We took the babies on their first fishing trip yesterday! After buying some gear, we drove about 30 miles north to Castaic for a day at the lake. We didn’t catch any fish but we enjoyed the warm weather and beautiful scenery.

My parents arrived yesterday for a week-long visit – yay! After a quick nap with the babies, we were off and running. We went to Cousin Booker’s last night and celebrated Passover with our extended family; grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles and cousins – oh my!
Reading the Haggadah (eco-friendly on iPads)
Went out to lunch today with aunt Julie, uncle David and cousin Booker. Lola slept through the whole thing.
It’s not even 9am and we’ve already had pee, poo, throw up and snot rockets. Gooooood morning!
Lola’s neurosurgery followup today was fine. He was happy that her fontanelle was still sunken and thought that she looked good. He took out her stitches, which was a little traumatizing for us both. I don’t know if there’s a better way to do it with a baby, but two people held her down as she screamed, while he tried not to nick her as he cut the suture knots. He was not totally successful – yuck. The wound on her head looks really good. The big one on her belly still looks a little red and raw.
We’re trying to figure out what “back to normal” means for Lola – which at this point I think is somewhere back in December? In December she was pooping every day, consistently eating 5 ounce bottles and sleeping through the night. I think that’s our baseline. With the hydrocephalus and surgeries in January, February and March she’s been pooping only with suppository/laxative, inconsistently eating 1-4 ounce bottles and waking up every few hours during the night. Presently he doesn’t think any of these symptoms are related to neuro because her head is so soft and there is no pressure. He said we should give her a month post-op to recover from this last surgery. Then we can rule out neuro and surgery, and if the symptoms continue we’ll have to go back to the pediatrician to see if there are other factors at work. Gastrointestinal, habit/routine, etc.
The good news is that she really does seem to be feeling better, both from the surgery and cold. She’s seems more like herself – smiling and laughing. We have another follow up appointment next week and will do another head ultrasound to get a post-op baseline moving forward.
I took Lola for a quick walk-in visit to the pediatrician this morning. She had started throwing up with coughing yesterday (4 out of 6 feeds), which can be a neuro red flag, so I just wanted to get her checked out. Pediatrician confirmed that it is just a cold and thought her head looked great. We have our neurosurgeon follow up tomorrow so he can tell us more.
On the plus side Lola is feeling MUCH better. In a good mood, not really coughing, nose stopped running and no throwing up. It’s just nice to see her smiling again.
My poor little Lola just can’t catch a break right now. Just when she was starting to feel better post-op, she now has what I think (hope) is just a cold She is totally miserable. There is clear snot running out her nose and she has a cough that doesn’t sound serious but is definitely bugging her. Ever since Lola came home from the hospital she’s been on PICU time – awake every 2 hours during the night. It’s been exhausting for all of us, and this cold is definitely not helping matters. Hopefully she feels better soon so we can all get back on track.