5 Months Old / Recovery Day 5

Rachel is 5 months old today!! She has had quite the experiences in her short 5 months of life...two surgeries and one hospitalization! Last week when she was weighed the day before surgery, Rachel weighed 16lbs and 13oz! She's quite the little chub. We're glad her weight is up, makes it a lot less stressful should she loose a little bit of weight with her eating being affected by surgery.

Rachel continues to sleep through the night which such a huge blessing!! She is such a good and happy baby. She had mastered the art of rolling from her back to her tummy, but for the time being, that isn't being allowed...She can't have anything touching her lip, and that includes her rubbing her face on a blanket!

As for recovering from surgery, she's doing better with each passing day. Still fusing a bit with her bottles. But she's taking between 4-6oz a bottle. We're still using her Habermen feeder which is such a relief as I had read accounts of needing to syringe feed following a cleft lip repair.

Rachel is on two medications...antibiotics four times a day, and Tylenol with coedine every 4-6 hours for pain. And boy, it was sure easier to give her medications when she had a cleft in her lip to squirt it through. LOL. Now we have to wait for her to cry in order for her to open her mouth. Despite the difficulty, we love having her lip fixed. It's amazing how quickly you forget what she looked like not even a week ago!!

Rachel is tolerating her arm restraints. Poor girl has had all her comfort techniques taken away from her for the next 3 weeks...she's a side sleeper, and she can't do that in prevention of her lip rubbing on the sheet, she likes to have her fingers in her mouth and likes to suck on her palm of her hand, can't do neither of those things. She's getting held a lot, because if you lay her down, she still trys to turn over even with the restraints on! We laid her under her floor gym this morning for a few minutes with her restaints off and boy did she ever love that!!

It's so hard to believe she's already 5 months old! This time last year, we had just found out we were expecting!! Boy time flies....