A hospital visit....and too much time to think!

On Friday, David and I spent the day with Hyrum in Tulsa. A doctors visit to see a Pediatric Surgeon in the morning turned into an all day experience at St. Francis Hospital. Hyrum has had constipation issues since birth. The poor kid will push and push just to produce a small streak on his diaper. His stomach is always swollen. And no matter how much fiber we try to put in his diet we have the same issues over and over. I'm sure if you have an idea for us to try to get him more regular...well, there is a good chance we have tried it. We have done the all natural things, the medicine routes, enemas, suppositories, massaging his stomach to try and actually encourage the waste to move in his stomach...you name it, we've tried it! MiraLAX has been our only somewhat effective tool. Did you know that you can have diarrhea and still be constipated? I did not know this until our poor little Hyrum would get so backed up that finally whatever that MiraLAX softened/watered down (or however you describe it!) would just shoot past his mass of blockage at the end of his large intestine. As you can imagine, he gets pretty whiny and clingy at times; I'm sure because of this. I've always found it odd, though, that he is more irritable right after a successful bowel movement than he is when his stomach is huge and has been working on a bowel movement for literally days! Anyways, Hryum will have a barium enema on Monday where they will do a series of x-rays. After that, probably the following week, he will have a surgery to see if he has Hirschsprung Disease. They will take a tiny piece of his large intestine out for a biopsy. And we will go from there. It is very rare and I'm sure he doesn't have it. At the same time though, I don't know what to do for him anymore. Anyways, it's time to stop freaking myself out and to brag on what a good kid I have! We waited in offices, waiting rooms, cubicles, etc... for hours and while Hyrum missed his nap and he didn't cry once. He melted the hearts of a number of older people who were waiting also at the hospital. One lady told us that he was just the happiest baby she had seen in a long time and that it said something about his parents. I absolutely loved hearing that but if it would have been Brigham waiting all this time, I'm almost positive she would have said quite the opposite about David and I! She would have seen a 5 year old bouncing off the couches, knocking over magazines, telling us how bored he was every 5 seconds, and eventually landing his nose in a number of random corners as punishment for not listening to us....yes, we are mean parents who do put our children in corners in public! Ok, so maybe (only maybe though) Brigham wouldn't do just that bad.

As we were leaving the hospital I told David just how grateful that Hyrum is so obedient. Levi was a very obedient baby and is now a very obedient child. I love to hear mom tell people about how she couldn't believe that her then 10 month old grandson, when she and Dad came to visit us in Rexburg, knew to never go in the bathroom....even if everyone else was in there. He would crawl right up to that piece of metal that divided our hallway and the bathroom floor and just stop. I had a bathroom fetish I guess you could say and I was always afraid of him getting in the toilet or getting all those nasty bathroom germs on him so he only entered in when I carried him into the bathtub! Oh how things change. Earlier tonight David had to give Hryum a bath because Hryum put his hands in the toilet water because we, of course, let our kids go in the bathroom whenever they want now. Oh the things I would tell myself to calm down about only 7 years ago! Anyways, Hyrum is a lot like Levi. You tell him once not to do something and he stops immediately. Sure, he'll pout about it but he always stops right away. He showed that over and over again at the hospital while we were all bored. I sure do love my boys....yes, even my stubborn Brigham. He may drive me nuts sometimes with his need to be independent but he is the one out of all 3 boys that always seems to have us laughing. As Auntie say, "Brigham is full of one liners!" I think what makes it so funny is that he isn't trying to be funny....he's trying to be literal - which is almost always hilarious! I'll end this post with something he said to me today.

He and Levi had been playing on the PlayStation and I thought they had been on there to long so I told them to get off. Brigham's reply was, "But mom, I didn't even hurt my neck. That means it wasn't a long time!" He wasn't trying to be funny, he was just stating the fact he hadn't been sitting on the ground looking up at the TV in one direction long enough to cause any damage to his neck....Hello! Obviously, he hadn't been on there long enough!