ABOUT MINA:

Mina is a precious little girl recently rescued from an orphanage in Eastern Europe who is now finally home with her forever family! She had been without a mother or father to love her & care for her each day. No one to rock her, kiss her gently or tell her she's loved. She is blessed with an extra chromosome known as Down syndrome, which for her that meant a life of being viewed as worthless in the country she was born into & a life without hope. Because of this her parents gave her up at the age of 6 months when they found out the diagnosis & from there her life progressivly went down hill. We are the Gower family residing in OKC who recently adopted this little angel. She was extremely malnourished and unable to do just about anything when we first met her. She will be 2 in January & is the size of a 3-6 month old weighing 14lbs. She continues to amaze us at how quickly she is progressing with love and nutrition. She has learned to sit up, roll over, feed herself finger foods, hold her own bottle and loves to interact with toys and other children. Her life has changed so much in such a short period of time and will forever be changed! Thank you Lord for putting a burden on our hearts to rescue this little blessing and making her apart of our family!

Monday, September 20, 2010

Zoo Trip and Doctors Visits! Long overdue update

Sorry that I've been slacking on blogging. Daddy has been out of town working this past week so it has been me and the girls till late Thursday night so I haven't found a whole lot of time for doing anything extra. :)
We had Mina's doctors appointment on Wednesday. She did great.... wasn't a big fan of sitting and laying on the table but for the rest of it she was a happy girl. The doctor gave me a list of things he wants us to test for and sent home a stool kit for me to collect stools for them to check for parasites and such. Ewwww..... Mina still has awful awful diapers... not quite as bad as they were at first but still bad. We figured by the time we got her home and fed her good food it wouldn't be as bad but not so. Maybe her tummy is still working on getting fully adjusted. Anyway... I think collecting stools from her diapers is probably one of the grossest things I've ever done in my life. Yuck! Mina weighed 14lbs and is 28.5 inches long. Of course the doctor showed me the growth chart and how she was no where near even being in the 1 percentile... as expected. I wish we knew her weight when we first got to her to see how much she's gained cause I'm pretty sure she's gained some weight over the past few weeks. Her little legs and belly are stating to get a slight bit of pudge on them :) Yay! The doctor also listened to her heart and said she has a heart murmur so someone should be calling me soon to schedule an appointment for an ultrasound of her heart. Also someone should call soon to get started on therapy.

I had my doctors appointment on Thursday and Mimi and Papa came over to watch the girls. I have some precious pics and videos below from the sweet time they spent together. The girls loved it! The doctor said everything sounded great and looked normal. The babies heart beat is 147 and I have an ultrasound scheduled for September 28th. So in just a little over a week we will hopefully know if it is a boy or girl.
Mina has been teething lately and fussy off and on. When I was brushing her teeth the other day there was one area when I brushed over it that she just went nuts and started crying. I felt so bad.... it's one of her back molars on the top and looks like it's about 3/4 of the way through.

Mina is absolutely loving bath time now. She gets in and splashes around and plays with all the toys and doesn't get upset one bit. So glad she has learned to love baths.

And the greatest news of all is she will finally drink milk. She actually isn't a very big fan of juice anymore and will just down the milk. The pediatrician gave me some pediasure to try her on so we did that but I hated all the sugar in those and that it is the 2nd ingredient so I thought I'd just mix that with some milk and she loved it. I just gradually did more and more milk and less pediasure so now I will mix about 1 ounce to 6 ounces of milk and she still drinks it. I'm so glad to be able to get the extra calcium and protein in her.

Mina is such a wonderful little blessing! It is so joyful when she wakes up in the morning and I go in there to check on her trying to figure out if she is awake (since she doesn't cry to let you know she's awake) and when she is and her bright blue eyes are opened and she sees you she gets the biggest grin and reaches her arms up to me to get her out of the bed. So precious! I love those sweet moments. She has turned into quite the little snuggler and cuddle bug!




Enjoying bath time!


OKC Zoo Trip!  The gorillas were loving their photo shoot :)


Mina wasn't so happy when I sat her down from holding her


Playing with the gorillas!


Spending time loving on Papa Bud!






YouTube Video
Thursday when Mimi and Papa Huzz were watching the girls







Daddy is finally home!!





Daddy was being silly with Mina's puffs. She thought it was funny!

1 comment:

junglemama said...

Mina is a doll! I love all the pictures!