San Francisco and Feeding

By my third wrong left turn in San Francisco, I had had it.  The rain had already ruined my plans for the morning, and now I was heading--on accident--away from the city on the Bay Bridge to Oakland, and there was no way to flip a quick U-turn.  As I was doing my best to not say bad words, I heard my youngest kids in the back seat of the van saying, “This is awesome.  This bridge is long!”  At that moment I decided that if the kids were happy with the erroneous left turn onto the Bay Bridge then I should be too.

Of course, as every conscientious father would do, I made a point to help my children understand the various risks associated with crossing this particular bridge.  Just after telling them that the bridge had collapsed during the last great earth quake to hit the Bay Area in the late 80’s, I mentioned nonchalantly that just last week large, heavy pieces of metal had fallen from the overhead lane, smashing a few cars (fortunately no one was killed), which had caused the bridge to be closed for several days.  I reassured them that the nearly bankrupted California Department of Transportation had enough resources to fix the troubled bridge, and that they had nothing to worry about.  Just in case, however, I asked them to lie on the floor of the van under their seats in the event that wayward pieces of bridge just happened to collapse the roof our van.  You can never be too cautious, right?

We finally made it to San Francisco, while Lisa remained at Lucile Packard with Abigail.  While mine and the kids day consisted of looking at tropical fish and butterflies (California Academy of Science) and riding bicycles along the bay, Lisa spent her day, haggling with doctors about how often they were going to let her nurse Abigail.  On top of that she got to sit in a cubicle in the Pump Room for who knows how many minutes of the day. Dad's have it easy, and get to do all the fun stuff.

But then again, she did get to spend a substantial amount of time with the baby, and I didn’t.  I’m actually going through Abigail withdrawals.  Odd.  I’ve never felt that before.  I now get a sense for why most mothers--including my wife--hesitate to leave their kids for a vacation.  Such a thing has never been difficult for me because I haven’t spent--until two weeks ago--every waking moment at their service.  With Abigail, I have done just that. And after two days without her, I miss her.

Having said that, spending the last two days with the “big” kids has been an absolute pleasure.  For a week, we stewed over the decision on whether to bring them.  Will it cost too much money?  Could Sami and Jeffrey miss school?  Are we going to be able to entertain them while we trying to look after Abigail’s well-being?  Our practical side told us, ”they’re resilient; they can handle another week,” but our gut told us that we needed some face time.  Thankfully, we listened to our gut.  And once again, the gut turned out to be correct.

Emma has spontaneously hugged me, thanked me for bringing her to California, and told me that she loves me at least 50 times in the last two days.  The kids have been kind to each other, have enjoyed each other’s company, and I have enjoyed them thoroughly. I think I’ve enjoyed them more these last few days than I ever have--another blessing of this experience.

I spoke earlier this week to a friend from Provo, Kathy (Shields) Shumway, whose 3 year old son was born with essentially half a heart.  He’s made remarkable progress considering his condition, but the long term prognosis is still somewhat uncertain, according to Kathy.  One of the blessings of his life and the uncertainty about his future, she said, was that she has learned to savor every moment of his life, which in turn has helped her savor and love her other children that much more.  Lisa and I have felt the same way, and I hope that we will do whatever it takes to keep that feeling.

This idea has been on my mind the last few days--the idea of how to maintain this spirit that we’ve had in our marriage and family after things return to normal, and the trauma and the emotion of this experience winds down.  How do we step back into reality yet maintain the love and the spirit of the last few weeks?  How do we keep, as Plato suggested, one foot in the real world and one foot in the ideal plane?  Those are key questions that all of us must continue to ask ourselves, and I have a few answers, but it will take far too long to develop right now, and I have to get to bed.  So, perhaps on Sunday afternoon, after I’ve dropped the kids off at the airport, I’ll tackle this one.  I’m sure you’ll be waiting with baited breath . . . .(I’ll make sure to appropriately title that entry so you’ll know to skip it).

Update on Abigail

Her white blood count came down today, which suggested that her “infection” has subsided.  We’ll get the official results tomorrow on the cultures taken yesterday.  For now they continue to treat her with antibiotics.

Lisa got permission to nurse Abigail for the first time today.  At first, they were only going to allow her to nurse twice a day, and the rest of the time have her bottle fed.  Their concern with introducing nursing too quickly is that she will expend too much energy suckng which could lead to other problems.  If you ask me, they play it a little on the cautious side, but I supposed you can’t blame them.  No one gets sued for being too cautious.

However,  Abby has shown promise with the bottle, and according to Lisa, a mother who has nursed four others, she could sense that there was no reason to continue to put off nursing. She met with a lactation specialist at the hospital (there’s a specialist for everything in a hospital) who was able to lobby the doctors to allow her to nurse Abigail at every feeding.  The lobbying worked and the docs agreed to allow that--as long as he baby doesn’t spend more than 20 minutes laboring to nurse.

The problem is that Abby doesn’t really labor to eat.  When she is interested in sucking and is hungry, she gulps down her bottle.  Unfortunately, the hospital has her on “their” schedule for feeding--every three hours like clockwork, and most of the time, she is woken up to eat, which means that she usually isn’t hungry when they want to feed her.  So, she sucks a little, and then goes back to sleep or play.  We wake her up, she sucks some more, and then she starts playing with the nipple of the bottle, or looking up at us with her big blues, while milk runs down her little, pointy chin, down her neck and onto her chest.  She typically takes about half her bottle (about 25 ml of the 50 ml in the bottle), and then she’s done.  By this time, 20 minutes has gone by, and the nurse then hooks up her nose tube (which runs to her stomach) to the mechanism that dispenses the remaining milk over the course of a 30 minute period.  Two hours later we repeat the same process.

I was a little irritated tonight as I went to pick up Lisa at the hospital at 9:45, and saw Abby crying and in a good mood for nursing, but nursing time had come and gone--Abby‘s allotted 20 minutes had expired.  I told Abigail’s nurse, “I’m a little concerned with the feeding process right now.  I feel like we’re in a bad pattern, a pattern that will keep the baby from making progress on feeding.  She nursed at 9:00, and then at 9:30 we are forced to stop.  By 9:45 Abby is actually really hungry, wants food, but we can’t nurse her again.  So you hook her up to the feeding machine, which dispenses food over the next 45 minutes, fills up her tummy, and then 90 minutes from that point, it will time to feed her again.  She’s not going to be hungry, so you’re going to give up on the breast or the bottle, and then feed her through the machine. It’s sort of a never ending cycle.  I want to get her on a more natural cycle of eating when she wants to eat, not when it’s convenient for the hospital’s cycle.”

To her credit (and almost all the care givers here are open minded and willing to take input from the parents), the nurse said that she was going to space her feedings as much as she could so that by the time Lisa go there in the morning, Abigail might be more naturally ready to eat.

Abigail, After Nursing for the Second Time

Our goal for tomorrow is to get the staff to be comfortable with us feeding her on her natural cycle.  She has a good suck (the occupational therapist--yes, another specialist--was much impressed with her sucking motion, which was quite strong for a cardiac patient).  We need to convince them that she is not expending too much energy sucking, and that we just simply need to let her be a baby.  Let her eat when she’s hungry.  Cross your fingers.

Recap of the Day in San Francisco

Before I call it a night, I’ll recap the day with the kids in San Francisco.  After the wrong turn onto the Bay Bridge, I was able to finally get off I-80, flip around, and head back to San Francisco.  Oakland, after all, has never held any interest for me (my apologies to my friends who attended Berkley).

I had planned on renting bikes first thing in the morning, and riding around the bike paths of the Presidio district.  Unfortunately, about 10 minutes from the city, the rain started falling, so I had to quickly change plans. My plan B was a visit to the California Academy of Sciences, a large museum containing an aquarium, a micro rain forest, a planetarium, and several other exhibits.  The price of admission is a bit steep (I spent nearly $100 to get the five of us in), and the food is even more ridiculous.  Unfortunately, we were famished when we arrived (all those detours did us in), so we were forced to eat the overpriced museum food.  See picture and comments below.

Outside the California Academy of Sciences

A Photo of What Cost Me $61 at the Museum.

However, the museum is first-rate, as each of my children from our 14 year old to our 7 year old thoroughly enjoyed it.

After the museum, we headed to the Presidio district, and rented some bicycles (thanks to a tip from our good friends, Robbie and Edy Buss).  We rode along the bay, stopping at the beach to see how cold the water was, to pick up shells, and check out sea urchins.  We watched seals pop up and down out of the water, and saw what looked like Pelicans dive repeatedly into the Bay after their prey.  We took our time, as Dad wasn’t trying to hurry anyone along.  We rode our bikes to the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, and watched some surfers catch some fairly good sized waves.

The bridge was completely shrouded in fog, and we could only see its silhouette, though it was only a hundred or so yards away from us.

After our we returned our bikes to the rental place, Dad got lost in San Francisco again (this time, I had my i-phone battery to blame, which cost me my navigation system).

Another fabulous day with the kids, and another reminder that our best days are spent together.  Good night.  Below are pictures of the family bike ride: