7 month update

In 2 days Scottie will be 7 months old! Last weeks we had our follow up with her cardiologist and she weighed a little over 15 pounds. She is getting so big! The follow up went really well and he basically told us what we already knew. The only difference was that if one of the defects hadn't cleared up on it's own that he recommends fixing it by around 18 months. We are praying that this little hole closes on it's own but if not we are pleased that it will be a pretty minor fix. Neither of the 2 defects are effecting her in anyway right now which is great news!
Last we week we had our first encounter with "the croup". Scottie was a trooper through the multiple nose sucker sessions and the bathroom saunas. This weekend she did go through a bottle strike and we ended up at one of those after hour clinics because I was worried about dehydration. They basically told us there was no infection and to just keep doing what we had been, but didn't address the bottle issue. Sunday morning we called the er because her wet diaper count had dropped significantly. Finally we got some useful advice. After a small dose of Tylenol she finally took a whole bottle. So either the drainage was causing discomfort or we might have a teething baby on our hands. For the past few weeks I have been feeling what I thought might be a tooth but it hasn't budged and it's very hard to see anything. So if it is a tooth I'm hoping it makes an appearance very soon. Luckily though it seems like the congestion is on it's way out and today we have had 3 good meals and 4 great bottles.
Before Scottie was born we had looked into cloth diapers but the initial start up cost was really high. We found some really cheap at the fall JBF sale and after waiting a few weeks for her to grow into them we are finally using them. I think it was love from the first time. We have chosen to use Gdiapers which is a hybrid meaning that they also have a disposable insert that you can use when you may bot have a washing machine around. Although we have a pack of those lying around we haven't needed to use them yet. I love this system because it also has an optional paper liner that clovers the cloth insert to catch poop (it's ok to say poop). With the paper it makes rinsing yucky diapers unnecessary. Tonight I figured out that we had spent almost $700 on diapers so far since Scottie was born. That's a ton of money! Well to start on with the cloth I spent $35 on 6 shells, $26 on plastic liners and $60 on 12 cloth inserts. I have also ordered more shells and cloth inserts making my total investment a little over $200. These will last until she is 28 pounds and after that I will only have to buy larger shells since the liners and inserts will move up to the next size. Making my total cloth investment will be around $300 and we should be able to use these with the next little
one too! They are easy to wash and since we line dry them we are saving on some energy usage too.
This blog post is also to ask for prayers for my baby cousin Liam. He was born at 32 weeks on Thursday and is in the nicu. I'm asking for prayers that he will start eating soon so he can get strong and come home by his real due date. His big sister Ella can't wait to hold her little brother starfish as she affectionately calls him. I guess when you are 3 years old and you love fish you would think your little brother is a starfish too.