According to the midwife Dylan was a perfectly healthy little boy. We were so happy with the new addition to the family and Lily was over the moon and so pleased that she finally had a little brother to play with.
Pregnancy wasn't a smooth ride. Luckily I was pregnant in no time. I expected it all to go as smoothly as it did with Lily but as soon as we new I was pregnant the morning..ahem allday sickness kicked in. It was horrible..normal but horrible. Couldn't leave the house without being sick in a public place like carparks etc.
Don't really have much to complain about because besides that everything was fine. All through the pregnancy I felt something wasn't right. Even shared my concerns with the midwife but I just pushed it aside and continued waiting for my baby to arrive. 6 months into the pregnancy I kept going back to the hospital cause I felt lack of movement. Sometimes I wouldn't feel him move at all for a couple of days. God I lost count with how many times I went there for an ultrasound. Luckily everything was fine.
On 31st May 2010 I phoned the midwife because I didn't feel very well, she told me to come to the practice right away so I could have a check up to see how the baby was doing. After having my blood pressure and urine checked I was admitted into hospital because of Pre-Eclampsia. I was told that labour would be induced the next day.
It might have taken only 3 hours but it was 3 hours of hell! Enough to scare me out of ever thinking about having another child! I'm glad it wasn't that bad with Lily else we probably wouldn't have had Dylan here today :)
Dylan was the cutest little boy ever! He was born with a full head of hair and the nurses thought he was adorable
There were a few things that worried us though, things like the patch of hair on his upper back, the slit between his bumcheeks was crooked, he had a small cyste like spot of about 1mm, skin discolouration and a dimple by his tailbone. We mentioned these things but we were told it was nothing to worry about. The hair will fall off, the spot and discolouration will go and the dimple and wonky split was normal.
When we got home it didn't really take long before we started noticing other strange things. Like the fact he always slept and would never relax his right leg and foot..he would cramp his foot up. The other leg was fine, he would move that about without a problem.
After a couple of weeks Dylan was very poorly with a chest infection. He was admitted into the hospital, there we asked again about his leg, back etc. and again we were told not to worry.
Slowly he started to grow a hemangioma on his left side. But we wern't too worried about that.
When Dylan was 4 months we started to worry about the fact that Dylan was always asleep, we noticed that his right foot was smaller than the left and he still couldn't lift his head. Not till the age of almost 5 months were we redirected to a physio therapists.
At 7 months he could finally lift his head, at 9 months he could roll over and 11 months he could sit and stand up at the age of 13 months.
By the time Dylan was 10 months he already had a chest infection 13 times. Poor baby was always poorly. After being tested for Cystic Fibrosis and allergies the pedeatrician thought it was about time to send him to a lung specialist. They were going to do a bronchoscopy to see why he had all these chest infections. After checking his lungs the specialist thought it would be a good idea to completely check him out as he was under general anaesthetic anyway. Once she saw his dimple and other markings on his back alarm bells rang. She asked the pedeactrician to look at it to see if this could be more that just a dimple as he has many other suspicious markings. There they decided to send us to a Neurologist and he finally gave us some answers. He thought all his markings and slow development could have something to do with eachother, he signed us up for an MRI and asked us about hereditary diseases in the family. He mentioned Dylan could have a mild form of Spina Bifida called Spina Bifida Occulta. That's when the guilt kicked in..was this because I didn't take folic acid as much as I should have? Is this something I could have prevented?
This also explained Dylan's obstipation. He was already on Forlax Junior to help him along.
It took a while before Dylan was given his MRI, by this time he was 14 months old.
In October 2011 (at 16 months old) we were told Dylan had Spina Bifida Occulta, Tethered Cord Syndrome, Multiple Syringomyelia, Lipoma, small Sinus Tract and sever obstipation. His bowels were stretched up to 6 times its normal size.
We were sent to an Urologist who advised Urodynamic evaluation and a Gastro-Enterologist.
The Gastro-Enterologist gave us Enema's to give him every other day and told us to give him 4 forlax sachets a day. This was a nightmare for dylan, he would get horrible tummy cramps. So we'd put him under the shower for half an hour to relieve his pain and stool.
The Urodynamics test showed that his bladder would expand to over 200ml instead of 60-80ml for a baby his age. He would just pee 40ml and then stop so we were told we had to cath him 5-6 times a day to prevent reflux to the kidneys and reduce the chances of Urinary Tract Infections.
We started the catherterizing last week and I can't get the cath in. Went to the hospital in my hometown and they couldn't cath him either. Now we are waiting for the next step. I wonder what they will do to solve this problem.
At this very moment Dylan is 17.5 months old and started saying his first words last week. He can stand while holding on to furniture and walk with a baby walker. He can't stand by himself yet and he tires easily and drags his right leg when walking. But i'm very proud of my little boy..he is always happy and to me he is perfect.
Dylan outside with his baby walker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlJU0xfSM34
