In the household news...

Since Blueberry's surgery (and my last blog)....

1. Blueberry is doing much better. The first few days were pretty rough, but she seems to be healing nicely. She has an inch plus scar, but when her pediatrician saw it a few days ago, she commented that she didn't think it would stay a permanent scar.

In fact, since the surgery, Blueberry is more mobile than ever. We're thinking that the hernia was slowing her up in terms of crawling and potentially other movement. Before her crawling was awkward. One leg was down in the traditional crawl position but the other was always kind of propped up. Now she's crawling like a normal baby. And getting into everything. She's also continuing to pull herself up on all things reachable and is getting good at moving from one piece of furniture to another. Even though we can officially say she is crawling now, I don't think it's going to last long.

2. In other Blueberry news, her latest tricks of the last month: clapping. She's started this thing of sitting in one spot and using her heels to rotate in a full circle. Rather funny to watch. Interesting conversations going on all the time. She has finally figured out the sign for "food". Refuses to learn "more".

3. My house is piley. By which I mean that there are piles of things everywhere. Part of this is stuff we need to put into our shed (box sitting for my parents while they're overseas). Part of this is partially finished projects that need to be completed (garage needs tidying out, master bedroom needs some work, I've just rearranged our study--more on that later). Must get taken care of. Beginning to get under my skin!

4. Am trying to determine the best action to take concerning her current pediatrician. I like the office we're a part of mainly because they let us give her shots as we like without hassle. However, her actual pediatrician is bugging me. I've had a few things in past visits that have kind of irritated me; however, her 9 month appointment (which we just had on Friday) really got under my skin. Am I over-reacting? I don't think so, but judge for yourself.

Basically what happened was we went in, they did the usual height/weight etc. Blueberry now weighs 14.5lb and is 28". The doctor came in and commented that she was getting "really concerned" about Blueberry's weight. I had to point out to her that when we came in the week before at the start of our hernia adventure, they had weighed her in at 16lbs (with her clothes on), and at the hospital, they had weighed her in at 15.5lbs (diaper only). And as she had just had surgery as well as having had several days of not eating well, was it really surprising that she had lost weight? Should I really have to be pointing this out to the doctor (who has Blueberry's chart in front of her as have this discussion)? Other than that, she has stayed within the same percentile for her weight basically since she was born. She's growing and gaining weight. Just at a lower percentile.

They then did the hemoglobin/iron levels test. Nurse came back in and said we were good to go. I got a call Saturday morning from the pediatrician's office. Apparently her doctor is concerned about her iron levels and was recommending we start her on iron supplements immediately. The nurse proceeds to give me the name of the supplements. I then start asking questions.

Question 1: What about constipation issues that are guaranteed if she's taking iron supplements? We have struggled with constipation ever since Blueberry has started solids (in hindsight this might have something to do with the hernia, but that remains to be fully determined). Their recommendation--another drug that will hep with the constipation. Really?

Question 2: What exactly was her iron levels at? Answer: 11.4. According to the nurse, normal levels are 11.5-13.

I also raised the question of the latest research regarding breastfed babies and iron levels, and increasing iron through food. No answer. I started getting annoyed, finished the phone call, and did some research on my own because a few things just weren't sounding right to me.

Issue 1: According to every thing I can find, normal iron levels at 9 months is considered 10.5-14 (12 average) NOT 11.5-13.

Issue 2: She was sick. Had surgery. Hadn't been eating well. Had lost weight. Oh look--4 things that each on their own can cause someone's iron levels to be lower than normal. But rather than giving her any time to just recover, the pediatrician wants to put her on supplements. Really?

Issue 3 (especially given the facts of Issue 2): She was 1/10 of a percent below their preferred levels. No recommendation regarding having her eat foods high in iron. No. No. We need to put her on drugs. BAH! Just irritating.

Issue 4: It really irritated me that the pediatrician couldn't take the time to look at her levels and have this conversation with me while we were in the office. No, I had to talk only to the nurse from home. This has bothered me greatly.

Any ways, given that this isn't the first time I've had some questions about how our pediatrician works, I have to wonder what to do now.


Well, that's about it in the land of quickish updates. Lord and baby willing, I'll be on here more in the coming weeks.

Mommyhood--The Downside

So the last 24ish hours have been rough. Very rough.

Let me start with the following picture.


Yup. That's my Blueberry with needles coming out of her head.

The story basically goes that Tuesday Blueberry was on the fussy side on and off and not eating a whole lot. Wednesday it was worse. Way worse. Not wanting to eat much. Would not take a morning nap at all. Finally took a brief 30 minute afternoon nap only to wake up screaming.

I nursed her, hoping to put her back to sleep. She did fine for about 10 minutes and then all of the sudden popped off and began crying again. Hard.

Decided to change her diaper, see if something was happening there. Well, when I took her diaper off, I saw a lump. A golf ball size lump. On her groin. Start mommy-hyper vigilance mode. Called the pediatrician, explained what was going on, and got her an appointment for a little more than an hour from when I called.

When the pediatrician saw her, he diagnosed the lump as an inguinal hernia. (For those curious--this link is a picture of another baby girl--not Blueberry--with an inguinal hernia about the same size as hers). The cure? Surgery. They were to call a surgeon first thing in the morning to set up an appointment. In the meantime, I was to take her home and keep a close eye on it. If any bleeding or change of color began to occur--go to the ER. Never comforting words.

Well, we got home and about 5 minutes later, she puked. All over me, herself, the floor. Nastiness. Keep in mind that at this point she hadn't really had a proper nurse since about 2pm. Brief discussion with husband. Called the nurse hotline, she called the on-call doctor (fortunately it was the pediatrician I had just seen that afternoon), and on his recommendation, by around 6:50 we were off to the ER.

I think what was really scary for me (other than knowing the potential for what could be going on--more explanation below) was watching her get rapidly more listless (in between throwing-up episodes) and not want to eat at all (this being my little girl who will happily have a snack at just about any moment--it's amazing she's as tiny as she is given her normal love of food). Plus the throwing up was unsettling. She continued to throw-up on a regular basis up to before they took her into surgery. Not even sure exactly what it was she was throwing up by the end.

At the ER they tried to push the hernia back in manually but had no luck in doing so. At which point they called it an "incarcerated" hernia. Basically meaning that the doctor couldn't manually push the intestines back where they belong. The only solution--surgery. The danger of an incarcerated hernia is that it becomes strangulated--or that the blood supply to the intestines gets cut off thus killing of the intestines. Obviously not a good thing. And could happen at any moment once you hit the incarcerated stage.

It took a bit of calling, but they found a surgeon who was familiar and comfortable with performing this kind of surgery on a child (several refused before they contacted this surgeon). In the meantime, they tried to put an IV into her arm. Unfortunately, she was dehydrated enough that they couldn't find a big enough vein to work with, thus the end result of having the IV in the head. Let's just say that was enough to arouse her from her listlessness and produce a violent protest.

Around 10pm, she was off to surgery. It was (thankfully) a short surgery. They were able to put everything back where it belong--including part of her ovaries that had forced their way through the hole (so frightening--if they hadn't been able to do that, they would have had to remove one of her ovaries). She did beautifully, and in fact, the nurses in the recovery room brought us back much faster than they normally do as she woke up so well and was charming everybody with smiles and playing around. Of course the minute she saw me she burst into tears and then proceeded (thank you Lord) to eat voraciously for a good 45 minutes while they monitored her.

At that point they took us up to the children's unit (really beautiful unit--lots of color and murals). I stayed with her all night and once she and I were settled, Chris went home because I felt at least one of us needed to have a decent night's sleep.

She did pretty good considering. Wouldn't let me put her down pretty much until we came home today and I put her in her crib for a nap around 10am this morning, but that was OK. We just slept on the couch/bed they had and she basically nursed all night long (except for the hour and a half between 3 and 4:30 when she decided it would be a great time to play. They had a nice little play room that we went and explored for a bit until she started rubbing her eyes). I was very grateful that they didn't fuss about us sleeping together or try to insist that I put her in her crib. I think at that point I might have just climbed in the crib with her and slept that way!

In total I got about 2 and a half solid hours of sleep plus a lot of micro-naps. Since we've been home she's alternated from playing happily, nursing a lot, and taking long, long naps. Seems her recovery is going to be all right. She's on Tylenol, and you can tell when that starts wearing off, but other than that, she's doing all right. Eating, nursing, movement, all good.

I'm so thankful that everything went as smoothly as we did. I really liked her surgeon, from the brief moments we had with him. The anesthesiologists were both really nice (one of them a guy from London!), and the night nurses were fantastic. From start to finish I felt like things were progressing quickly and appropriately and that the people involved were being legitimately helpful and considerate. Such a relief.

I was rather proud of myself. I did good. No breaking down crying (although I will admit I came close to it a couple of times). I even managed to help hold her as the put the IVs in without stressing out to much (They asked before they started if we could handle being in there. I wasn't about to leave her to deal with that on her own). As I put in a Facebook post, I hit a new level of Mommy-hood having survived 12 hours of living in puked on, peed on clothes while handling a high stress situation in a rather put-together manner (if I may say so myself).

I do find it amusing that she managed to charm every single nurse and doctor who came into contact with her. Every time someone saw her, the comments ran along the lines of "What a beautiful baby" or (even more common) "Look at those eyes!" She is officially in the records as "The cutest baby ever" (as stated on the phone by the recovery nurse to the children's unit nurse as he delivered his report Blueberry's status)!

All in all, could have been a much worse experience. But I'm glad it's over. Recovery will hopefully go well, and theoretically this will make a number of things much better for my baby girl. The only big thing we have to watch out for is that the other side of the groin doesn't do the same thing as that is a risk. Praying hard against that one.

A Morning of Pins

So having nursed Blueberry at 3:30ish this morning, I then stayed up to say goodbye to my APs who flew off to Thailand. They've been staying with me the last two weeks as we had weddings and showers and baby dedications. I've really loved having them in the same country as me for the last two years. Spoiled me a bit, to be honest. But the time has come and once again we will have not just a few states but oceans between us for long gaps of time.

Result: I've been feeling a bit blue.

I couldn't fall back to sleep after they left the house (at 4:30am), so I was browsing on the internet. Add into that the dark and rainy day outside, my blue and tired mood, and a delightfully sleeping baby girl, and I have spent a lot of time playing with boards on Pinterest this morning! Rather soothing actually.

What is Pinterest? Pinterest is this fantastic site wherein you can put together boards of pictures that interest you. You can go visit my page here to get a better visual for what I'm talking about.

I love this site because I'm always finding images of ideas/dreams/things to make/places to go/etc on the Internet that I either bookmark or add to a list on Evernote. Bookmarks can end up being a mess. And Evernote, while I value it greatly and it has really helped keep me straight in my internet wanderings, isn't very good when it comes to the visual collections that I can do through Pinterest.

You can do practical posts (like this one I've been doing while researching what bike seat to get for Blueberry) or just fun posts (like my geek post) or dreamy posts (like my places I want to see post).

I just love it! And I find it to be an intriguing concept if you want to see what really makes people tick. After all--isn't a picture worth a thousand words?

PS. If you would like to become a member, it's an invitation only site. I have a few more invitations I can send, so drop me a comment on this post and I'll invite you!