Bittersweet Homecoming

After spending a month in the postpartum center, little Hannah Piper has finally come home! As the title of the post states, it’s been a bittersweet homecoming. Sweet because our family unit is now a whole, but bitter because Hannah has been diagnosed with pulmonary valve stenosis and will require surgery next Wednesday.

Pulmonary valve stenosis is a congenital heart defect that mostly occurs by chance and develops during the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. A heart murmur is the most common sign that there’s a problem. In a normal heart, the pulmonary valve allows for blood flow from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery and then onto the lungs. With pulmonary valve stenosis, the valve is usually thickened which makes blood flow difficult. This can result in heavy breathing, shortness of breath, fainting, and chest pain.

A mild case of pulmonary valve stenosis usually doesn’t cause any complications or require surgery, but moderate to severe cases do because the condition can worsen over time and eventually lead to heart failure. In these cases, there are two types of procedures that are performed: a balloon valvuloplasty for most moderate cases and open-heart surgery for the severe ones.

A balloon valvuloplasty involves inserting a catheter tube with a deflated balloon on the tip through a blood vessel in the leg and guiding it to the heart. From there, the tube is placed in the valve and the balloon is inflated to widen the opening of the valve and increase blood flow. The balloon is then removed.

As far as Hannah is concerned, she has a moderate case of pulmonary valve stenosis, and the doctor has recommended a balloon valvuloplasty as soon as possible because her valve has thickened considerably since her birth. She'll check-in to the hospital next Tuesday, have the surgery on Wednesday, spend the night on Thursday, and be back home by Friday.

And while there are always risks to any operation or surgery, balloon valvuloplasty is quite safe and effective. Most children will grow up to lead healthy lives with no restrictions or complications and will only require regular check-ups with the cardiologist. But try telling that to the wife.

As you might imagine, this has caused countless number of tears to flow from her eyes, not to mention the guilt she feels. And who can blame her. No parent wishes this upon their child. But at the same time, these things just happen. It has nothing to do with whether you’ve been a good person in the past or not. This is not karma coming to bite you in the butt. We can only hope for the best and put our faith in the doctor. So please, keep little Hannah Piper in your thoughts and prayers!

 

 

 

   

Me and My Buddy

It’s now been about a month since the wife gave birth to Hannah Piper and another two weeks before she’ll come home from the postpartum center. You’re probably thinking, “Lucky you! You'll have been a free man for over a month!” Unfortunately, there is no freedom when there’s another kid impatiently waiting for you at home.

It was decided that the best option would be to let Caitlyn visit the wife only once a week while she stayed at the postpartum center. However, we had to carefully plan our exit strategy. Without it, we’d be left with a crazed, screaming kid clinging to the wife with a vice-like grip and a crowd of people with their cell phones out, ready to upload the next viral video.

Sometimes, the plan is as simple as snatching Caitlyn up and running out before she has a chance to react. Other times, trickery and deception might be used, such as pretending we’re all going out, buckling ourselves into the car, and then having the wife pretend she forgot something. She leaves the car, I drive off, and the kid is strapped to her car seat. Bam! Mission accomplished.

In any case, crying and screaming are to be expected. There’s no way around it. She’d ask why Mommy wasn’t coming home. Then, she’d plead and beg to let her stay the night with Mommy and how she’d be good and wouldn’t cry anymore. It was all heartbreaking to watch. Sometimes, I just wanted to wrap my arms around her tight and cry along with her and give in to her demands. But I had to remain detached and unyielding. I had to just let her cry it out, which was just torturous.

I used to think that it would affect her mentally and emotionally, but it seems she forgets about it rather quickly. Especially when there’s Dora on TV. Out of sight, out of mind. And with the wife out of sight and out of mind, I’ve become the go-to-guy for Caitlyn, which means she basically shadows me wherever I go. She’s wary of leaving my sight. She’s lost her mommy, and she’ll be damned if she loses me too. 

I have to admit that I kind of like it because it’s like we’re best buddies now. The first thing she does when I come back from work is yell out my name and come running over to give me a great big hug. And at night, she'll hold me tight as she falls asleep. I know she’s just using me in a temporary fashion and that I’ll be tossed aside the second the wife is back, but still, I’ll take it any way I can.

However, this bond of ours creates a bit of an issue in the morning when I have to leave for work. The first couple of days, she’d wake up with me and follow me around, begging to let her go to work with me. The only way for me to leave was to have Grandpa or Grandma snatch her up while I quickly made my way out the door. This obviously led to lots of screaming and crying, which then led to Grandpa and Grandma showering her with gifts and surprises as bribes, which then led to me being upset about Caitlyn being spoiled.

But as long as she doesn’t see me leaving, she's actually OK, so the only solution is to get up super early while Caitlyn is still dead asleep and slip out. Therefore, I now get up at 5:30 in the morning, wash my face and brush my teeth in the kitchen sink, change clothes in the living room, and am out the door by 6. I’m constantly tense and nervous the whole time, not knowing if and when Caitlyn will come bursting in and ruin my quiet getaway. It may all seem a bit extreme, but desperate times call for desperate measures. It's a small price to pay. Plus, I get in an extra hour of prep time at work. Win-win for everyone.

The Second Worst Pain to Childbirth

It’s swollen and bruised, ravaged and beaten to a bloody submission. The wife curls up into the fetal position and whimpers whenever she thinks about it. Obviously, I’m talking about her nipples and her reaction to breastfeeding. The pain, she says, is only second to that of giving birth. It’s hard to believe that a baby with no teeth that’s less than a week old can cause so much damage and pain. When I try to imagine what the sensation of a baby breastfeeding on a nipple might feel like, I think of an old person with no teeth, like Herbert from Family Guy, weakly gumming and drooling on a nipple, say Chris’. It’s a disturbing mental image, but definitely not painful.

The majority of women will feel 30 to 60 seconds of pain (from the nipple and areola being pulled into the baby’s mouth), and then the pain should subside. However, if the baby consistently latches on incorrectly, you’re in for a doozy. The result will be sore, cracked, bloody nipples. And trust me, it is not a pretty sight.

Unfortunately, the wife falls into the category of having the baby latch on incorrectly. Normally, you want the baby to take in as much of the areola as possible, not just the nipple. But it’s not as easy as it seems, or so the wife says. I’m guessing it’s something akin to docking the space shuttle with the space station. It takes precise timing and accuracy.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that Hannah, unlike Caitlyn when she was a baby, loves to drink the wife’s milk. It’s a blessing and a curse, I suppose. The wife really wants to breastfeed as long as possible, but that’s contingent on how long her nipples can hold out for until they throw in the towel. And I suppose it also partly depends on if she has enough milk to keep up with the demand. With Caitlyn, she never had that much milk production, so she stopped breast feeding after about six months. Fingers crossed, we shall see if the wife can surpass this mark. No pain, no gain! Says the person who doesn't have to endure giving birth or breastfeeding.

 

 

 

 

Hannah Piper Wu Makes Her Grand Entrance

"And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent!" 

These words describe the death of Jesus, but they very well could describe the coming of Hannah Piper Wu because that's exactly what happened right before she came into the world today, Monday, April 20, at 10:13 a.m. There was an earthquake, the building was swaying to and fro, and I'm hiding under the table screaming, "Save me, baby Jesus!"

I suppose our newest addition to the family likes to make a grand entrance.
Perhaps she wanted us to take notice of her. And personally, I don’t blame her at all. We have been neglecting her. When I went back to the States earlier this year, the wife had a long list of clothing to buy for Caitlyn. For baby Hannah? Some bibs. When the wife was pregnant with Caitlyn, I blogged about it all the time. For baby Hannah? I think I made two, maybe three posts max. We both read several books on pregnancy and went to several classes before the wife had Caitlyn. For baby Hannah? I think I just read some comic books to pass the time.

Talk about being shortchanged. Basically, we’ve pretty much done zilch for Hannah. But just to make myself feel better, I’m going to say it’s because we have a lot of hand-me-down clothing from Caitlyn and other people, we already know what to expect, and I’ve actually been so well-behaved that there haven’t been any pregnancy mishaps on my part to blog about.

But now that Hannah is here, I hope that I can treat both of my children fairly. I hope that I don’t play favorites. Both of my children deserve my time and attention equally.  I know it’s not easy. I was the second one in our family. Even though my parents would never admit it, I know my sister set the gold standard in their eyes. They say being second is just the first loser. Hannah maybe have come into this world second, but she’s a winner in my book! After all, you can't have an earthquake as your grand entrance and not be a rock star.

 

Little Miss Four-Eyes

Time to put on your learning caps, boys and girls! We’re going to be learning all about amblyopia today. For us not so smart folks out there, amblyopia is just a fancy way of saying “lazy eye,” a problem that can sometimes occur in children. In a child with lazy eye, one of the eyes has a different quality of vision than the other. That eye may produce weaker or more distorted images than the other eye. Therefore, the brain learns over time to start ignoring that eye and begins to only accept images from the stronger eye.

One cause of amblyopia is strabismus (cross-eyes). Children with strabismus often have double vision and try to correct for this by focusing with one eye more than the other. One type of strabismus is called esotropia. In esotropia, one eye is turned towards the nose while the other eye looks forward.

Accommodative esotropia is a type of esotropia that is caused by farsightedness. The usual onset of accommodative esotropia is between 2-3 years of age and occurs in approximately 1.2% of all children by the age of 7.

Bifocal glasses are usually prescribed to correct the crossing of the eye in accommodative esotropia. Eye patches are also sometimes used to cover the stronger eye to force the child to use and strengthen the other eye. If the glasses control the crossing of the eyes, eye surgery is not recommended.

The degree of farsightedness will often increase gradually until about 8 years of age. By the time they are teens, some children may no longer need glasses to keep their eyes straight, while others will need to continue wearing corrective lens even as adults.

As you may have figured out, I'm writing all this because Caitlyn was recently diagnosed with accommodative esotropia. Pop quiz! Do you still remember what that is without looking?

While it does suck that she is part of the 1.2% that has this condition, I have to admit that she does look super scholarly and bookish. Something that I’m sure Harvard holds in high esteem. Plus, with all the practice she had wearing those pink heart-shaped glasses of hers, Caitlyn isn’t the least bit bothered by wearing the real ones. Secretly, I can't wait to get her a pair like Harry Potter to wear. But the best part is, now she can look just like Mommy and Daddy!

Our doctor says Caitlyn will probably be wearing the corrective glasses for a year before her eye straightens out, but according to what I've read, farsightedness gradually increases until you’re about 8 years old, which is probably the earliest Caitlyn will be able to stop wearing glasses. I tried telling this to the wife, but she said she’ll believe the doctor over me. Guess I’ll have to patiently wait a few years before I can say, “In yo’ face, woman! I told you so!”