Andrew's Surgery

So all of you are probably wondering what has been going on with Andrew and why I haven't posted anything in a while. So here is the story. When Andrew was about 2 weeks old we noticed a small bump on his head, but it was so small at the time I thought it was part of his bone on his skull. At one of his appts. I asked his general doctor about it, but because it was so small he assumed the same thing and neither of us were concerned, at least at that time. Thinking it would get smaller I kind of rest assured about it, until the opposite started to happen, it was growing. He wasn't scheduled for his next doctors visit for 4 more weeks so I was just simply going to ask the doctor about it then, not thinking that this was anything serious. Christian however did and told me that we shouldn't wait and for him to see the doctor immediately about it. Christian told me all of the possibilities of what it could be and it scared the life out of me. The thought of losing my sweet little boy terrified me!

I decided to make an appt with a pediatrician to see if they might have any insight on what it might be, but of course being the only pediatrician office in Farmington, the more experienced doctors were all booked and the one we saw was new by 3 weeks!! Really nice, but was almost just as lost as we were about it, but he wasn't concerned very much. Thought it was a cyst, but not concerned! Christian went to the appt with me and I am really glad he did. Having medical background, and I none he knew more of what to ask for then I would have. We wanted some imaging done on his head, like and MRI or a CT scan, but for both you have to be sedated and they did NOT want to sedate a baby!! So they kept trying to tell us to wait a year or so when he is older to do imaging on it. What?! When we suspect that it's growing? we kept pushing, until finally the doctor decided to send us to a dermatologist for another opinion and see if they would refer for him to have an MRI. So I wait about 4 days, get in to the only Dermatologist in Farmington (apparently) and she agreed that he needed some more testing done. So she calls the diagnostic center to schedule an MRI, but they want his Pedo doctor to call and refer him..what? I thoguht that was the reason we were here!! Okay..whatever, let's just get this done is what I am thinking. She said they would call me with the appt. date. When I get home, not 10 mins later the phone rings and it is the pedo doctor saying that they don't want to do the MRI, but just a general x-ray of his head(which is not going to show jack-squat) and an ultrasound. Okay, I guess we have no choice, but to try this first, hopefully it works and and ultrsound will be all they need to determine the next course of action.

A day or so later they call to tell me that they do not see any connection to the brain, that it would be a simple procedure to remove and to see a general surgeon. okay, so I have an appt scheduled about 8-9 days away. But then I start thinking, he is going to have to have this removed regardless and I do not want him to be seen at this hospital, so why am I seeing a doctor here? (too many bad things have happened at the medical center here..hence why Andrew was born at the one in Durango, Co) So it makes sense to have him seen there. I call the general surgeon in durango to schedule and appt. but just as I am finalizing the appt the receptionist asks what ins. I have. I tell her and then proceeds to tell me that they do not accept that ins.! what? Most of the doctors do, why not them? So I call my ins comp. To ask them what I should do. I have to get them to send a pre-auth. form for it to be covered "in-network". So when I call this doctor back to explain what they need to do, she tells me that they normally don't do things like that and he would have to be seen first and become an established patient before considering it! That would be a waste of time!! So back to square one!

Meanwhile, I am calling christian at work to get his opinion on things and he said to try the UNM Children's Hospital in Albuquerque again(yes, again..which is what we wanted in the first place, but appts were months out) we were concerned that sedation for a baby here was just not best for Andrew. So I call the general pediatric surgery there and for the 100th time explain my situation. They put me through to the surgery nurse so I can tell her what I need. She then tells me that because of the place where the cyst is, they would most likely send me to neurosurgery. Wow! this really is serious! I seem to be going up and down with emotions! He's fine..he's not fine, etc. I then have to send a referral from my pedo doctor and faxes of the images..why? that's not going to really show up, and then they would determine whether or not he needs to be seen by a neurosurgeon. In fact he did and the first appt. they had was a week away, the day after we get back from utah!

So after buying new furniture and a new car(I will have to post that later)!! we get back at 2 am. I get to bed at 3 am, get up at 8:30 am to get ready to leave by 10:40 am leave Delia with a sitter and drive 3 hrs to Albuquerque!! I am just exhausted at this point! We talk with the neurosurgeon and he is wonderful!! He says the image from the ultrasound it very good and is all he needed to determine what to do! great! So we schedule the surgery for the next coming Monday, so we can drive up sunday night, stay in a hotel, and be at the hospital at 6:30 AM. But they need to do blood work first and I did not want to make another trip down there just for bloodwork. So I stay in a hotel, just me and andrew so we can go to the hospital in the morning to get this done. that's when his sleeping schedule gets off and he woke up at 2:30 am to eat..I am, soooo tired! I arrive there later in the morning than I thought because I really needed to take a shower and the girl told me the day before I could just show up anytime and they would get me in. I held off from feeding him because I wanted to nurse him right after they drew his blood. I wait 45 mins. before fianlly feeding him, doing this in the waiting room( I am not a pro at nursing in public, so this was a challenge) and then literally 5 mins later she comes to get us! Well, sorry I tell her, you'll have to wait until I am done feeding him! so another 15 mins. later she walks me up to the children's hospital to have an evaluation for anesthasia and then back to the main hospital to wait and have hisblood drawn...you mean I waited for you to have the time to grab the paper work and show me to where I needed to go? Heck, if it was going to take that long, I would have done it all myself!

So I get in to have his blood drawn and he is so strong and wiggly, the nurses have a hard time drawing it out of his tiny veins. About 20 mins worth of screaming and blood oozing from his arm later, I am done! I hate seeing him in pain and distress! What a stressful day this has turned out to be!

The morning of the surgery everything went smoothly. It took them a little longer to get started, but the surgery itself was fairly quick. The doctor even brought out the mass that was in his head! This really impressed Christian that he would take the time to show us exactly what was in his head and that the surgery went very well. They allowed all three of us back there, we had delia with us, and when they brought me back to feed him he was really sad and just coming out of anesthestia. His voice was hoarse because of the tube they put down his throat and it took him 10 mins to figure out that I was trying to feed him, but he finally took. The incision on his head made me so sad! It was 2x bigger than I thought it was going to be! It looked horrible, but it was apparently normal for head surgery. They needed a larger incision to make sure they got it all. There apparently was a hole in his skull and this, most likely, cyst developed between his brain and went up through the hole. It was actually sitting on his brain, but was not attached! thank heaven! Had we waited a year or two, it not only would have gotten the size of a golf ball or bigger, but it could have protruded into his brain causing a whole new set of problems which you can just imagine! When we took him from the hospital he was all smiles and cooing! What a brave boy! I love him so much and I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for entrusting me was such a sweet spirit and for keeping him healthy! Thank you so much to you all for your many, many prayers!! I know heavenly Father was listening and everything went fine! I will keep you all posted on how he is healing. The doctor says that the hole in his skull will grow back and that the scar will heal and disappear a little with time! I have some pictures below of what his head looked with the cyst in it and what it looks like after surgery. I still don't know for sure what it is, but I will update you an everything as soon as I know!





















You probably can't see it very well. It's right where his anterior fontannel is.

He is so happy considering the large cut on his head, which they

used "super bond" on so the incision stays clean and closed.

Love this boy!

Wow, this picture doesn't make it look so bad, it looks worse

in person..I'll take this as a good thing for you all! ;)

Happy 3rd Birthday Delia

So Delia got to celebrate her birthday earlier this year. Grandma and Grandpa Brereton came down to spend some time with us. My first idea for a birthday cake was to make ice cream cone cupcakes, but because time slipped away from me...we just made her a "rectangle cake" it sure was tasty though! She seemed to like having a birthday with all the attention on her, it's supposed to be that way, right? She gets more excited each year! She got a cradle, doll carrier, and highchair. .lots of books and some shoes with cupcakes on them! Now all i need to do is get some candid pictures of her in some cute outfits, hopefully soon! We love you Delia!!

What a character!

She was super excited about her own doll car seat carrier!

Happy 34th Birthday Christian!

Today Christian turned 34!! So he got 2 cakes!! We ordered Outback to-go with the official "bloomin' onion" it was very tasty. I then made him these chocolate fudge cakes which were also tasty. I know I went way over my weight watchers points, but hey, birthdays only come once a year..unfortunately we celebrate 2 in the month of August, Delia's is in 2 weeks. The Holidays are also fast approaching. I better learn some will power soon! All-in-all it was a good day! Happy birthday!

The Many Words of Delia

So I took Delia and Andrew to the park today and let Delia play while I fed Andrew..luckily there wasn't a soul there so I could nurse without complete descretion! I was finishing up feeding Andrew and I told Delia that it would be time to go in a little while so needed to go down the slides a couple more times. This is what she said:

She comes up to me and puts her arms around my neck from behind.

"How about you go home and I will stay at the park. Sound like a deal, mom?"
(of course in her cute little kid voice)

I burst out laughing it was such a funny and cute thing for her to say. It's so funny when she says things that make her sound so grown up. As if it was no big deal just to let her stay at the park. I love this girl!

Delia's Accident

Well, the day has finally come where Delia has needed stitches!! 5 of them! As you know, Delia is very adventurous and is climbing on mostly everything however, she is inside most of the day so most of her 'accidents" happen indoors. I would have thought that would keep her safer than having something happen outdoors. Well, I was wrong. This past Wednesday I had mentioned to Delia that her face was dirty, well apparently that was the wrong thing to say. Being an inquisitive child that she is decided to go and take a look for herself because she likes to do things herself!! She has been climbing on top of the counters since she was 2 (she'll be 3 in a month) and gets up and down pretty good with only some slight bumps, but we still grilled her on not doing it because she could get hurt, we don't belong on the counters, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da. She of course doesn't listen and continues to do it, so we have almost gotten use to her doing all the time to where all we say is, 'get down, Delia' because she had never really gotten hurt...until now! After viewing her face in the mirror and being satisfied with what she saw, she proceeded to climb down, all the while I am watching her do this from my bed where I was feeding Andrew. She seemed to loose her footing and bumped her chin on the way down. Crying on coming to me with her hand on her chin I thought she might have just bruised it and told her she was fine. But when she removed her hand her chin was gushing blood. My reaction: "Oh, no, that is not a bruise! Threw Andrew onto the bed next to me and quickly got some toilet paper to stop the bleeding. once I had it controlled, I took a look at the damage to see how bad it was. By this time Delia had stopped crying and said: "it's all better, mom", but I knew it wasn't, it needed stitches. I called Christian to tell him what happened and that he should look at it to confirm what I already knew. An hour later during lunchtime, he came home to see it. He indeed confirmed that it needed stitches. Luckily the office is just down the street and christian sews people up all the time although not outside of the mouth! We told her we need to go and fix her chin and she could have ice cream afterwards. She was pretty excited and happy considering she had just split her chin open and needed stitches, litttle did she know what was about to happen next. We put on Care Bares while I held her hands and Ruth, an assistant held her head. Daddy anesthetized her, which of course she didn't like. Once numb, he proceeded to sew her up, but the whole situation had scared her and she was not very cooperative..not really expecting a 2.5 yr old to be anyway. She cried and screamed the whole time..however..she did not shed a tear, she is all drama people! She was even paying attention to the movie while screaming because she would make a comment like, "oh, no the Balloon flew away!" or "oh the movie stopped!' sure enough it had! So she was in no pain, just scared which is to be expected for something so traumatic. She got her ice cream afterwards and had been fine since. and all of this before her 3rd birthday, hopefully her pictures will come out with it unnoticed. She seems to be pretty proud of her stitches for what reason..I don't know. I just hope she doesn't need them again, but have a feeling that hope will be short lived!

that will make for a good scar, hopefully not too noticeable

Hmm..is this supposed to be a good thing or bad?

She tought it was pretty funny I was taking pictures of her 'owie'

Andrew 6 weeks

A friend of mine offered to take Andrew's pictures as a gift and here they are! By Amy Brimhall, Dramtic Imaging. They are so adorable! I really think I have a beautiful baby boy. Who would have thought boys could be beautiful! As for me in the last pictures however..you can really see how much weight I still need to lose. Seeing yourself in the mirror is much different than seeing yourself in a photo..it's like hearing your voice on a recording..it's just not the same as you expect it!! Thanks Amy..these photos are gorgeous! So many of my friends are really getting into photography and I have always been intrested since highschool, but never had the opportunity really to feed my interest. Well, that is about to change..hopefully! One of my other friends has also asked if she could photograph Andrew for practice and we are going to experiment together! She has a great camera..I don't! Maybe if we can get shome decent practice in, I might just invest in a "beginners" professional camera. Maybe Christmas could come early this year...it's just all about convincing my hubby that it will be worth it!

Andrew's First Bath

Andrew really likes his bath, when he is not "starving"! He is a lot less "chunkier" than Delia was! The ones in the towel look so similar. I love giving them their baths when they are so tiny, one of my favorite times! I hope this isn't the last time I do this!! He is sleeping 6-7 hrs at night..hoepfully than will continue to last. His zantac medicine seems to be helping quite a bit with his fussiness, although he still spits up a lot, he is not crying so much and that I can handle.

Don't they look similar!!

Andrew...1 month old

Andrew is 1 month old today and I thought I would post a little about him and how he is doing. He is a sweet little boy and my love for him, as with Delia, is incomprehensible!! He is growing though he still seems so small to me. Just in the last week or so he has been doing a lot of spitting up..though not nearly as much as Delia and projectile vomiting every now and then with some back arching..yep he has acid reflux..although he still has to see his doctor in order to get his medicine. Hopefully this will help his pain he is having with it. It even effects his eating. He is a very sleepy baby. This is a good and bad thing. He falls asleep all the time when he eats so getting him to eat enough is super hard and sometimes frustrating, but he sleeps 5 hrs at night!! So nice. He grunts a lot and makes many noises..as did Delia, so I put him in the bathroom so I can hear him cry, but his grunting is barely audible, so no more waking up to every little noise. We'll see how long that lasts! He does make some cute noises when he sleeps that make me smile, I have to remember to get it on video. When he eats or sucks his bink, he brings his little fisted hands up underneath his chin..cutest thing ever! I think the only reason he cries when he does is his acid reflux or he is hungry. Nice this time around to have a baby who doesn't cry so much. Delia loves him very much. although it has been hard to teach her that she is not big enough to help with everything she is very caring about him. He has been given the nick name "bubba" courtesy of his father! Even Delia calls him that too! He has been smiling at me when I am looking straight into his bluing eyes. I love it and cry out of pure joy just looking at him and knowing he is mine. Such a wonderful thing to be a mother, to be able to love a child of god is unlike anything else. Moments like these make all the challenges worth it. I can't wait to see how much he is going to change and how fun it will be to raise a boy this time around!

More Pictures of Andrew...and the Birth Story

So this birth experience was soooo much better than it was with Delia. I made the sacrafice of driving to Durango, CO( about 1 hour away) to be seen by the doctors there and to deliver at the that hospital. I had heard too many horror stories of the one here in Farmington. It was worth it! It was so much more of a personal experience this time. There wasn't a bunch of hussle and bussle with so many doctors and nurses coming in and out of my room! There was only a total of 4 people vs. 25 that were there last time! My labor went fast. About 8 am I was at 3 cm and they started the cytotec, which is a tiny pill they put directly on the cervix. 4 hours later about 12 pm they checked me again and I was only at 4 cm. My contractions were pretty mild and were coming about every 3-5 mins. but I passed the time away by watching the Law & order marathon on TV. eventhough I was only at a 4, they decided to break my water to speed things up and boy did it! since Andrew was still so high in my belly, she had a difficult time trying to break my water. I had already had an epidural with Delia when my water was broke so I had felt no pain. But with this one it was one of the most painful things I have experienced. After that the contractions came on stronger and were getting closer together. They lasted about 1-2 mins. and were coming every minute to 30 seconds. It was pretty intense. I told them I definitely wanted an epidural, ut they needed to get a bag of fluids in me before they could do it. The nurse could tell I was in a lot of pain and tried making the fluids go in faster. Once that was done the anesthesiologist came in and was super nice. I was having horrible contractions while he did the epidural it took all I had to focus on pain management so I could stay still enough for him to do it. After it was done, it took about 15 mins. for the pain to go away. considering that I was only at 4 cm when they did the epidural, christian decided to take a drive to downtown durango to pass the time. after about 20 mins. I started feeling a lot of pressure and called the nurse in to check me. I was dilated to 8 cm!!! What..how did that happen so fast? All those painful contractions I was having during the epidural must have made me dilate super fast. So I had her call christian to tell him to come back because it was going fast. 10 mins. later, it seemed the epidural was going to do all that it could because I was in a lot of discomfort even after pushing the button 3 times. So I called the nurse again to check...and what do you know I was at a 10!! What the? That was faster that I was even hoping for. The doctor was called and was there fairly fast, but still no christian. After the doctor had put on all her dressing and was getting ready for me to push, christian walks in. What a close call. I pushed for 3 contractions, about 10 mins. and out he came. No one could believe how fast it all happened. The doctor said I pushed like a pro. Wow..that's good to know. It was pretty intense the whole thing. The pushing was more painful that it had been with delia..then again I may not remember how it really was. He came out posterior with a handby his face..no wonder it hurt it what the doctor said. She was amazed at how fast he came out with him being posterior and with a hand. The minute she set him on top of me we mad eye contact and had that instant bond. the first thing I noticed was his eyes. He had Delia's eyes. So stunning! He also was smaller than Delia and so adorable. I was in labor for a total of 6.5 hrs. a far cry from the 22 hrs I was with Delia. The experience was so nice and much more relaxed this time around. I was glad I was able to have a better birth experience. I am so glad to have a little boy in our family. He is perfect and a sweet addition to our family.

since we brought him home he/we have had a difficult time with nursing. Because this was my first time to be able to successfully nurse it became extremely painful! on a scale of 1-10 it was a 12. I cried a lot and finally came to my breaking point where I couldn't do it anymore. My friend had a couple more suggestions before I gave up and one of them was to use a nipple sheild. I hoped and prayed on my way to the store that this would work and that I would not have to give up breastfeeding. What a miracle!! It worked. So now if I used it everytime I feed him I can fianlly enjoy it pain free! thus that is why I have not posted anything since he was born. I never thought I would have such a challenge with the pain. He cannot latch on all the way, thus causing my excrutiating pain. Thank goodness something worked. Now hopefully my stress level will go down and I will start eating more(have been too stressed and busy to think about eating) Now things will continue to get better from here on out!