It's hard to believe that six months ago, Nami was born. He sure has come a long way. He is such a sweet baby. He is always smiling and cooing. Brycen has also become very fond of this little guy. Every morning he wants to be a part of our morning greetings to him. He climbs up the crib where he can peek his head over and then he says in adoration, "Hiiiiiiiii Dada!". Yes, he calls Nami "dada". Some of the new things Nami has been doing is playing with toys, scooting across the floor, going jogging with mommy and Brycen in the double stroller, eating rice cereal, and grabbing peoples hair. One of the quirky things he did as a newborn and still continues to do is grab hair and then wrap it in his hand to suck his thumb. It is a little awkward.
There are two major things that we have accomplished during his post-op. First, we are finally finished with using silicone on his upper lip... YAY! His lip is soft, the scars have lightened up, and his lip looks amazing. I have been nervous about the possibility of him not being able to move his upper lip. He can move it a little, but it's still very stiff. I mean, I get that he has never had control of his upper lip because they weren't attached, and since using the medela special needs bottle he wasn't moving his lips much because we did most of the work for him in getting the milk to him. Which brings up our next big accomplishment... We switched to the pigeon bottle. Now that his lips are attached, we felt that he could try the pigeon bottle again. We tried it in the beginning and was really hopeful to use it because he can control when he wants to eat, versus us squeezing the nipple of the medela special needs bottle to get the milk to him. At that time, we felt the special needs bottle worked best for him. My big concern with this was the thought of him having issues with self feeding later on. So when we were going through the process of feeding him with the special needs bottle during post-op (after we graduated from using the catheter), Brock, Nami, and I were all frustrated with the lack of control that Nami had in his feedings. We soon thereafter switched to the pigeon bottle, and all of us, especially Nami, felt exhilarated and relieved. I felt Nami become stronger. Finally, he had something he could control and I was so happy for him. He looked at me with the sweetest puppy dog eyes, and I felt him telling me, "Thank you". And inside, I was thanking Japan for making this awesome bottle. Arigatou! It is wonderful!
(This post was originally written in mid-September 2013)
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