Monday, July 18, 2005

The first time I met mommy and daddy

Today's my birthday, i weighed in at 3.3kg's... mommy had an emergency cesaerean because I was too tired and my heart couldn't handle the long labour. I tried breast feeding but couldn't do it, I couldn't work out how to suck, swallow and breathe all at the same time, it was too much hard work! The doctors started getting concerned so I was taken to special care where they fed me with a nasogastric tube, it's a tube that goes in through the nose all the way down to my tummy. Mommy kept trying to breast feed me but i just couldn't cope, I tried so hard though. my paediatrician did a scan on my body, he wanted to see if everything was ok. He'd noticed i looked a bit different and thought I could have a syndrome. He did a scan on my heart and saw that i had some holes in the atrium and ventricles. Mommy and daddy were very worried but he assured them that my broken heart could be fixed. We all got in an ambulance and went to Great Ormond Street hospital for an echo, it's a big machine that shows my heart pumping on the screen. That's when I met Rob for the first time, he is my cardiologist. He didn't want to operate on me just yet, I was still too little, they wanted me to be at least 5kg's... but I wasn't in any danger so we were allowed to go back to the Whittington hospital.

I'd been there about a week when we had to come all the way back to Great Ormond Street for genetic testing. There was a lady there called Clare who had a good look at me, she didn't think i had a syndrome but wanted to test me for a chromosomal abnormality. Mommy and daddy didn't know anything about chromosomal abnormalities, but they learnt very fast! We had to wait about 5 days for the results, it was a long wait. Mommy and daddy couldn't stay with me in special care, but they used to visit all the time, feed me, change my nappies and give me baths and cuddles. Clare from Great Ormond Street called and told mommy that they'd found an abnormality in chromosome 10. They went to see her but I had to stay in the hospital. They took blood from them to make sure that it wasn't genetic, it wasn't in the end... it's just nature's way of making me truly unique. There aren't many people who have the same abnormality as me, and even if there were it wouldn't really help me much. I was in hospital for 2 weeks altogether, mommy and daddy asked if they could take me home, they were happy to feed me by tube themselves and plus we'd all had enough of the hospital. Mommy didn't like the food much.