7 Months

I wrote this post yesterday morning...but didn't get to finishing it up until now. 

Luca is 7 months old today!  How are we spending our day celebrating?  Oh we're back in the hospital.  Sigh.  She was in the hospital at 4 months, 5 months, 6 months.  I was hoping we'd be home on the day of her 7 month birthday.  But then I checked on her at midnight on Friday night and she felt hot.  After a thermometer check, she was indeed running a fever.  A fever for an immunosuppressed baby = not good.  A fever for a baby who has a PICC line in her arm = not good.  So off to the hospital we went at 2am.  She was admitted.  Luckily, her fever came down on its own by the time we'd gotten to the hospital.  And it has stayed down since then.

I really had hopes.  High hopes.  Better luck for 8 months, maybe? 

At 7 months old:

She loves sleeping on her left side.  We're so incredibly impressed that even though she's had massive stomach surgery (x3), she is only a little bit behind in milestones.  She mastered the art of rolling from back to front, but stops short of being on her belly because she hates it. 

She loves sticking out her tongue.  Like, 90% of the time she is awake, she is sticking her tongue out, blowing bubbles, and smiling all at once.  She must be figuring out how to use the thing.  And when we are close to her face and stick out our tongues, she immediately tries to grab them.  (Don't worry, we don't let her.)

She is becoming increasingly quick at reaching for things in her vicinity, even if we just bring something near her for a second.  Especially things that she should not be grabbing.  Like her g-tube extension, my hair, syringes, dog hair.  She even has mastered the art of taking off the arm restraint that goes on when she's hooked up to IVs.

She giggles regularly.  It used to be a once in awhile occurrence.  But the past couple weeks she has increasingly been finding that sweet, belly laugh.  And she still has a big gummy smile - as many times as we've thought she must be teething, we have yet to see the evidence.  Here is a sample of her giggling from about 10 days ago.

In terms of eating - her entire body convulses with every bite of food we try to feed her.  She surely developed an aversion to anything being in her mouth - from being ventilated, having her mouth brushed out with medicine twice per day, and being suctioned a lot in the hospital.  But we continue to torture her try with her.  Almost everyday we try some solids.  The whole bottle thing - she has totally refused.  So oral therapy said to skip it and move onto something she does not have any bad association with.  Hopefully, one day it will just click.  Although she is not interested in eating much, she loves watching Ian and I eat or drink.  She stares intently and licks her lips.

And most of all, Luca is happy.  She is incredibly happy.  It makes me smile in awe to think that through it all, she is one happy baby.  We hear over and over again at the hospital that she is such a pleasant little girl.  She really only cries if someone is not with her, or if she is ready to fall asleep. 

And mama and daddy have survived 7 months - and are even more madly in love with our little girl each day.