Eating Mommy's Hair

Per Jay’s Request:

Now that Simone has more energy to fight, she has decided that meds are no longer necessary and resolutely clamps her lips against them. The multivitamin I have to give her is the worst. I really don’t blame her. It smells and tastes wretched. This morning after forcing 4 meds and one multivitamin down her, I rewarded us both with a mother/daughter bath.

Most mornings Moni and I bathe together, and it is my favorite part of the day. She is my water baby. She splashes and kicks and yells at the shower head and hollers her protest when it’s time to get out. This morning, however, she was angry when she got in, and she stayed angry. I should have known better than to get in with her with that look on her face.

I had just finished soaping her down and rinsing her when her face turned red and the grunting started.

Two seconds later I was splattered in excrement from sternum to belly button, and Simone was floating in it. Turns out she hates that even more than I do because then her eyes started watering, and she got deathly silent. I snatched her off my lap, put her over my shoulder, and raised her arms in the air, but I was too late. She vomited down my back.

So I started my morning sitting for ten minutes clutching my screaming baby, both of us covered in shit and puke, waiting for the tub to drain so that I could hose us both down and start all over again.

Um, sorry for going so long without posting. Been busy with the business of working full-time plus being a mom to a mostly healthy one-day-shy-of-six-months old. The complications were hellish– in some ways worse than the aftermath of the actual surgery, but we got through it. Simone is doing great (Knock on wood). Down to just six medications/day and working to shed another couple here soon.

I would love for this to become a boring mommy blog. Some great stuff the little monster has been up to lately:

*babbling
*standing assisted– wants to do this all the time. Prefers it to sitting.
*No longer grunts when she breathes
*Makes fishy faces with her lips
*giggles and screeches
*sucks her hands and gags herself on her own fingers
*teething
*Trying rice cereal and some whole foods– so far banana, avocado, lemon, pickle

Eating slowed way down and troubles breathing returned. Last straw was vomiting up two meals and her meds. Went to ER and was diagnosed with Pericardial Effusion (fluid around heart inside the percardium, a complication from open heart surgery that tends to show up around 2 weeks after surgery if it’s going to happen– not that common. Here we are in the small numbers again). Drained off 40 ccs last night. Stable now but heart rate still very high and not breathing as well as we’d like. In addition, heart isn’t squeezing as well as it should be, so she’s gone on some new meds. Expect to be here several days. Can’t update Facebook from here and won’t blog much, but Julie will be updating Caring Bridge.

Just a quick note to say that we made it home Saturday afternoon. Simone is great so far. Still on a couple of medications that she was on prior to surgery but dosages are down, and we are hoping she’ll be off them completely in another month or so. Knocking hard on wood right now, but her reflux seems to have cleared up completely– no vomiting in days!!! Also, I cannot feed her often enough. She seems to be making up for time lost in the hospital. Thanks for all the support here and on her Caring Bridge site. We love you guys!

Home at last and thrilled about it

Simone’s surgery was yesterday 5/21. Came through the surgery pretty well but started bleeding a lot from her chest tube upon entering ICU. Got that under control and she was stable until the middle of the night when her blood pressure dropped, heart rate went way up, became feverish(temp of 103) and she started having trouble with her mixedvenous gasses. She gained about 2 lbs with swelling. Seems to be stabilizing a bit again now, but it’s unlikely she’ll come off the breathing tube today as we’d hoped. They did take her off the paralytic, so she’s moving now and opening her eyes a little. The movement should help with her blood pressure.  Will try to keep folks updated,but it’s difficult to get away from her room and Facebook is blocked at the hospital. Setting up a Caring Bridge web site andwill probably post the url for that later.

Our experience at Riley has been wonderful, though. ICU nurses arranged for a Ronald McDonald room for us right in the hospital.We had planned to sleep in the lounge. Hoping to get another one for tonight.

One year ago today Vanessa and I showed up at Dr. G’s office around 7 AM hauling a metal tank. After 17 failed IUIs, a failed IVF, and a miscarriage after IVF using Vanessa’s eggs, I had undergone immunological screening that came back positive for alloimmunity. The RE said we should try IUI again w/the addition of aspirin and L0ven0x, so we made one last attempt, simultaneously shelling out $4000 to begin the process of domestic open adoption.

I was going through the motions. I was sick of injections, sick of the progesterone rollercoaster, sick of hoping and waiting, finally beginning to accept that no baby would ever come through my body. There were 5 follicles in play that month (had taken Fem@r@ and F0ll!st!m), and I remember poking fun at myself for ever having been worried about high order multiples during previous IUI cycles where I’d had far more follicles than this and not gotten pregnant.

One of those follicles contained the egg that got together with the contents of that tank and made this:

Buffy with her puppy