Dear Miss Tahnee

Dear Miss Tahnee
Its your FIRST BIRTHDAY! A year ago, we didn't let ourselves dream about celebrating this very special day. A year ago, we sat by your bedside in NICU at KEMH, tentatively stroking your hand and wondering what your future held. A year ago, we fell in love again, with you, our precious baby girl.

You have been through a lot over the last year. When we look back and say you spent 34 days in hospital, we realise it wasn't actually that many days. But at the time, it felt like forever. I can still clearly remember the day you were born, being told by our midwife that I would get to have a brief cuddle with you before being ventilated, and I remember holding you and realising you were a shade of grey/blue!! Yes we knew you would come out not being able to breathe, but it was still a shock. However you stabilised quickly and did so well.

We both spent every day with you, waiting for our first cuddles on day 11, cuddling you when we were allowed to every day there after, holding your hand, feeding you and changing you when we were allowed, talking to you.

We wheeled you to surgery twice, once more than we had been expecting. It was heart wrenching to watch your tiny body being put through so much. But we are thankful too, as it means you are alive!

We have blogged about most of your achievements over the last year. You have learnt to sleep through the night, roll, crawl, sit and stand. You are still working on the standing by yourself and walking thing, but you will get there ... one day ... in your own time ... just like everything else about you :)

One of your more recent achievements that we have yet to blog about is that you have worked out how to go from crawling to sitting. We were getting a little concerned as your bother was doing this a long time before you, but Kate, the child health nurse, assured us it was nothing to worry about and that you were concentrating on healing your protruding abdominal hernia.

Tahnee, you bring our family so much joy. You have taught us many things over the last few years,  ... such as patience and a capacity to love so dearly ... and your journey has made us face our deepest worries ... fears of hospitals, needles, surgeries and those very quiet thoughts that told us we would be unable to love another child like we love Lucas. We have travelled this journey with you and realised that when needed, we can sit by a hospital bed, with canula's, IV's, external organs and more, and that yes we are able to love another child as much as our firstborn.

We are thankful that you have survived and that you are so healthy now. Yes, we still have our worries and concerns ... keeping you away from yucky germs, your weight gain, your development. But these seem minor compared to the big worry of you surviving or not.

We love you Princess Tahnee, from your unruly, sticky-uppy hair to your feet that are already capable of producing bad foot odour and everything in between, but mostly we love your smile and your scar ... and we hope that we have been to able to show you what its means to be loved. We are looking forward to what the next year will bring us and we rest secure in that knowledge of this verse from Jeremiah 29 "For I know the plans I have for you,"declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future".

All our love,

Mum, Dad and Lucas
xxx

p.s. even though we celebrated your birthday early, so many remembered to congratulate us on the day. We received text messages, face book messages and comments and a little note on the CDH Australia forum.

Rainbow Party

After consulting the calendar and taking into account Chris's soccer game times, we made the decision to hold Tahnee's birthday party on the Saturday before her birthday! In the lead up to her party we were busy with the usual things ... invitations, decorations, guest list, food, presents and cake.

A few weeks before the event, we invited around our family, close friends and close CDH friends to come down and celebrate her special milestone. We agreed to do a Rainbow Colour theme and made the invitations accordingly.

We also discussed what cake we would be making. We looked at heaps online, some quite complex and some easier. We finally settled on doing a butterfly cake - the butterfly is the international symbol of CDH. We then had to figure out if we would use a cake tin or shape it ourselves. Then, purely by accident, I came across an awesome, tiered rainbow coloured cake online. Looking at it closely I realised it wasn't too difficult and rang Chris to tell him. After looking at a photo he agreed and we got busy with choosing colours. Chris also suggested that we colour each of the cakes to match.

I had seen a few decoration set ups on Pinterest that I liked, so we figured out a few costs and decided to go with making a ceiling arrangement. A little trick on Pinterest suggested using plastic table cloths as opposed to fabric, as it would be cheaper.

Keeping with the rainbow colour theme, I made a salad platter, bought coloured popcorn, skittles and snakes, and then we both made star shaped sugar biscuits and iced them. These biscuits were very yummy!

junk food table

healthier food table and drinks (on right)

We held the party at our house, a first for us!! We usually hold them at Chris's parents house as they have a large patio and in our old house, we didn't have much of an outdoor area. But our new house has an awesome area. It was so much easier decorating and setting up as we didn't need to transfer anything.

The day was a lovely 22degrees, blue skies and not a rain cloud in sight. We had everything ready from hot drinks to cold drinks, salad platter to crackers to meat to dip, lollies to chips to cake. We also had a donation box for CDH Australia and a present table.

CDH buddy Austin and his Mum

Some guests

After everyone had arrived we prepared to do the cake. We LOVED the finished result and it received quite a few comments, both on the day and on facebook!!

Tahnee was a little overwhelmed with the whole blowing out the candle process! She was unsure what to do, so my 4 year old niece gladly did the honours and announced it to everyone :)

Tahnee also loved eating the cake! We are so thankful that she eats like she does and did not develop an oral aversion like so many CDh bubbas do. My sister in law gave her the huge chunk that was cut out to take a photo of the insides! But Tahnee only ate the top section and enjoyed it very much.

A highlight of the day was the presence of two of our favourite nurses from PMH. Frances and Bec. We still keep in contact with a few of them, and these two were able to come down for the morning. They said it was really special seeing " their"  babies all growing up and doing well. And we loved seeing them as well! These 2 especially were fantastic in the NICU. We laughed and joked a lot, and they made each day so much easier :)

The little guests all went home with a party bag (which are usually the highlight of any party!). I had found an idea on pinterest to attach crayons to notepads, but ran out of time to make them, so decided to pop everything into a lolly bag instead :)

Our little miss was very spoilt! She received clothes, toys, chairs, dolls, blocks and books. She also has a few more pressies coming!

with her stash from her party

with her presents from us and Aunty Tash & Tristan

We had a great day celebrating our Little Miss Tahnee's first birthday. Will post more about her birthday on the actual day (Thursday).

Tahnee: {almost} 12 month milk journey

Since birth, Tahnee has had her fair share of feeding issues. At the beginning it was difficult to wean her off a continuous milk feed she received via from an IV. Then it was hard to get her to tolerate feeds every hour, then every 2 hours and every 3 hours. It all culminated in being forced to "suck or starve". Thankfully she was up for this challenge and came home fully suck feeding and breastfeeding using a nipple shield.

During her hospital stay, I expressed milk for Tahnee that the hospital was more than willing to store and freeze for me. Now in the milk room (room with expressing equipment and comfortable chairs) there was a sign that read "when your milk store gets to 16 bottles, we will let you know and ask that you take some home". I never got a call telling me, so naively I assumed I hadn't ready the 16 bottle limit (however much 16 bottles equated to).

After the initial week after Tahnee's birth, I had huge success with expressing milk. I remember that the most amount I expressed in one sitting was 400ml!! I averaged around 200ml each time towards the end. This supply dropped off dramatically once Tahnee started to feed from me herself.

My milk store was used during our time at PMH. It was fed through the continuous milk feed IV and was also fed through her NG tube. I remember at one point, one of the nurses feeling very bad that she hadn't used a small amount (around 100ml) in time (once defrosted, to be used within 24 hours) and I told her not to worry.

Upon discharge from hospital, we were asked to collect the stored milk. We received many comments about the supply we took home! I worked out later that we came home with 40L of milk!! Unfortunately I was unable to donate any milk to the Milk Bank at PMH as they are very strict on donations and one of the criteria was to not have had any immunisations recently and I had the whooping cough booster at KEMH.

Yep, it filled 4 coles esky bags and a Styrofoam esky and
we borrowed a freezer to store them in

After Tahnee came home, I was a little concerned about the use of a shield. I spoke with a few people and was told there was no reason I couldn't feed with a shield long term, but that Tahnee may well wean herself off it. She didnt wean herself off the shield though and actually thought the milk came from as one day she moved while feeding and the shield moved to my arm and she was continued frantically trying to suck! :)

We slowly started to use the supply of frozen EBM too. We used it in her food, mixing it with rice cereal. And we also gave her the occasional bottle. One day we left Tahnee with my mum so we could attend a wedding. At that stage, Tahnee was happy to drink milk through a bottle.  However, she started to refuse a bottle in March 2012, when she was 7 or so months old. It was a pity, as I was going out for a night and really needed her to take a bottle. We couldn't even get her to drink formula! (coincidentally, Lucas despised formula to and actually spat it back at the midwife when he was a few days old).

By 2 months Tahnee had stopped feeding during the night. By 4 months she had weaned herself down to 4 feeds a day. By 8 months she had reduced down to one side. By 10 months she was down to 3 feeds a day and by 11 months was down to 1 feed a day.

Sadly, last week Friday Tahnee had her last feed from me! Fully weaning her was accidental, as I had planned to get to 12 months, but Saturday morning I was very busy and her feed was skipped. Sunday morning I was sick in bed and didn't feed her, and after going to see the after hours GP at the hospital, he said to feed her while wearing a mask to ensure I didn't infect her. This morning I decided she had been happy to go without her morning breastfeed for the last few days, so I wouldn't offer it again. Its a bit sad as it was sudden, but at least it was a gradual weaning and so far its hasn't resulted in any mastitis.

And last weekend we made the decision to throw out the remaining milk supply. We ended up throwing nearly 20L down the drain!!

The second layer of the above photo - the top later only had 12 bottles
The taller bottles are 500ml and the smaller bottlers are 250ml

In short, I was able to feed (and express) both kids for 102 weeks (just 2 weeks short of 2 years). I managed to feed with a shield for 11.5 months, neither of the kids drank formula and I never got mastitis with either child. It truly is a blessing that I was able to do all this, as many women are unable to fulfill their dream of breastfeeding.  

New Feature(s)

WATCH THIS SPACE! I've started to play around with a few features on our blog. For starters, here is one that enables you to subscribe by email and receive an email each time the blog is updated. The link is at the bottom, LHS of the blog, feel free to subscribe :)

Lucas: muddy puddles

One of Lucas's favourite TV shows is Peppa Pig, a family of 4 pigs whose favourite thing to do is jump in muddy puddles. But I think he is watching too much of the show as yesterday it was raining here and he came up to me saying "mum, I go jump in muddy puddles!". 

It was raining quite heavy yesterday so I said no, but this morning it was relatively clear, with a few drizzles here and there. I got Lucas dressed in pants and gum boots and let him play outside. The first thing he did was ... you guessed it ... jump in a puddle!!