Bless Ivy's Valentine's Day Heart

Did you know that Valentines Day is also National CHD Awareness Day.  I don't know where I'm going with this.  I just wanted everyone to know that congenital heart disease is actually a lot more common than you think.  It is THE MOST common birth defect among babies (Not specifically Ivy's heart defect, but heart defects in general), affecting more than 35,000 infants every year.

So in honor of my sweet little CHD survivor I just want to shout out to the doctors who made it possible for us to have our amazing little girl brightening up our lives every single day. None of them even know this blog exists, but I want to honor them anyway.

Dr. Peter Kouretas:  He preformed Ivy's Norwood Procedure when she was 6 days old, as well as the Norwood repair 11 days later when she had a complication.  Then when she was 11 months old he preformed her Glenn Procedure as well.  Without his steady hands and expertise, we may not have our little ray of sunshine.

Dr. Michael Womack:  He has been Ivy's Pediatric Cardiologist since before she was born.  I have sung his praises many times.  We seriously adore Dr. Womack.  He is the doctor who gave us her diagnosis before birth and has always been so optimistic about how everything is going.  He is a great guy and we are lucky to have him!

Dr. Joseph Kiehl:  He is Ivy's Pediatrician.  We seriously adore Dr. Kiehl also.  He is great with Ivy and all the other kids too.  He always remembers all the kids by name, and does such a great job.  I remember right before Malcolm was born Ivy hurt her leg on the trampoline and refused to walk.  The next day I took her in to his office, but he was out of town so I saw the nurse practitioner instead.  She sent us to the hospital to take x-rays and it was discovered that she had no broken bones so we were told rest the leg and that she should be walking again soon.  2 days later when Dr. Keihl returned to work he heard about Ivy and was concerned so he called me to check on her and make sure she started walking again.  I was so impressed that he cared enough to call.  I don't think our old pediatrician in SLC would have given her a single thought!

Dr. Phillip Burch:  This is the doctor that preformed Ivy's most recent surgery, the Fontan, last July.  We don't know him as well as the other doctors, but he did his job well and Ivy is here today because of that, so we are eternally grateful.

Also, all the cardiologists (even Dr. Jerkface who will remain unnamed), nurses and other random people at PCMC who helped care for Ivy over the years.  We don't know all their names, and they probably don't even remember Ivy because they deal with so many people, but we are very thankful that they are competent at what they do and were able to help us keep our sweet girl.

We are also so grateful for our support system.  This includes everyone who knows our situation and actively supports us by giving us a place to stay during surgeries, babysitting, praying, bringing us food, giving shoulders to cry on, calling to talk things out, and just being there when we need.  We are so grateful for all of you out there.  You keep us going.

And thank you to Ivy for being so darn great!  We are honored to have her in our lives.  She makes life worth living and brings so much joy to our family.  I can't even imagine what life would be like without her, and can't even think about that.  We love her so much and are so proud of her everyday.

If you are still reading this, bless you for your patience.  Happy Valentines Day, and CHD Awareness Day!

Six Months Post-Fontan

Yesterday it was 6 months since Ivy had her Fontan operation.  These six months have been great!  She is doing so well.  She has more energy (she can walk all the way to school and back without getting too tired), her color is pink (as opposed to blueish-purple), her oxygen sats are at an incredible 92-96% on average (they were about 84% before surgery), her scar looks fantastic, and seriously, you would never know that there was ever a problem.  She is a superstar.  She had her six month follow-up with her cardiologist, Dr Womack this week and he is very impressed with her progress.  He gave the green light to wean her off of her Lasix medication (as long as she is doing well), and said we don't have to go back until summer, and then we will probably switch to annual visits!  Whoo hoo!

We love Dr. Womack! Ivy used to scream whenever he walked in the room, but she has since learned that he is a super nice guy.  When he asks her to lift her shirt to listen to her heart, she does it right away.  She holds still and stays quiet when he does an echo, and she is very friendly with him now.  She loves his red shoes and the fact that there is always a nice piece of candy at the end of each visit.  If we ever do manage to move back to SLC we will be sad to leave him!

Ivy with Dr. Womack back in 2009

I can't believe its been 4 years!

I CANNOT believe its been four years since Ivy was born!  Oh how time flies!  Here are a few things about Ivy, that you may, or may not know.

~Everyone (and I literally mean EVERYONE) loves Ivy.  Complete strangers will go out of their way to talk to her and tell her how cute she is.  I'm not exaggerating either.  It happens everywhere we go.

~Ivy has the GREATEST laugh.  She laughs loud and hard and it makes everyone else bust up too.  It is one of the best things about her.

~Ivy is such a sweet little mother.  She loves mugging on Malcolm, giving him kisses, rubbing his head, putting his paci back in his mouth.  She talks to him in her cute little high voice and tries to get him to smile, she tries to keep him happy while I am busy with something else, and is a super helper.

~Ivy seems to finally be getting taller.  For a while there I didn't think she was ever going to add any inches, but lately she is growing up and thinning out.  (Which makes me a little sad, I wish she'd stay little with those adorable chubby cheeks forever).

~Ivy is such a girlie-girl.  Its weird for me, since I was totally the opposite when I was a kid.  She loves pink, princesses, clothes, shoes, and dolls.  She always wants to pick out her own outfits, and enjoys wearing necklaces.  She's so fashionable!

~Ivy brightens up our household.  She gets along with everybody (but if she fights with someone, its usually Dex), and basically has the entire family wrapped around her finger.  For example, if she wants to play the iPad and its all the way upstairs, she'll ask Corbin or Dexter to get it for her, and 90% of the time they will, no questions asked, no complaining.  How do I get that kind of service!

~She's a little spoiled.  I am first to admit that we spoil this girl.  Its really hard not to.  Not only is she our own personal miracle, but she is also the sweetest little girl on the planet.  She has a great personality and is very easy going most of the time.  She is so awesome and well-behaved and tooth-ache inducing sweet that we just have a really difficult time saying no to her!  She hardly ever gets in trouble (it does happen, but she rarely behaves badly, I swear), and when she does she's so tender-hearted that she gets so sad, and that makes me feel bad.  Ugh, I need to work on that I guess.

Anyway, here is our awesome 4 year old with her birthday stash!

For a few of the kids' birthdays they have asked me to crochet them a specific toy.  Ivy asked me to make Jewel from Lalaloopsy.  If you haven't heard of them, here is their website.  They are semi-creepy dolls that have button eyes.  Jewel is her favorite because she has a crown.  Anywho, I worked crazy hard on this doll because I really wanted her to love it, and then we also bought her a Trinket (Jewel's little sister) doll to go with it.  So here is the homemade Jewel on the left, and store bought Trinket on the right.  I think they look great together!

Okay, I took a lot of pics of the doll for my World of Yarn website, so here are a few more.

A Collage of Craziness

First off, yesterday, Ivy had her post-op appointment with her cardiologist.  He took her off oxygen!!  Yay!  That oxygen was seriously a pain in the butt.  Her sats were the same with and without the oxygen in, so he decided she didn't need it.  He also took away one med, but she has to keep one until the first week of September, when he'll see her again and do an echo.  She is doing so great, and is back to her normal self (except that she was afraid of Dr Womack again. The hospital made her afraid of the medical field all over again).  We've spent most of our time hanging out in our air conditioned home, watching movies.  Ivy's obsessed with the montage videos that daddy makes for the kids.  I've put them all up here on the blog at some point, but I wanted to share one again.  This is from Ivy's first birthday and shows all the progress she made in that first year.  Its my favorite one and it still makes me cry EVERY TIME!  She was always so happy, even after all the stuff she had gone through.  This girl is totally my hero.

In other news, I'm 33 1/2 weeks pregnant.  6 1/2 weeks to go.  (yes, mom, I went to the doctor, everything is still fine). I still haven't started getting things ready for this baby.  I don't want to go in the attic to dig out the boy clothes, just in case.  Its too much work.  So instead I got some gender neutral onesies from Target to take the hospital.  I can do the other stuff after the baby is born, if its a boy.  I have a huge "to-do list" that I'm trying to get done before the boys get home from Utah.  Lots of those things are to prepare for this baby.  Hopefully I get them all done before he/she arrives.

 Since coming home, we are having bug problems. We came home to fly season in our neighborhood.  We live right by a farm, so every year the flies get REALLY overwhelming at some point in the summer.  We hoped that since the boys weren't home to leave the back door open all the time, they wouldn't all get in the house.  Unfortunately those darn flies found ways around that.  A few days after we got home we opened up our big trash can in the garage and out flew about 8 billion flies.  I've never seen so many flies.  It was horrifying.  Every time we came in the house from the garage, a million of those flies came in.  I went on several fly-killing sprees, but there were still so many.  We put up a bunch of fly traps (3 in the garage, 2 in the house), they all looked like this after a day (or worse).  They are mostly gone now, but it was miserable getting to this point.  Stupid flies.

The second bug problem: BEES!  We haven't done much playing outside since coming home (with Ivy attached to oxygen and it being 5000 degrees outside, it was too hard), but after Ivy's appointment and no more oxygen, the girls went outside to play while Scott and I bbq'd some burgers. Scott realized there were a bunch of bees by us, this is what he found.  A big fat beehive on the underside of our grill.

Several minutes later, Ivy started screaming.  I don't mean little screams, I mean blood-curdling, horrifying screams.  We looked over and she was climbing the ladder on our playground, surrounded by bees.  We both ran over, Scott grabbed her and ran her inside and I grabbed Echo, who was on the slide, and followed them.  There was another GIANT beehive on the underside of the playground.

 Poor innocent Ivy got stung FIVE TIMES!  One on her hand, one on her arm, one just under her lower lip, one on her forehead, and one on her ear.  Luckily, Echo didn't get any, but she was VERY ANGRY when we wouldn't let her go back outside.  Ivy is fine, she cried for a while (as would I), and now talks about it very matter-of-factly, saying, "I got attacked by bees.  They stinged me."  I felt sick to my stomach when it happened and I still can't believe it.  It was really scary.  I even called Dr. Womack to make sure she could take benedryl, and that she'd be fine.  I'm afraid she'll never go outside again.  Ps..Scott went on a bee-murdering spree right after it happened.  I think they are all dead now!  Here are a couple of terrible pictures of the stings.

 And here she is smiling after she stopped crying.  What a trooper.

 And last, and definitely least, I got some new dolls up on my Etsy page if you want to check them out.  I'm sure you totally care!

The day has come.......

This morning the doctors made their way to Ivy's room at about 10am.  They told me how great she looked and how great things are going.  I asked if that meant we could go home, and they said yes.  Ivy smiled, while they were still in the room even!  I asked them to discharge us first because the boys would be leaving with grandma and grandpa to Bear Lake at 3, and I wanted to say goodbye because I won't see them again until near the end of August.  They agreed to discharge us right away, and kept their word.  We left just a few hours later.

Ivy is now out of the hospital and resting peacefully on grandma Marde's couch.  She insisted she was not tired and within 2 minutes was out cold.  We made it here in time to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa and our 2 cute boys before they all headed out for more Bear Lake fun.  They greeted us with cute "Welcome home Ivy" signs on the front door.   

It was so fun to see everybody.  I hadn't seen the other three kids since Sunday, and I was afraid Echo wouldn't like me anymore.  Luckily, I was wrong.  She still loves me.  The boys were so sweet and cute and I can't believe its going to be a whole month before I see them again.  I already miss them.

Ivy is still on oxygen, and unfortunately we didn't bring our oxygen concentrator with us so we are using travel tanks now.  We only have enough to last about 30 or so hours, so we'll be heading home to Boise tomorrow.  So far Ivy is doing really well, and is just so happy to be away from all those doctors and nurses!  She still has a long 6 week recovery ahead, but I think she'll do great!

Thanks to everyone's kind words and comments and prayers and babysitting and books to lend, and mowing our lawn at home, etc.  We really appreciate everything everyone has done.  My heart is overwhelmed.

I never thought poop could make me so happy!

So....it finally happened.  At 2:45 this afternoon Ivy received an enema, by 3:00 she had finally delivered the mother-load.  She actually smiled about it and gave me a high five.  We were both so happy....I considered taking a picture, but I guess that's poor taste.  Anyway, the nurses came and weighed it...it weighed over a pound!

So as long as the Xrays in the morning still look good, we'll walk out these doors sometime tomorrow!  Ahead of schedule!  Prayer works!!  Thanks for all the prayers and support.  I never thought I'd pray for poop, but I prayed for it like crazy!

One can't go on forever without pooping....right?

Ivy is sleeping.  Its quiet and peaceful.  I asked the nurses to leave us alone for a bit.  My girl needs her rest. She is doing better today.  Still grumpy but not quite as bad.  Last night she had the mother of all meltdowns around midnight.  She had just woken up very uncomfortable and was whining and trying to find a better position.  Just then the nurses came in for vitals.  She, like always, was not happy to see them.  She lost all control, sat right up in her bed and threw the biggest tantrum I have ever seen her throw.  It could give Dexter a run for his money.  She flailed, screamed, kicked, cried and refused to cooperate in the slightest.  I felt bad for the nurses, but only a little.  I'm getting a little frustrated with the waking her up situation.  Isn't the best way to heal to sleep?  I just want them to let her sleep for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time.  I want to sleep for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time too!  Its really starting to wear on my nerves.

Anyway, a couple of good things have happened.  Ivy's IV went bad yesterday, so they took it out, and didn't replace it.  YES!! And we received the best news this morning.  As long as Ivy poops at some point before tomorrow, and her Xrays look good in the morning, we will be going home tomorrow!  I'm not worried about the Xrays, but I am worried about the poop.  She has now had 4 suppositories, 3 days straight of miralax, and still nothing.  We've discussed the possibility of an enema, but for now the dr wants to wait and see if she can get it out on her own.  I keep thinking it'll come, but it just wont.  I never thought I'd wish an enema on anyone, but I would really love to get out of here!  How do you make someone poop?  I don't know the answer.  I wish I did.

Anyway, we've been working hard to get Ivy up and walking around.  She is NEVER willing to do this, and it seems like I force her every time.  I try to explain that it will help her get well quicker, but she still gets really mad and frustrated when I refuse to take the wagon.  Its definitely been a struggle, and she's got daddy wrapped around her finger, because she knows she can make him hold her when she doesn't want to walk, whereas I just make her walk.  Poor daddy, hates seeing his little girl miserable.

 I've been doing my best to find ways to make Ivy happier.  At home she has always been a tummy sleeper, so I encourage her to sleep on her tummy so she can get a more deep sleep going.

 I let her eat cereal for every meal if that's what she wants.  She hasn't thrown up for a while now, and cereal seems to settle without making her nauseous.  Although, today she picked mac n cheese for lunch and ate some and hasn't thrown it up yet.  Keeping my fingers crossed. 

 After Scott arrived last night we took a "walk" to a playroom (Scott gave in and held her most of the way!), and she rode this little tricycle around for a few minutes.

 Then we found a car, which she also enjoyed.

 Then we went out to the patio.  She hated it out there, but it was worth a shot.

 Today I gave her another sponge bath and was actually able to wash her hair (not well, but its a little better), then we put it in some braids, put on clean jammies, found her bracelet and croc shoes, and walked the halls (Which she still complained about, but I think went much better because she had her own shoes on).  After we got back we got some playdough and she played with it while watching the little mermaid (for the billionth time).  She LOVES the playdough, and it was the happiest I've seen her in days.  She only yelled at me a couple of times.  

Now if I can just coax her digestive system into clearing itself out, we'd be all clear for home.  Maybe I should whisper in her ear while she sleeping that she needs to poop.  That kind of stuff works, right?