The transfer and pregnancy test results

So the embryo transfer was on April 2nd!   

Wyatt went over to his Auntie's house for a couple of days.  This was so I could just lay on the couch so that little embryo could burrow in.  It's important to not do anything or stress out about anything at all during that first little while.

Here's a magnified view of the embryo before it was transferred.  It's already starting to hatch!

After the transfer Jared picked up some PF Changs for me to gorge on and he went off to work.

At first I was like, OMG SILENCE!!  This is amazing!  la la la la la I can do whatever I want.. as long as I don't get up.  That lasted for about an hour before I was like holycrapiamsofreakingboredoutofmymind and howdidisurvivelikethiswheniwasonbedrestfortenweeks?!

Being a mom has changed me.

When Wyatt came home I was all excited to see him and he didn't want anything to do with me.  I think he was made at me or something.  Sorry kid.  He warmed up the next day though.

 So now I just had to wait 2 weeks for a pregnancy test.  Two whole weeks.  These two weeks always seem like the longest two weeks of my life.

During this time, Wyatt got a fungal infection in his diaper.  Oh the joys of Ichthyosis.  So he had a lot of naked time {which I was totally cool with because baby butts are the cutest}

 He had naked time in the pool

 Naked time playing running around the yard

 Naked time helping daddy plant an avocado tree

The kid loved being naked

Naked time plus Clotrimazole really seemed to really help the infection clear up.  Yay!

Here's a couple of bath time pictures since those ones are always the best

I love his personality!

So 5 days after the transfer I was super anxious and cheated.  I took a pregnancy test.  Then I took another on Wednesday morning.  Then another on Friday.  Finally I went and got one of those yes/no pregnancy tests so that all of the guesswork was taken out and

I'm so flipping excited to be a mom again!!!  We do know the gender, but want to make sure the little bean decides to stick around before we share.  We'll reveal the gender around the end of May.

As of now, I am 5 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  We got our first peak at what was going on in me on Wednesday

It's still too early to see a heartbeat {It's not strong enough to pick up on an u/s yet} but the dr. was able to see a yolk sac and cardiovascular tissue.  Hooray!!!

The next appt is set for a week and a half from now. :)

My family is so blessed!

Big boy bed

In a couple of weeks, I'll {hopefully} be pregnant.

As soon as I'm pregnant, I'll be on a modified bedrest.

Modified bedrest means no picking up anything heavier than 5 lbs.

Wyatt is over 5 lbs.

This got me thinking.  How in the heck am I supposed to get this kid down for a nap every day?!  Daddy can get him up in the morning and put him down for bed at night... but I'm the only one here with him at nap time during the week.  I kept getting the feeling that I really needed to get him in a toddler bed.  But almost everyone I know with kids Wyatt's age are still in cribs right now.  Keep them caged as long as you can right?  This last Thursday I finally decided to just do it.  So I told Jared to get out the conversion kit out so I could get it changed over.

After Wyatts nap I pulled his crib out from the wall and took off the crib parts.  And OH. MY. GOSH.  There was skin everywhere.  I do a pretty good job of vacuuming his bed out every other day, but his skin got through the crooks and crannies of the crib down to the parts you can't get to unless you take it apart.  I mean, it was bad.  It made me feel like I need to take his whole bed apart one a month just to get it thoroughly cleaned out... but that's not realistic.  There's way too many things on my to do list to spend 3 hours doing that. :/

Anyway, Wyatt stayed in the room with me the whole time, running laps around his bed, trying to jack the screwdriver from me, and climbing up on whatever he could.  When everything was finished and I pushed the bed up on the wall, Wyatt tried to climb up onto it... but he's too short, haha.  I helped him find his stool and with a little help from me, he was able to get up on his bed.  He sat there for a minute with a big smile on his face, and then climbed down.  Then he climbed back up, and down, and up, and down.  Threw his blankets off, then put them back on and laid on all of them.  He was definitely excited to be able to get in bed all by himself.

Friday night was Wyatt's first night in his big boy bed.

I sat in bed with him and we read a nighttime story, something I've never been able to do before.  And then I rocked him while he drank his night bottle.  I put him down and he was so tired he barely made it over to his bed.  He laid down on his tummy, I tucked him in, then closed the door.

I haven't had the baby monitor on in forever, but with him being in a 'new' bed, I wanted to listen to make sure he didn't get out of bed and start playing with toys.  Within 20 minutes, that baby boy was sound asleep.  I checked on him several times throughout the night, and had to move him back up the bed twice, but my big boy didn't get out of his bed even once.

3 nights and 3 naps later, he's still sleeping like a champ.

He doesn't even get out of bed until I go in his room to get him!

I wonder if he even realizes he's able to get out all by himself...

I'm not going to question it though! I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts, because I'm positive it's not going to last like this forever :)

Wyatt fell

Having a kid with ichthyosis... I'm always afraid of Wyatt falling.  Falling for Wyatt doesn't mean a little scrap or bruise.  It means a chunk of skin is going to come off.

Well, yesterday it happened.  Wyatt fell.

Not the normal trip over your shoes and face plant in the carpet.  This was a legit, fall of the couch and bang your head on the step stool on the way fall.  Oh my gosh I don't know if I've ever heard this little guy scream as loud as he did then.  I immediately picked him up and tried to comfort him but he wanted nothing to do with hugs, or back rubs or kisses.  So I set him down so he could shake it out.  He kicked around on the ground for a second, then stood up and walked back and forth a few times shouting baby profanity, and then he finally came back into my arms.

I brought him into the bathroom to survey the damage and discovered that, during his fall, his head turned and he had whacked his ear on the stool.  Ouch buddy!  Skin was peeled back and the wound was weeping a little bit.  I got him distracted with random bathroom items and removed the peeled away skin as best I could, then I made sure we didn't rough and tumble play any more that day.  He seems to be okay and acting completely normal.  Thank goodness he didn't get a concussion!

This isn't a great shot of it, but this is how his owie looked this morning

It hurts me to just look at that picture.  Poor kid!

 Excuse the bed hair, he hadn't gotten ready for the day yet. :)

Adding speech therapy

A couple of months ago Wyatt was evaluated for speech therapy.

I was really nervous for this evaluation.

Van, Wyatt's regional center supervisor told me we needed to wait until Wyatt was at least 18 months old so that his chances of being approved were better.

The lady that came out was really nice and tried to get Wyatt to play with her, but he was pretty clingy to me the whole time.  She asked a lot of questions and then told me that unofficially she thought he would benefit from speech therapy but needed to go through everything before she could officially recommend him.  A few weeks later we heard back that he had been approved to receive Speech once a week.  Yay!!!  We started as soon as our Christmas vacation was over.

At that point Wyatt was saying momma, dada, kitty and this.  In the last month of therapy Wyatt has started imitating almost everything that we say and is up to 15-20 words!  I'm am SO proud of my little man!  His therapist does a really good job working with him and has a routine that she goes through every week, which I LOVE, because it's teaching him good life skills.

So now Wyatt has physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and an infant teacher.  Phew!  Thank goodness they all come to us!  That's one of the benefits of him being high risk for infection I guess.  I'll take it.  :)

He still babbles most of the time but it's getting easier and easier to pick out some of the words he's using.  In this clip it's mostly, tickle, and back up {we're working on walking backwards}

Winter is the worst

Fall was too short and winter is the worst.

I didn't think it was possible for Wyatt's skin to get any drier than it already is.  Wrong!  He has been sooo dry!  And his skin is incredibly thick right now so there are lots of cracks on the back of his hands and on his wrists, ankles, and elbow creases.  I wish fall would have been longer than it was.  It was hot well into October, so we really only had about 2 or 3 weeks of perfect Wyatt weather.

The last couple of weeks have been really brutal for Wyatt.  He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and it takes 30-60 minutes to get him settled down enough to get back to sleep.  When he gets up in the morning he constantly itches his neck, which is at an all time bad right now and then he's grumpy throughout the day from itching, regular toddler tantrums, and interrupted sleep.

I'll admit, we've been letting Wyatt have more fun bath time than descaling bath time.  Apparently that was a bad idea.  I guess a little bit of pain every day will beat out a lot of aggravation in the long run from having thick build up?  His head still looks great, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done on his underarms.  Like, a lot.  Sigh.  Ichthyosis sucks.

To top it all off I'm pretty certain Wyatt has a skin infection going on.  One of his awesome dr.'s called in an antibiotic for him that he's been on for a few days now.  I've noticed he's been a happier boy since he was started on the medicine.  I look forward to having a happy, healthy little boy again.

I wish fall would have been longer.  I used to love winter... but as far as Wyatt is concerned, spring can't come soon enough!

Anxiously awaiting autumn

I feel like it's been hot forever and I'm ready for autumn.  I mean, it IS October and all.  Wyatt and I are tired of being imprisoned in our home and I'm pretty sure he's getting sick of only being around me all day long.  When daddy comes home he gets THE biggest smile on his face and literally screams with joy.  It's super cute.  We need outdoor time.  I'm done with this 80 and 90 degree weather!

Autumn is my favorite time of year, even before Wyatt came along.
To me, Autumn means changing leaves.
It means pleasant days with cool nights.
It means sweaters and scarves.
It means all things pumpkin are socially acceptable to eat again.
It means hot chocolate and bonfires.
It means pumpkin patches, farmers markets & apple picking.
And it smells like cinnamon and spice.

If weather.com's prediction is right, we'll have one more week in the 90's and in 3 weeks we'll start getting into the 70's.  I can't wait!!!  At least it cools off in the evenings.

The other night Wyatt and daddy jumped on the trampoline and rode around on the bear tracker.  Daddy is set on Wyatt loving 4 wheelers as much as he does so he said they are going to ride for 10 minutes every day. :)

I bought pumpkin spice m&m's the other day and they taste like fall.  It's really the only way to describe it.  I bought pumpkin ice cream and I made a pumpkin gooey butter cake.  My house is all decorated, I even broke out my fall candles.  Since it's always freezing in my house, I'll just wear scarves and drink herbal tea and pretend like it's autumn until it is :)

Learning to stand

This last week our main focus with Wyatt has been helping him build the confidence to stand on his own.  He's gone from immediately falling over, to standing for a few seconds all on his own.

We're so proud of him!

I feel like the timing of Wyatt's helmet couldn't have been better.  Often, when kids with ichthyosis learn to crawl, then walk, as with other children they fall down.  A lot.  The difference with ichthyosis kids is, each fall can result in some pretty bad damage.  A blister on their feet or a chunk of skin missing on their head when they clipped the table or ran into the door-jamb... luckily Wyatt's helmet is not only helping to shape his head, it's helping protect him from his falls :)

We're soooo close to having a walker I can hardly stand it!

I got kicked out of Wyatt's therapy

Wyatts therapists have decided that he is too attached to me.  For example, last week when his PT walked in the door, he crawled behind me, stood up, and peeked around and gave her this look that said, "You'll have to go through my MOM to get to me!"  So... My presence is now a distraction and they want to work on getting him less attached.  Thus I got kicked out.  They're in my living room working with Wyatt and I get 50 minutes of free time!  

Woohoo!!!  

Now I just have to decide what to do with these 50 golden minutes...

I could give myself a pedicure

I could lay out {yeah right}

I could... oh who am I kidding?

It means I have time to clean my office.

Teething & the park

Wyatt is getting his 4th molar in right now and is going through some serious teething pains.  These molars have been harder for him than any of his other teeth.

I never had my wisdom teeth removed and a couple of them came in a few years ago.  HOLY CRAP IT HURT!  I really feel for these little guys!  I can't imagine having that happen over and over and over for months on end.  But I really feel bad for kids with EHK.  When Wyatt teethes it stresses out his body and he gets blisters all over.  Pain inside and out.  The past 2 weeks he's been waking up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night dealing with itchy skin and now we get to add teething and blisters to the list.  This isn't any fun for him

On a fun note...

Yesterday was Wyatt weather!!!  70 degrees and overcast until noon!  We celebrated by going to the park.  It's been so hot out the past few months that we haven't had any outdoor excursions so we were both very relieved to get a break from our house prison.

This was Wyatts first time at the park.  I plopped him in the stroller and walked the 3/4 mile to get there.  Wyatt was practically in a trans with all of the activity around him.  He loves walks :)

When we got there I discovered that our park doesn't have any swings.  Lame!  What park doesn't have swings?  So he slid down the slid {with some help from me} over and over and over.  And then he stood at the bottom of it and hit it for like 5 minutes.  It made a different sound than all of the other things that he's hit before so of course it was entertaining.  I'm glad he's easily amused!

Hopefully this heat goes away for good soon so we can have lots more outdoor adventures!

Close to walking!

Wyatt has been cruising and crawling EVERYWHERE lately and it has been wonderful!  I love his independence!  Yesterday he started pushing his activity table away from the couch.  I thought he was just being lazy and pushing it our of his way because he didn't want to walk around it.  But then he started doing this!

My little boy is getting SO close to walking on his own!  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!  I expect he'll be walking within 2-4 weeks WHICH MEANS he'll be walking by Halloween!  People won't look at me like a complete freak when I roll up with a stroller bc my big boy is going to walk to the doors this year!  :)  Eek!

One big baby step

A lot has gone on in the past week!  Actually, a little over a week huh?  Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted.

I last wrote about how Wyatt's feeds were starting for the 2nd time and I'll continue from there. 

So after hours and hours and hours of him crying I went home and passed out for a few hours.  Since he threw up during his feed on Wednesday they decided to DC them for 24 hours.  When I spoke to his night nurse I expressed my concern with him taking a bottle.  I told her that I didn't think he was old enough yet bc it had taken him nearly 30 minutes to take 3 cc's of breast milk and would it be possible for him to just stick to the NG tube for now.  She agreed that was way too long and said she would bring it up during rounds.  Wyatt slept all night Wednesday and into the day Thursday.  I got there bright and early Thursday morning bc I wanted to be there when the dr's rounded.  When they came over to Wyatt's room, the attending stepped in the room and told me that she wanted to talk to me privately first.  She then continued on to tell me that "orders that are put in the computer are in there for a reason and they need to be followed" and how Wyatt was supposed to be fed with an NG tube yesterday NOT a bottle because he isn't developed enough yet.  Then she did that pause where you think a person is done talking, but they're not... so I started to defend myself {because DUH I WASN'T pushing him taking a bottle, in fact, I was doing the exact opposite} and as soon as I started talking she totally snapped at me "Let me finish".  Okaaayyyyyyy... whatever.  She finished reaming me in the nicest way possible as I sat there completely dumbfounded trying to figure out what the heck was going on.  She finished by adding on that sometimes parents have good ideas and so I can always share them whenever I want and walked out.  They talked about their plans for Wyatt for the day and then she looked at me and said "are you okay with that?" as if my opinion even mattered at that point.  I was so mad and still trying to figure out what had just happened with her {one sided} conversation with me that I just said yes and went back into Wyatt's room.  And as I sat there and played back the last few minutes in my mind it suddenly clicked.  She was blaming me for Wyatt getting fed with a bottle yesterday.  Somehow and someway things had been miscommunicated so badly that she had been told I pushed for him to have a bottle.  That was the dumbest thing ever.  And now I'm convinced that she doesn't like me.

Anyway

They tried feeding him again on Thursday and he threw up after about 1 cc.  He threw up a lot more than what he took in so the nurse stopped the feeds and the dr.'s decided to wait another 24 hours. :(  But he was in a really great mood. 

And I got to hold him!  I LOVE holding my guy. :)

The rest of the day was uneventful.  When we put him back in the isolate he fell asleep and he pretty much stayed asleep until Friday night.

On Friday, feeds were once again started, but this time they decided to try continuous feeds and put him on an antacid.  He would be fed 3 cc's over the course of 3 hours to see how his tummy would tolerate it.  Every time they checked his tummy it looked great and he wasn't throwing up at all. :)

 At one point during the day I was looking at Wyatt and trying to see if he looked like me at all.  Jared had showed me one of his baby pictures the night before and he and Wyatt seriously look like they could be brothers.  It's a little ridiculous.  Just saying.  So I asked my sister to send me some pictures of me as a baby.  And... well... it's official.  The Barney genes 100% dominated this baby.

Here are the three of us as babies

Me with my mom and with my dad

me a few months old

{I wish I could put a few more of Jared as a baby, but there was a fire in his parents house years ago and I think most of them were burned.}

 So yeah, definitely his fathers son :)

When Jared and I came in on Saturday the skin all over Wyatt's body was sloughing off. 

The dr.'s suspected another infection so the feeds were stopped and they did a skin culture, urine culture, and blood culture.  They went ahead and started him on 3 different antibiotics, just in case, and they took an x-ray of his bowels/tummy area.  The x-ray showed a shadow in the lower left quadrant and so they ordered an ultrasound to get a better picture of what it could be.  They told me that it could be nothing but they were concerned it might be a fungal ball.

The dr.'s also decided to bring in the pain management team to help manage his pain better.  Thank. Goodness.  I'm so glad that this was done!!!  I talked with the pain mgt. team about my goals for Wyatt.  At that point he was on morphine 4x a day with morphine PRN's (as needed) so if he really needed it, he could get morphine every 2 hours.  My goal for him was to get him off of the morphine.  Morphine is addictive and I was afraid of his body becoming dependent on the drug.  I told them that I would like for him to be weened off of that and to be on a different pain medication and eventually get him on something that I could give him at home if he needed it.  All of us were pretty much on the same page and they said they wanted to ween him off the morphine by about 10% a day and evaluate every day to make sure he was tolerating it.

Wyatt slept most of Saturday and Sunday, but would randomly move a little and make sad, I don't feel good, baby noises.  His skin looked about the same the next day, no real improvement, but a little more skin sloughing off.  The final report from the ultrasound came back, and it showed that everything was good, no fungal ball! Yay! :)

From my experience with his previous sloughs, all the areas on his body that are white, is skin that will eventually slough off within a few days.  Poor thing really did just shed everything this time.

Monday was about the same, slept all day, skin looked about the same.  The cultures were all pretty normal.  Blood culture showed nothing, urine, nothing, and the skin culture showed staff orius, which is everyones skin so they weren't worried about it.

On Tuesday his skin had a lot more pink in it.  And once again, he just slept all day.

When I called early Wednesday morning to see how Wyatt was doing, his nurse told me that his picc line had slipped.  They took an x-ray and the line was no longer central.  She told me that they would be discussing a broviac again during rounds that morning.  I got there around 7:30 and his skin looked amazing.  He was sleeping on his tummy and his butt and back looked so good!  When he woke up he was happy and smiling and acting like Wyatt again. :) 

At rounds, the nurse asked the dr.'s if Wyatt could get switched from the nasal cannula IMV to a regular nasal cannula or have it DC'd all together since he was just pulling it off anyway. The attending wanted him to still have some support, so they switched him to a high flow nasal cannula. :)  In regards to the picc line slipping, the attending said that she was going to consult surgery and have them place a broviac and then they could talk about possibly starting his feeds again on Saturday.  She didn't ask me my opinion on the broviac, and I wanted to hear the surgeon's opinion, so I didn't say anything.  But Jared and I still don't want to do it.  Why cut into him if they can just do another picc line?

The attending had a surgeon come by and look at Wyatt so that the procedure could get scheduled for he next day.  The surgeon was telling me about the plans and so I told her that I wasn't interested in doing a broviac.  That I felt it was best to avoid it if we could and to leave it as a last option.  After she and I talked for several minutes and I explained why I felt the way I felt, she told me that, personally, she agreed with me, but if we did opt to do the surgery that he would be a good candidate for it.  She left to call the attending and tell her that we would not be going forward with the procedure but came back like a minute later and told me that the attending would be coming over to talk to me about it.  Apparently she felt strongly that he should have this done.

Here we go again.  Same rodeo, different day.

I wasn't too thrilled to talk to the attending about anything because this was the same dr. that blamed me for the bottle incident.  She isn't very nice to me and is very condescending.

I let her explain why it is sooo imperative that we do the broviac and then told her I didn't want to do it.  I told her I wanted to avoid doing surgery on him as long as we can and that I really just wanted to have another picc line put in.  We went back and forth for while and finally she sort of scoffed at me and said, "Well you sound well versed in what you're saying" and that she would see if there was anyone that would even be willing to attempt a picc.  Gee thanks doc.  Glad we're on the same team here.  I swear that woman hates me.

For the rest of the day we played with Wyatt.  The little stinker was back to his old tricks, pulling the nasal cannula out every chance he got. I may or may not have intentionally not told the nurse when it was out. He was breathing great with it out and wasn't having any desats or anything. 

He had some fun sucking on my finger, until he figured out nothing was coming out of it and he didn't want it anymore.

And Wyatt and daddy had some bonding time

Thursday morning about 3 am the picc procedure began.  I asked his nurse, Marissa {she's one of his primary nurses and we LOVE her} if she would please call us and let us know whether or not the procedure was successful.  About 4:51 am, Marissa called and told me they were able to get a picc in! :)  The only really good vein left was in his head, so that's where it had to go and they got it first try.  They had to shave part of his head in order to get the dressings to stick and she told me that she saved the hair for me since it's technically his first hair cut. 

I'm so happy that I followed my gut instinct and had them do another picc.  Hopefully this one lasts a lot longer than 3 or 4 weeks so that we don't ever have to visit this situation again.  3rd time is the charm right?

At rounds on Thursday they decided to ween his nasal cannula again and went from the high flow to a regular flow.  I'm so proud of my little man for breathing so well!

 Dad- now you can gage how big he looks in the isolate.  Still pretty teeny but a TON bigger than when he first joined the world.

On Friday Wyatt was the happiest little boy in the whole NICCU because he was taken off the nasal cannula!  AND they DC'd the aminophylline {the drug that helps him remember to breathe}.  He is now 100% breathing on his own. :) Yay!!!!  My little boy is really growing up!

We had some bonding time and did kangaroo care for 2 hours.  It was awesome.

It'll be awesome when it isn't such a production every time I want to hold him, but I'm very glad that I do at least get to hold him now. :)

Another fun thing, Wyatt found his thumb.  He didn't suck on it for very long, but it was super cute to watch him suck it for a few minutes.

On Saturday, the dr.'s decided to continue Wyatt's antibiotics for 10 more days just to play it safe.  They also started his feeds back up!  He's on continuous feeds and getting 1 cc over an hour.  He's still breathing great on his own and his blood gas looked good so they changed his labs from every day to twice a week.

Jared held Wyatt for a couple of hours and I read them a story.  Sam and the Firefly :)

And we're pretty sure Wyatt's eyes are starting to turn green.

He is such a beautiful boy! <3

Yesterday was a great finish to the week. :)