Luke is 9 months old!

It's hard to believe that it's May already and Luke turned 9 months a few days ago.
All is well! At Luke's check-up yesterday (his last RSV vaccine for the season) he weighed in at 17lbs. 5oz.
Luke had his first cold, a light one and he did very well. I think I was more nervous than anything.
He's now doing a little reverse scooting when on his tummy. He can roll from back to front and front to back now. His doctor says to watch out, in the next few months he'll start to take off! It's exciting for us to watch him discover the world of mobility.
He's also discovering real food with vegetables. He eats pretty well and so far prefers the peas over the carrots.
We also got word that by mid-May we can take him out a little more, still not huge crowds, but at least he can meet all our families that haven't seen him.
Bryan is a good big brother and loves hugging, holding and feeding Luke, he probably would drag him around the house if we let him.
Thanks for keeping up on Luke and our family,
Melinda

Another Picture

Here's Luke in a box.

Latest Pictures

Here are some recent pictures! The 1st one is Easter, 2nd is how big brother Bryan shares his train tracks and 3rd is a stroller ride.

Enjoy!

April 5th No more diuretics, rice cereal & special visitors

I am so sorry that I haven't written lately. I am starting to get e-mails wondering how Luke is doing, so I better hop to it. The picture is a special family that visited us from Idaho, see more below about their miracle named Ryan.



Luke is doing good. He has officially been weaned off of his diuretics. Trying to wean him off of these in the hospital didn't go so well, so having it not effect him at all now is great! He really is a different baby than when he was in the hospital, he's just doing so very very good! Truly a blessed boy!!

Luke also met with the surgeon who did his intestinal surgery for a hernia he has and sometime later this year Luke will need to have the hernia fixed. It's day surgery and he'll need to be intubated, which is always tough on those lungs, but we can't wait too long to take care of it.

He met with his regular physician for immunizations and Luke did very well considering he had 4 shots (ouch!). He is up to 16lbs 1oz and 25 1/2" !

His latest accomplishments are rolling over with push off assistance from his daddy, but he's getting the hang of it. He's doing a lot of hand to mouth activities and making lot's of noise, he's testing those vocals out. He found his feet yesterday, sitting up (with assistance) and touching his toes. He loves sitting up and playing with a toy.

Luke will be trying out rice cereal too, that's right you read it, he'll start solids!!! If he does well, we'll start adding a few things little by little. Soon he'll be joining us at the dinner table.

I also want to share that we've had some more special visitors. Including a phantom nurse (sorry we missed you nurse Christie) who delivered enough train tracks for Bryan to cover the house from end to end. He LOVES them! I love them too, because he is busy building and playing with them for hours!! We also had a nice dinner with nurse Barb (Luke's Primary nurse) and I don't want to forget the nice lunch we had with 3 of Luke's nurses last month, a tasty lunch in the company of these wonderful nurses/friends who will always be apart of our life!

We also had a special visitor all the way from Idaho a special boy named Ryan visited us Friday along with his nice family while on vacation touring Oregon. Ryan's mom contacted us when she saw a prayer request from our couples group we belong to (it's called Teams Of Our Lady and they send out national prayer requests to all members) go out for Luke back last summer, she shared the story of her Ryan with us, born the same gestation as Luke and he also had a wealth of problems, mainly big lung issues, but today is a healthy happy 7 year old boy. Ryan was an inspiration to us and it was wonderful to meet him and his family in person. Very nice people who have invited us to visit them when we can vacation in their area someday. I've included a picture, Ryan is in front to the left of Bryan.

Lot's of positive things to report! I just need to do this more often, so I don't leave these long updates for you.

Thank you for those continual prayers, we are very grateful and we hope to be in touch more often and post more pictures soon!

Melinda

Wed. March 20th "A normal heart!!!"

Today I heard the words "NORMAL" when describing Luke's heart! Words that were music to our ears!!! It's true at his follow-up appt's today, his echocardiogram showed his heart pressures in the normal range and the size and shape of his heart back to normal.
His diuretic doses are now being cut in half to start weaning him and soon his Sildenafil (the Viagra drug) will be decreased slowly.
We also found out that Luke is the smallest patient to have the Cardiac-Catheter procedure in Oregon.
His lungs sound good, still a long road for those tissues to re-grow and it's just a matter of keeping him healthy. We're doing a lot of hand washing around here.
He is up to 15 1/2lbs and he's starting to do some hand to mouth activity with his toys.

Luke is truly blessed and amazing and we can't thank you enough for all your help, support and of course prayers!

Monday March 10th

Here's the boy's today sporting matching shirts from Luke's Godparents.

We're never short on thoughts of the journey Luke has taken us on. We're very proud of both our boys.

Melinda

March 5th

Luke is doing good. We are enjoying home life more than anything. Luke loves his big brother, he constantly watches him and smiles when Bryan plays with him. With the weather getting better, we've been spending more time outside.
Luke had a doctor appt. today and his latest weight is 15lbs 5oz.
He's starting to look a lot less like a preemie with his better muscle tone. His latest thing is to put him hands in his mouth. He also likes to hold his own bottle when he eats.
We've enjoyed the visits from his nurses from the NICU. Wonderful people that have become our friends and we love it when they come visit. These are people that we'll be in touch with forever.
I'll try to keep up with more pictures posted.
I can't say thank you enough for all your prayers and support, you each helped get us through a tough time. More importantly Luke thanks you!
Melinda