My Favorite

My mother always told me that you love all your kids equally--they each get all the love you possibly can hold. But if you press her, she will admit to having "favorites." It is always whichever of her children is sick, or struggling, or suffering. Basically whoever is most in need of love.

Joey after eating his Christmas pomegranate 3 years ago.

Well, today my favorite is Joey. This scruffy little guy just had oral surgery today. What? you say...Surely he is too young for oral surgery! Yes, he is young--only 6, and small for his age at a minimal 38 pounds. But he is no stranger to surgery. Actually, today was his 5th surgery. None of them have been serious surgeries--2 eye muscle surgeries for strabismus (crossed-eyes), and 3 oral surgeries.

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It is all my fault, of course. I consciously choose a path that would ruin 4 of his baby molars forever. But let me 'splain!

When Joey was first born, I noticed that he tended to choke a little bit every time he nursed. He always had to cough a lot and nursing was a slow going process. Still, he gained weight and seemed to be doing fine. Look how cute he was at 6 months:

He has "Bambi Eyes."

Sometime around 6-8 months we started having real problems feeding Joey. He didn't seem to want to eat--solid or liquid food. He would pull off while nursing a lot, like he was too excited or wiggly to eat. I started to loose my milk. He stopped gaining weight. I had to transfer him to formula around 7 months. It was SO hard to get him to drink even just 3-4 oz. at a time. When I took him to his 9 month appointment, I told the doctor about the problems we were having with him. The pediatrician said not to worry and that he was just a skinny little guy--and too interested in everything else to eat much.

Joey began to have chronic diarrhea and continued to refuse to eat. When I took him back to the pediatrician at around 12 months, his pediatrician was hysterical. She said he was in the "failure to thrive" category. I still remember how traumatic that visit was. We had him tested for allergies, for parasites, for lactose intolerance, for genetic diseases that might cause his ongoing diarrhea. I tried different formulas, I took him to "natural" doctors, I tried hokey alternative treatments, such as fancy oils, homeopathic medicine, chiropractice (the weird kind), difficult diets. Nothing produced results.

By the time he was 18 months, we had enlisted the services of a feeding therapist as well as a physical therapist and an occupational therapist. It was discovered that the "choking" problem was due to poor muscle tone in the esophagus.

Here is the part where I ruin his teeth--I started feeding Joey almost nothing but pediasure every day. He liked it and would drink almost the full 8 oz. But he would only drink it on one condition. He had to be completely alone--with no distractions, laying in his crib.

Every day for at least 6 months, probably closer to a year, he drank 4 pediasures a day in his crib. Often he would fall asleep with the bottle still in his mouth. I knew it was bad for his teeth. I KNEW it. I had read all about it in my child developement classes, but I didn't care. I was too worried about his brain and the rest of his body. He had started to seriously lag behind in physical and even cognitive developement. (He didn't walk until 18-19 months.) Drinking the pediasure was good for him in lots of ways. He started to gain weight again. He got back his adorable chubby cheeks.

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Around his 2 year mark we had a breakthrough as to what was causing a lot of his problems. Joey had never really slept well at night. He woke up coughing almost every single night--croupy, often. I had to put him in a steamy bathroom during the night about 4 times a week, so he could start breathing easily again. I attributed this to his tendancy towards asthma. And there was always a large drool spot on his pillow in the morning. Always. The doctor finally put all this together. Coughing at night, spots on pillows, refusal to eat=really bad acid reflux.

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Remember the low muscle tone in his esophagus? The acid from his stomach was coming up and burning his esophagus and throat. This made it hurt to swallow food. He had learned that eating was a painful thing. It had also caused inflammation of his airways so that it was very easy for him to catch every illness on the planet, and get croupy at the drop of a hat. I'm not sure, but I think that the inflamation in his throat was somehow related to the inflamatory response in his intestines that was leading to the unending diarrhea. All I know is that everything fell together when we started treating his reflux. The diarrhea stopped, he started responding to the feeding therapy, he gained weight and he looked this adorable by the time he was 2 1/2:

Perfectly healthy, right? Well, almost...

He caught up to all the regular developemental milestones quickly, running, jumping, talking, counting. The one casualty in this whole process (besides my mental health, possibly) was his teeth. Those months and months of drinking in his crib led to really bad decay on his first molars. All four had pulpotomies (root canals) and had to be capped (surgery #1). I felt a little guilty, but I still think it was a fair trade. Teeth or brain? So he had 4 silver little teeth in the back of his mouth. We got used to it. This is Joey at 3 1/2. He has 4 silver teeth, but who can tell?

Then one day about a a year and a half ago, one of the bottom silver teeth just popped out. I freaked, I shreiked, I cried... The dentist told me that he had never seen anything like it in his whole career. Sometimes, he told me, the teeth don't like the fillings from the pulpotomy, and the roots start to dissolve a little in protest. He had seen this VERY occasionally in his practice, but he said he had NEVER seen the entire root dissolve, until Joey. (Of course HE would be the exception!) So surgery #2 was placing a spacer to hold the spot for when his adult tooth finally comes in (around 11, I think).

Then last week Joey bit into a raw baby carrot and said ow! He indicated that his bottom silver tooth on the other side was hurting. I touched it, and it wiggled precariously. Ug. Here we go again. It fell out, but THIS time, the root was not completely dissolved. 2 shards of root remained embedded in his mouth below the gum line.

Sooooo, today I took my little sweetheart to the dentist for his 3rd oral surgery. He had to drink something nasty, and breathe in a funny gas until he was quite loopy. The dentist removed the 2 pieces of root (which was difficult, he told me later--he ended up having to remove some bone tissue to get them out) and placed another spacer. Now my poor little Joey is in my bed, with bloody drool coming out the corners of his mouth. But he was such a little champ. He did not fight the dentist at all.

So it's been a little bit of a bumpy ride for Joey, growing and eating and all. I still stress a little bit about his eating. I always wish he would eat a little more. But all's well that ends well, right? He is a healthy, active little guy. He is at the tip-top of his class at school, and his permanent teeth will eventually grow in and replace his spacers. So all is good in the long run.

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But for today, he is my very favorite-ist of all little kids. Ever. I am going to sing to him and spoon feed him apple juice until he is lucid enough to hold his own popsicle. And sometime tonight we might be brave enough to venture a cracker or two.