Well around September 23rd Ethan started spitting up pretty badly. Now, he had spit up before, and all babies spit up, but this was starting to get out of control. We had a check up scheduled for that Tuesday but I called to move the appointment up to Monday as I was pretty worried about my 3.5 week old little boy. He slept for seven hours without wanting to eat on Sunday night and we woke him up so that he could eat and then spit up everything he just ate. Connor was eating like a champ at this point and so I thought that perhaps Ethan just didn't want to be on the same schedule as his hungry little brother. But I started seeing this "pyloric stenosis" thing pop up on the message boards.
Pyloric stenosis is a disorder where your pyloric muscle is enlarged - the muscle between your stomach and your intestines. As you grow, the muscle grows as well and it blocks off this path so nothing gets past your stomach. Thus everything in your stomach has nowhere to but back up. The only solution is surgery, but that's it, no long term problems or effects. They just cut the muscle and it heals back in its proper place. It's somewhat rare, about 1 in 500 live births, and I had no reason to think it was this except for the fact that my dad had it and it is somewhat hereditary. He didn't know what it was called but when my mom and I called and asked him if it was pyloric stenosis it must have rung a bell, because he said that's exactly what it is.
So off we went to the pediatrician who sent us for an ultrasound to confirm. The ultrasound showed that Ethan did indeed have pyloric stensosis. But because he was dehydrated, we'd have to give him IV fluids and wait for the surgery to be the next morning. The IV fluids perked Ethan up enough for him to realize that he was hungry, and we had a looooooong night of trying to console him without food.
He was not happy.
But the next morning he went into surgery and did just great. We stayed an extra night to monitor him and make sure he was taking food okay and Mom stayed home with Connor. Blake and I asked the surgeon if we should be concerned that Connor might have the same thing. After all they were twins, but not identical. He said it was extremely unlikely that Connor would also be sick and we looked up the odds and it was something like seven percent.
Well Mom called me on Tuesday evening to say that Connor had started spitting up some larger amounts. And I thought, let's not be paranoid! Babies spit up and the surgeon said the odds were super low and let's just wait it out.
Next Monday, exactly a week later, we did the same parade of pediatrician, ultrasound, hospital for round 2 of pyloric stenosis. Because we got the jump on Connor's issue a bit quicker, he didn't have to wait overnight for surgery, we got to get him in right away.
He was still not happy, but less so.
There was some kerfuffle with his medication and so we ended up staying from Monday until Wednesday again. We were discharged on Wednesday and I had to be back at work on Friday! It was true craziness, but we got through it with happy, healthy little boys thanks too all the support from our families and our church family. Thank you all so much!
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