Silly Expressions turn out to be factual...

Earl and I found out that some silly expressions people use to describe a behavioral moment they may have can actually be known as a medical condition. Our poor little Ellie is tounge-tied...literally. So everyone has a string-like cartilidge that runs from your bottom back area of your mouth underneath your toungue and it should run to the back area of the bottom of your toungue. Well Ellie has been trying really hard to nurse. She has been pretty successful a few times but she really gets frustrated with it and tuckers out pretty fast. We figured that she just needed more time to get used to it because of her prematurity. Well there is probably some truth in that, but our physical therapist also discovered that Ellie's toungue is being held down a bit (or a lot!) because her cartilidge runs from the back bottom area of her mouth almost to the tip frontal area of her toungue. No wonder she is struggling and frustrated with nursing. And the medical term for it is toungue-tied. This turns out to be more common than we know. In fact it may be genetic because one of Earl's sisters had it when she was small. Although, Ellie's is so bad that it affects how she eats and it will definitely intervene with her speech later on. Wow! The poor girl can't even put her toungue up to the top of her roof of her mouth. We also found out that she has no gag reflex. We will have to see what the NICU docs decide to do with these issues. Atleast we know that they should be able to surgically fix the toungue-tied problem since it has been pretty common for years. We shall see what happens there.
Sorry we have not posted any more info for a few days. It has been a crazy week so far. Ellie has graduated from an enclosed Giraffe bed to an open crib(or bassinet). She is now able to wear clothes and so far is keeping her body temp up on her own. Once in a while her temp is a tid-bit low but nothing an extra blanket can't fix. The nurse gave her a bottle of my milk for the first time last night and she did rather well with it. She is now up to full feeds (We will see how she handles it) and she is no longer on an I.V. She has made some incredible steps to getting her closer to go home. In fact, the only thing left for her to do is taking all of her food in orally. The only problem with that is it sometimes takes the longest to get there. So we are still not sure when we will be home but we are much closer than we were last week and that is a blessing. She is now laying flat on her back and her head is getting a little more round and normal looking all the time. Ellie is incredible. We will try to have some new pics up later today. Thanks again for all the prayers. We are truly feeling all your love and support! Thanks again for all of that! I hope that you are all doing well.
Signing out!
Emily and Earl