After 1 night at home with 2 kids, I can see that this is going to be a lot of work.
It has been confirmed that D has a cleft palate (a small hole in the roof of his mouth) which means that when he sucks, he gets air in through his nose as well so he is not able to breast feed. We have to use some special bottles so that we can squirt milk into his mouth whilst he is trying to suck. He will have to have an operation when he is 14 months old to have this fixed and he is not allowed to start nursery until that is done so MK will be home for longer than planned. :-)
The fact that D will not be able to breast feed has an advantage that both of us can feed him in principal, but MK is better at that than I am, there is a special technique that I have to work on. The negative is that we will be spending a lot of time washing and sterilizing bottles and there MK will be pumping out milk until she gets fed up with it and beyond.
Handling D with the casts is a little difficult as well as they are rather heavy and awkward. We'll get used to it.
J was happy to have us home and has been quite interested in D, showing him various toys and constantly trying to make sure that he has a dummy (pacifier) at his disposal. So far there has been no jealousy...
Last night I noticed that D's tummy button was rather smelly and we were going to ask the doctors today if it was OK, apparently that is not a worry any more as it fell off in the night and looks much nicer now.
MK is back at the hospital today with D for more tests and we are going to be fed by the grandparents again tonight.
Finally, on the subject of Iowa, we explained our position to the doctor yesterday in Hvidovre that we had asked Dr Ponseti if there were any particularly good doctors in Denmark and he told us that in his opinion, there was nobody doing the job properly in Denmark and to illustrate the point he was treating 2 patients at the moment who had been poorly treated in Denmark.
The extra details that we now know are that these were both treated at other hospitals and the doctors who we are seeing have been trained in Iowa. The process is relatively simple and our Dr thought we would be completely mad to travel to the US.
My confidence in Danish Drs has not been improved by them not noticing Ds cleft palate for 2 days, but given the cost, time and inconvenience of going to Iowa added to the inability to breast feed, it was really a big relief to us to decided to stay here. If there are any problems in the future, we can always get a second opinion, but we hope it will not be necessary.
We are all feeling pretty happy today and looking forward to getting to know how D & J will get on together.
good luck. thoughts are with you and your family. i'm sure the docs will get it all good. take care.
ReplyDeleteLovely to see pictures of young D! I am very sure you will be in good hands with your Danish doctors. T was not able to feed for the first few weeks of his life, so if K thinks it will be useful to chat then I am here! We also have a friend whose child was unable to feed for the first 6 months, and she passed on her tips to me if they will be of any use.
ReplyDeleteRef siblings..In our experience, and having had many discussions on this subject with other recent parents of two, there seems to be a consensus that it takes 4-5 months before older sibling realises younger one is here to stay, and then behaviour can go a bit awry for a while!
E
D's problem feeding is a purely mechanical one that he will not be able to overcome so the pressure is off for trying. When he sucks hard, air comes in through his nose and the hole in his mouth. There is nothing to do about it at the moment so we are on the bottles. It is inconvenient and MK is a bit upset about it, but now we know the problem we can just get on with it. There are plenty of much worse things to deal with. Google cleft palate if you want to feel happier about the fact that this is a small hole that you can't see!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the messages though peeps, I'll be sure to apss them on.
HI
ReplyDeleteI realise it was a mechanical problem, I was meaning to offer support about how to stay sane during the dreaded pumping phase as Ben and I have been there, albeit only for a few weeks (the friend I referred to did the pumping for 6 months and seemed to have some admirable routine going to help her cope - I personally thought she was a saint for persevering with it that long, it was amazing i thought)
E
Sorry E, I mis understood. The feeding is going OK for now, but it is a lot of work in the middle of the night for MK to pump out as well as feeding.
ReplyDelete