a birthday, a holiday, and a surgery, oh my!

These last couple of months have been insane! I want to catch up on the major happenings, and hopefully will be able to remember all the things I intended to include.

Brooklin turned 5 in April. My baby girl is going to kindergarten this fall! She is so ready and so excited. I think she's going to do excellent. It will be hard giving up naps, and I'm assuming the first month or two will be filled with lots of tears and a very tired girl, but hopefully she'll acclimate. I'm so looking forward to seeing her grow academically and to make friends "on her own". We are so blessed to be in a school that I am confident will challenge her as well as be entertaining and stimulating. We won't be homeschooling, but we will definitely be involved parents, and I feel like staying in touch with what she's being taught, as well as working right along side her with work she'll do at home will give us the opportunities to teach and supplement as needed. I really am so excited for her and know that she will be successful.

We celebrated her  birthday this year with a preschool playdate. I always want to invite every kid we know so that no one feels left out, but I didn't want to deal with a party this year. So we just invited a couple of kids from church, but then decided to include all the kids in her preschool class. Brooklin was so excited that most of the kids were able to come, and they even spoiled her with thoughtful and fun gifts. She loves having friends, and loves even more when she gets to spend time with them! It was fun to watch her "entertain" her guests. I remember at one point thinking, oh gosh, I should have planned a thing for them to do, like a game or something (and I actually started gathering pillows to do musical "chairs" with) but she didn't skip a beat and improvised with parades around the house, hide and seek, and "free play". She even sent home each kid with a  balloon or two that she'd collected from her Grandpa Little's balloon making skills from a few nights prior to her birthday. I loved how concerned she seemed to be with making sure everyone had fun, but also seemed so laid back about it - like it was no big deal. She's so naturally social, I really have no clue who that comes from!

The kids had fruit and pizza, and of course, cupcakes to celebrate her birthday.

It was nice having just our little family together for her birthday - and we celebrated with her favorite meal of macaroni and cheese followed by "raspberry" cake. You can see the lovely flowers that Trent brought Brooklin for her birthday as well. She didn't really notice them until the next day though, when all the hype died down. I thought that was so sweet of Trent! I love the idea of a father giving his daughter flowers.

We also enjoyed a family party for her on Easter, which was nice. Brooklin was spoiled by both sets of grandparents the week of her birthday, and got to go to lunch with Grandma and Grandpa Little one day, and dinner with Nana and Papa another day. She definitely enjoyed her birthday "week" this year! Brooklin and her Papa share a birthday, but this year we decided to celebrate them separately, because my dad's special day has seemed to get eclipsed by my efforts to make Brooklin's day special. Who doesn't want another reason to have a party anyway?

Easter was also celebrated with various easter egg hunts, the arrival of Jena and Joey from Florida, and lots of family! I think in the future we'll do Easter separate from her birthday though. We always intend to do Easter baskets and family egg hunts on Saturday before Easter, but we always forget until Saturday morning. Maybe next year!

The girls did get to do an Easter egg hunt that the White River ward put on, and they loved it! I love that that ward does an Easter (AND a Halloween) activity. It's something our ward doesn't do, for some reason, but it's fun to get to crash their parties once in a while.

The kids in their Easter attire. Andrew was hilarious to watch. He slowly slid further and further down on the girls' laps, but he loved every second of those snuggles! It's a rare occasion to get all the kids smiling "prettily" all at one time. Mackenzi usually pulls a face, Brooklin usually over poses, and Andrew is usually squirmy or just staring instead of smiling. I actually had a few to choose from! I love these kids of mine, so much! They're keepers. Also, they're adorable! :DMackenzi not wanting to be hugged by Brooklin. She really doesn't care to be in fluffy dresses, and it was difficult to get her to do much of anything while standing. They did twirl for me, but unfortunately all my shots of the twirls didn't turn out.

 Our handsome Little men.

Aunt Jena brought over paper bunny ears for the girls to enjoy, and Brooklin loved them! I love this picture capturing her bunny hopping skills.

 Andrew's surgery was actually on April 9th, a week and a half before Brooklin's birthday. His original scheduled date was April 15th, the day before her birthday, which is why we opted not to do a birthday party this year. We got a call in the beginning of April saying the 15th wouldn't work for the surgeon, could we move to the 9th - and so we did that. It worked out beautifully as it was Spring Break for my mom, so we were able to leave the girls with her while Trenton and I took Andrew up to Seattle Children's for the surgery.

For a brief recap, Andrew had penile scrotal webbing, as well as a buried penis. The surgery necessary to reconnect some stuff under the skin, as well as to do a circumcision since the skin needed to be tacked down to correct the buried penis. It was nice having a medical reason for a circumcision, so that it will now be "covered" by our insurance. Don't get me started on our insurance, though.

Pre-surgery! A happy happy boy! 

Pre-surgery, playing with a toy to distract him.

Andrew did really well waiting for his turn to go into the OR. He was SO cute in the little hospital gown, and although he was both tired and hungry (he couldn't eat or drink at this point) he did so well. He loved looking through the glass wall of the little room we were in and finding nurses to flirt with. At one point he was fussing, so a nurse brought a toy in for him to play with. Luckily that distracted him until the nurses and doctors made their pre-op rounds. Soon after the rounds he was take back by the Anesthesiologist (who wouldn't let me be with him as he fell asleep - TERRIBLE - especially because I was told by our nurse that I was allowed to *if* the anesthesiologist allowed it. Lame of her) anyway he was actually smitten with her and allowed her to hold him and walk him down the hallway, but then he started getting suspicious and I had to listen to him cry his super sad cry until we were out of earshot. It was heartbreaking! From when we got checked in to when Andrew was taken back, we waited almost 2 hours. He really did fabulous, considering he was tired AND hungry!

The surgery itself went really well, everything was corrected and reattached that needed to be, and it was done in almost half the time we were told it would take. We got paged literally just after I finished my last bit of lunch. I left Trenton in the cafeteria to finish his lunch and rushed down to meet with the doctor. Of course I sat there for 20 minutes before he actually came out to see us, but we were told everything went well, and they would page us when Andrew woke up and bring him from recovery to a post-op room where we would ultimately be discharged from. I wish I would have demanded to be able to wait with him until he woke up. We were told that if he was super sad as he started to wake up that they would let us go right back to recovery, otherwise we'd just get him in the post-op room, as I mentioned. We finally were paged to go wait in the post-op room, and waited about 10 minutes. I heard this terribly sad cry, and knew immediately that it was Andrew. I was so sad that they didn't let us go to him as soon as they realized he wasn't a happy kid. He wouldn't settle down for me for another 10 minutes or so - he didn't cry that whole time, but I think he kept thinking he was going to be taken away again. He slurped a sippy cup of apple juice (poor kid was starving) and snuggled uncomfortably on my until we were discharged.

Post-surgery, chugging his juice.

His recovery started off mostly smoothly. He was on pain meds constantly for the first two days, and that definitely helped. His bandage, though, got trashed by an apple juice kind of a diaper - and there was fecel matter soaked into the gauze. We were told if this happened to put him in the tub and take the bandage off. That bandage was supposed to stay on for 2 days - and we had to take it off not 12 hours after his surgery. Fortunately, no infection or other complication resulted, although I was sure something would happen because of this "bump" in the recovery process.

Andrew seemed to be doing really well, and after those first two days we medicated him only usually once during the day and then right before bedtime. He was waking up multiple times a night, and fortunately I had not weaned him yet and was able to nurse him and medicate him and put him back to sleep. It was exhausting, but luckily he seemed to be recovering as expected.

After a few more days, though - just over a week after his surgery - he started to act out with screaming and lifting his hips away from whatever they were touching, whether it was his mattress or my body or the floor. He was in obvious pain. We were told just to medicate him similarly to how we did his first two days after surgery. We were told perhaps we just needed to get his pain under control. We did that for a day, and the painful outbursts only seemed to happen more frequently. The medicine didn't even seem to matter. We arranged to take him in to see his pediatrician, especially because I'd noticed that day that he hadn't had a wet diaper since the morning. He had been peeing normally up until this day, so I didn't really think anything of it. I don't examine every diaper - at least I didn't used to. :)

We were told he just had lots of swelling and that it was just a little painful for him to urinate. We were told to give him a hot tub, to see if that would allow him to relax enough to pee. He DID pee, a couple of short spurts of urine, while in the tub, but he screamed the whole time. I was thinking, there has to be a REASON it's hurting to pee, and I wanted to fix THAT - not just the symptom of not peeing.

He woke up a couple of times that night, as he had been the nights previous, screaming and lifting his hips up. The 2nd or 3rd time he awoke though, at 3 AM, it was a more intense scream than I'd heard before. It might had been amplified because of my exhaustion, or his, but either way I knew I had to take him to the ER. I woke up Trent and told him I was taking him in, and drove him up to Seattle right then. I wished that I had taken him up to Seattle Children's the night before, instead of just to our pediatrician. Alas, we were now headed to the Seattle Children's ER, where he was catheterized briefly to relieve his bladder, and then slept on me for a couple of hours. They wanted to get to the bottom of what was causing the pain, for which I was grateful. Andrew's surgeon was at the hospital that day and came to see him to see what was going on. Unfortunately, he was more concerned about me knowing that all this had nothing to do with his surgery, that everything was "healing" well, and that it must be something else. Maybe he wasn't drinking enough, and had a UTI - but his urine was clean, there was no bacteria and no blood. Fortunately, the ER doctor helping us disregarded the surgeon's brushing off of our situation and thought of what it might be. Ultimately Andrew had a couple of abdominal x-rays, and it was determined that he was constipated, and that the constipation was putting pressure on his urethra and causing it to be painful to pee. The surgeon was 100% sure that this was the cause of Andrew's discomfort. Again, the ER doctor said she wasn't positive that this was the cause, but couldn't think of what else it might be. Andrew was given a couple of prescriptions to loosen his stools, and the ER doctor  told us to call if he was still in pain after a day or two.

I'm so grateful that she shared her doubts with me, and didn't just pretend to be certain of what was going on. Had she not, I might not have thought to pursue his issues.

Sure enough, he was starting to react in very much the same way that he did only a week after his surgery. By now, it had been 3 weeks since his surgery, and I was worried that there was something wrong with his tubing, or something, that possibly might need another surgery. I was so sad for Andrew that he was in such pain. He was his normal self most of the time, which was encouraging, but he was in such obvious pain at different times, that it was truly heart breaking.

We called Seattle Children's hospital and I had the option to leave a message at the nurses station. No one was picking up the phone. It was irritating because when we were back in the pre-op and post-op rooms, I saw at least 2 nurses stationed at computers in the "foyer" where these rooms were located, and rarely were they on the phone. I tried reaching them through a few different routes and was lead to their answering machine each time. I tried the clinic in Federal Way where our original consult was with Dr. Lendvay, but they couldn't connect us either.

Ultimately we ended up taking him to his pediatrician's office again, and saw the doctor on call, Dr. Fox. We hadn't ever seen him before, but he was a breath of fresh air. He was so understanding, and didn't jump to any conclusions or make any assumptions. He listened to me recap all that had been happening, had Andrew catheterized again to release the pressure and therefore hopefully the pain. He pulled up Andrew's x-rays that had been taken at Seattle Children's, and he actually said that Andrew was not in fact constipated, at least not in the way that would cause any pressure on his urethra. That made me sad, because it sort of confirmed my belief that Dr. Lendvay was more concerned about his own "work" - the surgery site - than with helping my son in a meaningful way.

Dr. Fox paged the pediatric urologist on call at Seattle children's to have an over the phone consult, and spent time going over what his thoughts were. We were in a situation where it wasn't known what was happening with Andrew to cause him pain, but they were starting to figure out what WASN'T causing pain.  The process of elimination. Dr. Fox was concerned that when we could see Andrew pee, like in the tub, he was only peeing in spurts, as opposed to a continuous spray. This was the first time that this symptom was mentioned as problematic.

We were sent home with the instruction to push fluids, more liquid in his diet than solids, and to do warm baths throughout the day. A miracle happened, where Dr. Lendvay happened to be discussing Andrew's case with a colleague, and that doctor said, well hey, that actually sounds like meatitis! We got home from my parent's house, put the kids to bed, and I came into the office. I noticed a message on our machine, and to my surprise, it was Dr. Lendvay explaining this new thought, and explaining that it meant Andrew's penis was having an adverse reaction to the acrylic acid in his diapers. He suggested continuing to slather on vaseline, and to switch to cloth diapers, if possible.

As soon as I finished listening to the message, I knew that this was the cause of Andrew's discomfort. It was so relieving to know that there was something we could do that would actually help Andrew. This was a Friday night. I gathered enough supplies, thanks to family and Walmart, to start cloth diapering him as of that Sunday. For Friday night (when he woke up during the night) and Saturday, we lined his disposable diaper with washcloths or burp cloths, but he really started to get better when we stopped using disposable altogether.

He hasn't had any episodes of pain since we switched to cloth diapers. We were told once he healed completely we should be able to go back to disposables, but I can't even consider "trying" them out, knowing what pain they cause him. What if that part of his skin is just super sensitive, healed or not? I don't want to risk having that happen again. So, we're sticking with it. And you know what? It feels normal now! It's been three weeks I think, of cloth diapers, and I haven't had any moments of regret. When I'd considered doing cloth diapers when I was pregnant with Mackenzi, I was motivated to do them to save money. I chickened out. It seemed too gross and time consuming. Disposable diapers were so easy! It was worth it to me, even with the extra expense. But knowing that doing cloth diapers would significantly reduce and even eliminate Andrew's pain made it a no brainer.

We've found a brand of cloth diapers I love, and if we're able to have more kids, we'll probably do cloth diapers with them as well.

So, this surgery thing was WAY more traumatic than it was supposed to be, but I am so glad we are past all the pain and drama of figuring out what was going on. It was a long and tiring month and a half, and Andrew is STILL waking up in the night - I think out of habit now, (as well as 3 molars that are cutting simultaneously) but I am just so grateful to that random doctor who knew just what was going on with Andrew. I'm sure there was inspiration involved, as I know Andrew had many prayers during that time.

I just love my cute little man! I can't believe I was ever against having a boy. I was insane. He is such a sweet boy and I can't get enough of his cute little personality and his sweet voice and snuggly little body.

Watching the girls playing out back.

Here's to hoping these next few months are much less "exciting"! And filled with many more pool/popsicle parties. :D