Tummy Time

The past few weeks have gone by pretty quickly. We have seen the Yale GRAD clinic, who said Matthew was doing well, as well as his geneticist.  We asked the geneticist to let him go longer at night sleeping (we were waking him every 3 hours).  We wanted to give him a 5 hour stretch, but we negotiated on 4 for right now until he gains more weight.  He seems very tired during the day and really wants his sleep.  The geneticist also switched up his calories on his formula as he was on a really high regimen and I felt like he was always really gassy/digesting.

Then Birth to 3 came for the first time last week, and they noted that his head was really floppy and he was just laying there on his tummy not doing anything.  He had been picking up his head a little so this was a little concerning to us.  It was also frustrating because he went from doing "great" the week before to "not great" the next week.

We also had the visiting nurse come, to whom I mentioned about Matthew being tired and the head lifting thing.  So she decided to say maybe it was something "neurological" as if with the same breath that someone might say, "maybe its allergies."  I asked her if she was concerned, and she said not really.  Then she apparently sent a really concerning email to the geneticist because they called the next day asking if we needed to do another metabolic panel.  So much for not being concerned.  I said no to the panel.  Then I explained for the next hour on the phone that I didn't think Matthew was lethargic, I just thought he really wanted more sleep which we are not giving him.  I also explained how one of the preemie moms I know (Alyssa!) said it is likely because his head is big.  Turns out the pediatrician agreed with that theory this week.

On a brighter note he visited the eye doctor for the last time this week!  His ROP is officially gone.  The vessels on his right side are fully grown and on the left they have about 1mm to go.  So she doesn't need to see him anymore!  He may have to go to a pediatric ophthalmologist though around 6 mo of actual age to make sure his cross eyes don't get worse.

I was thinking how our biggest worry right now seems to be focusing around tummy time (of course, there are still tangential concerns to that with his 3mcc and overall preemie-ness).  I remembered reading Alyssa's blog for Virginia, which I read and re-read in the hospital and at home many times.  I remembered one entry where she talked about how her worries and focuses have shifted from where they were in November and December.  Virginia, as we astonishingly found out early on in our conversations, had the exact same due date (Feb 4) as Matthew.  So their timelines coincide!  I remember reading that entry in November and December and wanting to be out of that ugly part of our journey.  Out of the part that was worried about oxygen saturations and pressure settings.  It is nice that right now we aren't focused on that, and that instead we get to focus on more developmental goals.  While we (I more than Sean) still worry, it is not nearly as bad as when we were petrified Matthew was going back on the vent, or worse never coming off it.

Another one of my NICU friends has twin 32 weekers that recently had to go to the PICU for an extremely terrifying experience with RSV.  Unfortunately their worries did go back to oxygen saturations, pressure settings, and worrying about their daughters having to go back on the vent.  The preemie road is extremely scary - even after the NICU.

Matthew is weighing in at almost 10lbs now.  He is 22 1/2" long and his head circumference is 15 1/2"  His height/weight are not yet on the growth chart for his actual age (not surprising) but his head I believe is.  He has a big head.

I tried to get some good pics of him on his 4 month birthday, but he was kind of a grump that day.  I did take a pic with him in his blue/white striped hat.  This was the same hat he had on in the NICU and it almost covered his face.  Now it is too small for him!  That picture is also me implementing the recommendation of Birth to 3 - do tummy time naked so he doesn't just lay there.  You can see for yourselves how well that worked.  Matthew does what he wants to do.  It was true in the NICU and it is true now....

He has started to give more smiles lately, but I haven't been able to capture them on the camera yet.  Hopefully I will be able to soon.....

I will be trying to make Matthew's birthday numbers out of the baby cards people sent us.  The 4 came from the card sent from Mike and Michelle Parks!

One last note - thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers regarding Indiana.  The house seems extremely empty without her and we really miss her.  Christopher still asks about her, and I hope that she and Alexander have found each other and that they are happy together.

Indiana

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I rescued Indiana shortly after 9/11.  I was living in West Harlem at the time, in a ground floor studio with no bars on the window.  My neighborhood wasn’t great, and I had my heart set on getting a German Shepherd (not because of the neighborhood, but just because I wanted one).  I went to the CACC shelter in East Harlem and found one – but unfortunately he was “on hold” to see if his owner would come get him.  I looked around at some other shelters in the city, and then came back to the CACC a few weeks later.  The same dog was still “on hold” so I decided to look at the other dogs that were there.  They were all barking away except one dog – a small black lab that was in the middle crate in the bottom row.  She sat in the back quietly but something about her drew me in.   I asked to take her out back.  I threw the ball to her a few times and she came to life on the warm pavement.  When I knelt down she came right over to me, sat in my lap and looked up at me.  The woman who worked at the shelter took one look and said, “Well I guess that’s it.” 

I picked her up the following week, after she had been spayed.  We walked from East Harlem back to my apartment in West Harlem, and at every block that we stopped at she got a cookie.  By the time she got back to my apartment we were best buds.  By that point I had already done the two things that Indiana loved most – playing ball and eating cookies.  No, that’s not true.  She loved being with her family the most.  But these were a close second.

In the first few days I had Indiana I commented how she was a “perfect dog” because she didn’t chew apart anything while I was at work.  One of the guys I worked with at PwC at the time said, “Just wait.”  It seems dogs, much like babies in the NICU, have a honeymoon period.  Indiana’s ended, and from that point on she ate everything.  Within a week I decided I needed to get a crate for her safety (and my sanity).  The crate would come on a Friday night….

That Friday after work I came back to my apartment to a giant mess – the usual.  I was cleaning it up when I noticed some of the torn up paper pieces said Yankees on them.  “Strange,” I thought, “Did I leave old Yankees tickets around somewhere?”  It turns out that these were my Game 1 World Series tickets (Yankees/Diamondbacks).  The Fed-Ex guy had slipped the envelope under my door even though he wasn’t supposed to (likely because he didn’t want to return to my neighborhood).  After much panic I was finally able to talk with Ticketmaster the next morning.  It turns out the $8.50/ticket (at the time) service charge buys you the right to call them up and say, “My dog ate my tickets” and get 4 new ones at the Will Call window.

To this day that ranks as the top thing that Indiana has eaten, but not without contenders.  She had one of the strongest jaws and could chew through a “tough dog” bone with no problem.  Occasionally she would decide, for whatever reason, that she didn’t want to eat something.  Like one Christmas when she got a giant rawhide candy cane and decided she would rather carry it around with her (banging into every nook and cranny along the way); that was until the point she decided to devour it.  She ate through the drywall in that first studio apartment in an effort to get to the bag of food behind the closet door.  She ate through the mattress.  One day Sean and I left frozen sausages out on the counter to defrost.  When we came back we almost thought we didn’t leave them out at all.  Indiana had eaten every bite, including the foil they were wrapped in.

Indiana traveled more than most dogs, and not just because she lived to almost 15 years old.  When I worked at PwC I often took her with me to client sites and Sean and I always brought her on vacation.  I remember the first time I took her on a plane (I was petrified the whole flight, had used 8 bungee cords to keep people from opening her crate and kept asking the flight attendant to check if she was on the plane).  I was working at Microsoft for a bit of time and living in a corporate apartment. She loved Seattle.  We would play ball outside every night even when it got dark (she had a light up ball and because she was black all you would see was this glowing thing bobbing up and down in the air.  One time some neighbors came out to see what it was).  We would go hiking every weekend.  For the first time she got a taste of the country life – and she loved it.  I think she was depressed for several weeks after we came back home to Harlem.  Those streets were always very noisy and she was very scared of being outside there.

I also remember driving down to Florida with her.  We were supposed to fly down, but the temperature took a nosedive and I realized it was going to be too cold to go on the plane with her.  The only option was to drive down.  I was supposed to be at a client site in Tampa on a Monday, and Sunday night I had tickets to Simon and Garfunkel (I was not missing that).  So I packed up the car, went to the concert, came back and got Indiana, and we left for Florida at 12:30am (the exact same time of day Matthew arrived some years later).  We drove straight through stopping only for gas/coffee and made it to Tampa around 5pm.

There were our numerous trips to the Cape together once Sean entered the picture.  We found the pet-welcoming Simmons Homestead Inn in Hyannis (where we would later be married) and although the breakfast wasn’t great, Indiana loved it and we loved bringing her.  Then Cagney (aka Mr. Cags) came along.  We got him as a playmate for Indiana though the extent of their playing included her dragging him along the street by his leash.  Before we had kids Sean and I took them both in the truck and drove from CT to LA, then up to SF, then back to CT.  They did snuggle together that trip.

Indiana is responsible for at least 5 other people getting dogs, including one of my best friends Heather (Mr. Boo!) and Sean’s entire family (who at first were disgusted that Sean was dating a “dog person” – my how far they have come!)  Although Indiana was “my” dog first, she is really our dog.  She became a central part of our lives for such a long time.  Our vacations centered on where we could take her.  Our wedding even featured her as the “flower girl.”  She was always more than

a dog, she was my best friend.

She was also responsible for teaching me what unconditional love meant.  No matter the day, my mood, whatever, Indiana has always been happy to see me.  She would always be in whatever room of the house Sean and I were in, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable for her.  If Sean and I were in different rooms, she would find the spot of the house where she could keep an eye on both of us.  When she could walk she would wait by the door and her tail would wag so hard when we came home that her whole body shook.  In her last months, when she couldn’t move at all, she still had moments of happiness when her family was around her.  A simple pet or belly-rub was of comfort to her. 

She let me see the remarkable fathering side of Sean before he was even a father.  She let me see how caring he could be, as he became her legs in her final months when hers no longer worked.

When we were still living childless in the city, I remember Sean and I talking about Indiana and my commenting that I didn’t think she would live long enough to meet our kids (even the first one).  There have been several Christmases that we thought were the last.  But Indiana is a tough dog, and she hung in for a long time.  Long enough for Christopher to know her as a part of his life.  Long enough for us to have to figure out how to explain to him that she is gone.  Long enough to meet Matthew.  Long enough to be ready to be Alexander’s dog when she meets him in heaven.

Like Alexander, you are selfless and you are brave and you are strong.  Even in your last days you gave me the strength to open his memory box for the first time – to hold his precious memories in my hand.  To let you smell them so you recognize him when you meet him.

I have let him know that you will be coming.  That you love to swim, and play fetch, and chew bones, and play tug of war, and go for hikes, and sniff the grass.  It has been a while since you have been able to do these things.

Goodbye, old friend.  I owe you more than you will ever know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J8s8qHO2Xs