Brayden's First Year...

WOW...our baby boy is now One Years old.  It is such a bittersweet feeling.  We have had an amazing first year with him. 

We had first baths...which at first he didn't like too much, until you put his head under the water..he loved that.  Now he loves his baths, he has so much fun in there...which we are so glad that he likes water because we all love it :)

His first few weeks of life were pretty scary.  By five weeks of age our little guy was only one ounce over his birth weight and our pediatrician was not liking that at all...and I don't blame him.  So when we went for another weight check at five weeks, and Dr. Diehl seeing that he still wasn't gaining weight like he should decided to send us to Lake Havasu Regional Hospital for an ultrasound to see if Brayden had Pyloric Stenosis, from what they could see he did not.  So we went home and tried to give him formula as I was only breastfeeding him up to this point.  Well, he did not like that one bit...he puked the entire bottle up...it was everywhere:(  The next morning Dr. Diehl called me to see how he was and I explained what had happened...at that point he advised us that we should take him to Phoenix Children's Hospital...talk about having the pit of your stomach fall out...he said he was extremely worried about him and we needed to figure out what was wrong with him before it got any worse.

Sitting on my bed crying my eyes out and holding my little guy so tight, we decided to get packed up and head to Phoenix.  My mind was going crazy thinking of everything, and wondering what was wrong with our little guy.  Robert's sister drove us down there, which was awesome since neither one of us slept the night before.  We finally get called back to the ER at around 9:30 or so after getting there at 3:30.  Brayden was starving as they wouldn't let me feeding him, and the last time that he ate was at 12:00...once we were in the back they had to start and IV on him and get blood as well and get a urine sample by using a little catheter...he was such a trooper and a good boy...so brave...his momma was so proud of him.  They finally let me feed him a little after all that.  Then at around 11ish they took us for an ultrasound there to see if he had Pyloric Stenosis...which again they decided he did not.

Finally around 1 or 2 in the morning they admitted him.  After he was admitted Daddy and Aunt Jess went and got a hotel so they could get some sleep.  The the next morning the nurse came in and told us that they were moving him to the NICU, that scared me a lot, but then I realized they they Dr's and nurse in there are better trained to deal with newborns and I was okay with it. 

To make a long story short...he was in the NICU for 10 days...what they determined after many blood tests, ultrasounds, meeting with Gastroenterologist, Speech Therapist was that he had elevated liver enzymes and dysphagia...the dysphagia caused him to have trouble sucking and swallowing which was not allowing him to nurse good enough to get enough milk from me.  So by placing him on formula at a higher calorie count we were able to increase his weight and he was able to come home:)  I was so relieved  when they said he could come home...it was the best news that we had heard in those 10 days.  We just had a couple follow ups with his Gastroenterlogist in Flagstaff and he was good to go:)