Thursday afternoon

Well, we have been moved to a regular room! We'll be here for the rest of our stay here at the hospital. It's so much better in here- they will allow less monitoring wires and such, the room is bigger and has a solid door to close, and we have our own bathroom and shower! :) Emma Kate was checked this morning by the speech pathologist again and did great with applesauce and some honey-thickened apple juice, so we arranged for a swallow study. We just got back to the room now having completed the swallow study, and she is cleared to start on pureed foods! She did a great job, the pathologist was really happy with how she did, especially considering that she is really sleepy and groggy. She did not pass on the honey-thickened liquids since on her very last swallow she aspirated a teeeeny tiny bit and didn't cough in response to it. So we'll give her another day or two and reassess for thickened liquids. It did just occur to me though, that ever since she has been on solid foods we have always noticed that when she drinks a lot of fluid she tends to get raspy sounding, and she never coughed because of it. On occasion she would sneeze when she was raspy like that, and the raspiness would completely go away... I wonder if she's always had a somewhat reduced cough reflex and some of the noise we've gotten so accustomed to hearing was fluid rattling around in there... guess we'll have to remember to bring that up with the speech pathologist tomorrow.

Also, this morning Gretta got in to see the pediatrician for her 1mo checkup- she is my monster baby!!! She currently weighs 10lbs 2oz (in the 75-90th percentile) and is 22 1/4in long (in the 90th percentile). She has gained just under a pound a week so far! We just can't believe it... The clothes we bought her just a couple weeks ago are quickly becoming outgrown already! And I'm sad to say she's just barely fitting in her newborn cloth diapers at this point... I just can't grasp the idea that our two girls are so incredibly different!!!