The Long Awaited Sundae Video

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this up but I think you'll find it was worth the wait.

We took Bryce to dinner at Buca di Beppo on the night of his 2nd birthday. The food and the service were so-so at best but it was really nice of the waiter to surprise us all with this birthday sundae for Bryce.

You can pretty well tell from the video that he's never had anything like this before. He's had ice cream on a select few occasions and he's enjoyed unsweetened whipped cream on many occasions but never even a bite of a brownie.

The sugar made him a little emotional as you'll see...enjoy!

Bryce's New Trick!

Bryce has just this week (despite being sick) mastered pulling to stand inside his crib. He's very proud, as you can see on his face, and loves to show off!

Not bad for a micro-preemie, huh!?

Can you believe this!!??

It's been months and months of long, tortured therapy but we are well on our way to having an accomplished "sitter" in our household!! Go Bryce Go!

What a Week...

My sincere apologies for my lack of posting. As I was telling a dear friend at Bryce's party on Saturday, I sometimes feel like my blog has to follow the Thumper's Mom Philosophy...you know, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

I took Bambi seriously as a child and I guess it just stuck. I don't want to be negative and I don't want to be a downer, so when you see a lack of posts here at the blog it's likely a good sign that I'm trying to find a way to deal with something.

When Bryce was first born everything about our life was up side down, in side out and complete turmoil. These days are quite the opposite. We've settled into a routine, we rarely find that we have a medical emergency or new health issue to understand.

For the vast majority of the time, life is down right good.

But I do have my down moments.

I just prefer to bottle them up. And now that we're not in the midst of survival mode I'm able to do so much more effectively.

But my friend suggested that I be more honest - more like I was before. And since I respect and value her opinion I'm going to do my best to do just that.

Bryce's second birthday was just a week ago tomorrow but I've felt it coming on like a flu. You get a little sleepy, a little achy, a little less motivated and a little grumpy. No matter how hard you try to ignore the symptoms it always boils over into a mess of a day where you get nothing done but rest and try to let your body recover.

I HATE to equate Bryce's birthday with the flu. But let's face it, that was the best and worst day of my life. And I know that for most of our friends and family it's hard to understand how something that happened two years ago could possibly still be an open wound. But I'm here to say, honestly, that it absolutely is.

The saving grace is my precious baby Bryce - who soon I won't be able to call that anymore so I'm getting it all in while I can.

I had an email conversation with another mom last week who has two preemies. Her first is turning 11 this year and she said that she only now is able to fully embrace the celebration of his birthday without the bittersweet emotions.

It was so nice to hear from someone who got it. It's hard to find another human being who really understands these feelings. So what do you do with them? Well, I bottle 'em up, shove 'em down and keep on moving. I even went to the NICU last Monday night to do my weekly parent to parent volunteering. Wow, probably not a good idea.

I stood at the scrub sink almost exactly two years to the day from the first time I stood there and scrubbed in. The memory of the terrifying thought of walking in to see Bryce in the NICU for the first time is un-repressable. I remember so well that feeling of not knowing where I was, how I got there, what would become of my son, my life, my future. We were so sure he couldn't survive that I was in a constant state of trying to figure out how I would deal with losing my baby.

How would I go on? How would I ever find a way to be happy? How would Caleb and I get through such a trauma?

Well, he did survive - oh boy, did he! But our body remembers, the mind remembers. If you spend weeks and months preparing for a loss it doesn't just go away. It lurks in your subconscious, ever-ready to surface if necessary. It haunts your thoughts and tugs at your soul.

So there it is, there is the awful truth. As I celebrate the birth of my son I'm still working through the trauma of that birth. As we surround ourselves with friends, family, sweets and smiles - inside I'm fighting tears, I'm wondering when the next bad thing might happen, I'm fighting to stay above water until it's all a memory.

That's my coping method and while it might not be doctor recommended it's getting me through. I've been off the Zoloft for the better part of a year - the emotions may be raw and they may make me feel vulnerable but I'm feeling them, I'm dealing with them and I know eventually I'll be whole again. At least mostly.

So, I'm sorry there was no big happy 2nd birthday post. I just couldn't muster it. But I promise to post the video of Bryce eating his first brownie sundae on his birthday later today or maybe tomorrow.

And I thank my friend for suggesting openly that I get over my need to please and just be be honest. I hope it's okay with the rest of my readers as well.

Thank you all for your love, support and fellowship.

Feeding Woes

Hand to Hold is a local non-profit that I've talked much about before. They have a special place in my heart for many reasons and I'm always happy to help them when and if I can. Yesterday, they asked me to write a little something about our feeding issues for an upcoming project their working on. As I began to put the summary of Bryce's feeding issues down on paper it occurred to me that perhaps I should share with all of our readers as well.

Many of you and most parents can't appreciate the struggles related to feeding babies that have been intubated and/or hospitalized for long periods of time. It's hard for the parent of a normally developing child to really get the stress but I think most can imagine that they'd be terrified if they couldn't be sure their child was getting enough nutrition, enough fluid, enough nourishment to not only thrive but just to survive.

This is a very real problem for many parents and this is our "feeding story:"


Bryce's extreme prematurity meant that at birth he was unable to breathe on his own. He spent five long months in the NICU at Dell trying first to survive, second to breathe independent of equipment and finally to nourish his body with my milk.

It would prove to be breathing that would be Bryce's biggest challenge. It took four months on and off various ventilators before he was finally successful on high flow nasal cannula. Of course, as all preemie moms are aware, that just meant it was time to face feeding - no small hurdle in itself.

After being intubated with a breathing tube for so many months Bryce's "suck muscles" were weak and trying to feed from me or a bottle took so much energy that he would tire out well before filling his belly. We supplemented with tube feedings by way of an NG tube for weeks while trying to build his eating strength and coordination. We were grateful that he rarely aspirated while feeding but as time wore on it became obvious that if we didn't take Bryce home with a feeding tube he would either remain in the NICU for the forseeable future or end up catching some nasty hospital bug.

So we swallowed our fears and began our NG placement training. There really is nothing worse in our books than holding your infant son down while shoving a tube up his nose, down his throat and into his tummy. Oh and be sure not to hit the lungs, which is really just luck (especially since he's screaming the whole time), because then when you start the feed you may drown your child. Not sure if it's in the lungs or stomach? Well when you're in the hospital under strict supervision for placement you just take a quick listen with the nearest stethoscope but when you mention buying one for home use your reprimanded for being to NICUish and not enough Mom-ish. Oy vey.

It's easy to laugh off the stress of the ordeal as we look back now but it really was a true test for us. We now compare all things to the torture of placing an NG tube - ALL things.

Hand, foot and mouth disease, suppositories, baby puke and diaper blow outs all pale in comparison. If there were such a flag that read, "If I can place an NG, I can do anything," I'd proudly wave it high. I'd even get one of those cheesy mini flags for my car. Maybe one for Caleb's truck too.

Eventually though they let us take Bryce home with us and just like all the cliches you hear, he almost immediately began to grow bigger and stronger. After just a few short weeks at home we took out his NG tube, for what would turn out to be forever.

We hardly followed the book, or the doctor's advice for that matter, when we decided enough was enough. But it was the holidays and we felt that as Bryce's parents we knew him better than anyone. So together we made the joint decision to pull the tube and hope for the best. We could only pray that lacking those extra calories he was getting through the tube his desire to eat enough on his own would kick in. And thank the Lord, it did.

We were blessed and oh so grateful to place it finally away in the medical keepsakes box where it remains today.

(Yes, we have a medical keepsakes box. And it's full of blood pressure cuffs, hospital ID tags and myriad other odd momentos. No, I don't know what I'm going to do with it so for now it just stays safely put away in the closet. Yes, I know that's weird. And, no I don't care!)

Of course, our feeding struggles by no means ended the day we decided Bryce would no longer get supplemental feedings by way of NG tube. But we know enough to know just how lucky we are that Bryce's oral aversion was minimal. He always liked pacifiers, seemed to enjoy taking his milk from a bottle and overcame a texture issue with stage 2 foods in just over a month of daily trials.

We're painfully aware that this isn't the case for all parents but that is why Hand to Hold is so important. Because they have the unique ability to put those parents together and let them explore possible solutions, vent about frustrations and take solace in knowing they aren't alone.

I can only hope that our story will help another family along the way.