I were Whitney, I'd spit that stuff out too.

For the second time since Whitney was born we were able to go out Saturday night. My parents watched the girls while Laura and I went to a holiday party and then to a friend's surprise 30th b-day party. It was great to get out and see everyone and to not feel so stressed out about Whitney. We were encouraged by the many positive things people said to us about Whitney. We feel very lucky to have such great friends in our lives. I was also shocked to hear many comments about the blog. It seems like a lot of people tune in. Many thanks to you all and your comments. We'll keep keeping on, as will Whitney!

Here are a few pictures from the weekend: (Laura's photo shoot of Whitney in her Santa outfit + Laura bought these pink curler things to put in Anne's hair. Anne loved it!)