Warren. The Big Brother.

Warren takes his role as big brother very seriously. Warren also doesn't understand how much bigger he is than his little brother so he ends up being pretty overbearing... Let me show you what I mean...

Lucas is starting to catch on to the whole idea of "self defense". Warren kinda freaks the poor kid out, so now that Lucas is beginning to figure out that he can control the movement of his extremities, he does his best to push Warren out of his face. Warren just doesn't understand the concept of personal space yet, so he likes to get right up in Lucas' face, and Lucas isn't as enthusiastic about that. haha. However, they are getting to the point where they sometimes interact peacefully. Warren loooooves to make Lucas laugh, so every once and a while I catch them laughing together and it gives me hope that one day they'll actually be best friends. haha. In the meantime, I will continue to fulfill the role as baby bodyguard. :P

Lucas

Today my baby is 9 months old! Normally this is the "you've been out as long as you were in" milestone, but as you're fully aware, Lucas is an exception...

Look at how small he was when he came home, compared to today! He's tripled his weight since then and is now 18 lbs of chub. I sure do love him.

Here's a look at how he's grown since coming home after 10 weeks in the NICU.

Due Date Picture

I realized that I left a lot of the details of Lucas' NICU stay out. I pretty much left it off at his big scary nuclear scan where they were trying to see if there was a connection that kept making the mass on his liver grow. It was a good theory, but ultimately wasn't the case.

A few days after that, they did some blood work and found that the mass was still causing major problems. It was putting huge stress on his liver function. There was even a brief moment where they had included oncology, and talked about transferring Lucas to the Denver Children's Hospital in case a liver transplant became necessary... Thankfully that never happened. They found out that his vitamin K level was low, so they gave him a shot of vitamin K and he responded to that immediately. That was encouraging, because it showed it wasn't a tumor, and that if the abscess was taken care of for good, then it would most likely solve all his problems. Major surgery became the only solution. 

On September 11, 2014 the surgery was performed. The surgeon made a 3 inch incision and found that mass was the size of a ping pong ball. Keep in mind, he was only about 5 lbs at this time, so that size of a mass is even more astounding. After slicing it open it was found that it was full of puss, so they cleaned it out, and left it open inside of him for his body to absorb. The surgeon said that after seeing it, that it was no wonder that it didn't respond to the antibiotics. It was so large and so thick, that the antibiotics had no way of penetrating it. After the surgery, the antibiotics finally did what they were supposed to do and killed off any bacteria that was causing harm. Lucas was only on pain killers for less than 24 hours and bounced right back. He steadily improved from there.

Lucas had one more surgery to repair a hernia a couple weeks later. That poor kid was sure put through a lot. But the day finally came! We took him home on October 4, just a few days before his actual due date.

I am so incredibly grateful for the dedication his doctors and nurses had. Lucas sure was a unique case. I am even more grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ for giving us comfort when nobody could give us good news, and for strengthening us to be able to handle all this madness. I admit that I didn't handle it all gracefully, but now I realize that handling trying times gracefully isn't the measuring stick I should be using. As long as I'm praying, listening to promptings and clinging to the hope of the Gospel, that's really all I could have done. I'm human, so there's no way I could ever handle something like that perfectly. I did my best to keep trying and keep hoping, and there's not much else I could have done beyond that, and that's okay. The experience brought me closer to the Savior, so the trial served it's purpose in that way. I just never want to repeat it. haha.

Now, Lucas has been completely off oxygen since Christmas, he's just starting to eat solids, and he's so chubby he can't figure out how to roll onto his belly from his back. Though he is perfectly content being on his back and watching the world, so his motivation to move around is lacking. He is off all medications, and has a clean bill of health. My little miracle baby.

The Do's and Don'ts For When Friends Have Sick Loved Ones

My husband was asking me a while ago what ever happened to my blogging. I honestly haven't even thought to blog since the last post back in August. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that blogging about Lucas had become a coping mechanism to help me process his being in the NICU.

People would ask me all the time how I was doing and what they could do to help, and I realized those questions were being asked with good intentions, but they also weren't asking for the actual truth. They didn't want me to burst out in tears, and they didn't want to sit down with me for three hours to really let me get all my feelings out. So I had a really difficult time talking with people face to face. I felt like I had to put on a face in public that I was dealing with everything perfectly fine, when on the inside I was a complete mess. I couldn't think of the next day, and I couldn't think of what if's. I just had to "be". 

I blogged in an attempt to get people to stop asking me how I was and what's going on. I tried to give a quick summary of events and made my blog posts public in case they wanted all the specific details.  Looking back, as hard as it was going through all the ups and downs of Lucas' well being, it was harder putting myself in social situations. It was hardest for me to go to Church. I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb. Everyone knew a tidbit of information and they wanted more. I don't blame them though. Healthy babies are born all the time in the Church. It seemed like premature births were an anomaly, and it brought up natural curiosity to find out more. Even though my head knew it was natural for others to be curious, it was emotionally exhausting to be at Church, needing my Spirit to be filled with strength, but instead getting asked the same question (How is your baby?), over and over again, each time being harder to give an answer and hold back my tears and smile. Truth is, the majority of the time he wasn't okay. That's not something that is easy to say out loud once, let alone several times in a three hour span. So I just didn't say it. I said something about how he was getting there, or I said he was getting bigger, but it really was really hard to come up with something that didn't sound depressing or hopeless each time.

My point in saying all of this is not to make others feel bad. I know that had I not gone through it myself, I probably would have asked the same questions, and done everything that I wished people would stop doing to me. I'm not upset with anyone, but I do want to help people understand what the "Do's and Don'ts" are if they were ever to encounter someone again going through something difficult like that.

 1. DO NOT ask "How are you?".  Think about it. If you had a sick baby in the hospital, would you be okay? If you gave birth to a baby and had to leave the hospital without him, would you be okay?  It's impossible to be in that situation and "be okay". You are always worried. You are always overwhelmed. You always feel like there's not enough of you to go around.

Instead. Don't ask anything at all. The most meaningful thing anyone ever did while Lucas was sick was when a woman came up to me, pulled me into her arms and gave me the most heartfelt hug I have every experienced. I felt as if she was encircling me with compassion and that hugging me was the only thing that could properly convey how much she truly wished for the wellbeing of my family. That hug rejuvenated my Spirit, helped me feel understood, and allowed me to let go of my defense for just a moment.  Not a single word was said, but that moment will always be a cherished memory.

2. DO NOT ask "What do you need?". Truth is, in those moments, I didn't even know what I needed, so how could I tell someone else? My mind was always occupied with how could I get to the hospital to see my baby that day. Was I going to get good news or bad news when I got there. Does my three year old still know that I love him. Am I spending enough time with my husband. Do my parents know what's going on. All those things can't be fixed by someone else.

Instead. Show up with food. I was so overwhelmed that I didn't even think of feeding myself or my family. You could also check in to see if they need help with their other kids that day. Asking for help is harder than I would have expected. I already felt like a charity case, so the more stuff I asked for, the more I felt I couldn't fulfill my responsibility as a mother. When someone just called and offered their help right then, it was an incredible relief.

3. DO tell them you are keeping them in your prayers. Put them on the Prayer Roll at the Temple. There really isn't much that you can do anyways, so whenever someone told me that, it always meant a lot to me.

4. DO offer to clean their kitchen or do their laundry, but don't ask when you can come over. As I previously explained, asking for help all the time made me feel like I wasn't doing a good job at being a wife or mom. When you ask when you can come over, you're just not going to get a straight answer. Work it out in your own schedule when you can come over and help, tell the person that you have this time cleared and make sure that they will be there to let you in. It may be help that is hard to accept, but it is help that will make a difference and relieve a burden.

5. Most of all, when you are with them, treat them like any other normal person. I noticed that sometimes when people would talk to me, there was this obvious look on their face of pity. Pity isn't understanding or compassion. Pity makes you feel like you are less than everyone else, and that feeling sucks. Talk to them about what's going on in your own life instead of just cutting to the chase because you're wondering about the sick kid. Hearing about someone elses drama free and uneventful life is oddly comforting and gives someone in a hard circumstance something to look forward to happening in their own life one day.

Please use these tips with anyone, young or old who has a loved one in the hospital. It is such a draining experience. It is something you can't fully understand unless you have gone through it yourself. Please help make it easier for them. You can do more for their emotional wellbeing than you even realize.