Nursing

We have been trying to get a home-health nurse in place since October and it has been a struggle. There is a nursing shortage everywhere and maybe more so in home health. But yesterday, after more than a month without a nurse, we had someone assigned to us. The nurse we met will only be part time and will be with us two days a week. She has a background in pediatric ER and it was clear in just the short time she was here that she is very sweet and attentive. We are excited that we may be able to get nursing off the ground for Macayla. It will help us out a ton. We are also excited today, because we are hoping to pick up our van after it has had a wheelchair lift installed. We are waiting for confirmation that it will be ready. Jacob is excited about it as well. He was a bit concerned about leaving our van with someone else. He said, “I hope they are being nice to our van and taking good care of it.”
As far as Macayla goes, she has been showing some weakness in her torso and arms that makes it more difficult for her to crawl and she even slumped over in her chair for a while the other day. But she has been able to hold herself upright since then. Her sleep has been good for the most part. She struggles some at first to fall asleep around 9:00 to 9:30 and then wakes up around 4:00-4:30 after which she may sleep until 6:30-7:30 if we let her. This is a much better sleep schedule than what she has been on in recent months. She has been quite expressive with me lately and lets me know that she doesn’t like diaper changing. That may be from the not so fun time with diapers this past weekend as we combated constipation. She hasn’t suffered much constipation since we went completely to formula, but now it seems to be starting again as she has had it twice in about a month. She also has started calling out almost constantly. It sounds like a siren sometimes or yelling. She seems to do it regardless if she is happy or sad. She stops is she sees something that is interesting or when she is sleeping. Other than that it seems to go on most of the time. It can definitely wear you down. Overall, things seem to be going well for now and we hope that we can continue on that part of the journey.