long term hiatus...explained (part 3)

Then September rolled around. Quinn made some friends.  She went to her first Labor Day party and rocked it with a couple of her favorite bands....safely, of course.

Listen, I think I figured a way to bust out of that crazy cage they put us in at night.

hustler van!

I love hustler van! 

Eh, I'm not a big fan of this song.

I'm out.

Then Quinn decided that food wasn't quite her thing. Eh, and that formula wasn't so great, either. We persisted with food while conscientiously not forcing. We love food and it's such a big part of our lives; forcing the food would only result in a long-term aversion.

Quinn had a high-risk clinic appointment (a standard for all babies who spent time in the NICU), and her development was progressing as it should aside from her crooked butt-crack. Yep, a crooked butt crack. Get that kid in the circus! It could potentially be a tethered spinal cord. It sounds serious, but is actually very correctable. We'll get an MRI in November to determine what will be the next steps. Basically, everyone's spinal cord looks like a horse tail at the end. These are nerves that move freely. Sometimes these nerves get tethered to a piece of fat or some other object in the body, and it can't move freely. It can cause stiffness and therefore walking and crawling can occur later than typical. Oh, and it can cause a crooked butt crack. It would be a minor surgery (no surgery is minor, says devin) that would occur between 9 and 12 months and her horse tail would be free. We mentioned the decreased interest in eating at this appointment and they noted that she had only gained a pound since 2 months earlier so they bumped her up to the get-fat formula recipe to increase the calories in the formula. (Quinn, if it's 2020 and you or your friends in the 5th grade are reading about your crooked butt crack on this ancient blog....I'm sorry for exposing it on the internets. Just don't show it to anyone if they ask to see, okay?)

Weekly weigh-ins for Quinn started after the high-risk clinic appointment. It was like she was getting ready for the big fight. And in this corner, Q-Ball! Weighing in at 13 pounds 10 ounces! After the next weigh-in....and in this corner, Q-Money! Weighing in at 13 pounds 10 ounces! And then the next weigh-in....13 pounds 10 ounces. Hm. Our amazing pediatrician let us push it to the limit in terms of trying to get Quinn to eat. She'd eat, but only as much as she felt like which was about 10 ounces less per day than she needed. But then the day came when the pediatrician told us we couldn't delay the inevitable any longer and that they were going to have to admit her to the hospital for at least 24 hours to put in a feeding tube and to see what amount of food she could tolerate. Theories abounded among every member of the team (pediatrician, neurologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and GI doctor).
We hypothesized that Q was an ambitious little bugger who was on her way to a career as a supermodel or that she would be the next ghandi (or better yet, a supermodel ghandi).

No worries about her spirits, though....she is one happy kid.

I tried a million times to get the video to fit on the screen, but I can't figure out how to change the height and width ratio.  Sorry about that.  I'm sure you get the gist of the video, though.  :-)