It’s official.. :-(

Eicca is failure to thrive. It sucks. We were hoping he’d never fall this far behind in his growth, but it’s happened.

Today at the dr we got him weighed and measured and he is just about a pound away from being ’safe’ but still it’s sad.

They want us to keep up the new medicine and the neocate, special fucking expensive tastes like shit formula, because that is all they can do for him now.

In 2 weeks we go back and if he hasn’t grown they will put the NG tube, it’s just temporary, but it’s annoying to have my baby with a tube in his nose. And so sad to be honest that as his parents we can’t do the most basic thing.. keep him alive and feed him.

Then in August we will do the endoscopy to look at his insides and see if there is any damage. We never wanted to even do the endoscopy, but the doctors aren’t sure why he isn’t eating.. we fucking surely don’t know.. so it’ s a matter of trying everything.

We also talked to the child psychologist who was pretty positive about us.. not about Eicca’s behavior in any way. She said she loved how marco and i are on the same page and showed support of eachother and how we interact with Eicca.

All that was great.. and she said it’s so important as if there are feeding difficulites, many times parents kinda shut down and that damages the kids relationship.. i hope we never do that!

Okay enough rambling. Thank you all for the support. Send more eating vibes for Eicca. Our thoughts are with you all too!

anonymity is lost in the world of internetting…

Hi again, I realized that any sense of being anonymous on the net is truly futile. Simply typing in our baby’s name leads EVERYONE to this blog, and also to our past struggles to get and stay pregnant. I suppose that isn’t such a bad thing, although we will never go into details about our treatments openly to friends and family… all the details are just here.. on this blog. It’s funny really. Because we didn’t really hide the fact we had problems, and in fact I believe that people doing IVF or IUIs especially in the public eye ( which we are not ) should be open about it, but we just chose not to add any additional pressure with talking to our families about retrievals and transfers and defrosting and finally period getting despair. Those things we decided to keep to ourselves and if we ever got pregnant, could then share with the world.. I think that if we ever do this all again, we will keep it the same way.

There is already so much hope and faith that goes into each treatment and cycle, and the added pressure of family and friends hoping and crossing their fingers only to hear another cycle failed is just too much to bear.

Now that being said, things are going okay. We are just 90g or 3.5 ounces away from doubling Eicca’s birth weight at 4 months 1 day old. That is VERY good. We’ve been using some Fantomalt, which adds 20 calories per scoop to help fatten him up a bit, but still his feeding sessions are a bit poor at best.

He has taken to solids and when he is in the mood, he really enjoys rice cereal, prunes and avocado, but takes them mainly once a day, even though we try twice a day.

Eicca has also found and has fallen in love with his hands which he eats constantly. We aren’t sure if he is teething yet.. but it could be close. He is so vocal now, laughing outloud and smiling all the time, except when eating of course. which is a bit sad.

Other than that having him is still the BEST thing that has ever happened to us all.

Wishing you all a wonderful spring and please send positive continuing to gain weight vibes. I’ve only cried once this week during a flat out refusal at noon, but i am working on it.

byeee

I remember once..

Reading an infertile’s blog and having her complain her daughter, gorgeous newborn wasn’t latching on.. and thinking to myself.. what a selfish bitch. I mean here she is with this gorgeous baby, which I will never have and she’s bitching about feeding.. oh my apologies go out to her.

My precious son still isn’t succeeding in the feeding section of his life. He is steadily gaining weight and at his 15 wk apt was 5kg, or 11lbs, which is good considering he was born at 2.680kg, but every feeding session is hell.

I cry daily usually around 12 when he flat our refuses now pushing the bottle away. We’ve been on zantac , which only made him drink less, now on losec for 9 days and at least he isn’t vomiting as much and sleeping MUCH better, but the amount.. the amount is about 75% of his daily ‘requirement’ and he just hates each session.

We’ve introduced solids last week. He seemed to do ok with carrots and potato mix. We were desperate. If you see your child flat out refuse food for 5-7 hrs and you offer bottle after wasted formula filled bottle, it’s tough.

I decided to stop pumping at 14 weeks. I was going to pump the whole day..my period came that morning the first since giving life to this angel.. and i stopped. The stress of pumping 50ml or 2 ounces about, every 3 hrs plus everytime he refused a bm bottle, i’d feel it was SUCH a waste, cause I got so little for him, just made it all too difficult. Not to mention the 1hr+ it took me every nite to feed him, plus pump then try to get back to sleep not disturbing big man, who gets daily crying calls from me, and really needs to actually work sometimes so we can buy all the damn formula.

We go back fri for a stomach ultrasound and an ekg and then we will see if he can try different medication for reflux, but not before he gets a few more tests. I really hate putting him on any medicine, but the sessions are tedious and exhausting for us all. I just want to enjoy the spring.. and my little man, our miracle baby.. but we can’t. It’s just too damn hard to take him out, and fear missing a session.. then the eats nothing that day!

Help!! No one can help apparently…it’s so tough!

worst week for eicca ever!!

This has beena week from hell for Eicca. Today hours of crying and non-eating. The liquid zantac he has been on for 8 days for reflux seems to do more harm than good, and he flat out refused food today. It’s fucking heartbreaking. My morning spent on the floor next to him crying isn’t how I imagined my life with this gorgeous boy.

We even called the hosptial today, a desperate measure as I hate that place and thankfully we could speak to someone who told us to stop the zantac ( even though we were supposed to try it for 2 weeks ) and to give him some pain meds in case he has some bad paid because the reflux.

It’s a bitch though, cause all those days at the hospital exactly 4 weeks ago, and no one checked out the food allergy or reflux. We go back next friday and see the speech therapist again, and hopefully she has some suggestions, although to be honest, what we have read and we’ve read a LOT, it seems to just be gastric reflux that simply requires medication… some medication that works that is. We have a prescription to try something else, will do that tomorrow.. let’s just hope we all can get through tonight!

He has finally stopped crying and resolved himself to sleep, at least until we are forced to wake him again, for food because he fucking doesn’t reach his 30ounces a day not by a long shot!

I know most of you don’t have kids or give a shit, but when you are as alienated as we are here, you have to vent where you can!

Hospital update

Hosptial update

hi there,
Home for the weekend, after being told they are very sorry, but the nurses really should observe his eating over the weekend, even if there are no testing and we could leave him there.. ( yeah right ) we cried and pleeded our case to another nurse and she talked to another doctor who agreed to let us home… for the weekend only.

We had many test done on Friday, including a baby ultrasound of his head and xray of his chest. He is still on breastmilk, pumped and normal formula.

The head us was called because the speech thearapist fed him at 2 separate time and she said it looks like he doesn’t have a tight grip on the nipple. Maybe a bit of a lazy refux so then the neurologist came and wanted his head checked out. That was all okay

The chest xray showed he has a slightly larger heart than ’normal’. That could mean so many things, and if it was something serious they would have had us either stay there or do more testing that day, which they weren’t so concerned about. It could be normal, or a small hole or something horrible and serious I can’t even get my head around yet.. so we don’t stress.

Monday we check in again.. for how long we dont’ know really. He will hopefully be getting a MRI they said, and possibly a heart ultrasound.

It’s all been so tough. The sounds coming out of Eicca were horrible during the ultrasound. We had to hold him so still, he screamed so loud it was heartbreaking! The xray was no better, with the lead blankets over his head and groin, very heavy and uncomfortable.

The last dr was the ’head’ kids dr. He seemed quite sensible. He said clearly eicca has gained an average of 150g per week since birth. The ’normal’ breast fed baby gains 170g per week, so Eicca isnt’ ’that’ far off. We could a have a totally normal and healthy baby here, or one with some serious medical problem.. that we just dont’ know till more next week.

His blood tests have been okay and nothing exceptional stands out. They measured his oyxygen in his blood as he still makes this rattling wheezing sound all the time when he breathes, which again could be normal, or mean some trachea problem.. next week let’s see.

Being in that room, I was so lucky to have marco be able to sleep there with me, but it’s horrible. I hate hospitals, and the feeling that you are there for the indefinite amount of time with a maybe normal, healthy baby is just sad and feels wrong.

We are glad they are checking all possibilities. The heart thing we read could be why some babies don’t grow, their heart makes them too weak to suck and in turn they dont grow much.. that is always a possibility. But, we hope not.

It’s nice to come home. Same routine than there, but we are here. We can be among our things, and actually pack for a hospital stay, instead of being told we have to stay there while we were just on our way for a nice day in town as a family.

That’s a shitty feeling. You go for a normal apt, and suddenly your world is flopped upside down and you feel like a sick person. You feel that your child it so sick, when they aren’t.

The nurses that took him that nite were kind people, but I already dread having to leave Eicca with them Monday and who knows how many other nights. My sleep wasn’t any better.. i wanted my noisy little boy with us in the room, but it wasnt allowed.. he was ’under observation’ which as far as i could tell, meant he slept near them, in the hall and watched him while he ate.. just like they could do with us. It was so frustraing!

That’s all for now, going to try to enjoy the weekend at home.

Take are and talk soon, byeee

Here at 10 weeks with daddy! I think he’s sad cause he has the ugly hospital baby
clothes on still!! Ha ha.. mean mommy!! Love these guys so much!!

Still so worried

The nurses have been worried for weeks about our little guy’s weight gain, and this week was particularly dismal. He has gained just 2 ounces in 6 days. He is almost exclusively breast fed, through a bottle, so we can see what is going in, and i’ve supplemented with formula from the beginning.

We just worry so much. Last week we were told they want to send him to the university hospital for some testing. Testing is good.. i know. We went to a private dr on Thursday last week and she said not to worry too much. That every baby grows at his own pace etc..

But I just am so scared that this little guy won’t grow. We stress so much, and this should be the happiest time of our life, with our now 2 month old pumpkin and all we do is stress.

Please send happy and growing vibes to us!!

7 weeks today

Eicca is 7 weeks today. I took my first bath since before being admitted to the hospital about 9 weeks ago. The bath was lovely. I kept thinking the last time I was in this bath, Eicca was still there inside me and I was blissfully unaware how dangerously low his water was. There I was submerging myself in not too hot water nightly and his water was dramatically reducing. Hard to think about what could have happened if we didn’t go and get ultra sounds every 4 weeks like the paranoid androids we are.

Here the ‘normal’ practice is a quick pat of the belly, followed by some measuring, which funny enough measured him, not only ‘big’ constantly, because i am ‘big’ but also had him markedly growing weekly, when in fact he stopped growing at 36 weeks. Funny how the blindfolded ‘technique’ just doesn’t work.

I am so thankful daily for him. My little munkki, munkki is finnish for doughnut, but since I can’t eat those, i can kiss my little munchkin and call him a tasty little munkki for mommy!

I love being a mom, still with the night feedings, I love it. The nurses are a bunch of more over protective cunts than I am. This passed Monday he was up to 3.6 kg or 8 lbs, and we were delighted. Only again to get a call the next day. The nurse was ‘up all night’ worrying about OUR baby,. WTF!

She asked if we could come in the next day to see the dr., and i asked if it was absolutely necessary considering he gained 320g in 12 days, and the ‘norm’ for breastfed babies is 290g, so he was even above normal.. imagine that. All those ‘forced’ every 2-3 hr feedings worked a bit i guess. She said it wasn’t vital, but we can see the dr next week. I was so upset. I emailed a friend in the states, and she comes back with they are so worried cause SIDS is ‘highest’ among lightweight boys!

What the hell! As if I wasn’t stressed and worried enough.. thanks bitch! So, I spent Tuesday reading about SIDS, and yes, maybe it happens more in boys than girls, and yes, babies under 7lbs at birth are ‘higher’ at risk, but the biggest risk was under 3.5 lbs, and a whole list of other shit from smoking, to sleeping position to age etc..

So now, I’ve taken it upon myself to be a SIDS preventer. I wake him whenever he is sleeping, just startling him when i can’t hear him breathing. I feel like a bad and good mother all at once. I don’t want to ‘miss’ catching the SIDS cause I didn’t want to startle him. Nights are tough. We are both so tired. Big man is working and basically I take care of Eicca all night and he does the 6 am feeding/changing so I can sleep till 8.

But, I do set my clock to either feed or just startle him. Fuck, I hope it’s enough! I can’t even fathom my world without him. I can’t even grasp what life would be like without him, and if my faith in the gods was bad before, I can’t even grapple with what kind of god would take this so loved and much wanted little man our of our lives. But, again I am ahead of myself. I told big man that if anything happened to Eicca, that I wouldn’t want another child. We have 6 embryos on ice, and would love to have more babies,but if anything happens, I couldn’t bear going through pregnancy and everything again.

Also, let me make small rant about the recent twins explosion in Hollywood. We turned to IVF when we had no other options. When we were so desperate and 8 years together and couldn’t not try IVF. Now we have fucking Angelina, who I used to respect, doing IVF getting pregnant with twins, not because she can’t conceive, but because she was TOO SKINNY to conceive on her own. I have the solution… eat bitch! Eat a fucking sandwhich and gain some weight, get your period back, ovulate and get pregnant in two months like you did the last time! I mean come fucking on!

I know who the hell am I? Some have said I was too fat for IVF, too fat at a size 14, fair enough, but it’s a clear abuse of science because you don’t want to fucking eat something. I am just shocked Brad would go for shit like that. Let’s not even consider how many fucking kids they already have.. i mean; i could go on and on here!

That’s all for now, here is a picture of our little munkki at 7 weeks.

take care all of you!

Love being a mom!

Without sounding like some smug bitch, I have to say that I LOVE LOVE being a mom. Ms. Negative said once her little boy arrived that there is nothing like looking into his eyes. That comment really hit me the other night. Just looking into his eyes, he blinks, makes me think he understands me just brings me to tears.

My while I was pregnant favorite song was Ship song by Nick Cave and hearing that today whilst changing his diaper just brought me to my knees. Just looking at this little man that was so wanted, so loved from the beginning of time it seems.

I know everyone says don’t give up, but I could never imagine being this lucky. From 3 failed IUIs, 2 failed full IVF cycles and this being a FET, with bleeding, Fuck we are lucky! And if I never have any other children, this would be enough. This feeling is amazing and it still humbles me to this day that he is here. Nearly 3 weeks on and he humbles me and leaves me speechless.

He has gained a bit of weight, and is now 2.80kg about 6.2lbs so growing slowly and eating readily when we wake him, and if anyone has any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

take care, here is our little guy.. already with a message to the world.  honestly, this is how he was feeding the other day!

We’re homeee…

Hi everyone, firstly I want to thank everyone for the comments and messages! You have no idea how comforting it was especially all last week alone in the hospital. I never expected to go in for a check-up and be admitted. I had dirty underwear on and dishes in the fucking sink…. and suddenly bam there for a week worrying about Eicca.

Marco could come every evening and would read me your comments and just knowing so many people around the world were thnking of us made it a bit easier. My days were spent crying, watching some tv and listening to Eicca’s heartbeat waiting for something from the doctors.

By the time Tuesday came the baby water was so low they decided to try to induce labor on Wednesday. The whole day Wed I was hooked up to pitocin and was waiting to dialate.. it didn’t happen. I hardly had any contractions. The drs came in, checked and said, nothing is happening so ‘we’ll see’ I flipped out.. We’ll see.. we’ll see for WHAT? He has no fluid.. she returned with 7 people.. interns, students and drs alike..

And one saw that I was ‘mentally not handling it well’ and suggested an ultra sound Thursday. Then Thursday after a number of detailed ultras, they noticed he not only didn’t have any fluid, but for some reason he was really small, about the size of 36 weeks gestation, when he should have been 38. She thought it was best to just do the c-section on Friday.

In principal that was it, and after 6 days in the hosptial, more crying and more nerves when his weight not only dropped like normal babies, but also he gained some then dropped again. Plus they fucking had me labeled diabetic, which I am not, and therefor he had to have his glucose checked daily, twice daily, and his little feet look like someone took a knife to them, and of course he doesn’t have ‘my’ diabetes.. fucking idiots.

But the dr had run also a million other blood tests, including watching his liver function as he turned a bit yellower by the day, but those tests too came back okay. All in all, we are so glad to be home. We have to feed him every 3 hrs, and each feeding lasts one hour, first breasts, then breast milk from the bottle or formula just a bit to help him get more in.

He is just a very sleepy eater and never cries for food. Really he would be fine sleeping through the night, and does about 4 hrs if we forget to wake up.. which we try not to do. So far the animals seem curious. but not dangerous yet.. we’ll watch it.

Enjoy the pics, and thank you all so much for the lovin. Apologies if I don’t write much in the next few days, but we do love you all so much and are so happy to have our Eicca Francis Morgoth home. Btw, Eicca is pronounced Ay-Kah in case anyone didn’t know. My family still can’t get it exactly right, but you all will learn.. we love you anyway!!

Take care,
Regina, Marco, Eicca and pets

Our wait is over… So happy!

 

Yesterday 25th of January we welcomed our first born to the world. He is finally there!

Eicca Francis Morgoth has seen the light of day with squinty eyes. He is so qute and small, but he seem to like us and loves our bad singing voices.

My wife is doning wel, she was up a bit this morning  and ofcourse the surgery does make her hurt this morning.

For everybody out there, keep the faith, he was over 6 years in the making, but he is here now… Later more!

- HB -