babyblog

Tabitha - 6 months and 7 months

Dear Tab

I'm very sorry for combining your 6 and 7 month letters into one. Your 6 month one was due just after we arrived in the UK and I delayed it a few days while we had jet lag and then of course you got very sick indeed and this is the first opportunity I've had to sit down and talk about how you've been doing *aside from scaring us more than we've ever been scared EVER*.

So let me see if I can remember as far back as the time you were 5 months old going on 6 months old!

Mostly we were concentrating on your tummy issues, you still had alot of wind, discomfort, pain and found it very very difficult to relax and sleep. I ended up changing my diet midway through the month which helped you alot, and I think we figured out that you have a sensitivity to Soy in my diet and also Dairy. Having zero / small amounts of these foods helped you dramatically almost overnight. You became alot more comfortable.

With comfort came more smiles and giggles and enjoyment of your environment and family. Here is a photo of you on Christmas Day surrounded by some of your presents!

Over the month you also began to explore objects in your immediate vicinity - your crinkly toys and things. They got immediately rammed into your mouth, of course, the mouth which saw a constant stream of dribble thanks to you teething!

The big news was starting you on solids. I managed to 'hold off' until you were a week shy of 6 months and started you with some oatmeal cereal mixed with breastmilk. You loved it - shoved it into your mouth like no tomorrow. We gave you some every day until going to the UK, and also tried you with some carrots. You hated the carrots I made. Finally Daddy suggested that they were too thick and textured and he gave you a jar of babyfood carrots which was very liquidy and you loved it. Hmph!

Here is my big girl in her high chair on Christmas Day.

Moving forward to 7 months...... once more and no doubt for the millionth time I must comment on how rapidly you have changed!

You spent the month in the UK. You were only supposed to spend two weeks in the UK but obviously with your VERY SCARY RSV, the trip got extended until you were better enough to come home. I've written about the illness, but what I need to tell you here is that your daddy and I were absolutely terrified by what you went through. We even thought we might lose you and we cried and held your hands over your bedside and told you how much we loved you and to stay with us at all costs. You are a fighter though, little girl, thank goodness. Please never ever get sick like that again, you are too too precious to us.

Illness aside, your trip started with a good flight -you slept - and then spent several days visiting your grandad.

You liked your grandad very much! While there you developed a new skill, sticking out your tongue at anyone that you like. Dylan has a special version of it too - you stick it out to the right and a bit further! Your grandad was thrilled that he was honoured with getting 'the tongue' too.

You also saw your Auntie Sally & Uncle Steve again, although part of the time with them you spent throwing up violently after we accidentally gave you some baby food with dairy in.

From Grandads, we then went to see your Grandma for the first time! Here you are modelling the lovely coat and hat which she knitted for you.

The first couple of days at Grandma's you werent in the best spirits, starting to get this bug, but you also saw many other members of your family for the first time.....

Auntie Kay

Your great-grandma (Mama)

and other great grandma (nanny)

And we saw a whole bunch of others too..... you were not in the best spirits for all these visits but you were reasonably OK until the weekend when we went to visit your other family members in Hereford. Here you got to meet your Nanny & Grandad, Auntie Jan & Uncle Jim, Auntie Betty & Uncle 'Bill' and your cousins Alex Josh & Becca.

Here you are with Nanny & Grandad

with Auntie Betty

and having a big cuddle from your cousin Alex

While you were in hospital you got your first tooth! This was followed by your 2nd tooth a week later.

Your little smile is forever changed, but still adorably cute if no longer entirely gummy!

Food wise once you got out of hospital you regained your appetite dramatically and started wolfing down the 'solids' (slop). With these jars, (which I'm not too familiar with having previously used only home made babyfoods but circumstances must!) you were having maybe half a jar per day at the beginning of our stay in the UK. After you were well, you suddenly increased to eating a whole jar at once. The routine now is to give you a jar of fruit at breakfast, half a jar of veg at lunch, and half a jar of veg at dinner time. With this you're still drinking vast amounts of milk and currently waking 3 times per night (yawn) for feeds. I am going to start making food for you once we're over the jet lag though because I don't like this jarred stuff, hopefully you will not turn up your nose. You have a preference for the sweet stuff (you are your mothers daughter) though and also you seem to get uncomfortable after eating some stuff.

I found the UK jars extremely complicated actually - there were no plain ones, everything was combined in quite complicated flavours and I was supposed to be feeding you at 4 months, shepherds pie? Bizarre. There's a huge difference in the method over here in the US, a far slower approach with single ingredient foods starting at 6 months. Anything with peas, cauliflower, etc seemed to give you a really hurty tummy. We had to stick to just a very few things to keep you from being in pain. I'm not sure how to play this from now on. Slowly I think. I also still think you're sensitive to dairy and soy in my diet, but less so as time passes.

Now that you're well you're a very smiley girl again. You're increasingly agile. You can roll over but prefer not to - you happily roll to the side and play but hate going on your stomach still. You can't sit yet, it won't be long. You're not a super athlete much like your brothers weren't at the same age- but this suits me fine as I don't want to be chasing you all over the house just yet :-). You are lunging for everything in sight though, and your fine motor skills are fairly amazing for one so young. You have a very good grasp of small objects and love to examine everything and inevitably put it to your mouth.

Since getting back and having jet lag and possibly getting a cold (!!!) or more teeth your'e a bit cranky and won't be put down AT ALL, which is exhausting to say the least. We still really have no routine to speak of. You wake multiple times per night to eat. But, after what you've been through, if you want to eat all night and be held all day long then you can be held all day long!

Love you little girl.

Mummy xxxx

Actual Home

So we're finally back in the US after nearly a month in the UK. Although terribly stressful and traumatic during the hospital stay, I appreciated having more time to spend with my family than originally planned and didn't really want to come back here by the end of the trip.

When you live thousands of miles away from your family and have small children, you really don't have any help with them to speak of. You learn to do everything yourselves. You don't get to go out for the day without your children, you don't get to go and spend the night anywhere leaving them with grandparents, you don't get a break, you are full on, 100% of the time, responsible for your kids. You can pay someone or ask a friend to watch them occasionally (we do this) but it's not the same as having people who really love them care for them. It is a discovery when I go home to learn that other people have this support network, most other people infact, and I envy it.

Because we live out here alone and do everything for ourselves, I also find it quite hard to relinquish control or ask for help with the kids. Even if someone else is holding one of them, or feeding one of them, I am usually on edge slightly and watching to make sure they're OK. Going home for a month and being able to relax and have other people do things for them, (for many days having no choice but to have other people care for them while we were in hospital!), I appreciate how much we miss out on that being so far away.

And the kids thrived, really thrived, having that attention and input from other adults in their lives.

What happened with Tab also makes me fearful to be so far away. What if that had happened over here? How would we have coped? We would not have had anyone to help with the boys or support us through the terrifying ordeal. "Thank goodness" we were in the UK when it happened.

I'm homesick. I wish we lived closer. I wish the kids had their grandparents, aunts, uncles, extended family, in their lives more.

Nothing I can do about it though. Best get on with it.

Home!

We finally have her home, and it feels so amazing to be here at last. I'm so pleased to have her out of the hospital.

Some photo's.

First in the ER, receiving some oxygen

They admitted us, this is her being brought up to the admissions ward

She wasn't in a terrible way, as you can see here.

In the ward, she gets more poorly

After the feeding tube is inserted

After getting worse, in the oxygen box

Let out of the oxygen box and back on masked oxygen, in her grandads arms.

On the mend - finds her wires to play with

Dressed at last

And finally detached from all the wires before going home

Looking Better

She's perked up amazingly well in a short space of time considering only a few short days ago we were terrified that the worst possible thing might happen - that we might lose her.

She's smiling and grinning and miraculously today cut her first tooth and said MAMA all at once.

We couldn't go home because she's not doing great when she falls asleep - her oxygen levels drop and she ends up having to receive more help from the canned variety. Hopefully she'll do better tonight and we'll be able to go home tomorrow.

They have told us that she'll have to be on oxygen for the plane ride home - this is going to prove incredibly complicated with all the paperwork for the airline. Tomorrow we start to wade through the red tape for that.

We also will have to come back once or twice to see the Pediatricians here before next week.

I've rescheduled the flights for next week.... hope we will be able to make it!

RSV

Last weekend Tabitha started to get poorly. She had a strange hacking cough and she had a fever. We were up in Hereford visiting with G's family and she was really miserable and upset the whole time. I talked about taking her to a GP there but decided to see how she got on. We got back to mums on Sunday and she started to get worse, her breathing was extremely rapid.

We called mums out of hours GP and a nurse had me look at her chest while on the phone and we determined it was heaving and between the ribs sucking inwards. This was 11.15pm. At 11.25pm the ambulance that the nurse had called arrived and took us to the hospital.

G and I were very nervous about going to a British hospital after reading all about MRSA and the like and were obsessively and ridiculously washing with alcohol every 5 minutes.

The Pediatric ER was fantastic. They admitted us and took us to an exam room where the nurse confirmed that the chest heaving (known as 'recession') was alarming. She gave us oxygen and brought a pediatrician immediately in. He gave Tabby a nebulizer to open the airways. She wasn't too bad at this point.

They did an xray and this apparently showed something going on in the lungs. They decided to admit her. They sent us up to an 'acute admissions' ward where we were seen by a more senior pediatrician who told us he suspected RSV and Bronchiolitis as a complication and that he would be admitting her to a ward.

At this time, 4am, we were taken to a ward and put in a bed right beside the nurses station amongst other beds - very noisy and bright. Tabby, not the worlds best sleeper, began to get very upset and distressed. She started to cry, a droning very distressing noise, and wouldn't stop. This went on for several hours. Nurses ignored us. Nobody came to check her. Eventually someone from the billing department arrived (typical) because we're no longer UK residents. We agreed we'd be paying for the privilege and I asked for a private room. She said probably not. Tabby got worse. We took her to a quiet parent-only room to get her away from the racket but it didn't help. By this point she'd been awake pretty much for 3 days straight.

Finally a nurse realised she wasn't doing too well and a DR arrived. He took one look at her and prescribed oxygen and moved her into a side room - somewhere she should have been anyway because RSV is highly contagious. He said she needed to rest, she was completely exhausted, and this was not helping matters when she was already struggling to breathe. The 'recession' was getting worse. He sedated her - and she remained so for the most part for the next couple of days.

She slept for a while but got somewhat worse.....and then they moved us to another ward because we needed to be nearer to the nurses and DR's. We got a private room thankfully, right by the nurse station where she could be closely monitored. Still given oxygen via a mask at this point.

The days begin to blur here and I think alot of this happened over a short period of time, but in my memory it took place over days and days.... at some point they decided to put a feeding tube down her nose because she was too tired to feed from me properly and getting dehydrated. They didn't want her to work any harder. I was then instructed to pump. She continued to decline a little and they changed from the oxygen mask to nasal prongs to deliver more oxygen.

Things got worse.

On Tuesday night her oxygen still wasn't keeping up and they stopped the feeds and inserted an IV with a fluids drip. She got worse again. The DR ordered an XRAY and discovered that her right lung was partially collapsed. She was immediately given antibiotics incase further infection was stuck in the collapsed lung. She continued to get worse. The DR announced that she was warning the ICU that we were on the way. Meanwhile they put her into a 'head box' - a glass box into which was pumped large amounts of oxygen and steam - a horrific sauna of a thing. It enabled her oxygen to go up slightly but then she started to decline again.

Whenever she fell asleep her she 'de-satted' - her stats dropping and oxygen not being pumped around her body sufficiently. Her body was becoming exhausted from the effort it was making to breathe. The ICU was put on alert again. G and I discovered at 4am that when it dropped if we nudged her, shouted to her, attempted to wake her, her levels would rise above danger-zone. We sat vigil at the bed side doing this. At 7am dad arrived from London having cancelled his trip to the US. Having him with us has helped alot, emotionally and logistically meaning nobody gets left alone and scared.

He joined us in shouting at her to pull through and tell her to stay with us. It was truly the most terrifying thing imaginable. We really felt that we were losing her. Those hours were endless and horrific.

Things stayed much the same all day Wednesday until around 5pm when she suddenly woke up for the first time since Sunday and looked around inside the box. She explored it with her hands. Her oxygen levels went right up to 100% for the first time. This went on for about 30 minutes then she got distressed. Crying, flailing, hitting against he box, heart rate up, oxygen levels lowering. I begged her to be allowed out of the box, insisting it was upsetting her. Nobody else agreed that she should come out. This went on for a while, I was really worried she'd exhaust herself further and felt helpless as she was in this box and we could not do anything for her.

Finally a DR was called and she agreed if getting her out, her O2 stayed up, she could come out of the box and back on the mask. YAY. We really had turned a corner. She came out into our arms and her levels stayed up. She looked at us. She cried. She came back to us, no longer a limp little thing without a clue what was going on.

Yesterday (Thursday) she stayed on the nasal prongs and we started tube feeds again through her nasal tube. She has tolerated them well and her oxygen has stayed up.

As of today - Friday her feeds have been increased and her IV fluids decreased. Her oxygen slightly decreased too. Yay.

Despite the hiccup in the first ward, we've had phenomenal care here. Could not have been better.

I don't know when we'll get home - she may be let out of hospital next week earlyish if she improves at the rate she currently is. We've cancelled our flights home which were supposed to be yesterday. We're rescheduled for next week but will probably have to re-reschedule again as lowered oxygen and pressure in the plane is no good for someone with respiratory distress.

Meanwhile Mum has the boys and thank goodness for her. How could we have coped if this happened in the US? They are doing brilliantly with her and she's stepped up to the plate marvellously coping with them, despite it being a full on insta-grandma shock to the system! She is also doing our laundry endlessly and making sure we have clean underwear and clothes at the hospital. Auntie Kay and Ken are helping out too. Such a massive thing for us to be able to know they're being looked after so well..... we miss them terribly and they miss us, but they're doing fine...... we are tryign to pop back individually every so often to see them for an hour as long as Tab is stable.

I don't know if there's anything I've missed - probably - and I've underplayed how fucking terrifying this whole ordeal has been. RSV is the most horrible awful virus and Tabby has given us a massive scare. We genuinely thought we might lose her... it was so bloody awful. She's not out of the woods yet, but she's back with us, thank goodness.

I have photo's. I will post them. But I'm sitting in the corridoor outside the ward right now beside a coke machine, sneaking onto the WIFI belonging to the childrens hospital school room. It's heavily restricted so I can't do much.

In the UK

And have failed miserably to post anything to the blog due to the manic nature of our visits flitting between relatives and friends.

Short version so far

Spent 4 days in London with Dad...... during which we went to Richmond, Kew, and London Transport Museum (v good). Dad loved our little princess and she developed a new trick of sticking out her tongue whenever she was pleased to see any of us. She enjoyed rolling about on the rug in dads kitchen getting lots of kicking and playing in. The boys had a blast..... jet lagged but had lots of fun, loved their Grandad. Oh - went to Grapes and saw some old friends :)

To mums.... in 2 days have seen Mama, Nanny, Joanna, Robin, Alice, George, Auntie Kay, Uncle Ken and most brilliantly spent a morning with Auntie Sue, Uncle Roy, Andrew & Robert.... manic ness. Hopefully next week will be less hectic!

Currently in Hereford visiting G's family...... one night here..... Tab is v poorly and got a fever that we are struggling to keep under control so that's being a bit stressful but the boys are having a blast and we're enjoying the company.

Later today we are back to mums for the next 3 days during which we hope to get some shopping in and chill out a little!

Will post more, including Tabby's 6 month news, when I get a spare moment.