One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Updated: Jun 29, 2018
When you are living in the middle of unknowns it is hard to celebrate wins. Large or small, you are just waiting for something to go wrong. We found ourselves doing this more often. We hated that feeling. Our new goal is to focus on more positives, celebrate the small victories, and enjoy the roller coaster as much as we can.
We woke up still exhausted from the day before. We had to hit the ground running to make it to Nolan's weight check appointment at the pediatrician.
Since Nolan was born, it has been our full-time job to make sure that he was gaining. He is not an easy child to feed, and most times it takes about an hour to give him a bottle. Because of his heart disease, it is challenging for him to eat. The amount of effort that he has to put out to take a bottle means that he tires very quickly. Because of this, we go for weight checks 1-2 times per week.
When we got into a room, the doctor came in and told us that he already had the results from the skeletal survey. We held our breath. GREAT NEWS! It was 100% normal. We could breathe.
We were not expecting to get the results so quickly, but we were thrilled to check this off our list.
Next, we carried him down the hallway to scale and laid him down. We held our breath (just as we always do when waiting for the scale to post the weight). 8lb 0oz. The exact same he had been for two weeks. Not good.
We went back into the room and met with Dr. P to go over a plan for weight gain. We were to add an additional scoop of formula to increase his calorie count per ounces. We would feed the same amount, but hopefully, the increased calorie count would allow him to begin gaining.
We would come back in 5 days to recheck his weight.
I remember walking to the car feeling defeated. We had gotten amazing news about his spine, but we were hit hard to know that our sweet boy wasn't gaining weight. We had a new plan for weight gain, and that is all we could focus on.
Looking back we didn't celebrate the good news at all. We partnered the good news with the bad news. It was a draw.