Mr. Sandman

It's been a tiring week. It was a busy time work-wise for both Mike and I, but on top of that, Matthew has been waking up at night with a stuffy nose. Whatever it is -- a low-level cold, a reaction to the dry air -- isn't really noticeable during the day, but at night, he gets congested enough that he has some trouble breathing. We've got a humidifier going in there, but apparently that isn't enough. (And sometimes we use the nose-sucker, which Matthew hates with a burning passion -- he squirms and fights and screams at the top of his lungs the whole time. It's no fun for us either, kid!)

Sometimes I just need to pick him up for a minute or two and he can sniffle and get it out of the way, but a couple of times this week he hasn't been able to get back to sleep unless he's been upright (which is to say sleeping on me while I'm sitting up, or sometimes we can get him into the swing instead). I love snuggling with my baby, but it's a lot more fun when it's not 3 AM with work looming the next day! We are looking forward to getting back to sleeping through the night!

James had an appointment with the GI doctor on Friday. (Yes, I know, I thought we were done with that one, but since James seemed to be having more discomfort with his feedings recently, we went back.) The doctor didn't seem particularly concerned about anything major going on, since James is still gaining weight and he's doing fine with the overnight feeds. But he gave us some suggestions about things to try, like giving him baby Mylanta (in addition to the Prilosec) to see if it's reflux or something else that's the problem. (Another possibility is that James also seems to have just a little occasional congestion right now. It doesn't seem like enough to interfere with his drinking, but I suppose it's possible that if he has some kind of very mild cold it could be temporarily throwing things off with his eating.)

We're still doing the new formula (Nutramigen). Mike thinks it's helping a bit, but I'm not so sure. We'll give it a little more time. The strange thing about it is that it smells like a hamster cage. I'm not saying that as a cute way of saying it smells bad -- it literally reminds us of hamsters. That doesn't seem at all appetizing, but James doesn't seem bothered by the taste, as far as we can tell.

James goes in for an MRI and repeat hearing test on Monday. This particular hearing test will most likely just confirm the auditory neuropathy diagnosis; it's unlikely to actually give us new information about how much he's hearing. The MRI is mainly to look at his auditory nerve. (Apparently in some cases of AN the auditory nerve is missing, but since we're pretty confident James can hear some things, it seems extremely unlikely that his is missing. But it's possible that it's too small or has some other issue, and apparently that information might have some treatment implications.) I guess they might be looking for other things as well, but we have not been very well-informed about the purpose of this test. James has to be sedated for the MRI, so the poor little guy can't eat anything after midnight on Sunday. (Once again, the anesthesia team appears to be completely neglecting any type of sedation for the parents. How rude!) I am a lot more anxious than I should be about this whole thing; we've been hit with bad news so many times that I'm just afraid of what else might be lurking around the corner. Mike, as usual, is more realistic and is not particularly worrying at all. (He correctly points out that James seems to be developing just fine so far.)

Edited to add: Mike noticed that if you click on the top picture to enlarge it, you can see Mattie's two front teeth!