Friday, January 4, 2008

Vital Signs

This moment caught my attention as Charlotte gazed up at her Daddy. She just loves him, and we had been taking pictures when he came home. The huge smile that comes across her face when she first sees him is so precious.

And now on to why I titled this entry "vital signs". Because of our difficulty getting Charlotte to actually speak, we had been suggested by our speech therapist to teach Charlotte some simple sign language to engage her in communication with us. We are VERY proud to say that she has learned her first sign, and what an important one... EAT!!! She mimmicked us for the first time last night during play and dinner. It is amazing to see her doing it. And when I say the word and do the sign to her, she often will put whatever food is in her hand in her mouth, so we are pretty sure she actually understands it. I think that the more she understands that words mean things, the more verbal she will become. She has also made a more solid connection with other words, especially Mama, Dada, Gracie, kiss, ball and peek-a-boo. We are working on blowing a kiss right now, but it is great to see her making connections. She also conveniently knows the word no-no...thankfully. Or maybe it is just that I say it different, it doesn't matter. He language skills are giving us hope that she will be talking sometime soon.

These pictures were captured last night while we were preparing dinner. She just wanted to help us a little. How cute.


And finally, an update on how our GI appointment went. There isn't much to say really. She did not meet her goal of 12 oz...we got about 1/2 way there, she gained 7 oz with a total weight of 15# 14oz, 28 1/2" long. On a positive note, she was sick during that 3 week time period, and in the past 5 days has been eating much better than she was when we first started getting concerned about her intake. So, at this point we are hoping she can keep it up. Our last efforts to help her are with the feeding clinic at Cardinal Glennon that we will attend for the first time on Jan. 15th, and hopefully attend weekly for 5-6 weeks to see if they have any divine interventions for us. Chris and I are doing EVERYTHING we can to keep her from getting the feeding tube. I hope Charlotte meets us at least half way and keeps up her appetite. I have no idea what turned it off in the first place, and no idea what turned it back on. I am just praying that it sticks around indefinitely. We cannot force her to eat, but when she is eating....life is good, very good.

The Hawns

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Jenn, I enjoyed our talk at work. You are doing so well...before you know it you won't be able to STOP feeding her!!