Tummy time!

No, don't worry, I'm not going to post pictures of Blaise's tummy. Those are really not something most readers of this blog want to see. Although her umbilical stump finally fell off last week, so now she has a cute little belly button between her g-tube and her ostomy.

Kids who have to spend a long time in the hospital tend to fall behind developmentally because their experiences are very atypical. To mitigate this, the hospital has "child life specialists" on each unit whose job is to keep an eye on the non-medical aspects of kids' development. The woman who has this job on Blaise's floor is awesome. She's very dedicated to helping families do what they would do at home and has been incredibly supportive of our preferences for Blaise (e.g., no TV, lots of books, etc.). One thing that healthy newborns need to do is spend at least some time on their bellies (a.k.a., tummy time) to help build up early motor skills. I didn't know how we were going to do this with Blaise because of all the extra stuff on her belly, but I asked the child life person and she told the physical therapists about the situation. The PTs came and made little foam supports for Blaise's g-tube and told us not to worry about the ostomy, so we've had some tummy time in the last few days.

A full set of pictures will be on the photo site soon, but here's a preview.