Lucas Camilo

First off, we want to thank everyone for your amazing love and support since we posted about Ida’s admission to Children’s.  As you can imagine, its been a challenging time for us and so every text message, call and blog or facebook comment means a ton and gives us strength.

Little Ida is doing well in the hospital and there are positive developments to report.  [Two side notes: the grammarians amongst you probably figured out that our pronunciation of her name as “Ee-da” does not in fact have a long “I”sound as was reported in the previous post – which is now updated – or any “I” sound for that matter.  Woops.  Also, it was on Lucas’s fourth day of life back in 2009 that we started this blog and you may wonder if and when Ida will get her own.  That’s a good question… and you’ll have to keep wondering for now, but in the meantime Lucas is totally cool with sharing his blog.]

Anyway, we’re still working through Ida’s breastfeeding and eating difficulties and she’s definitely doing better.  The occupational therapist and lactation consultant have helped figure out a way for her to practice coordinating the suck, swallow and breath so that she’s getting better at it while also getting all the breast milk that she needs to be strong and grow.  She hasn’t had any more scary episodes like the ones that had her gasping for air on her second day of life.  She sometimes forgets to breath when she’s carried away with the eating but then recovers quickly on her on.  All of this means that she could be home with us very soon, likely with an NG tube going through her nose and down into the stomach to help supplement the food she takes by mouth.

Ida is also awake and alert a lot more now, which is fun to see.  Her cousins had a great visit with her yesterday afternoon in which all three of them got to hold her.  She was awake the whole time, looking around, making funny faces, and generating multiple exclamations of “that’s so cute!!”  She’s also spent quality time in the arms of her aunts Ashley and Megan, both grandmas, and Papa.  In general we’re feeling very positive as we wait for some important test results to come back tomorrow.

I started writing more details about what Krista and I have learned from doctors and discussed amongst ourselves related to what’s going on.  But rather than go there, I’m going to use the opportunity of having a few moments of peace tonight to write about what has made me feel full of awe, love and strength during these recent days.

It’s fitting that this is Lucas’s blog since he’s been a total hero lately.  On Sunday morning I took him to see Ida and Krista at the hospital and he was amazing – overflowing with joy, humor, and general goofiness in a way that lifted everyone’s spirits.  He insisted on holding Ida twice, and as he stared at her from a short distance, had a blast trying to imitate her blinking eyes and pursed lips.  I wish I could remember all of his hilarious quips, but mostly he just kept saying that he liked Ida a lot, and liked being a big brother.  And then, after 20 minutes he announced “I’m all done with holding her!” and asked to read a dinosaur book.  I can’t help but think that something inside Lucas sensed that his parents and extended family were stressed out and needed some lifting of spirits.  Frankly I’ve rarely seen him with such energy and positive mood as he has been over the past 3 days, and it’s been contagious.

The other completely remarkable person in all this is Krista.  Because things changed quickly on that second day of Ida’s life I haven’t able to truly absorb how brave, powerful, and graceful she was in giving birth to our daughter last Thursday.  It was a relatively fast labor – only about 6 hours, in the basement of our home – but that meant that all the intensity of childbirth was crowded into that short time period.  Because of tearing and bleeding during and after the birth, Krista was supposed to be on bed rest for at least a week.  But Ida’s trip to the hospital changed all that.  And because I’ve needed to be with Lucas at home some of the time (despite some heroic extra shifts by his nurses), Krista has been at Ida’s bedside for nearly the entire last three days – there for Ida when she’s fussy and crying, providing the milk for her to grow strong, dealing with all the doctors, nurses, residents, specialists, therapists, etc who come by… and sleeping only occasionally in the foldout bed next to Ida’s crib.  She and Lucas have made me so proud and feel so much love these last few days that it almost makes up for the agony and uncertainty of having our newborn daughter in the hospital.

On February 19,  just after midnight, Lucas’s little sister was born.  It was a big day for all of us, and we were very fortunate that it happened in the basement of our own home.  It was especially cool because by the time Lucas woke up in the morning, mommy and baby were resting comfortably in bed. Many people have already seen the picture taken at that moment, either from email or Facebook.

One new update is that she now has a name: Evelyn Mélida Hanson.  We’re actually trying out a shortened version of her middle name and calling her Ida – pronounced “Ee-da,” like in the full name in Spanish “Mel-ee-da”.  More explanation will come later.

The other update is that the little one is in the hospital.  This is about the last thing in the world we would want to report, especially since Lucas’s experience of early life involved so much time in the hospital and we had really hoped that Ida’s early days would be different.  The short story is that on her second day of life (Friday) in the evening she had a couple of episodes where she appeared to spit up or choke and then be protecting her airway, which  made her cry out and gasp for air.  It was quite scary and the advice from our midwife was to take her in to the ER.  We were able to get a nurse to come spend the night with Lucas and off we headed to Children’s.

It’s been about 36 hours since she arrived in the hospital and she’s doing well – sleeping a lot but also opening her eyes and mouth and exploring the world around her, which is a joy to watch.  She’s had one other episode where her oxygen saturation dropped after eating and so the lactation consultant is helping her practice coordinate her suck, swallow and breath better, which seems to be an issue.   Overall, she seems healthy, and seeing her breath, cry, move around, and sometimes breastfeed is so completely different from Lucas’s first days of life.  But there are some other things that aren’t quite normal, like the fact that she has slightly low muscle tone.  Given the situation, the doctors are recommending that she stay in the hospital for a few more days, just to be observed.

Needless to say, its been a rough couple of days for us – from the elation of Ida’s birth to the fear and unknown of having her admitted to the hospital, and all the challenges of going back and forth to Children’s, coordinating Lucas’s care, etc.  We both got some sleep last night but hardly slept at all the previous 3 nights.  Which, perhaps, is typical for life with a newborn.  But damn… we wanted so badly for it to be different.

One thing we’re sure of is that we can do this.  We know what its like to have a child with challenges, and so if that ends up being the case with Ida as well we’ll love her just as much and work twice as hard to make a good life for her.  We can actually imagine that reality.  And we can imagine a reality where she is a healthy, typically developing kid.  We’re feeling so much love for her and Lucas right now, and looking forward to be able to share it more with our family and community.  But if you don’t hear from us or see more pictures posted in the coming days… well, now you know why.  In the meantime, please hold little Ida in your hearts.

With Krista’s due date just around the corner, Lucas seems to be getting more and more intrigued and excited about the idea of being a big brother.  Granted, we’ve done a lot to cultivate that interest so that he’s not totally taken by surprise when the household suddenly has a new member.

A few weeks ago we took Lucas to a birth class for siblings with the great Penny Simkin.  In fact, Lucas’s birth owes a lot to Penny, whose birth class for adults we also attended over the last two months.  Because Krista went into labor very early with Lucas – and had to go on bedrest just to make it to 32 weeks – Penny’s book “The Birth Partner” taught us most of what we knew about labor and birth the first time around.  So it felt like coming full circle to take her birth class and then have Lucas learn directly from her about the birth process.

The highlight for Lucas was getting to practice holding a real baby.  In fact, it was a gigantic 3 month old baby that another parent brought into the class and which we helped ease into Lucas’s lap as he sat in his wheelchair.  Lucas noticed that when he held the baby she stopped crying.  It may have had to do with the mother consoling the baby right before Lucas held her, or maybe he’s just good.  Either way it seems to have given him confidence that he’ll be good at this big brother thing.

And Lucas isn’t just interested in the baby — he’s shown more interest recently in pregnancy and birth.  Now every time Krista groans when she stands up or complains about being tired, Lucas points out that its probably because she’s pregnant.  And then he follows that with “being pregnant is hard work.”  Even if he’s just parroting us, he says it with a sincerity that actually feels like he understands some of our current limitations.  We’ve even explained to him that Krista can’t pick him up right now because of the pregnancy, and he seems fine with that.  (note from Krista: It probably helps that Daddy remains his favorite parent!)

All this positive association with pregnancy and birth from Lucas is also wonderful given how hard – and sometimes scary – it is to imagine what it will look like to parent Lucas and a newborn.  Or Lucas and a toddler.  But since that’s something we’ll just have to figure out when we get there (tomorrow or next week or four weeks from now), for now we’re thoroughly enjoying ourselves as a family – two proud parents and one absolutely hilarious, goofy, and growing-up kid… who we happened to catch on camera in a moment of candor:

http://youtu.be/vLIcvOCODQk

The wheelchair ramp is complete on the new house so we took Lucas over to check it out this afternoon.  He was excited to do a full tour of the house and name each of the rooms.   For each of the bedrooms Lucas asked “whose rooms is that one going to be?” and fortunately we had brought sticky letters to make a “LUCAS” sign on his bedroom door.  He was excited about that, but even more excited about the next stop.  We spelled it out… “B – A – B – Y”.

Oh, perhaps we forget to mention to our blog followers that Krista is pregnant? That’s right, and just entering her third trimester in fact!  Indeed, adding a member to the family is the primary reason why our search for a house became urgent over the last few months.  And so we’re feeling extra fortunate to have a warm home to soon share with a little one.  The baby in question has the best room in the house, too – see it below in the picture of Krista opening the shades, to Lucas’s delight.

Lucas seems rather excited about the family development, and if you ask him directly he’ll announce, “I’m going to be a big brother!”  For the most part though, he’s content with continuing his deep exploration into dinosaurs, occasionally wondering aloud if “Pterodactyl” would be a good name, or if, perhaps, the baby might be a “long-neck.”  It’s hard for any 5 year old to truly grasp what its going to mean to have a little sibling, so for now Lucas will go about his business, happy to have our undivided attention.  By mid-February, however, things should begin to change…