colin&julia.com

Hi friends and family,

So it’s been awhile since we have emailed any updates because things have been pretty calm around the Toke household. Parker is still a puker but they tell me he will grow out of it.

He says Dada and duck duck and ball ball and HIIIYA!
I have to say after all the scary it is so good to enjoy the good.

We have planted a garden and will be busy enjoying our backyard this summer so drop a line and let us know when we can catch up in person.

If you haven’t met Parker yet he would love to meet you.
If you live far away or close by we are always posting images to our Flickr site. Mostly bi-weekly  I mean we are raising a baby we can’t be expected to update every week

So go check out our lives through our photos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliatoke/

Hugs and warmest of wishes to all of you.
Julia and Parker

Now that Parker seems to be back on the healthy train, along with Julia, the next item on our docket is to get Parker to sleep in blocks longer than 2 hours over night.

This week’s solution has us loading him up with rice cereal in the evening along with a 7 oune bottle right at bed time. So far its lead to him sleeping atleast 8-9 hours in a block.

Parker starts swim lessons this week at the Y as well!

Julia is currently Sicky Pants. Parker is rockin’ the Crabby Pants. While Dad is just plain Tired-Pants.

Parker made it through the weekend pretty decently. He was awake on and off Friday and Sat night… but by Sunday his cough had really calmed down. Last night he seemed a bit grouchy again at bed time and was hard to get to sleep, but finally went down for the night by 11. Julia and I keep playing with various bed time feeding amounts and we are discovering that he seems to like 6 ounces right at bed time, but then requires another 2 ounces a couple hours later before he’ll settle down for the night. Since we are trying to regulate his intake we think the later two ounces are gonna be something light like pear juice or pedialite.

Well Parker went to bed grouchy last night, and woke us up around midnight with a nice barking cough that turns out to be croup. So for the next few days we might mistake our crabby Parker-pants with a zoo animal, in hopes that it’ll break into a regular cold by weekends end.

Other notes of interest from a Doc visit is that Parker has really packed on the pounds since his last surgery and we can cut back a bit on his feeding schedule… so soon our little pudge ball will be a lean mean baby machine. Next up for Parker-pants, swim lessons at the YMCA.

After 4 and a half months of Parker living a less than stellar life (have we posted before that we figured out recently that he’s spent more of his life so far in the hospital than out?) Julia and I are so afraid to even say out-loud that we are basking in the light at the end of the tunnel.. but I think in the back of our minds we are both thinking it!

After expecting to be in the hospital for 10 days, we were so stoked to be able to roll home a meager 2 days after his surgery. Of course we got home to a mountain of snow at our house (after not having been home about a week)… but after about 2 hours of shoveling we at least were able to get our cars off the streets to comply with Lakewood’s snow ban.

After getting home Sunday, and now it being Thursday we are ecstatic to say that Parker is doing so awesome! In the first 24 hours he had a few issues with spitting up, but we think this was partly due to him being on regular formula (we have since switched him back to hypo allergic Elecare and that seems to have cured that). He also had a bit of a choking cough, but after confirming with our more than awesome Rainbow Dr.’s we stopped his Previcid doses and that seems to have licked that too.

Parker’s been pretty happy. His vomiting has stopped. His pukeiness has normalized, and his constant leakiness is a thing of the past! He is handling a normal feeding schedule of about 4 to 5 ounces every 3-4 hours with 6 ounces over night. His sleeping schedule is a bit mixed up but slowly but surely we are trying to get back on track and into a normal routine. The only obstacle in our way of that now: Teething.

Yup, Parker has started teething, and although its parental side effects are dealign with sleepless nights due to his crabbyness, we are pretty happy about it becasue it means all his problems haven’t sidelined him from maintianing a normal-to-advance development curve.

We want to give a huge thanks to our Rainbow Dr.’s: Dr. Todd Ponsky, Dr. Robert Parry, and Dr. Judy Splawski… all of which provided Parker with the support, care and miracle attention he needed to beat his Pyloric Stenosis! Thank you!

Hi Everyone…

A quick update: Parker had his surgery today… the short version: The surgeons performed another pylorotomy, slicing his muscle again and the tension on the intestine released immediately. This is awesome news as it was the simplest, fastest, and most non-invasive procedure they could have done. He’ll spend tomorrow getting back on the bottle horse and with any luck we’ll head home in a couple days.

The long story: after a weeks worth of tests and after an hour long conversation with our Dr’s yesterday, Parker’s was scheduled today to have a exploratory surgery that would most likely lead to a pylorplasty. A pylorplasty is where they deliberately perforate/cut into the small intestine and then reform/reshape/reconstruct it to better function. After that type of procedure Parker would then have a suction line put in his stomach and have it constantly pumped out to allow the newly formed area to heal over the course of 3-4 days. After that he would then spend 3-4 days getting sued to eating again. We are so stoked that the surgeons didn’t have to go to such a drastic measure. The exploratory part of the session revealed to the surgeons that his pyloric muscle was think enough to withstand a second slicing and it looks like this time it’s going to take properly.

The procedure went pretty text book, with only a slight complication. For an hour previous to the surgery the team couldn’t establish a new IV line. since Parker has had so many IVs int he last few months, most of his veins in his arms and legs are pretty blown or were too shallow due to dehydration. Instead the Dr’s opted to install a central line IV which is in the lower part of his neck -  upper part of his chest. It’s a bit larger than a standard IV and if he had needed a pylroplasty then he would have been fed through that line s well for the 3 to 4 days.

As of about 5 hours after surgery, Parker’s doing pretty well. He’s a bit sore as you can image after abdomen surgery and a mainline IV. He’s a bit horse from his breathing tubes, but he’s off an oxygen supply and slowly but surely becoming more active.

If anyone is interested in visiting, we are in room 3-510 at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital. We are pretty wiped for the night and slowly becoming more relaxed… so any emails and calls we’ll probably start to return tomorrow. Thanks for every ones thoughts and prayers.