There are moments in life when the stars assign so perfectly you can't imagine how anything can go wrong... There are also moments in life that bring you to your knees with such an intensity that you fear you won't stand again. This past week brought the later to my home.
First, I am aware of the blessings I have. On September 15, a perfect in every way baby boy was welcomed into our home. Anaius Elek was born safely in water in our living room after a strange on again off again labor pattern weighing 9#6oz. It was a very different labor than expected but I felt amazing through the whole pregnancy! Our younger two kids slept soundly through the birth and had a beautiful surprise when they awoke the next morning. Declan is thrilled to have a brother. Imagine kids faces on Christmas morning... His face was even better when we told him it was a baby boy!
1 day old, I felt amazing and he was so peaceful. He really feels like a peaceful soul to me.
Our first week was a good adjusting time. Damon was able to be home more than I expected, the kids were thrilled with Anaius. All things seemed fairly normal.
At a week old, Anaius had dropped 8% of his body weight. This is not outside of the scope of normal for us. All of our babies have started out bigger and taken about 2-3 weeks to regain to birth weight. In this case, a perfect storm was brewing. As we passed the 1 week mark, I fell ill. Seriously ill. Like, everything inside me hurt like I was going to die. Nursing was a nightmare that my baby seemed to not be able to understand and as I was so sick, I missed cues that things were getting much farther off track than normal. At 11 days old, things came crashing down. In what was expected to be a typical weight check and PKU screening turned into one of the most heart wrenching days of my life. My baby in a few days had gone from 8% weight loss to 18% weight loss. In that moment, it didn't matter how sick I had felt, I looked at my baby and realized he was no longer chubby. He was thin and weaker looking.
How could I have missed this?! There is no measure to describe the feeling of despair I felt as a Mom to realize my baby was starving somehow. This became a major emergency in a matter of seconds. In the hours to follow, I cannot remember exactly what happen. A whirlwind of phone calls, pediatric appointment, more phone calls, a priesthood blessing, a drive to the hospital. For the first time in our life life, we had a baby in NICU.
In the days to follow, I felt the disconnect with my baby. Nurses and doctors constantly touching him. Tubes. Wires. Constant beeping of machines. Feeding tube. Blood sugar checks every hour... more blood drawn for tests. Urine for tests. What had happen to my newborn and how had I missed it?
This is us in NICU with a feeding (NG) tube down his nose.
I refused to leave. I longed to hold onto my other kids for comfort and reminder than health is possible but how could I leave him? I'm so incredibly thankful for the families that helped us watch our 4 big kids while I sat with my baby waiting to find out what was wrong.
Damon spent a night with us too. I slept very very little that night actually. While having him there was the reassurance I personally needed to keep my shit together, my mama brain refused to stop worrying about my other kids. What if they woke up at night? What if they were scared? What if they ruined someones house?! It was a very long night.
By Sunday morning, our deepest fears were calmed. We knew that he had no major metabolic disorder. On one hand, I felt so much relief. My baby was "normal", he could digest food. This is really important if you think about it... on the other hand, this meant the problem was he was hungry. I had starved my baby. The problem was I had plenty of milk - he just wasn't getting it.
NICU was a fight to get out. The moment I knew that he was not sick - I knew we needed out. We have mountains to climb. We began checking out of NICU at MIDNIGHT and still didn't leave until noon. The doctors agreed it wasn't a deficiency on my end of things. They felt confident enough to let us leave to begin our task of fixing our son.
Anaius is unable to transfer milk effectively. The first week of his life he was gulping milk from excessive let down but in the second week, he would have had to work to breastfeed and he wasn't able to do so; and I was too sick to realize it.
In the last week of being home, it's been a nightmare and a blessing compared to other struggles I'm sure. With the idea of starvation, my confidence in the ability to care for a baby has completely eroded away. I'm isolated into our room trying to continue to teach him to latch properly, pumping so he has milk (since he really cannot nurse), and on and on. I am exhausted. Keeping up this schedule cannot last forever.
Wednesday night I had the opportunity to get out of the house with a group of safe women... Thursday morning we decided to brave co-op. Both events were relatively uneventful, except both had nursing mothers at them. I sobbed the whole way home from both. Why me?! Why us?! Why him?! I am devastated and still finding my footing through this mess. This is a scary place of unknown. By suggesting that I should be just thankful for my healthy baby is not honoring of the mother-baby connection and if another person says shit like that to me I might just murder them. I'm not refusing to acknowledge that we could face so much worse but I'm not going to pretend I'm not traumatized and mourning either. There is a swahili word for mother-baby: MAMATOTO. It is ONE word. You cannot have the baby without the mother or be a mother without the baby. This is a connection that is at the core of my belief of our divine heritage.
Our pediatrician and two lactation consultants agreed, he has mouth issues. We await oral surgery that will hopefully begin our road to recovery. This is a mountain we are going to climb. Surgery won't fix everything, it will hopefully fix the physical limitations that prevent him from even trying to eat though. That appointment with the ENT cannot come fast enough. We are working with a lactation specialist who also does cranial sacral therapy. We expect this to be a long process... Rome wasn't built in a day.
We are so incredibly thankful for the support system that has saved our lives.
A beautiful group of friends from around the US sent us a huge pack (300?) of paper plates. Another dear local friend set up a meal calendar that has literally fed us while we figure out how to balance everything. People took care of our kids and continue to do so while we see specialists and therapists to find our way through this. These people are literal angels helping us through. They sustain me just enough so I don't lose it.
We will exhaust our financial resources, our energy and our very souls trying to climb this mountain and I believe it's worth it.
One. Day. At. A Time.
So lovelies, I'm mountain climbing with this beautiful baby of mine. I don't expect much right now. I will have good days, bad days and all in between. I'm healing. He's growing. We are finding our way. There is trauma. It's messy and emotional.
He's worth it.
1 day old, I felt amazing and he was so peaceful. He really feels like a peaceful soul to me.
Our first week was a good adjusting time. Damon was able to be home more than I expected, the kids were thrilled with Anaius. All things seemed fairly normal.
At a week old, Anaius had dropped 8% of his body weight. This is not outside of the scope of normal for us. All of our babies have started out bigger and taken about 2-3 weeks to regain to birth weight. In this case, a perfect storm was brewing. As we passed the 1 week mark, I fell ill. Seriously ill. Like, everything inside me hurt like I was going to die. Nursing was a nightmare that my baby seemed to not be able to understand and as I was so sick, I missed cues that things were getting much farther off track than normal. At 11 days old, things came crashing down. In what was expected to be a typical weight check and PKU screening turned into one of the most heart wrenching days of my life. My baby in a few days had gone from 8% weight loss to 18% weight loss. In that moment, it didn't matter how sick I had felt, I looked at my baby and realized he was no longer chubby. He was thin and weaker looking.
How could I have missed this?! There is no measure to describe the feeling of despair I felt as a Mom to realize my baby was starving somehow. This became a major emergency in a matter of seconds. In the hours to follow, I cannot remember exactly what happen. A whirlwind of phone calls, pediatric appointment, more phone calls, a priesthood blessing, a drive to the hospital. For the first time in our life life, we had a baby in NICU.
In the days to follow, I felt the disconnect with my baby. Nurses and doctors constantly touching him. Tubes. Wires. Constant beeping of machines. Feeding tube. Blood sugar checks every hour... more blood drawn for tests. Urine for tests. What had happen to my newborn and how had I missed it?
This is us in NICU with a feeding (NG) tube down his nose.
Damon spent a night with us too. I slept very very little that night actually. While having him there was the reassurance I personally needed to keep my shit together, my mama brain refused to stop worrying about my other kids. What if they woke up at night? What if they were scared? What if they ruined someones house?! It was a very long night.
By Sunday morning, our deepest fears were calmed. We knew that he had no major metabolic disorder. On one hand, I felt so much relief. My baby was "normal", he could digest food. This is really important if you think about it... on the other hand, this meant the problem was he was hungry. I had starved my baby. The problem was I had plenty of milk - he just wasn't getting it.
NICU was a fight to get out. The moment I knew that he was not sick - I knew we needed out. We have mountains to climb. We began checking out of NICU at MIDNIGHT and still didn't leave until noon. The doctors agreed it wasn't a deficiency on my end of things. They felt confident enough to let us leave to begin our task of fixing our son.
Anaius is unable to transfer milk effectively. The first week of his life he was gulping milk from excessive let down but in the second week, he would have had to work to breastfeed and he wasn't able to do so; and I was too sick to realize it.
In the last week of being home, it's been a nightmare and a blessing compared to other struggles I'm sure. With the idea of starvation, my confidence in the ability to care for a baby has completely eroded away. I'm isolated into our room trying to continue to teach him to latch properly, pumping so he has milk (since he really cannot nurse), and on and on. I am exhausted. Keeping up this schedule cannot last forever.
Wednesday night I had the opportunity to get out of the house with a group of safe women... Thursday morning we decided to brave co-op. Both events were relatively uneventful, except both had nursing mothers at them. I sobbed the whole way home from both. Why me?! Why us?! Why him?! I am devastated and still finding my footing through this mess. This is a scary place of unknown. By suggesting that I should be just thankful for my healthy baby is not honoring of the mother-baby connection and if another person says shit like that to me I might just murder them. I'm not refusing to acknowledge that we could face so much worse but I'm not going to pretend I'm not traumatized and mourning either. There is a swahili word for mother-baby: MAMATOTO. It is ONE word. You cannot have the baby without the mother or be a mother without the baby. This is a connection that is at the core of my belief of our divine heritage.
Our pediatrician and two lactation consultants agreed, he has mouth issues. We await oral surgery that will hopefully begin our road to recovery. This is a mountain we are going to climb. Surgery won't fix everything, it will hopefully fix the physical limitations that prevent him from even trying to eat though. That appointment with the ENT cannot come fast enough. We are working with a lactation specialist who also does cranial sacral therapy. We expect this to be a long process... Rome wasn't built in a day.
We are so incredibly thankful for the support system that has saved our lives.
A beautiful group of friends from around the US sent us a huge pack (300?) of paper plates. Another dear local friend set up a meal calendar that has literally fed us while we figure out how to balance everything. People took care of our kids and continue to do so while we see specialists and therapists to find our way through this. These people are literal angels helping us through. They sustain me just enough so I don't lose it.
We will exhaust our financial resources, our energy and our very souls trying to climb this mountain and I believe it's worth it.
One. Day. At. A Time.
So lovelies, I'm mountain climbing with this beautiful baby of mine. I don't expect much right now. I will have good days, bad days and all in between. I'm healing. He's growing. We are finding our way. There is trauma. It's messy and emotional.
He's worth it.
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