Naptime Blog

Before I had my children, I babysat for friends and family for years. I thought I was prepared, armed with the best baby books and years of knowing advice from friends and family who had “been there, done that”.  Well, then the baby was born and I realized it is so true that every child is different. I really don’t  think parents realize, I know I didn’t, how different each child can be until they are faced with a child that has more struggles than they had hoped he would.

Here is a little background. My first son was born via c-section after a high risk pregnancy filled with bed rest and many doctor’s visits. He was born relatively healthy, but started to develop issues shortly after birth. By four weeks of age, he was having projectile spit up (by this I mean across the room, literally) and was losing weight because he spit up all of his formula. On his four week birthday, Memorial Day weekend 2007, he was admitted to Texas Children’s Hospital to have a Pyloromyotomy, because he was diagnosed with Pyloric Stenosis. Pyloric stenosis is a narrowing of the pylorus, which is the lower part of the stomach through which food and other stomach contents pass to enter the small intestine. In babies with pyloric stenosis, the muscles in the pylorus have become enlarged to the point where food cannot empty out of the stomach correctly.

About that time, we were also told that he would have to have at least two surgeries to repair a urological issue when he was at least six months old. Long story short on that one, he did have the two surgeries, but ended up having another because he developed issues.

All four of his surgeries were done under general anesthesia with recovery times (except for the pyloric stenosis) that  can easily cause delays because he wasn’t able to crawl and play as much due to his surgeries and needing to recover and be kept still.

Did I expect to have a son that had to go through all of this at such a young age? No, I guess I expected the baby that my friends described, one that was 100% healthy, crawled at a certain age, walked at a certain age and didn’t have to deal with much more than the occasional cold. I guess I just got lucky, because my son is absolutely perfect to me. He still has some struggles (I’ll tell you more in the weeks to come), but his struggles have made him who he is. He is sweet, cuddly, smiley and absolutely perfect to me. He loves going to the doctor (can you believe that after the surgeries, the IVs and all the poking and prodding?) while his younger brother (more about him later, too) who hasn’t had any surgeries or health issues absolutely despises doctors and nurses. They both make me proud daily.

Shannon
Potamus Prefers
http://www.potamusprefers.com/

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 6:14 am and is filed under Health, Shannon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.