Monday, April 28, 2008

Sibling Photo Shoot

I was trying to take a picture of the boys today so that I could order some announcements but I had the hardest time getting a good shot of both of them. This picture is hilarious because this is the way Memphis looks when he hears Merrick or knows that Merrick is close by. Merrick is always kissing, grabbing or smothering Memphis that I think whenever he senses Merrick he just goes into this "save me" mode and starts crying until I get him away from his big brother. Poor guy, let's see if that's how things will be when he gets older.

Memphis will turn 1 month tomorrow, can you believe it?

See what I mean! Merrick is just so curious of this little creature (who has some rather large lungs by the way) that he loves to poke and prod just to see what kind of reaction will come from him.

I really like this one. You can't see their faces very much but I think it turned out super cute.

This is also one of my favorites. He is just too cute in this picture that I might just have to use it somehow.

Memphis Michael Donovan 1 month old already. Yikes!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Life after surgery

I just wanted to update everyone on how we're doing and more importantly how Merrick is doing and how his surgery went. This is a picture of Merrick the day after he cut open his hemangioma and they catarized it at the ER. Not very pretty is it, by the way he cut this thing open a total of 5 times (thats 5 bloody messes where blood was just everywhere) and we had to take him to the ER a total of 3 times before the ER realized this was a serious case and got us an appointment with the Children's Hospital in Madera.

The last ER doctor we saw got us an appointment with a Children's Plastic Surgeon at the Children's Hospital in Madera and we scheduled to have Merrick's hemangioma removed on April 16th. Here's Merrick in his super little Hospital pajamas. He got changed and then got to go back in the waiting room to play until the doctor was ready for him.

Merrick had to be put to sleep for the surgery. The surgery lasted no more than 10 minutes and then he had to spend some time in the recovery room. This is him coming out of the anesthesia. He was so tired. He got a few stitches but other than that the surgery went really well. His eye looks 1,000% better and he's back to his usual self.

I've been trying to think outside the box with fun activities for him to do while I nurse or do other things around the house. One that I've thought of is giving Merrick messy stuff to play with in the tub. Here he has a big tub of hair gel that I got from the 99 cent store. Needless to say his little adventurous spirit is back and ready to explore. He was so restricted while we were going through his eye drama that it seems like he's really excited to be getting back into the swing of the things.

Here are my two boys. If you look closely Merrick's eye is almost healed. The stitches are already beginning to dissolve and it doesn't look like there will be too much of a scar. Thanks for all those prayers, phone calls and text messages you guys really did help me get through what I hear is just the beginning of a long list of issues to loose sleep over (GREAT!). What would people ever do without a strong family and good friends?
Lots of love from our family to yours!!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

The Good, the Bad and the Oogly of our first 2 weeks

On Friday, March 28th, our cute little Memphis was born.

On Sunday, March 30th, we got to bring Memphis home to meet Merrick for the first time. Merrick just adores Memphis but as you can see Memphis isn't too fond of all the love just yet.
On Wednesday, April 2nd, Merrick had to be taken to the Emergency Room because of that little red dot near his left eyelid. It's called a Strawberry Hemangioma and is basically an abnormal build up of blood vessels on the skin. We first noticed it in February and took Merrick to see the eye doctor then but he informed us that Merrick was really too young to do anything about it now so he said to wait and see what happens. I guess these things are suppose to go away on their own but Merrick has a terrible habit of picking at his face and on Wednesday he picked at this teeny tiny thing and made it bleed like crazy. It was during his nap so we didn't see it until the blood was everywhere. The blood wouldn't stop coming so we took him to the ER and had them catarize it. They basically burned the wound shut but didn't put any patches over it to cover it. They asked us to make sure he doesn't touch it.
This is him and aunt Meg on Wednesday night as they got ready for bed. On Thursday, April 3rd when Merrick woke up in the morning he rubbed his eyes of course and started the bleeding up all over again. Sean and Meghan took him back to the ER and he came home like this.
My poor son. Both doctors that we saw at the ER said there was very little else that could be done. On Friday, April 4th, we took Merrick to see our Pediatrician and he too said there was very little we could do. So band-aids until the wound healed was going to be our only solution. Unfortunately Merrick hates this kind of stuff on his face so anything we put on would get peeled off in the same night. We somehow managed to get through the weekend and Merrick was able to leave the wound alone until Tuesday, April 8th. My mom was here and sleeping in one of the bunk beds with Merrick that morning and Merrick had managed to pull off his band-aide and open the wound again. My mom came out at around 6 in the morning to get some more towels to catch the blood. She didn't want to wake us up but I was already awake feeding Memphis so I woke up Sean and my mom and him headed to the ER again. We thought that they would catarize it again that's the only reason we thought we'd try the ER one more time but to our surprise my mom was able to slow the bleeding down with leaves from a tea bag so by the time we got to the ER it wasn't bleeding as much so they didn't want to catarize it again considering that's not a fool proof plan to stop it from opening up again. But the good news is the doctor that was there recommended we take Merrick to the Children's Hospital in Madera and have this hemangioma removed immediately. He called over there and faxed over Merrick's history and we have a surgery appointment set up for Monday, April 14th. It feels like forever since Merrick had two more bleeding mishaps yesterday. We've learned that he can't sleep by himself and that he picks at his patches and face in his sleep so whoever sleeps with him has to push his hands away from his eye constantly. Tonight we've put 2 band-aids on him with some extra medical tape, an eye patch over the band aids, mittens over his hands and tape over the mittens and he's sleeping with my mom so that she can make sure he doesn't mess with anything and take anything off. Merrick has been a trooper through all of this and we pray that everything will go well on Monday. I would have never thought that our first two weeks of having Memphis would have ever been like this. We are all pretty wiped out but we keep truckin' on. Keep us in your prayers. Lots of love.




Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Yeahhhh, he's here, he's finally here!!!

Let me introduce you to Memphis Michael Donovan. Born Friday, March 28th @ 2:21pm weighing 8 lbs. 11 oz. and is 20 in. long.

He is such an easy baby and we are all in love with him especially his big brother Merrick.

Ohhh and he's so tiny it's just the best to hold him in our arms.

Proud Mama.

Exhausted Papa.

Welcome to my new life.