Good News

Wednesday we received great news. Mason no longer needs to sleep with oxygen! His oxygen trial looked good to his Pulmonologist. We are hoping to have the equipment picked up soon.

Mason received a new feeding pump last Friday. It is a smaller and more modern version of what he previously had. This new pump does not depend on gravity so hopefully the the messy part of his tube feeds will be greatly reduced. It also comes with a small backpack so that when he begins to walk, he can wear it on his back. Getting adjusted to the new pump has been a bit of a struggle as it seems to pump the food in faster than the old one. We are still in the process of readjusting the settings to see what works best for him.

Mason is also switching over to a big boy formula. He will get a new formula called Nutren Jr. (the Nestle version of Pediasure). We should be receiving a two week supply sometime today. The formula comes pre-mixed so it should save us some extra time.

Physically Mason is making some progress, slow and steady. He has a huge drive to become mobile but his body has not caught up yet. This proves to be very frustrating for him. He has become very good at staying up on all fours and rocking back and forth, but is still working on the balance and coordination necessary to begin crawling. As always, he loves to stand and jump so it is pretty hard to get him to want to crawl. He is getting pretty good at climbing. We will build him some "stairs" out of the couch cushions and he has lots of fun trying to climb them.

I can't believe how fast babies learn at this age. Mason has learned to wave hi and bye-bye. I actually think his next word might be hi. He even waves to the dog every day :) He is also trying to mimic sounds from some of his toys. Yesterday he was trying to meow like a kitty (wish I could have gotten that on video). Just last weekend, he learned how to smack his lips and does it all the time now.

Looking for his partner in crime

Attemping to scale Mt. Stairway

New Pics

There is not too much new in the way of an update. The only thing is that Mason's oxygen trial was moved up to this weekend due to the availability of an extra MedEquip box (our Pulmonologist has the software for this box on hand). Mason spent Friday night and Saturday night without oxygen and seemed to do ok. He had a couple of small desat's on Saturday night so we are not sure if those will end up keeping him on oxygen. We will take the box to UofM on Monday to see what the downloaded data looks like.

Cashed out after a day of playing

Pushing the numbers down

New Look

Today Mason's page received a new look! We have been using the same format for over a year and decided it needed some freshening up. Look for some new items to be added soon. A live site feed was added today which shows the geographical location of the blog visitors (city, state). I saw it today on another CDH blog and thought it was a really neat idea. We will try it for a few days to see how it works. We are also going to get rid of the photo gallery link and will just try and use the blog to post our updated photos.

Mason has pretty much recovered from his cold. He still has a small post-cold cough but that seems to be disappearing more and more each day.

We did receive some good news from his pulmonologist last week. The oxygen trial software is in! Sometime in the next month, Mason will have a two night trial to come off of his oxygen at night. We are pretty confident it will be successful and will be thrilled to see all of the associated equipment leave our house.

We have some more good news regarding Mason's medications. He is no longer taking an iron supplement as his blood work looked good at his 12 month check-up. We are also instructed to try taking him off of his last reflux medication. The medication also aids in digestion so we are not sure if he will tolerate his bolus feeds without it. He has been off for two days and seems to be ok for now. For the next couple of weeks we will be watching him closely for an increase in gagging, etc. Mason is now down to one full-time medication! He is taking flo-vent for his chronic lung disease and he has an albuteral inhaler to take only if needed.

On The Growth Chart!!!

We have some great news! As you can tell from the title above, Mason has made it onto the growth chart in all 3 areas (weight, height and head circumference) for the very first time! We were all super excited at his office visit. Two nurses weighed and measured him because they couldn't believe he grew so much since his last visit. Mason is now 19 pounds, putting him at the 4th percentile for weight and the 10th percentile if you adjust for prematurity. He is also 29 inches long! He has grown almost a foot since birth!

The office visit went pretty well. Unfortunately Mason had to get some shots which upset him, after a few moments of crying he started "yelling" at the nurses in baby babble, still with tears coming down his cheeks. I felt bad that he was so upset, but he was sooo cute at the same time that I had to smile! The nurses thought it was pretty cute too!

Unfortunately Mason has caught a cold this past week. He has been a little stuffed up, but has been handling it well. He has only required a couple of extra breathing treatments and his oxygen sat's are still 97 -100%. He has now developed a bit of a cough due to the stuffiness breaking up. Hopefully in a few days he will feel much better.

Stayed tuned for some pictures of Mason trying to crawl and standing.

It's hard to see it in the picture, but there is water, water everywhere!

Happy Birthday Mason!

I can't believe our little boy is 1! My how time flies!

Last weekend was a whirlwind weekend with Mason's first birthday and our 6th wedding anniversary on the same day! Travis and I managed to get out for dinner the week before so that we could focus the whole day on Mason. We had family over for dinner, gifts and cake and ice cream. As you can imagine we all totally spoiled Mason and he got lots of new big boy toys. His favorites include a plastic puppy rocking horse (or I guess I should call it a rocking dog). He also loves the alphabet wheel, tool set and gears.

Our Birthday Boy at the start of all the action

Rocking on his new doggie!

Opening gifts was fun!

Birthday cake mess!

Another view, here you can see Buster was also caught on camera!

After the post-birthday cake bath

Everything else is going really well. Mason is almost ready to crawl. He can now get himself into the crawling position from lying down and then he will spend some time rocking back and forth and trying to figure out how he can get to his toy without falling. His upper body strength is now enough for him to fully support himself. Mason is also getting great at standing against furniture without any help from us for longer amounts of time. It looks like he might start cruising the furniture soon. Our physical therapist is extremely happy and says that Mason is getting close to being "age appropriate" for his adjusted age which is about 10 and 1/2 months (since he was born 7 weeks early). This is great news, but the one downside is that he may not qualify for Early On therapy and support after this school year.

Mason has his 12 month well baby check-up tomorrow. I will post another update after that appointment.