What the Henkel, Padawan?

One month away from her first birthday. How did that happen? This means that my maternity leave is almost up. Well, luckily, I’m not going back to work until school starts again. So, she’ll actually be 15 months when I go back. Erik will soon take over as her primary caregiver, which also scares me a little bit. *wink*

I thought for this post/update I would name 11 things that I love about what Adrienne is doing right now.

• I love when you… wave at the walls of the long hallway downstairs when we are leaving for and coming back from an outing.
• I love when you… sit in front of the mirror and chat away to yourself, making yourself smile and giggle.
• I love when you… get excited about brushing your teeth after your bathtime.
• I love when you… sit and watch other babies and little kids, you seem so calm around them.
• I love when you… scatter to get near me when you are startled by a noise.
• I love when you… reach out your hand to gage how far away I am from you.
• I love when you… react to me saying your name. When you do, I know it was the perfect name for you.
• I love when you… play Peek-a-Boo, especially with your daddy, both of you light up so much.
• I love when you… sit and practice your speech. Today, you worked on “Bbbbbb” and “Brrrrrr”.
• I love when you… look for your daddy when you hear the sound of his key in the door.
• I love when you… spin around wildly in your exersaucer when one of us says “SPIN! SPIN! SPIN!”

Favourite food: Her favourites change from day to day but currently she enjoys digestive cookies, cream corn, toast with butter, noodles (macaroni and sprirals) especially in tomato sauce, but more and more she is just interested in what we are eating.

Favourite drink: Besides breastmilk, she loves water. We’ve started giving it to her it with lunch and supper. She seems to understand the word “water” but also recognizes her special water bottle. Sometimes, when she wants to have a drink, she will just stare at the water bottle until I offer her some. She tries to hold the bottle on her own, but it’s still a little too big for her to manage.

Favourite activities: Loves playing with her feet, being read to, travelling on the bus, and talking to her singing doggy toy. She likes being in the craft room with mommy and listens to all sorts of music. When she really likes a song she grooves to it by rocking back and forth while she sits up.

Favourite games: Loves playing Peek-a-boo, getting kisses from us (and her stuffed animals), and playing “boing, boing” (jumping up and down) and spinning in her exersaucer. She loves standing up and playing with her new giraffe toy. The lights are on the top (which is to motivate kids to be more upright I guess) so she wants to be help up there all the time.

New talents: Recently, she found a way of eating macaroni by putting it in her fist and squeezing it until it reaches the top. That makes it secure enough for her to place it in her mouth. Once she figured out that technique she hardly misses any of the macaroni.

She’s also creeping backwards but she is working really hard on staying up on her knees to crawl and getting her arms to support her going forward. She still hates tummy time which is why it’s taking so long to reach this goal.

Eye Update: She is still on medication for her hemangioma. It’s looking better and better all the time. When I look at pictures that are a few weeks old, I can still see improvements from that time. They want to give her an MRI in May to check what is happening behind the eye. That is when they will decide whether or not it has reached the “plateau” stage. If it has, they will most likely start to wean her off the medication since it should not increase in size after that. Unfortunately that stage could take years to reach, if that’s the case, we will just keep her on the same dosage as she is on currently.

Can you believe that my little girl is going to be one year old in 9 weeks?

Many people are doing these lists on facebook, so we thought we would do one to start blogging on this site again. I asked Adrienne to come up with some things to tell about her experiences so far. Enjoy!

25 Things About Me - The Adrienne Edition
1. I was born 5 weeks early with almost no warning.
2. A few days after I was born I had to go in a special suntan bed to get a cool diva tan.
3. I was allowed to leave the hospital with my mommy and daddy after one week.
4. For the first few weeks, I would only sleep while I was laying on my mommy or daddy.
5. During the first few weeks, I slept a lot but had to be woken up every three hours to eat.
6. I got to meet my grammie and grampie when I was a month old, they came all the way to Sweden to see me.
7. I was what they call a “high needs” baby, I just like to think of myself as high maintenance, cause I’m worth it!
8. My Grammie is the only person I allow to put me to sleep without food first. She has the best rocking skills!
9. I hate tummy time!
10. My smile can melt anyone in three seconds flat.
11. When I was about 2 months old, my right eye started to bother me.
12. I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for doctors in hospitals. I’ve become quite good at it.
13. Nurses with needles bother me.
14. Some people think I wear an eye patch for medical reasons, but really I’m just a pirate.
15. I got to spend my first Christmas in Canada while I was visiting for eight weeks.
16. While I was in Canada, my grampie got me addicted to cookies.
17. My other favourite foods are mango, sweet potato and pasta (with sauce!)
18. I miss my favourite babysitters, Aaron and Ashley. I can’t wait to play with them this summer.
19. Bath time is my favourite time of day!
20. I think my Aunt Shand is funny, but I love messing with her to make her think she’s not.
21. My nicknames are: Poker Face, Goofy Goober, Sweet Cheeks, Shining/Super Star, Cookie Monster and The Cookie Philosopher.
22. For the last few weeks, I’ve been growing alot of teeth. I think they’re overrated. Right now, I have seven of them. (Grampie’s cookies REALLY help my gums feel good!).
23. I love to pull on cords, especially white ones attached to computers.
24. I love it when my daddy tickles me with his stubble and twirls me up in the sky.
25. I groove to music even when it’s just my mommy singing to me.

We didn’t get the answers that we wanted to hear at the doctor’s today. The so-called “vascular malformation specialist” said that she thought that it is more of a hemangioma. That’s it. She took one look at her and wanted to move on, basically dissing her. I guess we won’t be her pet project after all. She did call Erik later in the day and schedule a meeting with a radiologist who will use an ultrasound to make sure that it actually is a hemangioma. Now, we have to wait until next week for that appointment, then the week after that we meet back up with her to hear the verdict.

I brought in all my notes and questions. She wasn’t impressed with that, stating that the information that I brought was from America where they “tell patients what they want to hear to make money”. I didn’t realize until after we left that the stats that I was using were from Australia. Why couldn’t I have looked down at the paper earlier? When I asked about the cortizone treatments (which I read should be administered as soon as possible for optimal results) she said that is only the very rare cases that receive treatment and doubted that Adrienne would be eligible for that. Then, when I asked my next question about the risks of flying with a hemangioma, she looked at me like I was crazy. She said that I couldn’t take her out of the country since she might be in treatment. WHAT!?!? You just said that she most likely wouldn’t get the treatment. Argh! When Erik asked if we would have to come into the hospital to get the treatment (if we would be so lucky), she said (shocked): “of course not! you could give it to her orally at home!” What!?!?! Why wouldn’t I be able to do that from Canada? Idiot!

So, we have to wait some more. In the meantime, I’ll be researching more on cavernous hemangiomas since that seems to be what the “doctor” thinks it is. At least, she didn’t just say: “let’s wait and see until next month”. I think I really would have lost it then.

Here is a picture of my supergirl after our appointment today. You can see that she isn’t pleased either. All this and she’s fighting a cold and having extreme tummy pain. She really is a superhero.

Since the last doctor’s visit, we have known that Adrienne’s eye could be caused by one of two problems: a benign tumor, called hemangioma or a vascular malformation which is basically when blood vessels and arteries have grown together incorrectly. I think it’s more likely that it’s the latter one since it seems to get bigger when she gets angry (which indicates that blood vessels are involved). The only thing that doesn’t point to it being a vascular malformation is that they are usually present at birth. Hers only showed up when she was about 8 weeks old. Although, it could be that it was small enough to go undetected.
I’m comforted by the fact that they are leaning towards a vascular malformation since the things I’m finding about hemangiomas on the internet are pretty scary. I found the following quote in a document that is trying to inform parents how to get insurance coverage for treatment since most companies will not cover it:

“Waner and Suen (1999) further stated, “Only 40% of hemangiomas involute with an acceptable result. Therefore, 60% of all patients with hemangiomas will require some form of corrective surgery” (p. 27). Williams, et al. (2003) also noted that “If these often disfiguring vascular lesions do not involute early, they may have profound psychosocial effects on the child and family” (p. 229).

I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen with vascular malformation cases but, from what I have read, it just seems like the hemangiomas grow quicker and can become a lot larger in size. The worst thing about the chance that it’s actually is a vascular malformation, is that it’s harder to get rid of. They can keep growing for life.

I’m hoping to find out more on at our next appointment on September 5th. They took pictures of her last time we were there, so they should be able to see for themselves how much it has grown and maybe be able to predict how much it will grow in the near future. I don’t want to put her through an operation, but if it’s an option to get rid of it as soon as possible, I will consider it.

I’ve been trying to limit how much research I do on this since I could easily drive myself crazy. But, I can’t just sit here and wait. I need to know what is going on with my little baby girl.

For as long as I can remember, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to be one of those mothers who runs into the emergency room every time my baby coughed or got a slight rash. So, when we saw that Adrienne had some puffiness around her eye, we decided not to panic. We kept speculating about what it might be - a blocked tear duct? a fingernail scratch? a bop on the eye with her tiny fist?

When it didn’t go away after a few days we started to wonder if it was an infection. We decided we would wait and talk to the pediatrician at our first appointment that was happening in a few days. We were relieved to hear that she thought the same things that we did, but she decided to send us to the hospital just to make sure.

The first hospital said that they didn’t have an eye specialist, so they sent us to a special eye hospital (I didn’t even know those existed!) in the city. There, we were told that they weren’t equipped to handle such a tiny patient, so we were told to go to the children’s hospital the following day. We finally got in to get a head scan. It showed that there is a mass of something behind her eye that is pushing it forward. It doesn’t sound as scary as it looks. In the x-ray, she looks like Quasimodo! Does this look like Quasimodo to you?!?

The doctors from both the eye hospital (is there a special word for those?) and the children’s hospital will be working together on our case. That makes me feel better, but it also makes for a lot of waiting time. We were finally called back in for today but were bumped at the last minute on account of emergency case that came in while we were being prepped. She even had a local anaesthetic cream already applied to her skin to help them insert the IV. I hate waiting, but it’s good to know that this isn’t a crisis and isn’t seen as something that can’t wait.

We will try again on Friday. In the meantime, we have an appointment with the eye specialist tomorrow morning. I hope he has some good news for us.

From now on, I think I’ll be one of those mothers who runs to the emergency room for every little sneeze, just to be on the safe side. Stay tuned for more of Adrienne’s eye adventures…

I can believe that Adrienne is 8 weeks old, but when I think that she is 2 months old - it just doesn’t sound right! I think it has to do with the fact that I compare her to all the milestones in the baby books/websites with her “corrected” age. If we treat her as if she was really born at the end of June, then she should technically be only 1 month old. Really, she’s 2 months old.

She’s been developing dramatically over the last couple of weeks. She is having more and more awake time, as well as more and more fussy periods. One of the things that she’s done that is completely amazing is how any time that I’ve laid her down for a nap with me (on my pillow), she falls asleep right away or stays there calmly looking around the room. Of course, I’ve only tried that when all else has failed. I never believe that it’s going to work, but it does! I really don’t want to wear that one out since it’s a wonderful way to get her to sleep and I will need it when I’m taking care of her all on my own.

We’ve just started taking Adrienne out to social gatherings and she has done well so far. We have joined some new mommies from Stockholm group for fika, had lunch with the girls and for supper over at Heather and Måns’s. During all of these visits, she’s slept through most of the time - so I hope that keeps happening. When my father was here, she was a wonderful sightseeing tourist . She’s such a natural!

Just look at the fun we can have while she is sleeping

She’s also becoming more interactive with us. Here she is having a conversation with her grandmother. I’m not sure who was doing most of the talking at the time, but they both seem quite involved.

This concludes the baby preparation portion of our blog!

We were very surprised to have our little girl arrive a month earlier than expected. Adrienne Shand was born at 10:46am on May 23rd. My water broke shortly after 11pm on the 22nd when I was brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed. I called my sister to find out if what I was experiencing was just poor bladder control or the real deal. It kept happening about every 2 minutes, so Erik rushed around getting a bag ready and drove me to the hospital. The strange thing was, I wasn’t in pain at all. No pain, no contractions. Come to find out later, that the extreme back pain that I had been experiencing during the week was actually an indication of premature labour. Everyone (including my midwife) just thought it was regular back pain since I’ve had a bad back since junior high. Once there, they told us that they would not release me and the baby would have to be born within 48 hours no matter what. They hooked me up to some monitors and an antibiotic IV, just because there was an increased risk of infection for the baby. No one ever told me why I went into premature labour, just telling me that she was ready to come out.

The staff of Danderyds sjukhus was amazing! Everyone made a point of speaking English to me and were all super supportive. We were suppose to have a doula with us during the birth, but because everything happened so fast, we had to do it without her. I’m actually happy that we didn’t have a doula since it gave Erik and I some down time to process what was happening. I was able to give birth naturally with some help of massage, a birthing ball, changing positions often and some beloved laughing gas. The pain was not at all what I expected. I thought that I was going to need the epidural, morphine, etc. (whatever they were offering, I was open to taking as long as I needed it) but no one mentioned further pain meds and I kept waiting for the next level of pain but the only part of labour that I thought was unbearable was the pressure during the pushing part (which is way too late for additional medication!)

People kept warning me that I could have the baby as early as 2 weeks early, and I took their advice seriously by moving my maternity leave/vacation earlier but I was not at all ready for what happened.
We spent her first 6 days in the hospital since she had some high jaundice levels. She was born at 2575 grams (5 pounds 7 ounces) and was able to reach her birth weight after just 10 days. It’s normal for babies to lose about 10% of their birth weight during the first few days after birth. Now, three and a half weeks later, she has reached 3155 grams (6 pounds 15 ounces).

We are blessed that she is here and are glad that she didn’t need any extra support that preemies usually need before they are released from the hospital. She’s adorable and so much a part of the family already. Her personality is already starting to shine through. I love motherhood so far!

There have been some dramatic changes in the pregnancy over the last few weeks. I can’t believe how tired I’ve become and how uncomfortable it is to sleep. I’ve also learned how much my body can deteriorate when I can only sleep two hours at a time over an extended period.

Just this week I’ve had the beginning of an ear infection, sore throat and half of my scalp has been tingling (which has been strange!). I know it’s all connected together and they are all my “weak areas” but as soon as I started sleeping more normally (only getting up once during the night) most of these ailments started to disappear. The best part of this weekend was the fact that I slept a whole 8 hours with only one pee break.

I was going to try working up until my due date to save as much time for after the baby is born, but have recently changed my mind. For one, it’s not going to help anything if I push myself and, secondly, because I will have to start working next August whether I end work at the beginning, middle or end of June, anyway.

I have some holidays and comp days that I’ll be taking in June and will officially start my maternity leave on July 1st. I’m ready to stop working now but I want to see my students graduate, write their Cambridge exam and help my mentor students finish off their first year.

If I combine all the days that I have to work, I have 14 days left. That’s the next two weeks, then some days here and there in June for graduation and fun days. I have planned it so I’m not lecturing anymore, just holding discussions, watching films and listening to presentations. The students know that I’m getting uncomfortable and have to move around a lot just to make it through a class.

I’m so ready to be home and relaxing!

This is the latest picture taken of our little one. It took forever to get a good shot the the baby’s face since our “Shelby Luke” started hiding and playing peek a boo with the sonographer.
We will be getting a “bonus” ultrasound since I’m taking medication for my thyroid and it’s procedure to check on the development when this happens. Hopefully, there will be another photo in a couple of weeks’ time.