Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Whatever happened to me... the story with Ray.

Hi,

Yes, I know it has been several months since the last time I blogged, and if I am not mistaken at the time I made sort of a promise to blog more frequently. And so far I haven't lived up to that promise. Well, there are good reasons for this.

So what happened since February 26th, the date of the last blog? Quite a bit. I can do this chronologically, but I prefer a more elaborate, chaotic approach.

For one, Ray is growing really fast. He's now around 60 cm tall and weighs 6 kg, which is quite an achievement when you're starting from about 2800 grams and 50 cm. Especially considering he throws up big time. And I mean it in the sense that we change clothes every time we feed him, not his clothes but our clothes. This has to do with reflux, the little valve in between his throat and his stomach is not fully developed. According to the pediatrician this is quite common for babies. Since a while now he's getting some medicine to relief his throat from acid-burn, and some medicine to ease his stomach. That helped.
We also started to wrap him in sheets before taking him to bed. His arms were uncontrollable and he was accidentally hitting himself while he was asleep. It's quite a sight seeing him wrapped in what seems a cocoon. And best of all, he sleeps a lot sounder ever since.
Maybe most importantly to mention about Ray is that his 'bad' kidney is not doing anything at all, so nothing bad either. A little recap on the subject; early March we were supposed to have him examined to find out how much each of his kidneys was still functioning. But the doctors had a little trouble applying the IV. After 6 trials they gave up and we were supposed to come back in a month, so we did. At that time it all worked out nicely at the first go and with the IV they injected some radio active stuff that later showed up on the scanner. Only one kidney showed up, the other, the bad one, didn't show up at all. This is actually a good thing, since a poorly functioning kidney causes high blood pressure and infections. So we're quite happy about this one.
Meanwhile, as I stated earlier in this blog, he's doing great. At 6 weeks old we took him swimming and have the photo's to proof this. Last week I took him for a second time, 8 weeks later, and he enjoyed it a lot.

What is rather interesting is that he's very different from Jay. For one, Ray likes the ease and quiet. He's very sensitive to crowds and noises. But he's also very verbal, makes a lot of baby noises and starts to smile and even laugh when you talk to him. As a matter of fact, when he feels like crying, you can start talking to him and it is very likely he'll be laughing instead. He sleeps more than Jay did at his age. On the other hand, Ray can play all by himself for a far longer time than Jay could.
Something that is really great to see is that Jay accepts Ray completely and it's really heartening to see him explain to Ray what it is all out there in the great wide open. And when Ray cries, and we're not acting upon it, Jay's telling us to go see Ray.

Iwan

PS: Check out Ray's website on http://ray.tripleminds.com I try to keep it as up-to-date as possible.