Still at Twice a Week

With Prograf levels still fluctuating, we've had to stay at twice a week labs.  Alone that's fine, but the snow is making the morning drives (still w/o snow tires) a little sketchy.  We've had good road luck so far this week and it looks to continue (I was even able to get in a trip to the supermarket yesterday before the snow really started.)  Nahum made is first lab/clinic day yesterday, on 3 hours of sleep (his normal insomnia), and wound up getting poked too for one of the studies we entered (I think we're only in 2).  Her liver numbers are actually w/i the normal range, probably for the first time since she was born.  She's not gaining weight again so there's talk of supplementing her.  I'm trying to stuff her between now and Monday to get her to show some weight gain, and so she'll stop waking up so much at night.  (At this point, I'd love a consistent 2-3 times as she's settled into 3-5 times.)

Shayna doesn't like be wet or sitting in a poopy diaper so I've decided to try to EC her in the hopes that this will also help avoid what I've seen friends' toddlers do recently, throw fits about diapers changes.  We're just doing it part-time, but so far she love to pee-pee with Ima.  I've always taken her to the bathroom with me in the hopes that she would see it as a normal part of life and be more willing to potty train with the time came as her health issues before transplant made ECing daunting to me.    If I work with natural baby timing (after nap and during a nursing break), she pees about every time.  The no-diaper watching is a little harder she sits and her belly is a little bigger than most babies so it's hard for me to see when she starts peeing.  (Most people start EC when the baby can't sit and it's a lot easier to see a baby start to pee when it's laying down so the genitals are visible).  Yesterday I caught her signals 2 of 3 times (the miss was caught by towels and pads and didn't even reach her play blanket over the floor).  I ordered the book The Diaper Free Baby yesterday (along with 3 sleep books).  That'll get here Monday so I can stop winging it based on the website and my friend Yael's advice (and the little I did read in the book I borrowed from her before Shayna arrived).

I made it to the JCC gym twice this week!!  Since I'm so out of shape, I only do 40min workout +10min stretching to avoid burnout before I can even get started.  I jogged and biked the Tuesday and biked and lifted weights yesterday.  Their bikes, while being only recumbant or cruiser style and not like real workout bikes, are quite hightech.  Most have computer screens that show tv or a cycling route and half have handlebars that turn.  I picked "Evening Bliss" so the computer took me on a 2.5mi loop ride in a park like a video game race track except you can't crash (I tried runing into other cyclists and they just kind of disappear once I hit them and it also won't let me off road when I tried to ride into a ravine).  My goals are to making hiking with Shayna easy this summer and to do a 10k in 50mins before summer solstice (my current PR is like 50min40sec).

5 Weeks Out: "Normal" baby

I opened up my "what to expect the first year" again for the first time in months (for some reason it didn't help much with a dying baby who looked like she'd swallowed a water balloon).  I have to go back a few months since we lost all of December and lost ground as well. Plus, I'll have to combine months as some fine motor skills are where they should be.  Month 7 is a good place to start; though, she gets stronger every day so she might be in an accelerated program.   Her vocabulary jumped again.  She'd had 2 days where she used a lot of new sounds then went back to the repertoire she'd had for the past 4 months until Saturday.  She started babbling again with all kinds of noise mixes (must have been our visit to the Tower of Learning).  I swear she says "duck" now but half of that may be wishful thinking.  Anyway, it's fun being able to look through a normal baby book and think about what she can and can't do and to be asking normal questions about her development again.

We started our first week of once a week labs this morning and all her numbers continue down except Prograf which stay the same.  They lowered her Prograf dose to 1mg in AM and 0.5mg in PM.  The lower that is without rejection the better.  Just after transplant the goal is usually around 15.  At a month out they want her around 12.

I got a sweet 2 month membership at the JCC 6 blocks from here that is not only a community center and daycare but a workout gym WITH a pool.  It got a $4milion makeover 1 1/2 years ago so its got awesome workout facilities now plus a posh locker room.  It's FREEZING here (as it is most places I know) but now I've got a place to get regular hard excercise.  Shayna's got a sitter at the house so I don't have any excuses. 

Nahum started to go regularly to the univseristy again. He met with the computer guy there to get access while he's on campus and has an office in the Physics building.  It'll be nice for both of us to have him working outside the house again.