Save me, Aunt Karen!

We needed Aunt Karen today! Max's hair was long and scraggly on top and patchy in back so I decided to cut it. We might need a little more practice...

His face says it all. Really, Mom?? He didn't mind the clippers until the very end. I'm pretty sure we missed a few spots because I was trying to hurry.

Max had an appointment with his cardiologist on Thursday. Everything looks good. Dr. Pilcher upped the medicine dose just a little bit and told us that he didn't want to see us again until Max is 10 months old (or earlier if he has another episode of SVT). We're keeping our fingers crossed that we can make it to 10 months!!

5 Months!

Max is five months old today! Some fun facts about our little monkey:

• Weighed 12 lbs 9 oz and was 24 inches long on December 29th.
• Sleeps like a champ at night! He will wake up occasionally during naps but since we started giving him some rice cereal, that doesn't happen so much anymore.
• Hasn't had another episode of SVT since Thanksgiving weekend (and we didn't have to go to the hospital for that one).
• Loves playing in his baby gym. Tries to put everything in his mouth and gets mad if he can't get something in there just right.
• Has tough little legs. Prefers to stand up all the time.
• Is close to sitting on his own.
• Hates being on his stomach. Used to cry the minute we put him on his stomach. Now he tolerates it for a while and then just gives up and puts his head down until we move him. Not sure how he's ever going to learn how to crawl.
• Loves spending time with his nanny, Jordan. I can hear Max talking to Jordan all day long while I am working. They have some pretty serious conversations!
• Can't wait to rough-house with Daddy when he gets home from work.
• Has the sweetest smile. His whole face lights up!

We celebrated Cory's birthday a few weeks ago.
Dressed up in his Santa p.j.'s on Christmas Eve.
Max and his cousin, Gracie.
Spoiled rotten!

This is Max's 4-month picture. I bought Max the Osh Kosh overalls so that he could be like his Great-Grandpa Porter.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was younger. Grandpa Porter wore his overalls every day while he was working on the farm. Grandpa took me everywhere with him: milking cows, baling hay, moving pipe, etc. He used to catch the baby chickens and bring them to me so that I could pet / hold them. I was always amazed that he dared to walk through all of those pecking hens to get to the baby chicks. He ate bread and milk and watched Mash every night after he was finished milking cows. Grandpa could play a mean game of baseball, too. I hope Max has a little bit of his Great-Grandpa in him!

Halloween, Blessing Day, Thanksgiving and Santa Claus!

Wow! Times flies when you're having fun. I went back to work on November 14th and Max went into SVT that evening. Cue the guilt. So off we went to Primary Children's ER. They got him hooked up to all of the monitors and the IV team came in to insert a line so they could push the medicine to convert Max out of SVT. Those folks amaze me. The fact that they can find such a tiny vein is truly amazing. Anyway, in the middle of inserting the IV, Max started crying so hard that he converted himself out of SVT. Hooray! The doctor monitored him for an hour and then they let us go home. That was our shortest visit yet.

Three months old on November 21st.
Oops! This picture got out of order. Since we didn't go anywhere for Halloween, this was Max's "costume". He chilled with Cory while I handed out candy.
We blessed Max on November 6th. So many of our friends and family came to spend the day with us. We are truly grateful for their time and sacrifice. The blessing circle was so big - I think we had about 15 people up there. The outpouring of love for our little guy, from people that we care about, brought me to tears. And Cory gave Max a sweet blessing.





Thanksgiving with Aunt Emilee. A big thanks to my friend Linda for giving Max such a cute Thanksgiving onesie. In case you can't see, it says "Mommy's Little Turkey".
We had the Johnson Christmas party at Downata. Max didn't get to swim this year but he'll be out there next year for sure! He didn't seem to mind sitting on Santa's lap.
We also got to see Santa at the Hollingsworth Christmas party. I'm pretty sure Santa told Max he could have whatever he wants this year!

And Great-Grammie got to spend some time cuddling with Max.
Max loves his nanny, Jordan. We are all starting to settle into a routine. Did I mention that Jordan is my cousin? After all that time I spent interviewing nannies, I put a free post on Facebook and found out that Jordan was looking for a job. I could kick myself for all of that wasted time that I could have been napping with Max! It is truly a blessing to have someone that I trust caring for Max. There's no way I could ever take him to a day care. His eating and sleeping schedule is super strict because his medicine schedule is super strict. I don't know how a day care could manage that and keep tabs on his heart rate throughout the day.

Max loves to stand up. His little legs are so strong. He hates to be on his tummy, though. I'm not sure how he's ever going to get the hang of crawling. Max is also starting to reach for toys (with actual coordination) and has a pretty firm grip. He has such a sweet smile. We are still waiting for him to laugh. He's pretty hard to impress. He loves hanging out in his bouncy seat and kicking up a storm. Max usually goes to bed around 10:00 and will sleep until we have to wake him up at 5:00 to take his medicine. Too bad we can't just let him sleep until he wants to. Aunt Karen gave Max his first hair cut on Saturday. He just needed his ears lowered a little bit.

We have an appointment with the cardiologist next week. I hope we can make it until then without another trip to the ER. We woke up on Sunday morning and Max had gone back into SVT. Thank goodness we were back from Idaho - it always makes me nervous to be too far away from Primary Children's. I woke Cory up so we could start to load the car for the ride, and possible stay, at Primary's. I checked Max's heart one more time and he had come out of SVT on his own. He's been super fussy today so it wouldn't surprise me if he's going in and out of SVT. They will weigh him next week and see if they need to increase his medicine dose because of how much he has grown. And speaking of growing, we are finally moving into some of his 3-6 month clothes. At the last pediatrician appointment, Max was only in the 4th percentile for his age. His genes will prevent him from ever being tall but hopefully we can get him a little further from the bottom for his next appointment at the end of the month. :-)

Parenting 501 - Master's Level Course

Our induction into parenthood has been…interesting. Perhaps there's no real way to ease into it but I feel like we've been drinking from a fire hose for the past nine weeks.

One week after Max was born, the Health Department called and told us that Max's newborn screening had come back positive for cystic fibrosis and a metabolic disorder. After two more rounds of tests, they finally determined that the tests were showing a false positive reading and that Max is fine. We breathed a sigh of relief when we found out the news on a Thursday afternoon. We had one weekend to relax and then our world was turned upside down again the following Tuesday.

Max was super fussy and would not eat. He pushed away from me like it hurt him to eat so I thought he just had a lot of gas or perhaps acid reflux. We cajoled him throughout the night and then took him to the pediatrician's office on Tuesday morning. Our regular doctor wasn't in but the doctor that we did see listened to Max's heart (among the other vitals she checked) and suggested that we go to Primary Children's Hospital. Max's heart rate was fast. The doctor suggested that it might be a build-up of gas in his tummy or maybe a mild infection that his body was trying to fight. So we got back in the car and headed to the emergency room. I wasn't particularly panicked - I figured we would be heading home in a few hours with some antibiotics or maybe some acid reflux medicine. Boy was I wrong.

We started out with one nurse and one doctor in the emergency room. Within a matter of 10 minutes, we had a team of 15 people working on Max. His heart should be at ~140 beats / minute - his was 277 beats per minute. And because it was beating so fast, it couldn't push blood effectively to the rest of his body so his major organs were shutting down. The IV team tried to get a line in his body for about 45 minutes before they succeeded. His veins were mostly collapsed because his little body was so dehydrated. The doctors tried to push two doses of a medicine that is supposed to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm but it didn't work because he was so sick. Cory and I had to sit back and watch while they hooked Max up to the defibrillator to shock his heart. They had to do it twice before he finally converted. It was horrible to watch Max's little body jump off that table when they shocked him.

It turns out that Max has something called Superventricular Tachycardia i.e. irregular heart rhythm. A heart has four chambers and each chamber has insulation between them so that the electric current from one chamber can't skip to the next one. In Max's case, the insulation didn't grow properly, which means that every once in a while, he has an extra heartbeat that jumps from one chamber to the other and causes his whole heart to go out of rhythm. The good news is that most kids grow out of it by the time they are one year old. In the meantime, Max has to take three doses of a medication daily that keeps his heart in rhythm.

We stayed in the PICU for a few days and then they transferred us to a regular room. We were released on Saturday and spent a few days at home before Max went back into SVT again on Tuesday. We have to check his heart rate a few times / day with a stethoscope and I noticed that his heart was crazy fast after he ate that afternoon. So back to Primary Children's we went. Thankfully Max responded to the medication they pushed into his system so he didn't have to be shocked again. We stayed in the hospital until Friday. They sent us home with a higher dose of medication and so far Max has been doing great. How fortunate we are to have a world class children's hospital in our backyard. The staff at Primary Children's is amazing.

I've decided that I should get the mother of the year award. I was tired and frustrated with a fussy baby. Turns out he was actually going into cardiac arrest. That's fantastic. We are so lucky that we didn't lose our little Max.

So many wires attached to his little body!
All snuggly in the hospital bed. It was tough to get him out to feed him and love on him. Inevitably I would pull a wire off and set off an alarm at the nurses station.
One month old.
All dressed up in our camo gear. Daddy is gone hunting this weekend. He really wanted to take Max with him...
Liking bath time now.

Our first time going to church (and we only made it to Sacrament meeting due to Max's feeding and medicine schedule). Max is 8 weeks old here.
After a hard day's work.
One of my friends gave Max these darling pumpkin p.j.s'. Here's Mr. Pumpkin Bum!
Two months old.

I'm still not sure what I think about motherhood. I'm still waiting to say it's the best thing I've ever done and that it's totally worth it. I thought I was prepared for how tough the newborn stage was going to be. Everyone told me how tough it was but no one told me that it is absolutely brutal. Of course, perhaps I'll have a different outlook on things now that we've finished three weeks of sleep training. Once Max got out of the hospital, he wouldn't sleep unless he was in my arms sitting upright. I lasted for four days doing that and finally had enough. So the first week was spent getting him to fall asleep in his crib on his own. The second week was spent getting him down to one feeding per night and the last week was spent getting rid of that last nightly feeding. Max still wakes up around 3:30 but he'll go back to sleep once I put a pacifier in his mouth. The world is starting to look a little better now that I can see it again.

Max went in for his two month check-up yesterday. He weighs 9 lbs 9 oz and is 21 inches long. He's in the 6th percentile for his age but considering where he started and what he's been through, his doctor was pretty impressed. We sure love him and pray that he continues to be healthy and strong. What a tough kid!

Max Cory Johnson

Max arrived on August 21, 2011, at 1:58 p.m. He weighed 5 lbs 15 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long. Not too shabby for being exactly three weeks early.

I'm not sure why this turned out blurry but it's probably best that you can't really see how fat I am. We had to be at the hospital at 7:30 a.m. to be induced. I cried the whole way to the hospital. And through the admission process. And while they started hooking me up to all of the equipment. I really didn't want to have a baby that day. I wanted three more weeks (or better yet, five more years).

Dr. Langer prepared us for the long haul. She said that it would likely take 9-12 hours since this was my first baby. So we settled in with a movie and tried to relax. They had to increase the pitocin drip several times before anything really started to happen. I had only had about 10 contractions that I thought were mildly severe (maybe a 5 on a scale of 1-10) when the nurse came in and told me that if I didn't have the epidural now, I wouldn't be able to get it for another hour because the anesthesiologist was going into a C-section and would be tied up with that. I really didn't want the epidural at that point but didn't want to chance it so I went ahead and got it. The nurse checked me before the anesthesiologist started and I was dilated to a three. She checked me after he was finished and I was dilated to a seven. And about 15 minutes later, we started to push. Thank goodness I got the epidural when I did!!!

I'm not sure what I was expecting but pushing was more intense than I thought it would be. Max's heart rate kept dropping so we had to stop and let him stabilize before continuing. I later found out that the cord was wrapped around his neck twice, which is what was causing the problem. Thank goodness they didn't tell me that at the time! I pushed for about 40 minutes and then, voila, the doctor placed a screaming (rather blue) baby on my belly. We had been in labor for six hours. What a surreal moment. It probably wasn't until we left the hospital that I fully realized that we were going home with a baby. Everything was just a blur up until that point. He sure is a handsome little guy and we have loved having him in our home.
Shortly after delivery.First family photo.
Daddy got Max all strapped into the car seat to go home. I was so happy to leave that hospital! One of my friends told me that she loves being in the hospital because the nurses take care of everything and she feels like she is on vacation. What a joke! That hospital room door brought a constant barrage of people who wanted to pick at me or Max. I had to go home so that I could take a decent nap.
First ride in Daddy's truck.
And speaking of trucks, my brother and SIL sent us this darling flower arrangement. Cory, my dad and my brother all have black Ford pick-up trucks. So the card on this arrangement said, "we didn't want Max to be the only boy in the family who didn't have his own Ford truck." So cute!
This kid is a rock star when it comes to sleeping. We usually have to wake him up to eat. And after he's finished eating, he just hangs out and looks around. For a few nights, he kept me up all night and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I knew he had a full belly and dry diaper but he would scream when I tried to put him in the bassinet. He would sleep like a champ in his swing, though. It took me a while but I finally figured out that he probably has a little bit of acid reflux and being propped up helps to keep his tummy settled. So we elevated the head of his bassinet and he slept great last night. Good grief! Let's hope the learning curve isn't that steep with everything or we are going to have "the stupidest parents ever" plastered to our foreheads.
Jared and Camille came to visit and wanted to see the bear rug. And since we had it out, Cory decided Max needed to try it out. The only regret: Max wasn't wearing camo at the time. You should see this kid's wardrobe. He has enough camo to last him a lifetime!
After the first bath. Which he hated. Typical boy.
Houdini ain't got nothin' on this kid. He can get out of a swaddle so fast! Another learning curve for the rookie parents. Max likes to have his hands out. Duly noted (after another round of screaming and parents who looked on with puzzled faces).