Saturday, December 3, 2022

The Trouble with Swallowing

Roman has been tasting baby foods and some of our dinner in the silicone feeders.  He was still thrusting his tongue out and most of the food would come with it so he hasn't actually been swallowing much of it.  He had really been rocking the bottle though since September, drinking four 8oz bottles (in less than 10 minutes!) a day.  There was a little dip in this during his illnesses, but not a bad one considering how much he went through.  He had a swallow study scheduled out for the day of Halloween and he seemed to be mostly back to normal so I kep the appointment, but kind of had a bad feeling about it.  It was supposed to be just a formality to confirm that he was not aspirating his milk or food into his lungs.  I tried to figure out where the bad feeling was coming from, and all I came up with was that he'd had such a major respiratory illness fairly recently and I was dreading getting to the appointment and him refusing to eat or drink and wasting my time.  I was not worried that he was aspirating. ever.  at.  all.


However, what was supposed to go smoothly and check off another box for him ended up going south.  After he has been drinking his bottle for a minute formula has been collecting near his epiglottis and then begins trickling into his trachea.  It was such a small amount.  He's never had pneumonia which would be expected from someone having this problem.  I was in shock as the Speech and Language Pathologist started giving me instructions on thickening his formula again.  No, this is not the worst news ever, but it was quite the blow to me.  It felt very much like a giant step backwards.  He had been on thickener before and weaned off it in June.  Even back then though he was never thickened to this level.  The first bottle I thickened after going home that day took him half an hour to finished.  And just like that I saw more than an hour of my day, every day, disappear for the foreseeable future.  That was the difference in total bottle time per day with the thickened formula.  He won't hold his bottle, and he has in the past been a little particular about who gives him his bottle.  He's in the second percentile so I can't just say, "Tough luck, Buddy," and make him accept a bottle from someone else because he has to gain weight and grow.  

I also had to wonder, "Was this an accurate test? Were the results skewed by his residual illness?"  I won't get answers to those questions because this test can only be done every six months because of x-ray exposure.  We have no choice, but to thicken and carry on.  It was a hard pill to swallow.  (Pun intended.)


I pretty much held in my tears until I got out of the hospital and then cried.  I cried a half a dozen times that day, and a lot in the days following.  I knew it was dumb and that we'd been through worse things, but it just hit me hard.  I talked to a local friend about ways to manage my time homeschooling better, I talked to my mom, and I decided that I was going to force myself to employ my tiny Army that I co-created and get some help.  I started having someone else put him to bed every night.  This is something that I love to do, but it does take up time and I do get to put him down for most of his naps.  I decided to make other people giving him bottles a goal and try it more often.  


 Things definitely improved when I implemented those small changes.  And like I suspected he did get faster at drinking the thickened bottle.  He since had to be switched to another formula and another kind of thickener, both for toddlers instead of babies, and we have once again slowed back down on drinking the bottles because this thickener made it even thicker.  Picture trying to suck a gel out of a bottle nipple.  It's ridiculous.  However, I know it will get better.  "This too shall pass," has always been my baby mantra.  I use it to encourage a new mama who thinks she will never sleep again or never again take a shower without interruptions.  These phases, though they may seem never ending, are so quickly passing.  Looks like I need to listen to my own advice now.

Friday, November 18, 2022

Halloween 2022


Some of the children opted for a giant Costco pumpkin and some chose to pick theirs out after Mass at the "Pumpkin Patch."  Isaac helped the younger boys with their pumpkin carving if they needed help.  They all picked out their own design and drew it on the pumpkin.








Hannah has never liked pumpkin guts so she usually paints hers.  Judah wanted me to paint Roman's like Jack Jack from The Incredibles, so I did a very fast job of it the day of Halloween.






















We had a really lovely time walking the neighborhood together, though Genna did have a party with friends to go to so she wasn't there.  Afterwards they came back with an insane haul of candy.  Bob actually started skipping houses at the end and walking with us because he said he just had too much.  Our neighborhood even had margaritas and chocolate fondues. 

Here's Bob after some kids dumped their candy and went back out for more.


Thursday, November 17, 2022

High Flow Oxygen, Just What the Doctor Ordered


As I mentioned at the end of the last post, Roman got RSV on Friday after coming home on Wednesday of the big kids' fall break.  He did okay for a couple of days, but Saturday night was pretty bad.  I slept in the rocking chair with him upright to help him breathe.  The humidifier was working overtime and we even tried to sit in the steam in the bathroom although it didn't seem to help much.  By Sunday morning I was pretty sure his wheezing and retracting was bad enough to warrant a trip to the ER.

His oxygen saturation was in the 80's.  They did an RSV test which eventually came back positive, but because my sister's baby already had a positive RSV test, and we'd been living in the same condo, they proceeded with the assumption that he had RSV.  They tried a breathing treatment with little hope that it would help.  Then the doctors ordered a high flow oxygen cannula and an IV and admitted him.



He had not had an IV put in since his heart surgery.  I was hopeful that it'd be easier now that his heart is working great, but I was wrong.  It took them 5 tries before they finally listened to me and decided it was best to wait for anesthesia (no matter how long that might take) to come and do an ultrasound guided IV.  Unfortunately it took him 2 tries.  Poor guy was wiped!  We had listened to a lot of Living on a Prayer while trying to get that IV.  The nurses thought it was awesome that he loves that song so much.

High flow oxygen was so irritating to him that he was trying to rip it out, and his Aunt Kristen came to the rescue with the perfect swaddle with snaps to keep arms in and let them out when I was at his bedside.  It also zipped from both directions to allow tubes to run into it.


The large tube in the pictures is the high flow oxygen tube.  He wasn't allowed to have bottles or anything by mouth while the oxygen was above 6.  Once he was allowed to eat, he wasn't super interested, but we were confident that this would change once the nasal cannula came out because this guy is "just so" about his eating.  It all has to be the same, feel the same, look the same.


"Let me outta here!"

Once he was feeling a little better, he would lay and play with the cord of the call button/remote if I hung it over just so.  This kept him distracted from the tubes attached to or coming out of his own body.  You can also see how the wires got tangled.  I slept lightly because I was so afraid he'd roll over a couple of times and get a tube around his neck or pull out his treasured IV.

Once he had the lower flow oxygen, the nasal cannula didn't bother him so much, and we were able to let him play more.

This was a rough experience for us all, but the most amazing thing ever did happen.  When we got up to the Peds floor, we found out that the senior doctor on the floor was a pediatric cardiologist and the very next morning his rotation ended and Roman's pediatric cardiologist came on for his shift...his ONE WEEK A YEAR shift.  We were so grateful for that because the nurses and other doctors didn't know Roman and his regular breathing pattern.  Dr. Black is the doctor that we have seen the most times, hands down.  Pre-heart surgery we were in his clinic once or twice a week.  The nurses and doctors would panic because he was belly breathing when they turned down the oxygen a bit, and Dr. Black knew that was normal for him.  We were sooooo grateful for this blessing!

"Oh, my dearest Hedgehog!  How much we've been through together!"  Roman fell in love with his music-playing, vibrating hedgehog in the CICU after his surgery.  He's slept with him every nap and night since.

Home really missed this guy!

 When he finally got released, after 4 days, his sisters and brothers were showering him with kisses, cuddles, and hugs.  I always worry that I'll be greatly missed by the kids when I am at the hospital all day ever day, only coming home to sleep every other night, but it's always Roman that is missed the most!  I wouldn't have it any other way.

Saturday, November 12, 2022

The 12 Days of My Beach Trip

One happy baby...




Two of brothers shopping...


Three brothers riding...



4 superheros...


Five cousins playing...



Six s'mores a toasting


Seven kids at a busy restaurant (and a dead battery)...


Eight days before Roman got sick...






Nine holes a digging...







10 cousins posing for the annual beach picture (Roman missing because he was sick)...






Eleven cousins together for the last weekend...


12 days of resting (Not really!  It was a rough trip with many sick kids and a sick Mimi too.  Unbeknownst to us, we brought home RSV incubating in Roman and his baby cousin to top it all off.)...