Maxwell's January

I apologize about the two week lateness of this post--although theoretically I'm still almost a week early in writing it :] The other crazy part of our January (remember back to my last post when I said January was so nuts?) involved good old Max.

It seems that on my Saturdays off of work, I always get sick or something else crazy pops up. January 26th was no exception. The day before (January 25th), I had my 37 week doctor's appointment, and they told me that they didn't think I had much longer to suffer being pregnant. I just laughed at them, because Jayson took his sweet time coming (40 weeks and 1 day) so I figured I would maybe have Max a few days early.....certainly not 3 weeks early. So you can imagine my surprise when on Saturday, I was having what I thought were contractions. I have to say thought because I was pretty much induced with Jayson, and pitocin contractions are lot more strong and painful than what nature makes, at least at first. After trying to get things done all day and see if my body would keep it up, Sam and I decided to head to the hospital around 7 at night. I felt guilty dropping off Jayson for the night at my sister's and causing such a stir, particularly if this wasn't the real deal, but decided that it would be in our best interests to make sure everything was okay.

After staying for an observational hour in the hospital, they decided I was having contractions/progressing enough on my own to have a baby that night! I think that's when things began to kind of hit home for Sam and I--Jayson had just had his 18 month birthday that day, and we were bringing another baby into the world within the next 12 hours. Can you say overwhelming a little bit?? But the excitement of getting to meet "Baby Max" (as we had nicknamed him) kept us (or at least me) going through the IV and epidural insertions and wide awake.

We were hoping that our little boy would be born on the 26th, but by the time 11:45 pm had rolled around, it seemed like my body had slowed down progress a fair bit. So, it was on to the pitocin (big boo) and waiting a few more hours. Finally, at 2:11 am on January 27th, Maxwell Chase Slaugh finally decided that it was time to make his big appearance! We were really surprised to find out that he weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces--my doctor told me I was really lucky that he came so early; otherwise we could have easily had a 9 pound baby at 40 weeks. No thank you!

When Jayson was born, they had the NICU team on standby just in case he had any breathing problems due to swallowing meconium, but luckily he was just fine. True to style, we got the NICU team there again for Maxwell due to being 3 weeks early. He did need a fair bit of help clearing his lungs, and then his blood sugar was too low. It was looking like he was going to have to actually be admitted to the NICU, but after he had a little bit of formula, his sugars came back up and stayed up. We were really grateful to have avoided that bullet again.The only other health issue we've had with Max was needed to get the skin under his tongue clipped a little bit, but that was pretty non-traumatic all things considered. Max has been considerably less jaundiced than Jayson, not to mention a lot less gassy/spit-uppy (if that's even a word lol). He has been doing just fine on his formula, so we are holding high hopes that maybe Max has dodged the CSID bullet too.

Here are a few pictures, which I know is what you've been waiting for :]

Daddy and Maxwell not too long after he was born. Love this picture of Sam :]

The afternoon after Max was born, Jayson came to visit us. He was really bashful about the new baby, but seemed interested. He was really excited to see Sam too (and just a touch mad at me), and enjoyed drinking from my giant cup a lot haha.

And finally a few of the professional hospital pictures they shot on day 2 of Max's life.....

Love this baby! Even though I am still really tired, not gonna lie. Recovery has been faster in some ways, and slower in others compared with having Jayson. It definitely poses more of a challenge having two little boys as opposed to just one, particularly with Sam being gone at work a lot more this time around. But we are making it through one day at a time, and for now that is all I can ask for.

Jayson's January

Well it's official--I totally jinxed myself in my last post when I hoped for a quieter January. Pretty sure that January actually turned out to be one of the busiest/craziest months Sam and I have had together!

As you already know, we kicked off the month with Jayson having pretty major surgery. I am happy to say that he has made a full recovery, and sleeps/breathes SO much better without tonsils/adenoids. What you don't know is how our lives got much crazier about a week after the surgery on the gastroenterology end. I was just having an average Wednesday (aka being driven slightly crazy after not working for a few days) when I got a call in the middle of the day with results from Jayson's stomach/small intestine biopsy. At first the guy calling me mentioned that everything looked normal in the stomach, and in my mind I was already figuring that he was letting me know that they found absolutely nothing, when all of a sudden I was brought back to reality as he said "However, Jayson has a condition originating in his small intestine, called congenital sucrase isomaltase deficiency (or CSID for short)".

My first thoughts, probably much like yours, were "What in the heck does that mean??" To sum it up, people who have CSID lack enzymes in their small intestine that break down sucrose and maltose. Sucrose is table sugar, and maltose is a type of starch. And yes, they are found in pretty much EVERYTHING it seems. The guy on the phone told me that anytime Jayson ingested foods with sucrose or maltose in them, it would cause him to have diarrhea, bloating/gas, and possibly acid reflux--all of which Jayson has suffered with practically since birth. He also said that if we cut out foods containing sucrose and maltose that Jayson's symptoms would go away and all would be well; if we wanted help from a dietician they could refer us to someone familiar with dietary needs associated with CSID. CSID is an autosomal recessive disease, meaning that Jayson got a bad copy of the gene that helps make sucrase and maltase from both Sam AND myself--making this disease pretty uncommon as I have come to find out. Overall, the gastroenterology clinic made it sound like a walk in the park to get Jayson well, and quite frankly I was so excited to have a name for his problems that I felt relieved at first.

When I told Sam later that day, he was a lot more upset than I was at first. This is probably because Sam deals with foods for a living and understood the implications/limitations of CSID right off the bat......but whatever the reason, I didn't get it at first. I thought that it would be pretty easy to cut out foods with sugar (of which Jayson has no enzymes to help break down) and go easier on the starches (of which Jayson has a very low enzyme level to help break down). However, when we went to the store two days later, it became painfully obvious to me of how difficult it was to find convenient foods for Jayson. It wasn't about what he couldn't have--that list is just WAY too long. It's more about what he CAN have: meats (except those cured in sugar obviously like a lot of ham and bacon), dairy (except he seems to be somewhat lactose intolerant, so we have to buy lactose free milk and avoid things like pre-shredded cheese that has potato starch in it), most vegetables, and a small list of fruits.

Forget convenient snacks like crackers, pretzels, or bread--anytime Jayson has them, even in smaller amounts, he seems to bloat up. Even natural peanut butter for example has too many, well, naturally occurring sugars not listed for him to tolerate (we learned from the dietician, and then totally noticed after we fed him some). I think I could go on and on about things I miss him being able to eat, but I don't want to bore you to death. I will leave it at saying that it has been a very difficult experience trying to get Jayson to understand why he can't have most things to eat anymore. It is worst when other people are eating taboo foods, and he pleads with us to just have "bite please". As selfish as it sounds, I really miss being able to just pick out a simple/cheap carb loaded dinner (like pizza for example) and eat the same stuff as a family, no tears involved.

The bright spot (if you want to find one) in all of this is that CSID is not a fatal disease--if we don't comply with the diet, the worst he has is stomach discomfort essentially. Not pleasant, but it won't kill him. I am extremely grateful that they didn't find stomach cancer or something like that when they did the biopsy. I wish that he would just "grow out" of CSID, but it's something that we will all need to deal with for the rest of his life and learn to adapt to. Maybe we will even end up on the healthier end for it, considering that even Sam and I will be doing away with some of the starch and sugar that we used to just consume without even knowing it.

I am not sure why we have to learn to cope with CSID--it is definitely NOT something I would ever even wish on a family that I couldn't stand--but I believe that it is a learning experience/trial that we are supposed to have right now in our lives, and I am interested to "stay tuned" per say and maybe learn just why, in the coming future.

The First Week Of 2013

Our good old friends from Century Link never bothered to show up and fix our internet back on Wednesday.....surprise. But, in an effort to keep up better with blogging this year, I will go ahead and do another picture-less post here from work--and maybe hope that we can get the service guy to actually show up soon.

The first almost week of 2013 has, true to the whole form of a "new year", has been filled with strange and new experiences. First off, I began this year by recovering from a rather nasty stomach bug that started a few days prior to the year's start. I don't exactly recommend this, especially while pregnant. I was just really grateful that Sam had a few holiday days off, because it allowed me some time to heal and rest (when I wasn't at work anyway). Then, on the third, Jayson was scheduled for surgery: tonsil and adenoid removal, plus a GI scope.

A lot of people have asked me why we chose to have these procedures done, particularly at such a young age. And honestly, I have a hard time coming up with a straight answer. The GI scope is a bit more clear: Jayson has had chronic acid reflux and freqeunt loose stools from birth, and it was just something that needed to be explored and checked to make sure that it's not more serious than that. The tonsils and adenoids were kind of a more personal choice for us. Jayson has always had a raspy voice, allergy like symptoms (runny nose, cough, wheezing), and a snore at night. Our ENT doctor said that Jayson would benefit from adenoid removal, and the tonsils were up to us. After a lot of pondering we decided it would be better to get rid of everything that might be plaguing him so that we wouldn't have doubts down the road about "what if", even if the tonsil removal meant more pain upfront and an extended hopsital stay.

The day before his surgery, they called to tell us what time his procedures would be. At such a young age, I assumed that his surgery time would be really early in the morning, so we didn't have to deal with starving him/depriving him of fluids. Apparently, this was not to be the case--his surgery time was slotted for 1:30 in the afternoon. I was terrified--how do you not feed a kid (especially one like Jayson who constantly clamors for food) that long, and not give him fluids from 10:45 am on?? Worse yet, how was I supposed to eat in front of him? Somehow we were all blessed with the ability to make it through without food; I felt impressed that we should just stay as busy as possible and away from the house that day, so nobody was thinking so much about food. And it worked beautifully, much to my relief--Jayson was an angel until about 15 minutes before his surgery time. Which, in case you were wondering, got bumped back to 2:40. It was kind of an agonizing wait, not knowing when we would get seen.

The second worst part of the whole experience was handing him over to the anesthesiologist, who carried him back to the operating room. Jayson did not want to be separated from us, although I think that maybe we wanted to be separated from him even less. I was proud of myself for not totally crying and losing it though, because it was very tempting. The whole waiting for an hour and a half actually wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, I really felt a sense of peace the whole time that we were doing the right thing. It was a lot harder to find that sense of peace when I went back to be with him as he was waking up--that was the worst part of the experience by far. My advice to all moms is to make dad do that part! He was quite unhappy and in pain, which made for a squirmy child that was quite difficult to hold with this next baby occupying my lap space. Luckily, we didn't have to stay there for too long, and we were given our observation room where Sam joined us again.

I think it was nearing 8 pm (about three hours after we were given our room) when Jayson began really crying and we noticed some fresh looking blood in his mouth that shouldn't have been there. The resident ENT came by to check on him, and decided that Jayson had to go back to surgery to get the tonsil wound re-cauterized. We were one of the lucky few with this procedure who get to experience two surgeries in one day. I felt bad for Jayson, but was kind of relieved that he would get to escape the pain again for a little bit. He came back to us just fine from the second surgery about an hour later, but it was a VERY long night trying to get his pain under control. I think he got two rounds of morphine in the IV and lortab by mouth every 3-4 hours (which he HATES still in case you were wondering).

As you can imagine, after all of this trauma, Jayson decided that he did NOT want to eat or drink anything. The rules for his discharge were that he had to drink at least one full sippy cup (around 8-10 ounces) every four or so hours. This definitely was not going to happen before our 23 hour outpatient window was up, so we had to be admitted to the hopsital for an extra night. By this point, Sam and I were quite worn out and hadn't showered since the day before. My sister graciously came and stayed with Jayson for a few hours in the evening so we could go home, shower, and eat. It was so wonderful, even though it was hard to leave him. When we came back, Jayson seemed to be turning the corner for the better a little bit. His pain medicine had previously been making him really drowsy, but he was alert enough to want to walk around, and even go on a wagon ride around the halls. Around 1 in the morning, he even decided it would be okay to start drinking from his sippy cup! It wasn't all roses (he was definitely still in a lot of pain) but better than before.

Lucky me, I got to sneak out for work at 5 am, so I missed out on a lot of Saturday at the hopsital. It was hard for me not to be there, especially because Jayson really wanted both Sam and I in the room at all times, but a necessary evil with working at a hospital myself. Jayson was still doing well with drinking after I left, so he got discharged around noon :] Since then, we've just been trying to keep up with the pain meds and fluids at home. Slowly but surely I see progress in pain management--this morning he tried a few bites of pancake, and this afternoon he even played with his toys for a while. His little voice is really high right now, so it's funny/cute whenever he tries to talk.

We are optimistic for Jayson's healing, even though it has been a little bit slower than the doctors predicted. Hopefully it helps out with the symptoms he's been having his whole life, and wasn't totally futile--my bank account might actually wish this even more than I do lol.

Our next big roller coaster event is coming in about 6 weeks; can you believe baby Max is almost here? I can and can't all in the same sentence. We look forward to his arrival, but very much hope that 2013 stays quiet and less eventful until then!

The Last Post Of 2012....

Another holiday season/year is pretty much over.........seriously, where does the time go???? I am quite embarassed thinking about just how many huge things have happened this year, and how few times in comparison I have blogged about it. So, if I have any faithful readers left, you can rest assured that one of my goals for 2013 is to blog a lot more! Luckily, to assist me in this, we have a service man coming out on Wednesday to set up the internet in our house--only being able to blog from work the past few months has been difficult, and I never have any of my pictures with me. It's not a great excuse, but to me a post isn't complete without pictures, so I never feel any motivation to blog without them.

Hopefully, if all goes well, I will be able to do a complete "New Year's" post in the coming week :] I hope 2012 was as good for all of you as it has been for our little family, and I very much look forward to sharing 2013 with everyone!

L-O-N-G Thanksgiving List

Today I felt kind of inspired to write about some of the many things that I am thankful for, on this lovely Thanksgiving day--it also seemed an appropriate time to remedy the fact that neither Sam or I have bothered to write these past couple of months. Oops. So anyways, today I am thankful for (in no particular order of importance)....

*My awesome job. Even as I write this, I am sitting here in the lab just looking out the window and enjoying the view-apparently most people try and stay out of the hospital on Thanksgiving, because it's been fairly slow so far today. Most labs don't have huge windows with pretty views, so I think it's pretty darn cool that we do at St. Mark's. I've been working in the blood bank full time since the end of September, and I seriously love it. When I did my internship, blood bank intimidated the heck out of me--but I work with some really cool people here who have been infinitely patient when training me. This is only my second week where I am officially on the schedule and not training, and let me say, it feels neat to be a productive working member of society who fills in wherever needed. Although, I refuse to do graveyard (8:30 pm-6:30 am) shifts lol. Today is actually my first day without anyone else here to babysit/save me......but so far so good.

*My awesome husband. I couldn't think of a better adjective than awesome, but somebody should make up one just to describe him, because he is the best hands down. He has been incredibly supportive of me working, is a very hands-on dad with Jayson, and lets me run the show in our lives for the most part (but is always willing to step in and do whatever not-so-fun task that I assign him lol). I submit that it does not get any better than that :] Oh, and did I mention that he has a really cool job too? In the middle of October, Sam started working for Ralcorp's research and development department up in Ogden, who produce the infamous Lofthouse cookies. I have learned that Lofthouse does a LOT of other stuff besides their standard sugar cookie that you see in stores all the time. I'm not exactly sure how much I'm allowed to digress on that point, so I will leave a more detailed description of Sam's job up to him in a later post. However, he is super happy with his job, and we enjoy getting to try samples his day's work every now and then. The only downside is the 40ish minute commute, but hey, not everything in life can be totally perfect right?

*Our new car! With me working slightly wacky and varying hours/days, and Sam commuting five days a week to Ogden, we quickly realized that we needed to get a second car. We wanted something that would make a good little commuter car for Sam to drive to work, since we already have a family van that guzzles plenty of gas. Thankfully, we didn't have to search very long before Sam found his dream car: a 2008 Honda Fit Sport in a silvery-gray color, with only 47,000 miles on it. It was an incredibly scary leap to sign away our lives to a dealership (particularly for me who usually manages the budget) but a necessary evil to growing up and getting jobs. So, after a weekend of deep thought, we became a two car family! I think we've had the car for about a month now, and Sam still loves to drive it at any opportunity, so all is good with our (not so little) investment. Just for the record, I do like the car a lot too, but I think I've only been behind the wheel twice so far. Me and the van get our quality time driving around now, and it stays pristine because it's all mine :]

*My Jayson bug. At almost 16 months old, I just can't believe how the time is flying with him!! He is SUCH a busy little boy too. To prove my point, I will inform you that we've already had our first ER visit with him, a few days before Halloween--we left six stitches in the forehead richer and decided to purchase an umbrella stroller to restrain him when we went to stores without shopping carts! In case you were wondering, the poor little guy tripped and hit his forehead on a display corner at the scrubs store--thank goodness we were at a place with nurses because I was kinda freaking out that I let him bang his cute little head up and it was bleeding pretty good, but Sam stayed calm and a nice nurse bandaged up his head until we could get to the doctor. The last of his stitches are finally dissolving now, and he will probably have a small scar forever, but chicks dig scars right? The only other close call we've had is when he pulled his highchair on top of him last week, but thank goodness it didn't break his nose like I was worried it did. Otherwise, we have just been dealing with the usual bumps and bruises of near toddlerhood. You'd think with all the crazy running around, he'd be skinny, but he's a hefty little guy who tops the scale at 26 pounds and never passes up an opportunity to eat! Jayson constantly babbles, and says a whole slew of words now--every day seems to bring a new word or phrase, with yesterday's being "cereal treat" haha. Having to watch him more with days off and Sam's work schedule has proved challenging for me, but rewarding in the long run as I feel a closer bond forming between us. The best part is when he blows me kisses before bedtime and runs across the room to give me a giant hug :]

*Little baby Max. Still not commited to the name, but I have to admit that it's growing on us a little bit! I can't believe that tomorrow marks 28 weeks down and only 12 to go until his arrival! Pregnancy has been harder this time only in the sense that I feel like I have to overfeed myself just to keep up with this little guy's needs! At the beginning of the month I got to take a good long look at Max when I had my anatomy ultrasound, and it was so much fun to see similarities and differences in him and Jayson. For example, Max has proven to be a thumb sucker both times on ultrasound (which is the cutest thing EVER), and just hams it up in general, while Jayson always was stubborn and refused to show off. Also, it appears that Max will have the same wide boxy foot that both Jayson and Sam have; now if we could just hope for a small ribcage life would be good for all of us lol. They tried to get a 3D image of Max's face, but he didn't want to turn full on--from what I saw though, I'm thinking the boys are all going to look fairly alike. Still hoping for a redheaded baby however hehe. Sometimes I am terrified of having two kids to chase after, but the closer it gets to Max's due date, the more excited I get about meeting him.

*My sister. And family in general. I mention my sister specifically because she has been our babysitter when both Sam and I go off to work, and I couldn't ask for better. Jayson has stayed in better health because he doesn't go to a daycare center anymore, but he is still totally thriving and developing thanks to my sister's patience and hard work. Plus, thanks to her having five other kids, Jayson learns so much from them (the good and the bad lol). It's like the best of both worlds. I really am grateful to everyone else in my family and Sam's family for the wonderful things they do to help us, even if I don't have room to write it all out.

*Our soon to be new house! We have been staying with my sister and her family since we moved from Idaho at the end of August. While they are wonderful people to live with, and I cannot even begin to thank them for giving us time to get on our feet and find jobs/get settled, I'm sure they are ready to get their bedroom back that we are occupying--and we are ready to stop sharing a room with our darling son who sleeps lighter than a feather. So, we've been looking awhile for our own little place to live. Pretty sure we toured at least 15 different apartment complexes in varying areas between St. Mark's and my sister's house, and none of them just gave me "that feeling". I know it sounds weird, but I've always known when something is right for us by how I feel about the situation. Anyway, Sam and I were starting to get really frustrated, so we decided to broaden our horizons a bit and look into renting a house. After looking at a few houses, we went to look at an adorable rambler style house in the Foxboro community, only 4 miles north of where we are living right now. I pretty much fell in love right away to make a long story short, so we applied to rent, and the rest is history! We are moving in December 1, and I am really excited to get started making ourselves our own little home....even if it is a little more expensive than an apartment like I had originally planned. The stability (aka not moving) and long term opportunity to rent is going to be more fantastic than I can begin to express.

In short, my life is so incredibly blessed. I get stressed over a lot of things that I probably shouldn't, and frequently over-react........but when I write everything out like this I can see that I have the greatest life! There is always enough food, shelter, and love to go around and really that is the most important thing (and as I say that I realize that I have not mentioned how grateful I am for the gospel in my life as well, so I count this as my mention of that because it is so very true). I hope that everyone has had as good of a Thanksgiving as I have.

Now we can start looking forward to Christmas and a New Year! Pictures to come soon of everything I've blabbed about :]