Back to the beginning

It’s funny, I obviously knew that Hazel wouldn’t be able to walk once she was out of the cast but I don’t think I appreciated just how much she was going to have to relearn. In many respects, she is now back to the level of an infant. She cannot roll over, sit, crawl OR walk so she is really going to have to work her way back through the entirety of the baby milestone book. Now when people ask ‘When did Hazel….?”, I’m going to have to reply, “The first or second time?”.

She has been great since the cast came off. Her hip joint is stiff and she gets pain if it is brought up in front of her, so she keeps it pretty much in the position of the cast. We do, therefore, need to be careful when dressing her, which I find a little hard as I’d become almost brutal in hoisting her about in the cast. It seems as if we have gone from one extreme to the other.

She is able to fit in her car seat, high chair and stroller once again though. so she does have some ability to move her joints without pain and she is already trying to get back into crawling. It is hard to know how long it will take and it is just a waiting game from here out.

Myself, I’m exhausted. Term 4 is always crazy and this one has been harder than most, because of Hazel’s surgery but also because I have 9 different classes this semester. I just finished writing 25 000 words worth of end of semester reports and marking three classes worth of exams and tonight, I had my end of contract review with the Principal and Deputy for my Head of Faculty position. To top it all off, Linus decided to face plant into a kitchen chair last night and so we had spurting blood and tears and panic. I’m tired.

So an early night for me. Hopefully I can convince Mr “Sleep? Who needs it!” to feel the same way.

Freedom!!!

So Hazel had her spica removed today.  It was nice to be heading to hospital looking forward to a positive experience, rather than simply being terrified!

As she was going to have an anaesthetic, she had to fast from 7:30am but of course, she wanted absolutely nothing to do with any breakfast we offered and couldn’t understand when we told her that she’d better eat now, because there wasn’t going to be anything else for a long time. She also slept quite late, so there was no chance for a morning nap before we went to hospital at 11am.

The hospital staff was wonderful and Hazel headed into theatre at about 1:30pm. She was pretty cranky by that stage from hunger and tiredness and so wasn’t too happy to be put under, but of course the staff worked quickly and so there was little time for her to be upset. We went to the waiting room and it seemed like mere seconds before the surgeon was out and telling us all was well. The x-rays indicated that the hip is great and there wasn’t even a need for fluroscopy to have a closer look. She also won’t need a brace so we have been incredibly lucky.

She was a little cranky after waking up in recovery but only due to tiredness and hunger, there wasn’t any indication she was in any discomfort. She wolfed down her bottle and seemed a little better after than and I snuck her a few scraps of my sandwich once we were back on the ward. Once she had her proper lunch, she perked up immensely as you can see in this video.

She is moving her legs well, although she definitely favoured her right (her left hip was the dislocated one). She was moving around great guns in her cot on the ward and even pulling up on the sides so I don’t think it will be long before we are running after her as per usual.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us through this process. We have been so lucky to have an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Tomorrow’s the day!

Where on Earth has six weeks gone? I’m accustomed to term 4 flying past but this has been truly crazy. I honestly feel as if it were only a week or two ago that we took Hazel in for her surgery; not the 6 weeks we have actually waited.

The actual surgery and the days that followed were hard, I’m not going to lie and I think the worst of it was feeling like I couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t in pain, and fighting with the hospital staff who told me she was just frustrated. Whilst I agree that frustration is a big part of Hazel being upset, I still refuse to believe that one is pain free 24 hours after bone surgery. I’ve had 2 c-sections and a gall bladder removal. I KNOW that it isn’t just movement that makes it hurt.

Her surgery tomorrow should actually be a pain free experience as she will just have the cast removed and the doctor will move her hips and legs whilst she is under to make sure everything is AOK. I imagine she is going to have some discomfort associated with being freed from the cast, much like it hurts a bit when you get feeling back into a foot you were sitting on, but I’m hoping it will be easily managed.

She coped really well with our last hospital visit and wasn’t at all upset going into surgery, but of course she had no previous experience so we may find she is a bit more wary this go around. I think it will be easier on me though, knowing that she isn’t going to be cut open and have bits of her hip chopped out. I’m hoping she doesn’t freak out but we just won’t know until we’re there. I will post tomorrow afternoon, if I can, to update.

My beautiful children

I’m going to be a bit indulgent here but my children, Linus in particular, simply stun me with what good human beings they are. I went to Woolworths last night and heard a couple commenting on my kids and when I turned to see what they were remarking upon, I saw the two having a hug in the canned goods aisle. Last night when I went to the kitchen, having brought the kids their dinner but gone back to get each a drink, I returned to find both eating happily. Hazel, trapped as she is, couldn’t get to her dinner so Linus had handed her some before starting on his own plate. And finally, I was bribing Linus to practice writing his name today and gave him a Kit Kat for his beautiful penmanship. He broke it in half and immediately offered me a piece.

It is such a joy to live with such nice people. Parenting is a hard job and I’m not always sure I was cut out to do it, but I couldn’t ask for better children than the ones we are raising.

 

One week to go!

Where does the time go? I can hardly believe that it has already been 5 weeks in the cast for Hazel. She has coped well with the whole experience but I am looking forward to her shucking in one week’s time. She hasn’t been nearly as mobile as I’ve seen with other spica kids, who seem to happily drag themselves about on the floor and flip about. Hazel will drag about a little bit but she isn’t usually happy on the floor and we haven’t pushed it with her.

I’m not certain what to expect once she is released as the other spica kids I’ve heard of go into a brace following the spica and we have been told it should not be required in our case which is a wonderful bonus. We are expecting some atrophy of her muscles so she will have to learn to crawl and walk all over again. We are planning to build up her muscles with some swimming sessions and hopefully she’ll be running about like a crazy person in no time. I’ve got to admit, I’ll also be glad to be rid of the 5 week old, wee soaked plaster. It smells.

She’s currently in bed with a fever, poor duck. Linus had a fever on Friday which burned hot but was gone by Saturday so I’m hoping she’ll also be well by the weekend.

Fee Fie Foe Fum…

I’ve been writing almost exclusively about Hazel’s DDH treatment but I have actually got two kids having ‘medical’ treatment so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about Linus’ as well. Linus has some speech issues, primarily articulation. I had been concerned about how he speaks from fairly early on, but it is so hard to tell as I didn’t spend any large amounts of time with children of his age. I certainly did feel like the little girls I encountered were a lot clearer.

So when Linus started in a full time 3 year old program at my school this year, I wasn’t surprised that the teacher suggested a speech pathologist. We had his hearing tested but that wasn’t the issue so we started therapy with the marvellous pathologist, Susie Pinches.

Linus’ main issue is ‘stopping’ which means that he inserts consonants in some words that shouldn’t have them. Instead of ‘frog’, Linus says ‘dog’ (or ffffff-dog if you ask him to say frog carefully) and this was true of a number of his sounds. He also has trouble saying l/r which, as you can imagine, makes things hard when people ask his name! He also does not use pronouns correctly, with everything referred to as ‘he’ or ‘his’.

Well, after quite a few months of thinking “Why am I paying for this again??” we have finally made some serious progress and Linus is blending ‘f’ and ‘sh’ and ‘s’ quite well. It was such a delight at bedtime last night to play the roles of Jack and the Giant and hear him say perfectly “Fee, fie, foe and fum….”. I have been told that articulation issues can point to phonological problems which in turn make it hard for him to learn to read so I must confess to being really eager to see him ‘fixed’. It sounds awful and I know the social fiction is that I am supposed to ‘love him as he is’ and embrace any disability. But I don’t. I don’t want him to have a disability. I don’t want him to struggle to read. I want it fixed and I want it fixed now. I want him to read the classics and write poetry and mock bad vampire romances.

Lest I sound like some sort of lunatic stage mum, let me assure you I do love my son very very much and would do so if he were as dumb as dirt. But I’m a realist and a teacher and I want the easy, not the hard, road for him.

So I cheer for Jack and The Beanstalk and keep my fingers crossed for a fairy tale ending.

 

Phillip Island

 

 

After being shut in for the four days of the Cup Weekend, we decided to cure our cabin fever by enjoying the fine weather down at Phillip Island. We stayed at Surf and Circuit which was lovely and well located but the owners like to make really sure you don’t miss The Rules! There were signs on walls, doors, fences and 2 pages of rules in the guest guide book. You were admonished not to drive fast, drink too much, fail to supervise your children, stain the towels, leave rubbish about or forget to clean the dishes. I’m sure it helps keep the place nice but 6 signs up in the kitchen was perhaps more than was needed!

 

Hazel and I held the fort at the unit whilst Ash and Linus headed off to the penguins. Linus did find the wait for the penguins to arrive a bit of a struggle but he was very excited and coped very well with such a late night for a four year old. The boys picked up pizza on the way home and then it was into bed ready for the next day of action.

 

One of the benefits of the spica, at least for us, is that Hazel has not yet figured out how to roll in it, so we didn’t put her in the port a cot, instead she slept in the double bunk with Linus who thought that was terribly exciting. She didn’t sleep quite as well though and both kids were up pretty early.

We had breakfast in Cowes which was delicious before leaving for the Phillip Island Wildlife park which I recommend to anyone with kids or overseas guests as they have lots of animals that you can hand feed and see up close. Linus is pretty reserved and prefers to watch but daredevil Hazel was right there in the action, patting the animals and trying to eat their pellets. Mmmm.

 

 

 

 

 

More happy snaps from our lovely weekend.

 

And a few from me in my arty mood.

 

So much to tell you.

One thing we have noticed with Hazel since her surgery and entombment is that she seems so much more verbal. I’m sure part of it is that we are making that much more effort to understand her, to make the experience for her as pleasant as possible, but I’m also certain that being unable simply to wander over to something she wants has prompted a language explosion. She greets us every morning with a cheery  ‘Hello!’, usually followed not long thereafter with a hopeful ‘Stroller?’ and her vocabulary in general is much expanded.

Of course now that she is clued in to the fact she can order us around, she likes to tell us her every whim and thought and sadly her much of her vocab is not actually that comprehensible and so we spend a lot of time trying to decipher ‘Quibble boo thwa’ whilst she squeals in frustration. She is gorgeous though and seems happy to endure endless games of twenty questions as her silly parents try to figure out what it is she wants.

Rainy day masterchef

One benefit of the rainy days is that I have been inspired to get back in the kitchen I made two dishes from Delicious: Quick smart cook. I’m usually a Donna Hay monogamist when it comes to the recipes I actually cook. Don’t get me wrong, I love cookbooks of all persuasions but I just find I can’t go past Donna Hay for practicality and availability of the ingredients. All my other cookbooks seem to call for ingredients that required the sort of forward planning undertaken by those who are not chronic procrastinators (creme fraise, I’m looking at you).

The first, a Thai tomato soup was divine. I adore tomato soup in all manner of forms and this was simply heaven, albeit very rich with a lot of coconut milk, which didn’t really agree with my post gall bladder removal digestive system, but it was worth it. The second was Spaghetti with Beetroot and Marinated Feta. Ash likes beetroot and so I wanted to make something with that in it, and although he was skeptical, he pronounced it a success.

I should have taken photos to glam up this post but hey, I’m new to the ‘take photos of your life so you can blog them to the 3 people who follow your site’ approach to living. I’m sure I’ll be taking absurd photos of myself in the mirror to post on facebook any minute now. I’m sure you can’t wait.