Failure to thrive...

Failure to thrive.

They threw the words around as if every parent who walked through the door was prepared to hear them.

Failure. To. Thrive.

This about my 9-month-old boy who was standing at my feet bouncing and screaming, "dadadadadada." My best attempts at getting him to say "mama" always end there in that happy scream "dadadadada."

Failure to thrive.

This about the baby who was born my biggest, the boy with the blond peach fuzzy head and two teeth. The one who rolled early and crawled at six months.

Failure to thrive.

This about the boy with a lightening fast crawl, a mischievous grin. The boy who has taken to pulling hair because he likes the reaction. The boy who giggles as he races me to the dog dishes if I haven't pulled them from the floor.

The doctor said it. The dietitian said it. Even the lame receptionist scheduling further testing said it.

I've tried all day not to feel like some sort of failure myself, to not take Robbie's dead halt in growth as a personal failure of mothering. I'm not sure I've succeeded.

At least I've quit panicking over the secondary horrid words "cystic fibrosis."

Perhaps I should start somewhere near the beginning.

Robbie born in July, healthy, happy, blah, blah, blah.

Around four months old, he just sort of stopped pooping. I wasn't worried because Jack went through a phase like that and it was just one of those things. The doctor wasn't worried and said it would iron out when he started eating solid foods. Robbie's six-month check up was something of a disaster. I had all three kids in for their annual check ups on a busy day for the doctor. He never looked at Robbie's growth chart, because if he had, he would have noticed the drop from the 55th percentile to the 10th. He wasn't concerned with Robbie's constipation, but I persisted and he relented to a referral to a pediatric gastrinologist.

So, a month later we went to to see Dr. Kooros, who informed me that Robbie had a milk protein allergy that could be fixed by formula or my cutting all dairy from my diet. As I am lazy, I opted for cutting dairy and putting Robbie on a temporary laxative. And when I devote myself to something, I go whole hog. I've been hyper vigilant about not eating ANY dairy. Ask anyone who has been within five feet of me in the last month. I make amazing pouty faces at all get togethers over all the wonderful food I cannot eat. I have been a label-reading, rice milk drinking, milk-hating Nazi, if I can say that.

About three weeks in, I took Robbie off the laxative and the diet seemed to help. And then, it didn't. He was pooping, but just little pellets all the time and it clearly pained him.

Through all this, I kept expecting him to gain weight. It's seriously as if he grew until he was six months old and stopped. He is active, happy, and I'd say, wiry, but he honestly just has not grown. Last week, I took Ellie to the doctor for what I thought was croup (wasn't) and asked if we could weigh the baby.

At his six month appointment, he weighed 15 pounds, 14 ounces. Last week, he weighed 16 pounds, 1 ounce. In three months, he had gained three ounces. I sort of freaked out.

Sort of.

The folks at the PGI doctor's office worked me in for this week after they agreed that it was troublesome that he had fallen OFF the growth charts. So today, my dear friend Teresa came and picked up Jack and Ellie, and I hurried Robbie off to his morning appointment.

I went with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, I admit. I knew I would also be meeting with a dietitian, and my gut instinct has been that his issues aren't dietary. I didn't want a lecture on what to feed my baby. I've moved two children to solids and despite my love of chocolate, I know what foods are healthy and which aren't. She ended up being the best part of the visit, and not just because she gave me a mommy feeding gold star. She did give me some good ideas of foods I hadn 't thought of that Robbie can eat right now that are higher calorie than just veggies, like olives, olive oil and coconut milk yogurt. Those ideas alone were worth the visit.

After catching up, Dr. Kooros said he still thinks Robbie suffers from a milk protein allergy, which of course ticked me off because I have been DAIRY FREE and I mean FREE for two months. He'd like to put him on a formula, but first it would be bad medicine to NOT check a few other things that it COULD be, that he DOUBTS IT IS, but we MUST CHECK ANYWAY.

They are: Cystic fibrosis. A stomach emptying issue which I can't recall the name of. Thyroid. Tests begin next week.

I didn't really know much about cystic fibrosis except it was a life-long lung issue and I mentally panicked about it as I left the hospital. Where I went not wanting him to have dietary issue as I walked through those doors today, suddenly eating non-dairy for the rest of his life seemed like a great trade off. I was in a cloud as I walked from the hospital hoping that Bob and my complete lack of genetic issues thus far would work in Robbie's favor.

Than, I saw a woman carrying a little girl, about three or four years old. They were kissing each other's faces. The little girl had no hair and they were walking toward the cancer center wing of the hospital.

Things can always be worse. Right now, it's failure to thrive. It's a very happy, energetic, burning-calories-like-crazy baby who is just a bit skinny and short. Ok, a lot skinny and short.

But it's not cancer. And I'm optimistic that it won't be cystic fibrosis.

And at the end of the day, maybe it will just be what the dietitian whispered to me through my tears at the end of our visit today:

"The doctors would get mad at me for saying this, but sometimes, they do the tests and it just turns out you have a skinny baby with a high metabolism."

Let's hope.

Bunko queen...

In October 2007 I gathered some friends together at my house and started a bunko group. It's simple enough, 12 women, three sets of dice, food and prizes for the following: biggest winner/loser, most bunkos (think Yatzee) and something called "Traveling." In 18 months of play, I've never won a thing.

Ever.

Until Saturday. The streak is broken. With a head cold and a baby on my lap, I rolled my way to victory as THE big winner with 8 wins.

I won a pedicure set, which I have no idea how to use.

My feet are excited for me to find out how, though!

Notes on a day #3

A recent trip to the Joseph Smith farm and Sacred Grove, Bob's village board swearing in, Easter egg hunt and Robbie discovers the joy of sucking face with a window...


* Ellie went pee pee in the potty tonight. She is a fan of asking to sit on the potty, wanting to read the special potty chair book, wiping, flushing...the works. Just not actually, you know, getting down to business. But tonight, she was all business. We had a massive bathroom celebration. There was woo-whoing and clapping and perhapssome dancing and singing. Let's hope this is a sign of good things to come.

* I debated at 3:30 whether or not to insist that the kids take their nap. Otherwise, I would have had four hours of whining and crying to deal with. They napped. Of course, when I had happy kids bouncing around the house at 10 p.m., I very much regretted that decision.

* Be careful what you wish for. Robbie had his first ever diaper blow-out on Sunday. It scared him.

* I'm beginning to wonder if having a clean house is beyond my ability to manage.

* The baby is crying, so blogging is over. :)

Adieu, Annie.

She showed up on a one of those nights where Spring didn’t get the message that Winter had left.
It was below freezing and Bob was going to get wood.
“Amanda, there’s a cat at the back door.”
“Well, it can stay at the back door,” I shot back.
We’ve had strays around here before, mostly this big, fluffy orange fellow. I can’t stand him. He’s mangy and who know where he actually lives but sometimes he shows up and finds a way into the basement and I steel my nerves against him until he leaves.
She was different.
She was pretty.
And clearly not mangy.
And skinny in an “Oh, you’ve been out on your own” sort of way.
She was a sleek black and gray tiger striped with a completely white underside and white paws. With one glimpse I felt my 11-year-old self surface, the girl who found every stray, starved cat or dog in my small town and had a speech prepared for why we had to take care of her. They were always hers. I knew I’d like this her if I just gave her a chance.
But there are three children, two adults and a dog under this roof already and I have a hard enough time keeping everything running as it is. I did not need to add cat hair and a litter box to the list.
But she found her way into the basement (old New York houses and a bad foundation in one area...) and after I’d put everyone to bed that night, I opened the basement door. Just to look at her. She shot through the door straight to the dog dish, like she’d been there before. Soft heart Bob must have let her in for a minute, I thought.
She was friendly. Almost annoyingly so. I let her eat and then she proceeded to purr like a chainsaw and rub against my legs over and over and over. I petted her, for some reason unconcerned that this stray cat would have fleas or germs. Beauty really does open doors.
I reminded myself that I didn’t have room in my life or my small house for a cat and I put her with a small bowl of dog food back into the basement. She got in, she could get out.
After scolding Bob about the cat, my guilt forced me to write him a note: “I fed the cat. How stupid am I!!! Now I feel guilty...”
He responded, in crayon of course, something about compassion and if the cat came back, we should consider keeping her.
That night, she came back. The meow at the basement door was loud and melted my heart. I opened the door and let her in.
She walked in as if she had always lived with us.
“What do you guys think of this cat?” I asked.
The kids were enthralled by the novelty. They had never really spent time with a cat and were excited by her. I sent Bob to the store for some food and cat litter and we decided to give her a try.
For about four days, she did nothing but eat and sleep. She threw up, clearly because she hadn’t been eating and food was a shock to her system. She was a model house member.
I took her to the vet for shots and to be de-wormed, because that seemed responsible. We found out she was a non-pregnant, otherwise healthy 8-10 month old cat.
Then, it was like she woke up and became the kitten she was. She started randomly racing through the house at warp speed, finding ping-pong balls or bits of string and playing with them. She started batting at little hands and feet dangling over beds. This is when the children decided they did not like the cat. Jack LOVED her until the night she attacked his sleepy, moving feet. After three nights of being thrown off my bed, she figured out if she went to the foot of Bob’s side, she had a safe sleeping perch.
Jimmy, our Springer Spaniel, is going on five years with us and was, for the first week anyway, very distressed over the cat. She scratched and hissed at him. She clearly was given better food. While he is not allowed to put so much as a paw on the furniture, she was all over the place and didn’t get in trouble.
It was after a week or so that I just didn’t think a cat was for us. I didn’t like dealing with the litter box, and we don’t really have a great location for one. She interrupted my weekly routines with her snuggling ways. I save all my favorite television for Wednesday evenings when I shove my kids in bed, kick Bob out of the room, fold laundry and drown in entertainment. She was constantly purring and jumping in my lap or onto my clean laundry. Some of Robbie’s clothes last week had to be rewashed because she used them as sleeping implements.
I decided to find her a new family and by chance, told this to a friend who stopped by. He lives down the street and as he was driving home, noticed a washed out sign nailed to a telephone pole. He stopped and called me. The sign had a picture of Annie on it, but the words had been washed away.
I was elated. She had a family to return to, all I had to do was find them. I walked the ½ a block to the sign to make sure I couldn’t make out a number and collected the sign to prove to Bob that we couldn’t keep Annie.
I designed a little ad and sent it to our little advertising shopper. They agreed to run the ad for free in the interest of returning the cat to its home. I made a sign and the kids and I took a walk before General Conference on Sunday, putting some up on various phone poles in our section of the village. I, of course, put one on the pole where I’d found the other sign.
Turns out her family lived right across the street.
Mike and Jen Hennessey, by coincidence the son and daughter-in-law of a couple I go to church with, moved to Mount Morris a couple months ago from Dansville, a village 13 miles to the south. Tigress and Panda, sister kittens named from Kung Fu Panda, were their three children’s favorite pets. Tigress was pregnant when she went missing a month and a half ago. They feared she’d tried to wander back to Dansville and they’d never see her again.
They saw some lady putting tape over their sign the day before, and today as they were leaving their house, they noticed it was actually a different sign. With a picture of their cat on it.
Mike called and asked if we were the people who’d posted a cat sign.”Oh, are you her family?” I asked.
This is the point where I have to confess to a bit of dread. Despite my actions and insistence, I had become attached to the cat. I liked her despite my objections. I was whining to my sister one night about the extra responsibilty and she simply said, “Mandy, I remember you really liking cats.” Stupid siblings know everything about everything. And I had spent the night before letting her sit on my lap while I worked on various things. I played with her when she was frisky before bedtime and I confess, I even petted her fondly.
Mike described her and said, “Does she act like she has amnesia? Like, you push her off your lap and she just jumps right back on?”
Definitely Annie.
They drove to the house. I had planned on asking for proof of ownership. Mike wanted to be sure it was their cat, too. He took her and looked at her tail. I knew then she was gone: The tip was broken and her tail is a bit crooked at the end. She was theirs.
And I found myself a bit sad as I gathered up the food we had for her to send home with them.
I gathered the kids to say goodbye.
Jack was ambivalent.
Ellie kept asking where Annie was going.
I tried not to feel like my small, crowded house was empty.
The Hennessey’s were thrilled, almost to tears.
They pondered what had happened to her babies, a thought I still can’t process. She was not lactating when she came to my door, so I know something happened before she came to me. However, I still spent part of the day brewing over whether my letting her in killed her kittens.
I keep telling myself overall, I did the right thing, from letting her in, to taking care of her, to searching for her family, to returning her.
So, why have I just written 1,500 words about a cat I didn’t want?
And why tonight do I miss her?