Dave Massy's Spaces Blog

Sometime since I've posted so here's a random collection of news and updates.

Emily

Emily is doing great. We had a checkup on her hips last week for her hip displasia. The X-ray showed good progress on her hip with the angle they measure now at 30 degrees. The doctor wants more though so she stays in the brace for another three months. That's a bit disappointing as we were hoping to be able to only use the brace at night and let her out more. She really wants to crawl and walk now and the brace is restricting. The doctor says it's dose dependent so the more we keep her in the better the improvement will be. We've got pretty used to the brace and this is a relatively small sacrifice to ensure she can walk, run and play without a limp. It'd still be really nice to get this behind us but the news could have been a lot worse and it is good to know we are headed in the right direction.
She's such an adorable little girl.

Here's the brace she wears. She basically sits in it and and the Velcro straps go round her middle and legs to keep her in. The purpose is to keep her legs pointed out so that the hips develop with the leg in the hip socket.

She comes out for changes, baths and to play in her jumparooo thing which she loves. It is a suspended seat where she can jump up and down.

She's looking very blond now. Some people say she looks serious but she always seems to smile for me. Those moments make me feel great.

Jaguars

My car doesn't get out much but we did have the All British Field Meet here the other day which is a great car show. Lots of British cars turn up. My XK 150 looked great and got lots of compliments which is always nice.

My XK 150 looked great. Hugh liked the Atoms.

Dad

I also got news the my Dad had a heart attack. This is his second in four years. After a few days of worry it looks like he's fine. His last stent had furred up a bit and they put a new one in. That's a relief. It was a wake up call that we hadn't got a passport for Emily so we've expedited getting her one just in case we need to go to England.  It seems silly to me that young children can no longer travel on their parent's passport. We got Hugh's passport when he was 6 months old. The photo is already well out of date. By the time he's five when the passport expires the photo isn't going to be recognisable at all!

All Well

There's other random news but basically we are all doing fine. Kids are hard work but Hugh is potty trained now apart from the occasional accident. He'll be three in September and it's really nice to move on from diapers for him. It'll be even nicer when we get beyond the occasional accident. Melissa is a great Mum to the kids but is occasionally frustrated at not getting out to do something other than look after the kids. She has started a little business selling Usborne books. http://www.melissasbooksathome.com  These are great books for children, if you want a good kids book then take a look there. Hugh loves books and demands lots of reading to these days. He's even making up his own little stories!

Emily is doing great and we are very used to the brace for her hip dysplasia now. Another four weeks and we'll get an X-Ray to see how her hips are doing. If all is well we'll get to take her out of the brace for at least some of the day.

The brace goes outside her clothes so as it gets warmer (summer is finally here) we have to watch it doesn't rub too much if she is in shorts. At 8 and a half months old she's grabbing and babbling just like any baby and the brace really doesn't seem to trouble her and it is fairly unobtrusive. She even tries to crawl in it but isn't too successful yet.

Bath time!

Hugh loves to give Emily hugs. This one looks more like a tackle!

Picnic time for Emily and Hugh.

Shopping at Costco! Hugh and Emily share a cart.

Today Emily got out of her spica cast after twelve weeks. We got down to Children's hospital in Seattle and they cut the cast off so we finally got to see her left knee again and hold her close. It was lovely.
The X-Ray showed that the hip is developing well. So we now move to having a brace instead. We had thought that she'd only have to wear the brace at naps and nighttime but we had that information wrong. So we were very disappointed to learn it has to stay on 23 hours a day. However it is much easier than the cast to care for and she can now take proper baths. Apart from some dry skin she has survived the cast very well.

Emily gets some tummy time in her cast

Emily gets breakfast at home before the cast comes off.

The cast comes off

  
Move those legs

The new brace keeps her legs out. She can move both knees now and we can take her out of the brace to change and clean her. It's a lot less bulky than the cast and she can fit into the car seat without padding. We have three months of the brace twenty three hours a day and we'll see how she's doing after that.

We're disappointed that Emily isn't able to stay out of the brace for longer but this is better than the cast.

Last Sunday we had Emily baptised into the Catholic church. It was a lovely day with my Sister Clare and her husband Jonathan as godparents.

 
Emily gets a big fuss from godmother Clare before the service.

 
Harriet and Pippa my nieces read to Hugh before the service. Hugh wasn't very happy about someone else getting so much fuss but he was very well behaved.

Melissa with Emily. Wearing the family christening gown that my grandmother made. I wore it for my baptism!

 
Godparents, parents and Emily and Hugh

It's been great having Clare and family over to visit. Just having an extra pair of hands around to take Emily is a real bonus. Of course they are very fun to have around as well. They've gone off to try skiing for a few days before returning to stay with us for a few days more.

Emily has just 14 days left in her cast. I'm counting the days down. She's doing very well but we can't wait for her to get out of it. She remains a happy girl but is wriggling and twisting in the cast more and more. Fingers crossed this has fixed her hip dysplasia!

Emily had what we hope is her final spica cast change on Wednesday for her third cast to correct hip dysplasia. It was another early start to get her down to Children's Hospital in Seattle for 7:15AM. She's now five and a half months old and was recovering from a cold. Both Hugh and I had had the cold as well so we were all a little miserable and tired! Emily had also had bad constipation on Sunday followed by the runs on Monday when she could barely eat because the cold meant she couldn't breath through her nose when taking the bottle. The advice for relieving constipation in infants isn't much help when the infant is in a cast. Place her in a warm bath or pump her legs like riding a bicycle! Not really going to work in this circumstance!
After some debate the anesthesia doctors decided the cold was just a little nasal and it'd be OK to operate. We'd spoken to a nurse there the day before and they'd said to come on down anyway and see what the doctors said. They said there's a slight increase in risk given that she's got a cold but her chest was clear so they felt comfortable doing it. As her second cast was getting a little tight around the left leg opening we decided it was best to go ahead so we let them take her away to go under general anaesthetic, have the hip X-rayed and checked out and then a new cast fitted.
An hour and a half later the doctor came out and said it all looked fine but he wanted a CT scan to get a better view of the hip in position. A little later we got to see her and accompany her to the CT scan room. A very fancy circular ring they place her in so the X-ray can build up a 3D image.
Emily was hungry and not happy at all as she woke up. After the nurses decided she was basically OK we were able to take her home and she stopped crying as we left.

The new cast is the biggest yet. The opening at the top is huge and I'm sure we'll be dropping crumbs down there. The diaper opening is also large which is a mixed blessing since it makes it easier to clean but also diapers don't stay snuggly in place. We've still yet to have a major accident though. The bigger cast makes it even more difficult to carry her as the baby bjorn front carrier will no longer hold her. We'll be so ready for this to be over.

After another day Emily seems pretty much back to normal. I really hope this is the last cast though. Having two young kids is exhausting having one in a cast is just more work. Now she's even more difficult to hold which means for one of us to take both children out is a challenge. Melissa is managing it but she's really tired of it.

So far the results of the casts are looking good. In four weeks time this cast will come off and she'll wear a brace at night for a couple of months.

This time they gave us the old cast to look at after the operation. It's actually only a pound and a half in weight so I think it is probably the bulk of the thing that makes it so exhausting to hold her for an hour or more. Emily is weighing 14.2lb now with with the cast weight subtracted so she's doing well and her smile just melts me.

Today we went down to Children's Hospital in Seattle to have her first cast change. She's had the first cast on for four weeks and she's done surprisingly well with it but they want to change it every four weeks as she's growing. We weren't sure what to expect today after the first operation when she had to be kept in overnight. Today all went very well though.

It was an early start to be down at the hospital at 7:15AM to check in. After a bit of a wait we got called through to the surgery center and went through the checks as the nurse, orthopedic surgeon and anesthetist all checked her heart beat etc. Then Emily was taken away from us and Melissa and I went off to find some breakfast and wait for the pager they gave us to beep signaling she was out of OR and in recovery.
Eventually the pager beeped and we met with the orthopedic surgeon who was very pleased with Emily's progress. They had injected die into the hip and taken X-Rays to see how the hip is located and developing and it is all looking very good in indeed. So she was returned to us with a new cast. She was still asleep from the anaesthetic and slept in our arms for the next three hours before we were allowed to take her home. Unlike the first major operation though she only had an IV and no catheter or epidural and we could pick her up and hold her straight away. No pain meds needed and we were home by 3:00PM.

It's a real relief to know that the hip is forming as we want and great not to have an overnight stay in hospital and a baby who is in pain.

A few pics:
Emily in gown before operation.

Emily returned to Mummy's arms straight away. Sleeping.

Emily's new cast goes a little further down the legs than the first one and has a bigger opening for diapering but is otherwise pretty similar. Having had a cast on for the last four weeks we know what to expect.

Another eight weeks of cast for Emily with a change in four weeks time. She's wriggling more and more so it'll be nice to get out of casts and be able to do a blog post titled "Hip Hip Hooray!"