earth girls are easy

or at least i think they are compared to earth boys!  i’m still undecided if it is a boy thing or a second child thing or just the different personalities of my two darlings but percy was far easier to influence and direct than tally is proving to be.  some examples: i told percy more than a year ago if she runs onto a road or doesn’t hold my hand when we walk across a road there’s a good likelihood she will be hit by a car and killed.  she got this and behaves very well on roads, tally on the other hand (!) thinks it’s a great joke to tear up the driveway and burst onto the road the moment he is let out of the front door- continuously.  back in erko we had our hundreds of books on bookshelves ranged about the house.  percy pulled a few shelves down once and was reprimanded and asked not to do that again, and she never did.  i’m kind  of thankful that all our books are in storage for this year or two because i’m sure i’d be packing away books all day long, every day if tally could get to them.  percy understood the requirement for warm jumpers and enclosed shoes in her first winter, tally screams blue murder if you try to put anything but sandals on his feet (yes, he looks very stylish in long, thick socks and sandals) pulls off his slippers and socks at the first opportunity and is a struggle to get into anything beyond a singlet.

sure, percy is challenging and difficult in more a negotiating, having control of her environment, asserting her will and understanding that other people require things in life that she must contribute to, way.  for instance she needs to pee and get dressed promptly in the morning so mamma can get her to day care in time to also get to her train in time, to get to work in time.  we are seeing improvement…

overall i do find having to tell or request of tally the same thing repeatedly thru the day and day after day, wearying.  i know it won’t last forever but it is lowering my patience quotient quickly.

hence, in my experience, earth girls are easier than boys!

“day out with thomas”

the thirlmere rail heritage mueseum (of whatever it’s called) held a “day out with thomas” yesterday.  i took percy and tally while paul was off getting our new car.  both percy and tally really enjoyed themselves and were very well behaved.

recent photos, 1st quarter 2011

tally at 18 months

well tally will be 18 months old on saturday.  today we went back to the gastro specialist for our follow up appointment from october last year.  he has gained weight at least- he’s now 10.4 kilograms which puts him in the 10-25 percentile range, and he’s 84cm tall which is bang in the middle.  the good news to take from this is that he is on the scale at least for weight, instead of under it.

the gastro dr has advised we double his dosage of reflux medication, as 5mg twice a day is apparently very low for his weight.  she has also given us a referral to have a barium study done.  swallow some goop and take pictures as it travels down to be sure no twists in his gut.  i’m sure we, as a family, are NOT going to enjoy that experience.  finally we have a telephone number for a speech pathologist.  in the spirit of learning something new everyday i learnt today that speech pathologists also deal with eating and swallowing issues.  our issue is that tally never chews.  he swallows everything as it enters his mouth.  we do make most of his food mush or very tiny pieces however we think the unchewed food contributes to his prediliction to vomitting.

so i shall be making some ‘phone calls tomorrow to make what undoubtably will be, expensive appointments.

i should also mention tallly is walking perfectly now, using some signs very well and learning a few words.  he’s a joy and a delight.  he laughs so heartily and hugs so strongly.  it’s just bliss.

a frail species

i’m beginning to think it’s lucky that humans have evolved such big brains because we are actually very frail as a species.  we need that big brain to think our way out of problems and to logic our way into calm.  our frailness is coming home to me the more people i speak too and learn about the ill health that abounds all around me.  as i’m typing i’m listening to tally cough.  i feel so sorry for him but there’s little i can

….

…poor mite, there he went again.  change of bedclothes, wash the vomit off him and settle back to bed.  we’ve been thru a few gp’s and specialists now. i’m coming ’round the the idea it’s environmental and not internal.  here’s why; gastro doctor couldn’t say anything conclusive, blood test negative for coeliac disease, blood test normal for indicators of mal-absorption and while thankfully tally has dropped from vomiting five or more nites a week to one, he does seem to vomit during wet weather.  tonight is cool and raining, as it was yesterday and the day before.  could the poor drainage under our house be a spawning ground for mould and spoors?  are these now nicely saturated, growing and infiltrating our rooms?  i knew taking on this house would be a big job come re-building time, i didn’t factor in my baby being made sick by it.  (however mould doesn’t account for the handful of spews we’ve had when away from the house.  hmmm…)

continuing on the internal side of things.  we’ve also consulted a dietician who has recommended all sorts of things i would normally avoid!  it’s almost funny.  the aim is to increase tally’s “caloric intake.”  the things we are to do include; put lots of butter and grated cheese on any pasta, put lots of butter on bread, only give him full cream milk when he has milk, substitute his normal formula for pediasure (which is expensive!) re-fry any meat he has in lots of oil, put butter on his cookies, and don’t worry about variety- just load him up with what he does eat.  once he’s gaining weight sufficiently we can go back to trying new foods.  during the consultation i was shown a bowl with measurements etched on the inside- 1/2 cup, 1 cup, 2 cups, etc.  how much does tally eat?  less than a half a cup each and every meal, often no more than three bites, sometimes nothing at all.  he’s really subsisting on formula.

there’s lots of talk of reflux.  no-one has said he does or does not have it.  the gastro dr said in her letter to our gp that since he has reduced to one vomit a week she does not yet want to give him medicine for reflux.  i learnt this week of a little girl who threw up every meal she had from the moment her parents started her on baby mushes.  she threw up so much there was blood in each lot as she’d torn out the lining of her oesphagus.  i think i am very thankfully that tally is not that sort of example of a frail human.  this little girl even now age seven (approx.) will throw up if her orange juice has pulp in it.  she ate purees to age two.

a swab was finally taken today for whooping cough too.  i was back at our erko gp today.  thank god there are good doctors about that will do what you ask, even if they think the likelihood is small.  we shall have the result of that test on friday.  in the meantime i’m going to try to find someone that can check our house for mould and spoors and the like without treating me like an idiot, nor charging like a wounded bull.  any suggestions anyone?

i’m so glad that percy was and is healthy.  we haven’t had any concerns beyond head colds and tummy bugs with her.  it’s a good thing she wasn’t sick, she may never have had a sibling otherwise.

buuyyeee!!

for many weeks now tally has been trying out new sounds and proto words.  my favourite is “good -bye”, or as tally says it “buuuyyyee!!”  with a lovely frantic waving of his arm or arms.  he also loves kisses.  he will smack his lips together and make a “pop” sort of noise at the least possibility of getting or giving a kiss; if some one says “kiss” or if he sees other people kissing.  he is a bit over-enthusiastic a lot of the time; his kisses are big, open mouthed affairs that can leave a fair bit of baby drool on your cheek, mouth, head, arm, leg, whatever happens to be the focus of his affection at the time.  i adore each and every one!

he’s also a wonderful hugger- throwing his arms around you and clinging on, repeatedly.

i hope he starts using some new words other than ‘mamma’ soon.  ‘mamma’ is the default word for everything- “i want”, “i don’t want”, “pick me up”, put me  down”, “carry me over there”, “bring me …. whatever!”  the universal command for all these things and much more is “Mamma!” on a rising crescendo and repeated until said action is carried out.  he’s learning a couple of sign language signs so hopefully more linguistic skill will shortly follow.

tally nov 2010

yesterday we took tally to his appointment with the gastro doctor.  it felt a bit like taking the car to the mechanic and saying “it’s got a weird clunk in the back”, but no clunk is discernible while the mechanic drives the car.  tally has been spew free for a week.  it’s great news and hopefully it lasts forever but it doesn’t explain why he spewed so much over the past six months.  we have a referral to get blood tests done anyways.  to rule out things like coeliac disease.  there is a list of four on the referral paper but darned if i can understand one jot of it – EUL / LFT / (mess!) FBC / (huh?) / BIL  and so it goes on.  i will ring on monday to make an appointment at the hospital.  we also have instructions to load his food with butter and other such high calorie things!  it’s kinda funny that i’m wanting to lose weight and find the will power to avoid fats etc and the time to exercise, while tally needs to seriously gain weight.  go figure huh?  we also have the number of a baby nutritionist.  fun and games…

the lovely big news for today is that tally started walking unassisted!  go tal-bal!  so far a handful of three or four steps on his own but i’m sure he’ll be off and away too soon for me to keep up.

ok, that’s odd

wanting a second opinion about tally’s failure to thrive and weight loss, yesterday we visited our old doctors back in erskineville.  it’s not that i don’t trust or believe our local doctor, just a second opinion seems a sensible thing.

oddly, tally weighed in this time at 9.6 kilograms; could he really put on nearly a whole kilo in two days?  i think not.  so it’s a difference of different scales.  nevertheless it was a bit reassuring to see him back in the healthy range.  albeit , very near the bottom but at least in it.  with our erko dr we weighed him on two different scales with the same result.  she still wants us to keep a food diary and take him to the specialist in november.  coelic disease crossed her mind but he shows no other sign for it so she thinks not.

today i stripped his cot, washed everything- and i mean everything- sheet, blankets, sleep toy, mattress cover, the cot itself, the floor boards underneath, the wall next to the cot.  and i went to clark rubber and had a new foam mattress cut.  so there should be nothing dust- or mould- wise to irritate him.  our erko doctor thinks dust or something related may be irritating him, which brings on the cough, and she thinks he may have a weak or weakend sphincter between his oesphagus and stomach so strong coughing and laying down brings up his stomach contents.  if we can eliminate the coughing she is confident the sphincter will strengthen over time.  let’s see how we go…

failure to thrive

three words no parent ever wants to hear.  percy was a slim baby and is now a slim child, she’s reached all the developmental milestones that we attach such importance to either at or before due, she’s healthy, growing, smart…

so i just kinda thought tally was slim too.  that he’d do all the normal things in the normal time.  he’s nearly fourteen months old now and yesterday he weighed 8.8 kilograms, down from the nine kilograms he weighed two months ago.  babies aren’t supposed to put on lots of weight at this time but they are supposed to creep up, not drop back; no matter by how little.  nine kilograms at 12 months of age is at the low end of the healthy spectrum anyways, and now he’s dropped out of the bottom of the spectrum altogether.  he’s so utterly adorable it breaks my heart to think he’s not getting the food and nutrients he needs.

and why isn’t he getting nourishment?  because five nites out of seven he vomits up everything he ate at dinner.  despite offering him lots of food all day long he really doesn’t eat a lot of it.  mostly i pick it up off the floor or out of his hair or from the high chair when he gets up.  dinner would be when he eats the most, and then not always, only for it to reappear one to six hours later.  you see what happens is we’ll have dinner, tally eating a reasonable amount most times, then some play, a bath, a milk bottle, a song and a story and down to sleep by 7pm.  he wakes up anywhere from 8pm onwards coughing and retching and then we have to change his sleeping bag and wash him off as the milk and dinner comes back up.  usually only once each nite, occasionally twice.  now having an empty stomach he wakes two or three times more until around 2am, each time i feed him formula milk to get him back to sleep.  hopefully after 1 or 2am we get to sleep until 6am, sometimes only ’til 4:30am before he gets more milk to get another hours or so sleep.

we have a referral to see a paedatric gastroentrologist. (i’m sure i’ve spelt that wrong but i haven’t the strength to look it up.)  the referral letter from our gp says “a 5 month history of vomiting at night” and “i am concerned with his weight loss that he has a malabsorption syndrome.”  bright and early this morning i rang the specialist (that i can still spell) to be told the first available appointment is 10th may 2011.  WTF!!  well, i said, we have to take it.  the receptionist then started to take our details.  funny how sometimes your ridiculous name can be a boon.  we started chatting over our shared lithuanian heritage, as revealed by the spelling of my surname.  she then went on to ask what is up with the baby?  i said five months of continuous vomiting and weight loss.  her reply, and i think it was because of the nature of tally’s problem, not our ‘aitis’ names, was that that could not wait seven and half months, let’s see…. (holding breath)…  yes, we have an emergency slot-in on 5th november 2010.  sigh and sob.  it’s still a month away but far better than mid next year!

the gp suggested that with paul’s irish/scottish family history and my northern european one coeliac disease is a possibility.  a diagnosis would involve a blood test and possibly endoscopy and biopsy.  uurrggghhh, my heart flips over thinking of how is blood drawn from a baby? and how does he lie still for a camera to be pushed up his bum?  i barely want to think about it.  i do want to know why he vomits, why he’s losing weight and what we are to do to make it right.  so i’ll have to think about it and learn about it and make sure he gets the best care and future we can give him.  he’s to be my thriving, gorgeous, smart, tall, funny, healthy, perfect boy.  no matter what.

tally turning one party

it was just lovely to see so many of our friends come to wish tally a happy birthday.  it was a relief that no-one pitched head long down the 3 metre drop in the back yard.  it was great to have a yard big enough to fit a jumping castle in it.  it was mildly embarassing to have everyone see what a third rate house we presently live in- give us a few years we are going to build a better one!  it was exciting to see a raft of new clothes and toys for tally, even if that is mercantile of me.

hugs to all!

tally’s cake was a cupcake cake- note to others; cutting a cupcake cake into lots of little servings is hard!

tally having enjoyed said cake!

happy family!