He's Growing Like A Weed!!

As you can see, Brendan is getting huge! He weighs about 12 pounds and most of it is in his cheeks! At his last cardiologist appointment she was so thrilled with how he was progressing that we are able to go about 3 weeks until she has to see him again. That is a huge change from the weekly visits that we were making. The hope is that when we go to see her next week she'll take him off having to be fed every 4 hours which will mean I can get more than 2 hours of sleep at a time!

Rory is a wonderful big sister who loves Baby Brendan to death! She always asks to hold him or help feed him, and she can give a good play by play on a diaper change! Brendan loves looking at her and listening to her. He can hear her coming and he automatically starts smiling and laughing, such a wonderful thing to see!

Bryan has gone back to "work", if you know what I mean! He is doing well, busy as always, and getting into the groove of things!

Thanks for all of your love and prayers, you can see that they work wonders!

Home Again!

After 5 days in the hosptial, Brendan is home and doing well (fingers crossed!) We're now just having some good quality family time for a while before you know who goes you know where! We'll post more later!

San Antonio is nice, but seriously!

Well, let's be serious, things seemed a little too perfect with Brendan being home for the Holidays, and as luck would have it, it was a little too perfect! Brendan came down with what we thought was a little congestion, maybe a cold, on New Years Day. After a call to the cardiologist and trip to the Dr the next morning it was confirmed that poor Brendan has RSV. RSV, when anyone other than a baby gets it, is nothing more than a very bad cold. In babies, because of their small airways and sensitive lungs, it becomes more serious. In Brendan's case, because of his heart defect and his lung disease it much more serious. So Brendan and I are down here in San Antonio having him monitored by all of the wonderful dr's and nurses for a few days. Thankfully he had his RSV shot before we left San Antonio the first time, so the symptoms of RSV were'nt that bad. We are now just waiting to make sure that his lungs clear without any problems and that he begins to eat again. We are hopeful that we'll be home this weekend, and our family will be under one roof again!

On the Homefront

Life with Brendan at home is wonderful! Big sister Rory has been great about keeping us updated as to whether Brendan is "sleeping" or "woke up!". She has also been able to involve him in dress up and playing cooking...poor kid doesn't stand a chance with her! She also can't understand why he can't "get up and walk" or "do bubbles", but we think she'll give him about another week to figure those things out!

Brendan is feeding a lot better, but still not exactly where the doctors want him to be, so we have weekly trips to the doctor for weight checks, and at last weigh in yesterday he was 9lbs, 15ozs...sounded good to us!

We are looking forward to having our family under one roof for Christmas, and we hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas too! We can't thank you all enough for all of your prayers, phone calls, emails and postings on the blogs. I wish we had all the time in world to respond to each and every one of you, but please know that we are so thankful to you from the bottom of our hearts!

Picture Perfect

Our Little Champ!

Well it didn't take long at all..Brendan has figured out the bottle all by himself! All day today he took his feeds by bottle, no need to use the feeding tube! It's been a long few days for Bryan and I, as we've been at every feeding (which doesn't sound bad, but it's different when you have to get up, dressed, get in the car, etc) but he's done such an incredible job! We are keeping our fingers crossed that Friday morning they will take the feeding tube out his nose! We'll keep you posted!

Manga!

Brendan is doing pretty well on his bottle feeding, he's taking about an ounce and a half 3 times a day. Poor thing just gets tired easily, so it's harder for him to eat a lot. He does burp like a champ though! It's taken a little getting used to feeding him too. We had to start by feeding him while he was in his crib so that he wouldn't get too comfortable and fall asleep, tough I know! That's where all our focus is these days is getting those feedings going, and by the looks of him, he enjoys eating too much to not figure it out quickly!