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Prayers for Benjamin

Please keep Benjamin in your prayers. He has developed a very bad cough and has started albuterol treatments at home, but his Pulmonologist said you can't really treat the infection since it is viral, all we can do is treat the symptoms. He said we need to watch him closely over the next 5 days to see if it improves or gets worse as it could be a minor upper respiratory infection or possibly RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus). At this point he is coughing a few times each hour which seems to really exhaust him. Other than that he seems to be fine, still eating and sleeping like usual. We know he will get through this and continue to thrive. Thank you for your prayers.

We are enjoying every minute having Benjamin at home! He is smiling, laughing, and even trying to piece together babbles into words. He recently discovered his tongue so he is trying hard to speak. It is so cute! He has had several visits to be evaluated on his development and they all believe that he was doing good, even better than expected on his language and cognitive skills, which are the indicators for intelligence so we were very pleased to hear this. They also both agreed that he was slightly behind where he should be on his fine and gross motor skills, but they feel he should be able to catch up by two years of age. They showed us some exercises to do with him that should help. Overall he looks amazing. He is still on oxygen, but he did so much better at his OCRG Sleep Study so hopefully he will only require oxygen assistance a few more weeks. Oh, and our sweet little angel is sleeping through the night! It started over a week ago and we were waiting to see if it lasted and it has. I now understand what they were referring to in the NICU before discharge.

Overall, Benjamin is doing really well, but he has a very busy schedule. Last week he had an appointment on Monday with his Pulmonologist, Tuesday at Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) for Physical Therapy evaluation, Wednesday at TCH for Occupational Therapy evaluation, and Thursday Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) is coming to the house to work with him on his development. Friday- he had the day off! : ) He will be busy for the next few weeks.

Benjamin is eating great, no choking- thank the Lord, and has slight reflux but is taking Prevacid for it. He now weighs over 13 pounds. He is getting so big. He will be having surgery on May 13th for his hernia and will require anesthesia so please keep him in your prayers.

Thanks for all of your continued prayer support. Benjamin is doing wonderful and looks like a happy and healthy baby!