Mary Cate Update (the week of First’s)

Hello and welcome to the story that never ends. Mary Cate’s life is a virtual plethora of stories and happenings though out the day that honestly is a little overwhelming to try to get down in a three-paragraph blog. So that is my excuse for not posting as often as my wife would like me to. So here is the post:

This weekend has been a very interesting weekend in the life of the Mustaine family. Auntie Trista is back in the US, Brigit and I bought a car, we had an offer made on our house, and I am going to Ft Myers tomorrow to look at a house that could be perfect for us to live in (so please be praying that the Lord's Will will be evident in all the fun decisions we have to make).

So here is what is happening with Mary Cate. She has had some fun first this last week and then some not so fun things happened. So first with the fun, at the beginning of the week MC was acting more like a big girl than a premi. She was eating food like it was her job and growing in leaps and bounds (like 4 or 5 oz a day, she is 3 lbs 12 oz now). The other fun first was that she was started eating rice cereal; this was because she was having some reflux and the doctors thought that if there was more weight in her tummy less would come back up. It worked for the first couple days and she got up to eating 23 cc of food. This was a wonderful day because if she got up to 28 cc we could possibly remove all of her tubes (the end was in sight) but you know what happens next the NICU roller coaster reared its ugly little head. MC decided to start refluxing the rice cereal, which isn’t normally a huge problem, but MC doesn’t know how to swallow very well so some of the food was going into her lungs. This starts a new list of first, like the first time I saw my daughter turn royal blue from head to toe because she couldn’t breathe very well (this is a first that I pray will stay a one and only). So with MC trying to be a character from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the doctors decided to lower her feeds back down (she is now eating 13 cc of food and not having any spells of changing colors which is great news. We just need to pray the feeds can back up and still have no spells of reflux and no spells of breathing issues).

The last bit of firsts in MC life is her first eye exam. They schedule a routine eye exam to check all the kids in the NICU for ROP (Its an eye condition that effects the retina of the eye and is caused by the kids having to be on so much O2). Most of the kids in the NICU have some stage of it and MC is at stage 2, which is not good but not bad either. We are hoping that this is as bad as it gets for MC (because at stage 4 we would have surgery to fix it). This is what is going on with MC and I hope this helps you all stay informed and also keeps you praying because it is really amazing to watch God answer your all prayers.

Thank You!!!!!!