Update on Addison

Addison turned 3 months on July 20th. On July 26th we took her to the pediatrician to get a weight check and they said she now weighs 10 pounds even. But then the following day we took her for a GI check-up and they said she weighs 10 pounds 13 ounces. So someone's scale is wrong and we're not really sure how much she weighs right now. :( The important part is she's gaining weight now. The GI doctor said that he's happy with her gaining weight and eating everything by mouth now so he estimates that we can have the g-tube removed in about a month. Yay! She's eating by mouth and she's even burping some on her own as well so he said "I'm proud!" (He's foreign so that came out funnier when I say it. lol) She's still on the Neocate formula for preemies and I've started her on cereal, applesauce, and even gave her some bananas yesterday. She loves all of it so far.



This is when I put her 1st pair of shoes on. She's looking at them like "what is that on my foot!" I thought it was too cute. :)


Jacob has been such a little helper thru all of this. He enjoys picking her clothes out and now that she has her first pair of shoes, he likes to put her shoes on her. He will even use her tube to burp her sometimes and likes to feed her. The boys think it's hilarious to watch her formula come up the tube when we use it. Eli still isn't too comfortable holding her so he usually doesn't pay her much attention but I do catch him talking to her and playing with her someimes. He's just still a little shy about touching her and gets ansy when she starts to cry. They fight over who gets to sit next to her in the car but as soon as she starts crying, Eli is the first one to move over and let Jacob help her while I'm driving. I want to thank everyone for all the prayers and thoughts for her thru all of this. It's been a long and emotional time but she's made it thru it (and so have I and Josh) and no one got hurt. LOL :)



We've also taken Addison to her first time at the lake and first time swimming in a pool. She loves it even tho the picture I have on here she looks pitiful. I just took that one because I thought it was cute. The others look much better. :)

This was her 1st time in the lake up in Roane County.

This was one of the 1st times in the pool. Maybe the time after I stuck her under water. :/ lol

This is just a random bath time picture I took. She loves the bath and she didn't know what to think of rubber duckie.

Addison's hospital visits

So we've spent a total of 3 1/2 weeks in the hospital with Addison. She's now had a head and abdomen ultrasound, upper GI test, modified barium swallow, NJ tube placed (and removed), sweat test, and a ph probe test done. She got admitted to the hospital the first time by her pediatrician. They sent us home after she gained a few ounces. When we went back to the pediatrician, she had lost again so he sent us to a GI doctor. As soon as he saw Addison he said that she was malnourished so sent us to the hospital to have an NJ tube placed. When we got to the hospital the doctor on call decided not to do that and sent us home a few days later after gaining 1 ounce (no joke.) 2 days later we had a recheck appointment with the GI doctor and he was upset they didn't place the NJ tube so we went back to the hospital. This is when they finally did the NJ tube and ended up doing a fundoplication, g-tube placement, and a pyloriplasty all in the same visit. So she's been out of the hospital for 2 weeks now and has only gained 5 ounces. They're still worried about her weight and we're going for weight check and GI appointments and also starting on a feeding pump at night starting tonight. We go back in 2 weeks to see if this has helped and find out what to do next. Secretly, I'm starting her on cereal to help. LOL. Here are some pictures from the hospital:

I think these 2 are during her first visit when they didn't do anything to her.


This is the NJ tube. It bypasses her esophagus so food can go straight to her stomach. This was to see if her refluxing in her esophagus was what was causing the problem.

This was after the G-tube was finally placed with her poor little IV in her hand.

All wrapped up like a burrito. :)

That's a picture of her G-tube. While we were in the hospital she never acted like none of this was bothering her. She did awesome!

Jacob and Eli came to see her in the hospital. Jacob missed her. He was worried about her and kept asking if she was ok.


This one is when she had the IV in her head...which we were not fond of. :(

ER and hospital visit

So on June 1st we took Addison to the ER. I got home with her and she started crying and fussing until she started choking and spitting formula out of her nose and mouth and gasping for air. The doctor in the ER said that she had reflux and that we needed to follow up with her Pediatrian. We already had an appointment scheduled for the following Thursday. In the hospital she was weighing 7lbs 11oz (she was 8lbs 3oz at birth.) So when we went to the Pediatrican on Thursday he recommended that we go to the hospital to find out why she's losing weight. She started at 8lbs 3oz then went to 8lbs 1oz, then 7lbs 11oz, so off to Children's we went. On the way there my cell phone breaks and the clip on my transmission line falls off...just to make things worse. While we're at the hospital we see 2 different doctors and do a upper GI barium swallow test and an echo since they found that she has a slight heart murmur. Everything came out fine and normal and she started gaining a little bit of weight so they sent her home. We're still not sure why she had been losing weight and she all the sudden went from having constipation to diarrhea (yeah I know, too much info.) So we got discharged home and went into Dr. Machen's office again the following Monday (after staying 2 night in the hospital.) Dr. Machen ordered a sweat chloride test which checks for cystic fibrosis on Thursday so that's our next step. Since we've been out of the hospital she has had 2 more of her choking episodes. Once while she was screaming and once while just laying on the couch having her diaper changed. Apparently the most important thing to the doctors was to get her weight under control. So for right now...mission accomplished. :) Here's some pics of her in the hospital.
Sleeping in the hospital with daddy.

Having an Echo done. And actually sleeping thru it!

Staying in the hospital

Smiling even in the hospital. Plus, 1st picture of her smiling. :)

1 month check up and new brother & sister

Addison had her one month check up Monday. She had lost down to 7lbs and 14oz and she's 22 inches long. So she grew taller but she's losing weight and Dr. Machen wants to figure out why so we go back in 3 days. (Honestly, how much weight can she gain in 3 whole days.) Anyways. She's been sleeping thru the night (like 7 and 8 hours if I'll let her) and she's been spitting up a little which I think is the formula that WIC gave us. She didn't do this on the sensitive stomach formula. So we switched back to the sensitive to see if that's what's causing it. She had her 2nd Hepatitis shot and actually only cried for a second or two until Josh gave her her pacifier. I refused to hold her while she was getting the shot. :) When I told the doctor that she likes to sleep on her stomach and sleep all night, he said that she can't sleep on her stomach and I needed to wake her up to eat. Yeah right! Wake a sleeping baby AND make her mad by putting her on her back. Yeah ok. So that night...she slept on her stomach and slept for 6 hours. :) Other than all of that he said she was neurologically doing good. Very alert and had good color so over all she's good.

I went back to work on Monday but only took a half day to go to her doctor's appointment. Yesterday was my 1st full day back to work and I was proud...I only cried once. lol Josh keeps Addison while I'm working. I'm glad because that gives him and his mom time to spend with her and now that we've introduced them to her brother and sister that gives them time to bond with her too since the boys have already had a month with her.

Which leads to the new brother and sister. On Sunday Josh explained to the kids about Addison and I brought Addison to meet them. I'm sure it was a little confusing but since they're so little they were just excited about the idea of a baby. I'm sure all of us will be getting questions asked in the future and we will just have to take them all one step at a time but for right now they are doing really well with her. Once the newness wears off like it did with the boys then it'll be easy to get to some kind of normal with everybody. Right now everybody of course wants to hold her and play with her and always be touching but I know that will die down so I just let all the kids (all 4!) help and do as much as they want to so none of them feel left out. Jacob of course likes carrying her around and actually does really good with her and is a HUGE help so I let him do as much as he wants so he doesn't get jealous. I think of the 4 of them, he will be the one to be protective since he's the oldest. I did get asked by one of them "if she's my sister, and she's his sister, then does that make us brothers?" I'm still trying to figure out how to explain that one to them. Luckily the short attention spans helps out a lot.

Made Daddy hold her while she got her shot. :)

1 month checkup pic...yeah bad pic I know :(

Better 1 month picture at the waterpark sleeping.

Addison Nicole Dalton

I know it's taken me two weeks to put her first blog on here so I'm posting her 2 week pictures too. Addison was born on April 20th, 2010 at 12:45p.m weighing 8lbs 3oz. We went in that morning to be induced at 7. They started inducing at 8:30am and was already breaking my water around 10am. Then at 12:35, Dr. Myers came in and put on his scrubs and got ready to start pushing. She was born at 12:45. This labor was EXTREMELY fast. I was really lucky and had almost no pain at all except for feeling a few contractions right before they gave me the epidural. I did get sick once but that was from the epidural. I went ahead and warned them before so they could give me the bucket. :) Josh was able to cut the cord without getting sick but did turn his head when I was getting sick. Go figure. She was born on a Tuesday and by 3pm on Wednesday we were already home again. It was ridiculous how fast everything went. She's been doing really good and especially for only being 2 weeks old now. She sleeps all night long already and has turned over once from laying on her stomach and getting so mad that she kicked herself over. :) We had her pictures taken like we did with the boys when she turned 2 weeks. She's already extremely spoiled. Always wants to be held and gets mad when you don't talk to her or when she's put in her car seat. Jacob and Eli have done very very good with her so far and Jacob is my little babysitter right now. He makes sure that I feed her and change her diaper when she needs it (like I've not already done this twice already.) lol He even fusses at me if I don't get her bottle to her fast enough. They've also done really good with Josh around too. We were worried about how they would do having Josh at the hospital since they haven't been around him but they've already liked having him around again and none of them has even skipped a beat. Now we're just waiting to introduce her to her other brother and sister. Will post an update on that when the time comes. Here's some pics.

Going home picture...hospital pic didn't turn out so good.

2 weeks old...

Eli's field trip + doctor's appointment

I volunteered to go on Eli's field trip with his class to the aquarium in Gatlinburg. I actually signed up for this a couple months ago before they set a date so I didn't honestly think I would be almost 36 weeks pregnant before they decided to go. But, my friend Mandy was going as well since her daughter is in Eli's class so I figured I'd at least have someone to ride with and also someone who just had a baby so she'd feel my sympathy. :) Here's how our day went: I took the boys to school and Eli of course had to walk 50 feet in front of me so no one would know I was there with him. Jacob of course gave me a kiss before he went to class and could care less. I drove Mandy and I and we had already decided we were going to jump out of the "field trip line" and swing into McDonald's and get back behing the bus. It worked! We get there and I had 2 boys and a girl including Eli. Mandy had 3 girls including Adison. We walked around together to help each other out. One of the girls kept wanting to run off and tell another girl she didn't want to be her friend. That turned into us having a cry baby because no one wanted to be her friend. So that was fun. Then we're walking around and this one girl spits on the floor. For no reason! So we go on to the tunnel where the sharks were. The "spitter" decides that she wants to see what the red button does that says "Emergency Shut Off...Do Not Touch." Mandy grabs her in time. We go off to lunch and things get calm. We come back in and we're fixing to leave when the class it sitting at the sting rays tank on the rocks petting them. The "spitter" turns around and starts spitting in the floor again. This time she's spitting because she drank the water in the sting ray tank and wondered why it tasted bad! Wonder why?! This ended up being a field trip from you know where. Eli, Adison, and the other two kids we had acted fine. I'm reconsidering this wanting a girl in the family thing now tho. But I guess it gave us something to laugh at later. :)

So my doctor's appointment was yesterday. I have lost 2 pounds from being sick last weekend and throwing up several times. I'm also dehydrated and had to be checked for the Strep B virus and so on. When he did that he said I was dilated to 2cm but not to worry because I shouldn't have this baby this week. Then he mentions he's going on vacation next week. Figures! BTW, I didn't dilate with either of the boys until I was already in the hospital. I have to at least try and hold out til April 3rd. April 2nd is the Reba concert. :) So as long as I stay calm, don't get sick, and drink water (which I am thanks to Cathy yelling "take a drink" every 2 minutes) I should be fine for a while at least. Needless to say my life is never boring.

First update on the boys and baby

So I tried to think of "the first blog" but anyone and everyone that's going to read this already knows who I am so there's really no point in an introduction. So I'll just give a run down on what's going on with baby.

As of tomorrow I'll be 35 weeks. I didn't tell the boys until the weekend before the baby shower because I was so scared that Jacob would be upset and not understand and the fact that I hadn't even told Jonathan yet at that point. Jonathan found out and was of course furious at first but now has been a real help with everything that he can and says he would even like to help after she's born even if Addison's father is there too. He wants to be there for us. Jacob on the other had took it WAY better than I thought he would. He hasn't wanted to leave my side because he feels like he needs to be helping me all the time. He helps keep the house clean "for the baby" and loves going shopping and picking out things for her. He keeps reminding me that we need to do this and that for her when she gets here and even tells me that I'm not eating healthy on ocassion. He's being so sweet about everything and it's cute. Eli on the other hands talks about it when you ask him and at first had to tell everyone that he's going to have a little sister but he's 7 so he's already to the point where it's old news. Until she's here then he doesn't really pay attention til he notices Jacob doing something. Short attention span. We're working on getting everything ready for Addison tho. Getting everything cleaned and washed and making sure we have what we need because everyone seems to think that she'll be here any day now. Neither one of the boys were really early but this pregnancy has been COMPLETELY different than the previous two. So just keep us in your thoughts and hope she doesn't come too soon.

The questions...At first I got several questions that I didn't know how to answer and still haven't figured out how to answer them. "Where's Addison going when we go to Daddy's house?" "How's she going to be my sister if she doesn't have my last name and what's her last name going to be?" I still don't know how to answer these and any help would be appreciated! Also, everyone always wants to know where the Dad is. Well, we're working on that part. He's having a hard time with everything since he's worried about his other kids dealing with this just as much as I was Jacob dealing with it. I'll let everyone know how that turns out as it progresses. It gets way to complicated for this blog. :) Anyways.

Hopefully soon we'll be adding Addison Nicole to this blog and keeping everyone updated on her as well.