The Innocuous Red Spot

A few days ago Max had a Haematology appointment. I worked night shift the night before and didn't sleep before we went to the appointment. Usually the haematology appointments are fairly straightforward and we don't have to wait too long. But on this particular day, our regular haem was off sick so there was only one doctor on. "I'm sorry Miss Valentine, but there's a bit of a wait today". "yes, that's fine...."

So....we waited. And, as usual me singing playschool's favorite hits was the only thing that kept him happy. I actually started nodding off at one point.

Eventually there was only us and one other family in the waiting room. We'd been waiting a few hours, it was getting so late that the receptionist was packing up for the day. This was to become the fourth time that we would be left waiting so long that the receptionist had gone home (not that I'm keeping count or anything....)

The other mummy in the waiting room approached the receptionist and complained. The receptionist informed her that we had arrived before her so we would be seen first (woohoo!!). The lady continued complaining that they were only late because her son had required blood tests beforehand. I wanted to call out "big frigging deal woman, if we have blood tests before an appointment then we arrive earlier" (but I didn't). Instead I sat there nodding off with a well and truly pissed off expression on my face. If the wind had changed, I would been stuck forever looking like an Orc. I fantasized about what which orrifice I wanted to shove her stilettos up.

Whilst we were waiting, I had noticed a small purplish, red spot on Max's head. It looked a little bit Petechial but a little bit not. So when we finally saw the haematologist (Dr Anthea), I showed her. She wasn't sure either but recommended that we come back in the morning and have a blood test. I adore this particular hematologist, she explained to us the results of some previous blood tests and gave him a thorough examination.

We were finally walking out the front door of the hospital when my phone rang. It was Dr Anthea, "um....I've been thinking and since Max has a history of being complicated, let's just get that blood test done now. Can you guys go around to the emergency department?". "yes, that's fine....".

When we got to the ED, the triage nurse greeted us with "you must be the Valentines, come through and we'll do the bloods quickly. Dr Anthea has just called and explained the situation". (I love Dr Anthea!!)

So the bloods were done and his platelets are great! Thankfully it's just an innocuous red spot. Max and I slept well that night.




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Don't mess with the bedtime routine

Yesterday was Max's half birthday. In my head, I had imagined it being a beautiful day. It wasn't. The day before was a beautiful day with lots of smiles, giggles and successful naptimes. The day before was so successful that I got cocky. I took Max to the community radio station with me whilst I did my drive show. It was a busy but fun afternoon. Imagine doing a traffic report whilst trying to entertain a 6 month old. It went something like this "Outbound on the ring road the traffic is.....Max stop pulling off my headphones....heavy as usual.....get your finger out of my nose.....meanwhile on the Eastern Freeway.....don't eat the microphone...." (and so on and so forth). But he enjoyed it, so I did too.




By the time we got home it was 6:45pm. He normally goes to bed at that time so I didn't think he'd have any problems sleeping. Wrong. The night went something like this......
7pm- finish bottle, has medication, daddy puts him to sleep
730pm- Max wakes up. Mummy cannot get him back to sleep so reads some stories.
8pm- Mummy desperately plays every relaxation track on YouTube to get him to sleep
845pm- Max is finally asleep
1130pm- Max is awake again. Mummy gives him a bottle and change his nappy.
1144pm- Max doesn't want to sleep. Max wants to practice putting the dummy in his mouth and pulling it out again.
1230pm- Max is finally asleep again. Mummy goes to the loo cos by then she's busting.
1232pm- Max is awake again. Mummy contemplates selling him on eBay.
1243pm- Max is asleep again.
214am- Max is awake again, blowing raspberries.
216am- Mummy tries to give Max a bottle. Max isn't hungry. Nappy change.
245am- Max is still awake. Mummy gives up and calls in daddy.
3am- Max is asleep again
445am- Max is awake again
5am- Max is asleep again
530am- Max is awake again. Mummy and Daddy concede defeat and make coffee.

So everyone was a little bit fed up on Thursday, including Max who was a low-medium grade of feral all day. That afternoon he flaked out before 5pm and slept normally. He isn't sleeping through the night yet, but I can handle the 4-6hour nappy/bottle/sleep thing.

I will never mess with the nighttime routine ever again




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Wordless Wednesday- A day in the life of Max

Nom nom, avocado on toast



Bath time, check out the baby boobs!




Jolly jumper....




Some physio with mummy




Cuddles during physio with Jess




DJ Max....








You're not meant to eat the microphone baby....




And I dare not take a photo of him sleeping now cos it took me nearly 2 hours to get him to sleep. Sweet dreams busy man xxx



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Macrosomic Baby

If you missed the last post, you wouldn't know that Max is turning 6 months tomorrow. I'm in a reflective mood this week and thinking a lot about my first 6 months as a mummy. Today, I wondered "what happened 6 months ago today?" aka the day before Max was born.....

Initially, all that came to mind were hideous memories of being 39+ weeks pregnant. The heartburn (OMG the heartburn), the insomnia, the boredom and the intense fear of the unknown. In hindsight, I now realize that I was pretty depressed when I was pregnant. Isn't hindsight great? Luckily, those hormones that made me feel so miserable disappeared almost as soon as he was born and I felt like myself again. I'd much rather have had depression whilst pregnant rather than after he was born. As least I had time back then to wallow in my own misery!

I'd spent much of my pregnancy trying not to feel anxious about childbirth. After all, it's inevitable ending to the whole pregnancy thing and stressing about it for 9 months wouldn't change anything. However, that all changed when I had a scan at 32 weeks to re-check a previously low lying placenta. That is when I was told that I was having a 'Macrosomic Baby'. In laymans terms, that means that my child was huge. At 32 weeks, he was the size of a 36 weeker. I was having a shrek baby.



The thought of childbirth is terrifying enough for a first time mother and finding out that my baby was the size of a baby hippo made it even worse. On the same day of the 32 weeks scan, we also had our first childbirth education class. Our teacher was an old school nurse who should us a graphic video that was filmed sometime in the '70s. It was horrible. After that day, I was an anxious wreck. The fear kept me awake most of the night and it was all I could think of during the day. How on earth was I going to squeeze out Mr Macrosomic??

The doctors were convinced that I had gestational diabetes so I had to do the darn glucose tolerance test again. Whoever thought up a test making a pregnant woman fast is a sadist.
I didn't have gestational diabetes.




(38.5 weeks pregnant with mega-saurus child)

I had another scan at 36 weeks and this time he was the size of a 41.5 weeker. Holy crap, the kid just kept getting bigger. I begged anyone who would listen to induce me. By now I was envisaging him being the size of a full grown toddler by 40 weeks. The answer was always the same. "Let's just see what happens". Not that reassuring really.

Finally, one day before I was 39 weeks, a midwife was concerned about the size of my baby and referred me urgently to an Obstetrician. And that was where I went on the day before Max was born. Exactly 6 months ago. I was so excited about the appointment but the obstetrician gave me the same response "let's just see what happens". I cried when I left that appointment. Ok, I didn't just cry I bawled my eyes out. That same night, my waters broke. I'll spare you the birth story. He finally came out weighing 8 pound 10 ounces- completely bloody normal.



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Max is 6 months old this week

This morning Max woke up at 5am. I quietly changed his nappy in the dark and gave him a bottle. I popped him in bed next to me, wrapped him up firmly, played some relaxation music and dozed off. Shortly after, I was woken by a tiny little finger being rammed up my nostril. I opened a bleary eye, he grinned at me and said "raaaah". How can you be angry with that?!

I took him into the kitchen, put him in his highchair and gave him some toast (with avocado- he loves to lick it all off). It was then that I looked at him and thought "thank goodness you aren't a newborn anymore". Whilst I'm still not a fan of starting the day at 5am, I much prefer spending my days with a (nearly) 6 month old.

There is an element of predictability with a 6 monther that you don't get with a newborn. Ok, so I don't what sort of mood he'll wake up in, nor do I know what time it'll be. Some days he likes cereal, some days he doesn't. Sometimes he falls asleep in the car and other times he'll babble the whole way (and fall asleep as we pull into the driveway). But.... these days I can pretty much understand what his various vocalizations mean, I know that he likes to 'wind down' before a nap by reading stories and I love how Mozart is his favorite music (always makes him fall asleep with a smile on his face). I LOVE that he can entertain himself a bit now. I ADORE watching him try and figure things out. And his beautiful, cheeky grin makes me melt everytime, without fail.

So, whilst Max was happily slurping away on his avocado toast, I enjoyed my morning coffee in relative peace. I even got his bottles prepared for the day and did the dishes, all before 6am. Noice!

Since, Max will be 6 months old this week, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane.

Once upon a time, Max was this little.....




I loved him so much but he was so small, so new to world and so unpredictable. This photo was taken after his first bath, he was 24 hours old. This was the first time I had dressed him and I bumbled through it like Edward Scissorhands. Those damn press stud buttons. Tiny, confusing little bastards.

A few days later, I gave him a dummy. God bless you Mr dummy. You restored my sanity.


About a week or so later, he looked something like this....



I always took photos of him sleeping back then. It was my trophy, "look at me, I got my baby to sleep". In the early days it stressed me out so much that he only napped for 20 minute stints during the day. One day, I just decided to accept that that was 'his thing' and I've been much happier since. Incidentally, even when he was heavily medicated on seizure and pain medication he still only napped in 20 minute stints.

There was no reason for him to be wearing this 'Wally' hat.



He was a few weeks old here, we were at 'Births, Deaths and Marriages' registering his birth. He slept with his arms up, the whole time.



I think he's about 6 weeks old here. He's watching Larry Emdur on TV.




I love this picture. What on earth are you thinking little man?




This is the expression he used to pull when he was first put in the bath. I called it 'Charles Manson'.




After a few seconds, he would realize that he liked bath time and changed to something like this-





Gorgeous boy, I think he's about 8 weeks old in this one.




I have almost 1,700 photos of Max on my phone. 600 of them were taken before he got sick. I'll be honest and admit that the next photo hurts me to look at. It was the last photo I took of him before he got sick. When he was in ICU, hooked up to a zillion machines and in a coma, I looked at it a gazillion times. Most of those times, I cried. All I had was hope that one day I'd see him smile like this again.





And finally, photo number 1,612 taken a few days ago





Happy 6 month birthday Maxwell Hendrix Valentine. Thank you.


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Some beautiful photos

I really hope this works! Since my computer has been kaput this week, I've downloaded an 'ap' to write this blog and add photo's. I've managed to get some beautiful photos of him lately, despite the fact that he has been in a feral mood all week. Behold....



We're trying to get him weightbearing more on his right arm, to strengthen it more.




I've bought him a 'mirror box' to use in physiotherapy when he gets older. For now though, he enjoys looking at the other gorgeous baby in the room.





This is Max with our private physio Jess. I think this photo shows how wonderful Jess is. She is so sweet with him and he absolutely adores her. We are only doing structured physio with him 2 (sometimes 3) times a day now and are seeing fabulous results because the program she has put together is so comprehensive.




We had a horrid day on Thursday. Max's second tooth is cutting through and he was cranky, cranky, cranky! To make things worse, we had to spend a few hours at RCH getting blood tests and seeing his neurologist. This picture was taken just before he had lunch and it was (what felt like) the only time he was happy all day! I love how small he looks in the highchair.





One of our new physio exercises is to have Max to sit up by himself and allow him to fall. This will help him learn a whole heap of wonderful things but the thought of letting him topple over terrifies me. So, we practice this one on my bed where it's nice and cushy.





Going.....





Going......





Gone! (yes, this is actually how he landed- cheeky sod)

Some good news from this week is that we have been given the go-ahead from our neurologist to start weaning him off his anti-seizure medication. Hopefully in a months time he will be medication free. It does scare me a little bit though. I never want to see him have seizures again but also know that we'll cope ok if it happens.

Lastly I want to finish with my favorite picture of the week. A photo that I call 'Brave Nana'- cos who doesn't think that a babies bum is cute?




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Darn technology!! (yes, it deserves two exclamation marks)

I have so much I wanna post. But my computer is being a royal pain in the butt and won't let me upload photos! And the photos say more then any words can, so bear with me whilst we sort it out. AND Max has one tooth that's cut through and another that's so close to cutting through. He hasn't been all that pleasant to be around the last few days, so blogging has been the farthest thing from my mind.
Will have update soon!! (not sure if that deserves two exclamation marks though)