Needing prayer...

Time has just flown and we haven't been able to write to ask friends to pray despite it much being needed. Thank God he has given us strength to manage the past few months and we have to just keep depending on Him. The past 2 months have been such a busy time of going for appointments to the doctors, physiotherapist, speech therapist, occupational therapist etc. And Annette's been climbing and pulling herself up to stand but I need to be around her constantly to support her and make sure she doesn't fall and hurt herself.

We weren't just concerned about Annette's poor weight gain - we were also concerned about her body muscles - because her neck and trunk (torso) weren't that steady so she didn't seem to meeting her milestones. But despite our constant asking, the doctors we saw weren't that concerned as they kept comforting us that different children develop at different paces. Not that we didn't agree, but it did turn out that just after 2 physiotherapy sessions, Annette is sitting up better (at 11.5 months, she's just beginning to sit up without support for a short period). So thankfully we managed to get the referral so we could move along for the sessions.

In the course of our search to get to the root cause of her poor weight gain and low muscle tone plus delay in gross motor skills, Annette had to take a blood test (extremely excruciating to see her cry her lungs out while I held her down). It showed that she had a previous CMV infection (probably after birth and not during birth when my blood test at 12 weeks into the pregnancy showed a previous CMV infection as well - so we're really thankful as the effects could have been very serious) but the infection doctor and neurologist (another thankful moment as we got to see that neurologist at a subsidised rate instead of a privatised rate, or else we would have had to see a junior in her team at a later date) didn't think that was the cause. So Annette had to have her blood drawn another time (because of the different referrals and doctors so it wasn't done at one shot) to check if she's able to absorb the nutrients etc, and we're just awaiting the results in 2 weeks' time.

She's having her birthday celebration with Sammie in 2 weeks' time as well! So we're looking forward to that too. We're just very thankful to God that He has blessed us with 2 lovely daughters. Annette has been copying many of our sounds (like apple, Nai Nai, Jie Jie, bread, there, Da Da) and our actions (like when Sammie covered her nose one time we were changing Annette's diaper). And it's so cute to see her play peekaboo when she covers and uncovers her eyes with her hands or moves a book/tray up and down. So we thank God that she's communicative and developing well in other areas. May we keep having the endurance to depend on the Lord's strength, to teach the kids to love each other, as well as to feed Annette as best as we can to help her to grow.