Olivia turned 8 months old on the 20th! She has been home with us for over a month, and we can’t believe how fast the time has flown. More and more people have been able to meet or visit Olivia, which makes our hearts happy.
We’ve had some excellent nurses helping out with Olivia, and have a few more starting soon. The scheduling is quite complicated to figure out, but it’s been beneficial to us to have night nursing. When the ventilator or pulse oximeter goes off four times in two hours overnight, it gets harder and harder to get up… The day nurses have been helpful with caring for Olivia while we try to care for the house, run errands, and sometimes take naps.
This month, Olivia has been working on almost rolling – she’s getting very good at moving onto her side and falling asleep in that position.
She’s playing quite a bit, trying to chew on toys or wave her balloons around.
She is less aggravated by tummy time, and working on lifting that big head of hers. Olivia’s first tooth began popping up just a few days ago, which was so exciting! Her smile is only going to get more beautiful.
In the last few weeks, Olivia has had several doctor’s appointments in-person and virtual. She just had her G-tube changed for the first time, now that it is considered healed. We also saw pulmonary, and had several discussions about Olivia’s progress. After our talk yesterday, she spent the night off the vent for the first time in her life (while still getting oxygen through trach mist)! She’s going to be able to do that if we have night nursing, about every other night. This brings us just one step closer to not needing the vent, so we are all excited.
We expect the updates to continue to be less frequent, as it has been quite hectic lately. Please always feel free to reach out to us for adorable photos of Olivia!
What a fantastic post mom and dad. Miss Olivia Hope is doing so well. 💘 Love you all.