Archive for the 'Family' Category

Only You

Published on February 11, 2008 in Aidan, Family, HELLP, Marriage, PIH/Preeclampsia, Parenting and Prematurity. 4 Comments

Recently I participated in an online discussion on a preemie group I belong to regarding having a clotting disorder during pregnancy.  The discussion began with a woman asking a question about a subchorionic hemorrhage she had in early pregnancy.  A couple of us advised her to ask her perinatologist about having a thrombophilia panel done since she had had a preemie just a couple of years ago and now this early bleed in her second pregnancy. 

I, too, had a subchorionic hemorrhage in very early pregnancy with Aidan.  About the 6th week along.  It was absorbed by the next ultrasound and was not thought of again until that day in the hospital when I was diagnosed with homozygous Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene mutations, better known as MTHFR.  (For those of you wondering at home, high risk OBs, perinatologists, and antepartum nurses do use *that* word it looks like to describe it.  Sorry have to keep this G-rated.  :-)   Hmmm…I wonder if that early bleed was a sign? 

Anyway…the discussion led to me pointing out that any future pregnancies for me would include daily shots of heparin or lovenox in my stomach.  Ugh.  I know…it isn’t great, folks.  It friggin hurts.  I literally still had bruises on my abdomen 3 months later from those shots.  And I only endured it for the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy once we knew about my disorder.  But I would gladly do it again for another baby…the whole nine months.

Except….that Aidan is our one and only.  How did we come to this decision?  Not lightly.  Not without a lot of soul searching, a lot of tears, and finally a lot of gratitude.

When Brandon and I were starting to talk about children seriously, we discussed how many, spacing, etc and we both stated that we may indeed decide we are happy with only one. 

This disorder makes the decision for us…or rather, the HELLP syndrome that resulted probably was more of a deciding factor.  There is too much that happened that is so scary and so painful, that the idea of repeating it is torturous even to consider.  The first time we found out at 21 weeks that his growth was not on track anymore, but lagging significantly.  The PIH at 24 weeks.  Then the hospitalization at 26 weeks.  The MTHFR diagnosis.  The physically grueling hospital bedrest accompanied by twice daily heparin injections, high flow oxygen, blood pressure meds, so much protein that when I saw my meal tray I thought I would vomit to have to take in so much food, and the 1.5 gallons of water I had to ingest each day.  The daily biophysical profile.  Holding our breath and hoping the umbilical cord flow had not reached reverse diastolic flow.  The 4 c-section scares before it actually happened.  Listening to the fetal monitor and hearing occasional decels.  The night of delivery.  Knowing my liver was about to rupture and wondering if I would ever see Aidan alive since I was going under general anesthesia.  Having to say goodbye to my husband as they wheeled me down the hall to the OR, frightened beyond measure.  Learning later that I bled out—a lot.  That I very nearly died.  And that my husband waited for 40 minutes alone in the hallway not knowing the fate of his family. 

The wondering of the next couple of years was just as difficult.  Will Aidan meet his milestones?  Will he have disabilities and what will they be? 

This kind of thing is also hard on a marriage.  Most people don’t talk about this.  And honestly, I think a lot of people who know us would be surprised to learn that all of this stress strained our marriage immensely.  But it did.  We each had our own personal brand of grief and PTSD we dealt with and we lived a lot of the first 2 years of Aidan’s life in a kind of survivor mode.  Don’t get me wrong, we have had wonderful times as a family.  But it is just recently that we have both started to let our guard down and take inventory of what an experience as scary as this was does to you.  Brandon and I are in a wonderful place again in our relationship and the idea of putting our relationship through that again makes me shiver.

Do we ever want another child?  Sometimes.  We love being parents.  Aidan is amazing.  So far, he has no significant problems lingering today from his premature beginning.  That doesn’t mean we couldn’t see some issues like ADHD surface later as it is about twice as common in preemies. 

Sometimes when we watch Aidan play alone, we feel the urge.  We think it would be nice for him to have a playmate.  But I don’t think it is essential.  Often times when he plays alone it is because he wants some space.  Brandon and I play with him a lot.  He goes to playgroups.  Sometimes Aidan will leave what he and I are playing with and just go grab a book and ”read” to himself.  I think even toddlers sometimes want their space.

Sometimes I want vindication.  I want to carry a baby to term.  I want to get big and pregnant.  I want a baby shower.  I want my husband and I to be present during our child’s delivery.  I want to breastfeed successfully.  I will admit there are times that I want a do-over.  But there are no do-overs in this realm of parenting.  We can’t change what has been by having another.  Wanting those experiences is not the right reason to have another child.  

The idea of this possibly happening again terrifies me.  It terrifies Brandon.  There are no guarantees.  Aidan and I almost died.  Period.  The idea of having another very early preemie terrifies me.  The idea of having a baby with an outcome vastly worse than Aidan’s terrifies me.  The idea of leaving Brandon to raise Aidan alone is just too much for me to bear.  Don’t get me wrong.  He could handle it.  He would do a wonderful job.  But Aidan deserves to have us both.  And more importantly, he deserves to have us as we currently are.  Happily married.  There is no guarantee that would remain the same if we had to endure something this stressful again. 

So what am I left with?  I have been thinking about this a lot.  I am left with *gratitude*. 

  • I am grateful I didn’t die in that OR. 
  • I am grateful my son is alive. 
  • I am grateful my son is a vibrant, loving, rambunctious 2 year old boy.
  • I am grateful my marriage survived something that ends many.
  • I am grateful for my 2 “boys”.  I have more love than any woman has a right to have. 

I was thinking of an old Elvis Presley song I love and it captures how much I love both my only son and my only love.  So to both of my “boys” (Brandon and Aidan):

“For it’s true
You are my destiny.
When you hold my hand, I understand
The magic that you do,
You’re my dream come true,
My one and only you.”

My two boys...aren't they the cutestHi Mom...we've been playing with the hoseKiss for DaddyWe have lots of these days in our future son

Our freakishly tall toddler just cost us another $400

Published on January 14, 2008 in Aidan, Family and Toddlerhood. 3 Comments

I can blame Brandon for this one.  Aidan is definitely built like his Daddy.  Tall with a very long torso.  Aidan is already over 38 inches tall.  If you chart that on growth charts, you will find he is above the 97th percentile.  And the long torso/short legs (relatively speaking) is the luckiest thing we could have asked for in regard to his little preemie lungs.  For the uninitiated, BPD (bronchopulmonary dysplasia) is a common preemie diagnosis, especially for babies who were ventilated for a more than a month.  Aidan was ventilated for almost 7 weeks.

 When he was discharged home, one of the first doctors we saw was a pulmonologist at Children’s Hospital.  She told us we could expect to see her to monitor Aidan’s respiratory status/progress for about 4-5 years.  In November of 2006, we saw her to get her OK for Aidan to have a minor surgery.  Since he would need to be sedated, the pulmonologist needed to sign off on his lung function and that sedation was OK.  She took the standard X-rays and listened to Aidan breathing in a variety of different ways for about 10 minutes.  I thought perhaps something was wrong.  When she began smiling, I didn’t even know how to process a doctor smiling listening to his lungs. 

She said, “You are about to get rid of your first specialist.  Aidan’s lungs look and sound wonderful.  Unless something completely unforeseen happens, this will be the last time I get to see your little boy.”  HOLY CRAP!  Are you kidding me?!?!?  Wow!  Aidan was only 1 year old adjusted and we were done with the pulmonologist?  She explained that his growth was so amazing for an ELBW (extremely low birth weight) baby and his torso in particular was long.  She figured that us keeping him on oxygen for those first 4 months home (the winter months) had helped him grow and his lungs were recovering nicely.  I almost would have asked for a second opinion except that this particular pulmonologist is very conservative.  Harvard trained.  She doesn’t like to take chances.  When we first brought Aidan home she advised we keep him on oxygen even though he was achieving minimum oxygen saturation goals.  She explained that it was still a lot of work for him to breathe.  She told me, “He can either use the calories he takes in to breathe or grow.  I prefer that he grow.”  It was a sacrifice to do home O2 for 4 months, but oh-so-worth it. 

 So this brings me to the $400 part of the story.  A 5 point harness child car seat is required in our state until he is at least 4 years old and 40 pounds.  At that point, if you wish, you can use a booster.  Aidan is not even 2 1/2.  I recently noticed his shoulders were at the top harness slot height on his Britax Decathlon.  Ahem….isn’t this car seat good up until 65 pounds?  Yes, but I guess not for freakishly tall toddlers.

Aidan is only about 32 pounds, but in height was rapidly outgrowing his car seat.  Ugh.  What options did this leave me with?  About 3.  Total.  THREE types of car seats that would work for him.  The choices were: 

  • Radian 80–Tall enough in the torso, but very narrow.  Maybe better suited for a girl with it having such narrow shoulder room.  Scratch.
  • Britax Regent–Wide enough and tall enough.  But is didn’t look like it offered much side impact protection.  Plus, once this is in the back seat, you will seriously never be able to have 3 occupants in the back seat ever again.  This thing is a beast.
  • Safeguard Child Seat–Tall enough and wide enough but not too wide.  Lots of really amazing features.  But….*GULP*…$400.

No real choice in the matter….I ordered the Safeguard.  What an amazing seat.  He has at least 3 more inches of torso growth left in this thing.  For anyone that has ever had to use a childseat, you would appreciate all of the geez whiz features on this thing.  A self adjusting harness height system that adjusts when you adjust the headrest height.  No more removing the car seat and reweaving the harness straps through the  appropriate hole height as your child grows.  A retracting harness mechanism.  Cool!  And the self-ratcheting latch system makes this car seat almost impossible to install.  If you are a geek for this kind of thing at all, you must go check it out.

 Hubby was dumbstruck.  $400.  Ouch.  After I had assured him that the nearly $300 Britax we bought would be Aidan’s last carseat until a booster.  He kidded me and said I would need to find a way to “earn” the money for another carseat if I turn out to be wrong on this Safeguard.

 I said don’t blame me.  Go look in the mirror, Mr. Torso.  That is most certainly YOUR freakishly tall toddler.  :-)

Go Ducks!!!

Christmas adventures

Published on January 3, 2008 in Aidan and Family. 1 Comment

We went to my brother and SIL’s house for Christmas.  Our trip was delayed a day by a minor complication with my LASIK procedure, but I am happy to report my eyes are just fine and feel back to normal…except that I can SEE!  :-)  

Aidan dearly loves spending time with his cousins and this trip was no exception.  He mentions them to me at least once a day since we have been back.  We had lots of great finger foods on Christmas Eve and a lot of people over at my brother’s house.  The kids opened most of their gifts, but Aidan was still at the age where the paper and boxes were often more exciting than the gifts themselves. 

Christmas morning was more of a hit with him enjoying Christmas goodies, really loving his stocking stuffers, and deciding Santa was cool for bringing a dumptruck and frontloader.

I imagine that next year will be a hoot since most kids really start to put the whole Christmas thing together around 3 or so.  We had a wonderful time and I am very thankful for my brother’s family helping to make this a special Christmas for Aidan.

Home for 2 years

Published on December 12, 2007 in Aidan, Family and Parenting. 0 Comments

Dear Aidan:

2 years ago today we brought you home.  You spent 105 days growing and getting ready to come home.  You have come such a long way in 2 years.  From 7 pounds to 32.  From 19 inches to 38!  We have watched you learn so many things in 2 years.  Sitting, crawling, walking, talking, running, kicking.  The list is too long to even remember.

What I do know is that we couldn’t possibly be more proud of you.  You have brought immeasurable joy into our lives.  You are so active and inquisitive.  You love to laugh.  You are perseverant.  All of these traits will serve you well in life.  They already have.  Thanks for a wonderful 2 years at home with you.

Mommy and Daddy love you.

Some then and now moments….

Then:

Now:

Feeling kinda clueless!

Published on November 18, 2007 in Aidan, Computer savvy or lack therof and Family. 0 Comments

If you only knew the number of hours it took me just to get this blog remotely up and running, you would laugh and then go tell all of your friends.  I am intelligent about a lot of things, but coding is definitely not one of them.  I did find a theme to plug into my site that would allow some pictures to randomly rotate when the page is loaded.  (you should notice if you reload the page, that a new image appears in the header) I am still monkeying with the correct settings for the pictures to display correctly, but I think I am on my way. 

 I plan on writing a post in the next couple of days that will give you some back history on all of us and probably posting some of the updates I sent out to an MSN Group shortly after Aidan was born. 

I promise the blogging will get more interesting than this, I just wanted to get something down and make sure I remotely know what I am doing. 

So I can get some eye candy on the page, here is a copy of the family photo we took last week.  Aidan is usually SO eager to pose for the camera, but as you can see he most definitely was not in the mood by his expression.  Sadly this was the best picture of the bunch.  ;-)   The photographer says 2 is the hardest age to shoot.