hip update

About a month ago, we had a follow-up appointment and x-ray for Diya's hips.  The news was pretty discouraging.  In the two months since our last appointment, Diya's hip had made no progress.   Two months of full-time brace wear (on top of the one month before the appt, as well as 7 weeks of cast + 2 weeks of harness) and we had nothing to show for it.  The angles of the hip were exactly the same as last time.  We may as well not have even come in for the x-ray. 

It was a huge blow after the success of our first post-op appointment where Diya had been ahead of schedule.  In my head, although I knew it was premature, I had pictured us maybe coming off the brace during the day and graduating to nights only.  To make the whole thing even harder to swallow, Diya had just turned one.  And back when all this started, I had hoped that by the time she reached 1 year, we'd at least be down to only wearing the brace at night.  The process has already taken a lot longer than I had initially hoped, though I guess I didn't realize back then what was reasonable to hope for. 

And then, to cap it off, after the appointment, I decided to post my frustration on a hip board that I've been part of for a while.  I also mentioned that Diya still had a hard time moving her legs, especially the bad one.  She won't straighten it out downwards.  I keep reading about babies being able to wear pants again once they were out of their spica cast.  But we can't get pants on her still because she holds her legs in the froggy position even with the brace off.  She cries when we move it.   Bath times had been especially rough because she can't sit up in the baby tub.  She seemed fine as long as she was lounging back in the tub, but when we tried to raise her a bit to a sitting up position (to scrub her back or let her play with toys), she'd start wailing.   The problem is, in the tub, the legs are scrunched in a bit.  She can't hold them out horizontally because the tub is too small.  Not sure if that makes any sense the way I'm describing it. 

Anyway, so I mentioned the pain in my post, and suddenly, I had a bunch of people responding saying that I should get a second medical opinion.  Because that kind of pain doesn't seem normal.  So THAT was fun to hear.  Nobody talked about what would be a reasonable progress to hope for in terms of hip angles between doctor appointments.  Which is what I'd been mostly frustrated about.  So overall, the post was a bust. 

AND, the week before this, we had gone in for our 1yr check up with our pediatrician, and she had also been concerned about the pain.  She told us to ask our specialist about possibly trying physical therapy because she should be moving her leg a bit more than she does.  So in light of that, these posts were especially fun to read. 

I LOVE our ortho doc, so I was able to read these responses without having a meltdown.  At the actual ortho appointment, the doc and occupational therapist had been unconcerned about the lack of progress.  These things take time, they said.   Diya is still doing fine.  And as for physical therapy, she doesn't need it.  Of course her leg will be stiff from holding it in a brace all day long.  When she's allowed to take it off, we'll be surprised at how quickly it'll get back to normal.  

So I guess medically, all is still fine.  The projected time for full time brace wear is 6-8 months, we're still just at 4.  So I can't hope for miracles, I suppose.  And of course I need to stop posting about my appointments in online groups.  But I'm not very good at waiting, and lately, it just feels like we've been waiting for a long long time.  If she doesn't progress any further, then the next step is more invasive surgery.  But no one is ready to talk about that yet.   There's nothing left to do now other than wait for our next appointment which is still another 5 weeks away. 

In other news though, Diya is getting to be much more active despite her brace.  Within the last few weeks, she's started "crawling."  It's an army crawl, with her pushing with her arms.  But she's actually gotten pretty fast with it.  Until this week, I could leave her on the floor of our room while I showered and expect her to quietly play with her toys.  I can see her through the shower door, and she can keep herself entertained pretty well.  On Monday, though, I watched as she pulled herself along to the nearest electrical socket and started poking at it.  So if you'd been a fly on my wall that morning, you'd have seen me rushing out of the shower with conditioner in my hair trying to move her.  Only to have her then make her way to the other side of the room where the dog water is and be sitting in a little puddle before I could dry myself off.  In the 4 minutes it took me to feed the dogs that morning, she'd found the OTHER bowl of dog water in the living room.  Is it bad that I start cracking up whenever she does this?

Bath times have gotten much more pleasant, so I think she is able to move that leg a bit more now than before.  We're able to sit her up for brief periods during the bath without fuss.  And I think that was really the only source of distress during the baths.  Now that she's not all freaked out about her leg hurting, she's been splashing and enjoying the water just fine. 

A few weeks ago, she started sitting up, which is something she hasn't done since before she got her cast.  She does it with her legs splayed out, like a gymnast doing splits.  Until now, she could never keep her balance this way, and lately, she's been starting to get better at it.  I know it's cheesy, but I feel so proud of her when she does these things.  Probably even more so than your typical parent, just because I see how difficult it must be with that big brace on. 

So I guess progress does come slowly and eventually.  Ultimately, these new milestones don't say a whole lot about her hips.  That is, she could be army-crawling through the house at lightning speed, and it doesn't mean that her hip is getting better.  But for her sake, I'm glad that she's able to be more mobile.  Cuz she could be in this thing for a while longer still. 

And I guess it's pretty darn cute for us, too.  Though it means that we might have to start baby-proofing after all. 

the end?

Last Wed, I decided to stop pumping. I was packing up my pump parts that morning and decided that I didn't feel like it. It was time. The day's been coming for a couple of weeks now, so it's really not as rash as it sounds. It's been in the works since Diya turned 1 (can you believe is? She's ONE YEAR OLD, actually 13 months now!). We started giving her regular whole milk a week or two before her first birthday. We started working harder at her sippy cup skills. Daycare has been working on her regular cup skills, since I guess they go straight over to that.

Each time I thought about stopping pumping, though, the moment never seemed right. She's still not that great with her sippy. And she blows bubbles with a regular cup. True, the two aren't necessarily linked. There's nothing to stop her from taking her whole milk in a bottle. And she loves bottles. But I want to be done with the whole deal, pump parts, bottle nipples, the whole shebang. And it's supposed to be a good transition time. Many people argue (including the American Pediatric Association, our daycare, and several friends that I rely on for childrearing advice) that if we wait too long, it could be much harder to make the switch. And I certainly don't want a 3 yo walking around with a bottle in her mouth all the time. I don't even want her with one at 2. So now seemed like as good a time as any. And honestly, I need the counter space in my kitchen. Our bottle/pump part rack takes up an awful lot of space near the sink.

But still, I waited for excuses to stall. I was worried she wouldn't get enough fluids. Plus, although she liked whole milk just fine, I didn't want to make the switch all at once. She tends to get constipated a lot, and dairy's not great for that. So for weeks, we've been slowly mixing the whole milk into her breast milk bottles. I kept waiting for her to loosen up. But the problem is, she's had the tendency for constipation since she started solids months ago. I could be waiting her whole life for the right time.

So in the end, I needed to do it like a band aid. On Wed, I took my pump into work with me just in case I caved, but didn't look at it once. It was actually harder that night at home to not do it at bedtime, just one more time. It's not that I'll miss pumping. I've hated it from the first, and this day couldn't come soon enough. God, it's been the bane of my existence since I started doing it regularly at 6 months, and can I tell you how much I would have paid Gregg to do it instead if somehow we could have switched roles?

What I will miss though is nursing. I'm not stopping that yet. I'll still nurse for a while mornings and evenings as long as Diya wants. But I know that she probably won't want to for long. I think she hasn't been that into it for a while. She'll take it when offered, nurse quickly, and move on. I think she holds out for solid food. So I've decided to continuing offering first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. It's only a matter of time I think before I start to dry up now. Usually, in the evenings, when I've offered her the boob, at least half the time, she's fussed and I've just given up and pumped instead.

EXCEPT: I started writing this post last Wed and I figured we'd already be done nursing now. But so far, my kid's actually taken the boob happily whenever I've offered it! And during the day last Thurs, it almost seemed like she wanted it. (It's hard to say for sure, she kept staring intently at my chest, but she was also pretty attracted to the picture of the dog on my shirt that day.  And maybe I was feeling a little nostalgic too). So we'll see, for now, she seems to have other plans, and I'm happy to be oblige for a bit longer. Though I'm definitely definitely not going to miss the pump.

meal times

Before the little munchkin was born, a friend told me to savor my mealtimes because they would be the last times I really got to enjoy my food without a wailing infant in the background.  Gee thanks, you couldn't have also bothered to tell me the kid's mealtimes would be out of control for the foreseeable future too?

No one bothered telling me that.  That things get better briefly only to present new challenges around the next corner.  At our house, first it was breastfeeding.  As in, the kid didn't really want to do it and didn't know how.  But it got easier and we seemed to finally be moving right along.  But then she started daycare and drinking out of bottles.  And suddenly, she didn't want to nurse anymore.  I mean, why bother when bottles are much less work.  So nursing sessions suddenly became scream fests (you know, me screaming and the kid wailing, or maybe the other way around?).  That was a fun period, all kinds of mother-baby bonding at the boob and all that. 

We kind of got through that phase but I couldn't wait for us to start solids just to make things easier.  I was tired of pumping, and I just never produced milk the same way after she stopped nursing regularly.  It was always a struggle to keep up with her bottle intake.  So the 6 month mark came along, and I was ready with a bowl full of mashed avocados mixed in with the familiar taste of breastmilk.   Delicious, right?  Who wouldn't love it?

Well, clearly my kid.  Diya didn't like solids.    Not when she was 6 months or 7 or even 8. Then all of a sudden, she started loving EVERYTHING and we couldn't keep her from putting everything in her mouth (including every random kernel/piece of dust on the floor).  And somewhere in there, she started to tolerate nursing again, so I figured we had it made.

Except now we've entered new territory.  She still loves to eat but wants to feed herself.  Which is fine except that she doesn't really know how to eat with a spoon yet.  Sometimes, she manages it with help, but most of the time, my attempts to help result in screaming (again, me/her, who the heck knows).  So I leave her to it and suddenly, 2 seconds later, we have a big pile of blueberry mush all over the table and floor.

My response so far has been to forget the spoon altogether and focus on foods she can pick up with her fingers.  Lately, she's been able to eat what we eat, so I come home and try to either cook dinner quickly or make her a small version of whatever we'll be having later.  A while back, I made a Thai curry with veggies and tofu.  And it worked out beautifully.  First I cooked up the tofu and gave her some while I was chopping up veggies.  She stuffed them into her mouth (to the point where I think she didn't know what to do with them all) and still had room for some cooked vegetables after.  It seemed like such a productive way to handle it -- she got to take all the time she needed, I wasn't sitting around waiting for her to finish.  I brought all my veggies to the dining room table where she was eating, so I could keep her company (and from choking on her tofu).  Win/win for everyone.

Sounds great, right?  Except then, we ran into another snag.  Diya's realized that it's fun to eat her food, but it's even MORE fun to feed it to the dogs.  So now, instead of finger foods being my savior, I'm not entirely sure what to do.  I spend lots of mornings watching her take each piece of egg and holding it down into Mia's face.  Mia likes to gobble straight out of her hands.  They're a bit of a tag team now too.  I'll walk away to bring more food or something, and I'll suddenly see the two of them at it.  When I say something, both look at me, kind of guiltily but then the kid actually starts giggling.  She thinks this is funny. 

What's extra fun is that dog feeding is interspersed with self feeding, so the kid's hands are covered in dog slobber when she'll suddenly decide to take another bite herself.  Awesome.  And somehow, I think she's realized that she needs to treat the dogs equally.  Cuz she'll make sure to drop food over on the other side to Tucker also. 

So then my newest technique was to keep the kid distracted and just feed her myself.  That worked pretty well actually.  Until daycare lectured us this week on not reinforcing the skills they taught at home.  I guess instead of feeding herself with the spoon on Mon, Diya just sat there and waited for the teacher to feed her.  So basically, she totally ratted us out, the little turd. 

So we're back to dog feeding and self spoon feeding and kitchen generally looking like an earthquake hit it after each meal.  On the plus side, the kid's not terrible at eating with a spoon.  Also, her favorite food?  Avocado.

naptime (i.e. yet another sleep post)

The other day, a friend marveled at our kid's napping abilities and told me how lucky we were.  It made me start thinking about how this happened.  Because for months, I feel like all I did was complain about nap issues and how poorly our kid did it.  So, for anyone interested, I've put together some tips on raising a good napper.  These tips have worked well for me, and you know me, always sharing my hard-earned wisdom. 

• Create a regular naptime routine. For us, having regular naptimes never really worked, but what did was to have a general routine. About 2 hours after waking up, Diya was tired, so I would immediately start putting her down for her nap. At first, it wasn’t quite 2 hours (more like an hour and a half, and since she breastfed for ONE HOUR, it didn’t leave a lot of time to do much else after). And as she grew older, her periods of awake time lengthened, and her feeding times shortened.
• Stick with it. Always. No matter what. Our kid liked being swaddled and rocked, so that’s what we did. She could already have fallen asleep randomly on my boob or on someone’s shoulder, but still, we’d change her diaper, swaddle, and put back down (even if it meant waking her up in the process). Nowadays, she likes the sleep sack and her lovey blanket. We wouldn’t dream of putting her to sleep without it, and I’ve actually gone back home when I’ve shown up to daycare without it.
• Avoid leaving the house during naptimes. No naps in the car or stroller.
• Avoid feeding just before sleep, to reduce the chances of the kid waking up early with poop in her butt.
• Avoid visiting people that live more than 20 minutes away, since there is no chance of you being able to go, visit, then come back within the awake period.
• Encourage people to visit you instead but tell them to keep their voices down so as to not wake the baby prematurely from her nap.
• Also make sure they text you when they arrive instead of ringing the doorbell, so as to avoid the dogs going crazy and waking the baby up prematurely.
• Start eating dinner at 4 so as to get the baby to bed early (that’s not a nap tip, just a general bedtime tip).
• Avoid leaving the house after 4 for the same reason as above.
• Generally figure you will have no life after the baby is born until about 7-8 months when the naps are set in place. Then only plan on having a life in 2-3 hour increments (maybe 4 once the child is a bit older) so as to not interfere too drastically with the established nap schedule.
• After that allow for periods of adjustment as nap needs change (from 3 naps to 2, 2 to 1). Restructure your life accordingly.
• Brag about your child’s excellent nap habits to any existing friends over email and on your blog (unless they live within 20 minutes of you, in which case you may be able to brag in person).
• Wait for your child to become a teenager.