JACKSON IS EATING!!

My apologies to those of you who have already seen the above picture (William looking so serious, Addison and smiley Jackson). It is one of my favorites!! I think they look so cute in their little overalls. Funny when you have multiples, it really is fun to dress them alike. I don't have a lot of matching clothes ... in fact, this is the only outfit that all 3 have (complements of Grandma Coblentz). I have a few more that the boys each have ... but they look so cute dressed alike! I can't believe I'm one of "those" moms! For those of you who were not aware, we have been having some concerns with Jackson and eating. Basically, back around Thanksgiving, he started having difficulty eating. When it started out, he would visibly be in pain and not want to eat. Lately, no signs of pain, but his daily volume just continued to dwindle to the point that Mom was driving Dad crazy with my concern over it. This is a great example of why you have to be an advocate for your children. After two weekly weight checks where Jackson had lost weight (about 4-5 ounces total), I insisted that something was wrong ... it is just not right when a little baby doesn't want to eat!!! Long story short, we went for a Barium Swallow test this past Thursday. What they have found is that he is having some minor problems when he swallows ... just a muscle developmental thing and he will grow out of it. When he swallows, a tiny bit gets aspirated into his nasal passages ... making it uncomfortable for him. Couple this with a child who has acid-reflux and you can see how he has come to associate eating with pain and discomfort. Good news ... they changed everything! They put him on the skinny Dr Brown's bottles versus the wide-mouth bottles. Did I mention that bottles are about $4 each!!! They also changed what we are thickening his formula with ... instead of using rice cereal, we are now using a substance called Simply Thick. The thicker the milk, the less likely he is to aspirate it or reflux it. Finally, we had to go back to the old NICU hold for feeding him ... in a nutshell, we turn him slightly to the side to feed him and that uses gravity to bypass the nasal openings and get the food going down the right pipe! So, a few $$ later with the bottles and the not-so-inexpensive Simply Thick ... Jackson is eating like he used to! And I would pay a lot more than what we have for this ... what a relief for Mom and Dad. And ... this past Friday, he had made up for the lost weight and then some. When we started this deal 3 weeks ago, he was 13 lbs. 6 ounces ... he went down to 13 lbs 2 ounces and Friday he was 13 lbs. and 15 1/2 ounces!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One last thing ... if any of you know anyone about to have a baby ... we highly recommend the Dr. Brown's bottles. We have had 3 babies at once on them ... they are supposed to help against getting colic. None of our babies had colic ... thank goodness! When we had the swallow study done, the Dr. who did the study said that she did a test on bottles a few years ago and that Dr. Brown's did indeed allow the least amount of air in when feeding ... she said Avent were the worst ... and this was under a Barium test where they can literally see the air that gets in when babies swallow. Please pass this on to others. One last update ... we are currently on the search for a Nanny again. Have I mentioned that day care is wearing us out? Al and I are just tired constantly from the crazy schedule that is our life. If we can find a nanny that we like, we think things will get much easier! We interviewed one nanny this weekend and have one more interview today ... wish us luck! Quenta