THANK-YOU

Just a note to say that we want to thank each & everyone of you who have helped us out in the last few weeks & have offered to help in the weeks to come. People have made us some delicious meals & baked goods, we’ve been given food & gas gift cards, we've received help with covering the cost of our stay & parking, help with our children, visits, emails/cards, care packages, house cleaning, & so much more. Most importantly, thank-you for storming the gates of Heaven with prayers for us. Please know that every little gesture you've done has helped us along the way, & we are so thankful that God has given us the communion of the saints. Saying thank-you just doesn’t seem enough to express how incredibly grateful we are for all that you’ve done for us.

 

Through this we’ve also learned a lot about self-sacrifice. As we enter this Christmas season, may we remember all that Christ has sacrificed for us…"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13. May Christ’s Name be lived out through us; and though we aren't be able to imitate Him perfectly, may we strive to follow Christ’s example and follow in His footsteps.

 

It's not hard to count the blessings this season!

From our crazy family to yours...Wishing you all a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

Much love, Adam, Jennifer, Malachi, Olivia & Logan Linde.

 

 

 

 

A Day In The Life...

Many of you were wondering if I plan to keep up the blog now that we are home. My answer is yes, as much as I possibly can I will update you on how things are going with Logan. Life is busy, and other then weighing Logan weekly, there won't always be many changes, but I will update you all as best that I can.

So for starters we've been home now for 13 days. It's crazy how fast time has gone! Although with it being Christmas and all, things have been even crazier. When we are home Logan seems to do fairly well with his feeds as long as we feed him and lay him down again right away afterwards. As our dietitian pointed out, this is very weird as usually if you lay a baby on that tummy when its full after a feed, they will vomit. However Logan is different. Brad, our dietitian, says that Logan is no text book baby - he's unlike any baby he's worked with before! He does everything the opposite that the doctors would expect a "normal" baby to do. So Brad doesn't compare Logan to any other baby, he figures that we just have to figure out what works best for Logan, and do it! We know that Logan tends to vomit up more of his feeds when we are busy & not at home, so we are hoping that after the business of Christmas we will hibernate for a little while & keep him in somewhat of a routine at home in hopes of helping him keep the food in & gain weight. When Logan is sitting up watching what's going on or being passed around, it doesn't help his situation. It's best after feeding him to lay him down and let him be. I know this is hard as alot of people want to see him and even hold him, but at this time it's probably best not to transfer him around too much. He's learning to be quite content laying in his bed watching his mobile, or in his swing watching his siblings, and of coarse just laying anywhere sucking his fingers. It's taking a bit to get him out of that habit of being held all the time at the hospital, but we're getting there.

Logan is very slowly gaining weight. He has gained roughly 7 ounces since we left the hospital. Maybe even more! (I say this because our dietitian was unable to weigh him this week due to having the flu, so we won't find out until next week at his next appointment). He's fluctuated up & down as well, and continues to vomit. As long as he still continues to gain, the doctors will be happy, but if he plateau's for too long or loses excessively we will need to take him back to Mac for sure. We are hoping that will not be the case. We've also seen our family pediatrican since being home and he assured me that things look promising as far as Logan's weight gain. He thinks it will take a bit to get Logan to where he needs to be, and when he does he may finally take off in weight. After all Malachi had the same thing and he's perfectly fine now! On average they hope to see 30 grams a day in weight gain and Logan has been doing between 30-35 grams per day, so this is great to see!

Things are still crazy over here, but we love having the kids home & the kids love that daddy has lots of time off this Christmas...ok, mommy loves this too! He will still be off until the middle of next week. However he has been snow clearing for over 24 hours as we speak, so we are hoping that he will be done with that soon! We are looking forward to not being so busy & settling down into somewhat of a routine in the new year. We will be busy will appointments & Logan's needs, but I am sure this will all just become part of a new "normal" life for us. We will be heading back to Mac in early January to re-evaluate Logan's condition and see where to go from here. Until then we will just keep doing what we are doing & hope for the best!

I know people have been wondering too, how often we are really feeding Logan, what's all involved, etc. Sometimes its hard to understand a day in the life of someone else until you have stepped in their shoes for a moment. I thought I would share with you the schedule we've made up for Logan that is posted on our fridge. We have a timer that is also on the fridge (or often clipped to my jean pocket) that is set to automatically go off every 2 hours so we don't get too busy and miss a feed. That timer has controlled my life lately, and I can't wait until the day that I never have hear the thing again! I will post this schedule so that you can pray how to support us, grasp why we might be a little tired and cranky (please forgive me if I am!), or to understand better what's really going on. :)

5:30am - Give medication, (Domperidone & Omeprazole)
5:45am - Boil water, measure out & mix a special high calorie formula
6:00am - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
7:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
8:00am - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
9:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
10:00am - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
11:30am - Give medication, (Domperidone)
11:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
12:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
1:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
2:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
3:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
4:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
5:30pm - Give medication, (Domperidone & Omeprazole)
5:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
6:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
7:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
8:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
9:45pm - Make & warm up bottle
10:00pm - Feed 75ml, burp him & lay him down
11:30pm - Give medication, (Domperidone)
11:45pm - Make & warm up next bottle
12:00am - Feed 90ml, burp him & lay him down
2:45am - Make & warm up next bottle
3:00am - Feed 90ml, burp him & lay him down
5:15am - Make & warm up next bottle
5:30am - START ALL OVER AGAIN.

It takes me about 30-40 minutes by the time each feed, changing diapers, etc is done - which only leaves about 1hr 15 min inbetween feeds. As you can tell this doesn't give me much time to get alot of other things done, much less SLEEP! Our dietitian has been telling us that we can push Logan to do 110ml every 3 hours, but this ended in an epic FAIL. He vomited more because he couldn't handle the bigger volumes at once. Instead we now try to get him to go every 3 hours at 90ml, but he usually cries for his next bottle after 2 hours because he's so used to that schedule. I feed on demand pretty much now with the max time that he'll go every now & then being 2.5 hours. Soooo, if you ever feel up to staying over for a night to try the night feeds with Logan the door is always open! ;) Nah, in all seriousness I give credit to Adam, who tries his hardest to get out of bed to do the 3am feed! For anyone that knows Adam, it is VERY hard for him to get out of bed, but he's doing surprisingly well when it comes to getting up to help feed Logan.

So, if someone you know, is ever in a situation like this, walking around, looking like a zombie... now you know why! :)

Up, Up & Away!

Logan was weighed yesterday and thankfully has gone up again! He is now at 11pds, 6oz. It is not as much weight gain as they were hoping for, but they are just happy to see him going up and not down again. On average they would like him to gain 40-50 grams per day, but I pointed out that realistically because he is behind and has to catch up he may only gain 25-30 grams. He is not actually taking in as much as a normal 4 month old baby would be eating. Hopefully over the next few weeks we can get him up to where he needs to be. As long as Logan continues to slowly gain and doesn't drop again, the doctors will be happy.

 

Our dietitian is awesome! He said he would be willing to come again on Friday to see what the weight is then instead of waiting till next week (he usually only comes once a week). He said this will give us all peace of mind to see that Logan is slowly going up. I also had to remind myself that although we'll never know for sure if Malachi had this, the doctors like to believe he did have a milder form of a protein intolerance. If any of you can remember, Malachi was so long, spidery and yes scrawny for the first year of life and by the time he turned 1 he chunked right up. He also went up in weight, just very slowly and he did vomit more of his food because we never thought it was an issue as long as he was still gaining. The difference as to why we took Logan to the hospital was because he actually dropped under his birth weight at almost 3 months old.

 

We also go to see the pediatrician on Thursday. He will take a look at Logan and see how he's doing on the growth chart and do a follow up since being discharged from Mac. Thankfully next week we are getting a whole week off from appointments. We are just having the dietician come to our place one day so that we can still monitor Logan's weight. Otherwise we will just be enjoying our week of Christmas holidays as a family & free from all of this for a bit. :)

 

Here's to hoping Logan keeps going up everyday!!

Home Sweet Home

Sorry that I haven't had a chance to blog since we got home, things have been just a little bit busy. I have also realized that it is silly waiting for that "perfect time" to do anything that I need to do, life is just going to be busy for awhile so I'll take a moment to do things like this admist the toys scattered in every room, sounds of my children fighting, a baby crying and learn at the same time how to tone it out! :)

 

We were discharged around 2pm on Friday afternoon and we were so excited! Even Adam (who barely shows his emotions) was pumped! The words, "You are going home", have never sounded better! The nurse snapped our last picture together at the hospital, we packed up our things and we were out of there.

 

 

It never felt SO GOOD to get out into the "real world" again. I cranked the Christmas tunes, singing like a crazy woman, so excited to go home and spend Christmas with my little family. This was the best present we could have received this year.

 

We picked up the kids & got home around 5pm. We had so much "stuff" that had accumulated over the last month and a half of being gone that the van was packed with only enough room for Logan and myself. Malachi & Olivia got to go for a ride home in the truck with Adam, they were thrilled!

 

 

 

As we pulled into the driveway Malachi got really excited to see that the Keizer clan put lights on our house. Malachi LOVES Christmas lights so this just made his day, especially since we told him that this year we weren't doing a tree or lights. We walked into our house to find a card on the counter from "the Christmas Angels" who had made a crockpot of chili for dinner & set up a Christmas tree and our decorations for us. I wish I had my camera handy, the look on Malachi's face was priceless as he shouted,"Oooooh, MY CHRISTMAS TREE!!!"..."Look mom, look dad, LIGHTS!".

 



 

Thank-you SO much to the wonderful people who did this for us. It brought tears to my eyes to see how excited the kids were and how great it feels to be loved by all of you. It was so thoughtful!

 

Olivia decided to make sure she really felt at home again. She walked through each room of the house destroying things & touching things she knows that she shouldn't be touching. Out came the night light from the plug, out came the water cooler tray, my candles were scattered amongst the living room floor and then she headed for the remotes. Oh Olivia, its so good to have you home! 

Anyone have tips on teaching her how to play with TOYS? :) Malachi was admiring our christmas tree when he stopped to give Adam & I a hug and says, "Hey guys, guys, we're home!" haha. First of all we are not "guys", its mom & dad. Second of all YES we are home and loving every busy, crazy, chaotic minute of it!

 

Saturday morning we enjoyed just hangin' out in our double bed with 3 kiddo's, 4 blankies, 8 books, about a dozen stuffed animals and a puzzle. (same as last time we came home from the hospital). Daddy made everyone pancakes for breaky, we listened to Christmas music while decorating the tree and we started watching my all-time favorite Christmas movie Elf! It was then naptime for everyone. The rest of our weekend was busy. Adam's family had a Christmas get-together with presents for the kids on Saturday afternoon/evening, and my family's was on Sunday. Needless to say, Monday morning came too quickly and I was exhausted. Ok, we were all exhausted. At one point yesterday I locked myself in the bathroom just for some sanity. Not 30 seconds later my kids were banging on the door asking, "Mom, what are you doing in there?" Really? My response was, "I'm hiding sweetie". Then the kids started laughing at me like I'm joking! I will be honest with you all & not only post the good moments in my life because life is not always sunshine & rainbows. Real families, real moms, have bad moments too and I think its ok to admit that. Sometimes it makes us feel uplifted just to know that we are normal and all dealing with days like these. Thankfully though I can say that today seems to be a bit better!

 

Logan is doing great so far. He feeds every 2 hours from start to start, and needs medications at 6 different times a day. My life is controlled by a beeper that automatically goes off every 2 hours so that I won't get too busy and forget to feed Logan. Between caring for Logan, dressings the kids, feeding them, changing diapers and spending a bit of time playing/reading books, that doesn't really leave us for time to do anything else. So if you've called, emailed or texted me and I haven't gotten back to you, that's probably why. I LOVE chatting, but right now my family takes first priority so please don't take it personally if it takes me a day or 2 (or 3!) to get back to you. :)

 

Logan has been keeping the majority of his feeds down, and seems pretty content to be at home in his own bed. I think he needs to get used to hearing his big brother & big sister throughout the day...it is definitely not quiet in our house! We are looking forward to the dietician coming this afternoon to weigh Logan. This will give us a good idea of how things are going and if he is soaking up all the nutrients that he needs. I will update you on his weight later today when we know! For now we've set up our bed for him to be in just like at the hospital, and of coarse he's still a t.v. junkie! We keep the tv on in our room with Baby Einsteins that he can watch when he's not sleeping to keep him occupied. For now that's ok with me.

 

 

Things have indeed changed alot for us and it will take some time to get used to our new routine again. But we will get there! We are thankful for all the support and help from our family & friends. And as we've said before it is just SO great to be home again! Praying for strength, patience and energy to keep going on each day.

 

"Blessings today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine with 10,000 besides.... Great is Thy faithfulness!"

GOING HOME!!!

I will give thanks to the LORD according to His righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High ... Psalm 7:17

HE DID IT!!! Logan, our brave, adorable, happy, vibrant baby boy proved the doctors wrong and jumped the highest in weight that he's been since day 1. All we kept hoping for was that Logan would hold of off taking a big poop right before weighing him, as that could definitely change the outcome of weight. Thankfully he decided to hang onto it until this morning! lol. He is officially 11pds, 2 oz. Our nurse Sylva was ready with a drum roll, we put Logan on the scale and for about 5 seconds we all stood there with our mouths wide open looking at eachother...can this be right? Did he really just go up to 5 kilos (which is 11pds, 2oz). I cried, I hugged the nurse, I jumped up & down...we are GOING HOME! Sylva was extremely happy for us and wanted us to have a good nights rest before our big day so she offered to do his night feeds for us so we could both go back to the RMDH. She is just so wonderful and I'm so thankful to have ended our last night here with her.

We have so many different feelings about going home. Excited, nervous, exhausted, feeling blessed, a bit anxious, joyful & hoping that things continue to go up from here. We are so thankful for the great support that we have from our family, friends and church family, which makes going home with Logan's issues & the business of 3 under 3, not so overwhelming. We are grateful for the friends that have visited us & chatted with us about being down this road before and how they managed once they were home. They've given me hope that although life will be busy and alot of things will be put on hold, we will get through it and it will only be for a short time. Adam & I have never been more excited to be going home. Logan has spent most of the first 3 months of life at the doctors office & in the hospital, and we are ready to give him a somewhat normal life at home! We are also excited to have Malachi & Olivia back in our lives permanently! We can't wait to take them home and enjoy the small things in life again. {“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things.”} I know that I will probably still continue to sound like a crazy person with all my emotions of laughter, crying and exhaustion, but it feels great to get it out and know that each day is a fresh new start and we will try to make the most of each day that the Lord has given us together.

I am so so proud of Logan for fighting so hard and being so cheerful through all of this. I am so thankful for the friendships we've made with most of the nurses here, they all told us that they are so happy for us, but sad that we are leaving them. I am thankful for the power of prayer, thank-you to ALL of you for praying so hard for us through this. We ask for your continued prayers for the days, weeks and months that lie ahead as well. We want to thank each and every one of you that have followed Logan's story and have offered to help in the past and in the weeks to come. We have had help with meals, parking passes, food & gas gift cards, help with our kids, visits, emails, phone chats, prayers, yummy baked goods, care packages, house cleaning, gifts for Logan and so much more that I can't seem to think of at that moment. We would love to thank-you all individually, however things are so overwhelming at the moment and may be for sometime, that I would like to let you all know here first. Please know that every little gesture you've done has helped us along the way and we are so incredibly grateful for the people that God has placed in our lives. You have carried our burdens with us, shared in our joys & sorrows and God has blessed us so richly! We hope someday to be able to "pay it forward" so to speak to someone, anyone, that will also need help in their situation someday.

We'll update you in the next day or two on how things are going at home and of coarse long term for what's to come as far as what allergy's he may have as he begins solids, etc.

We're outta here!! Have a blessed weekend everyone & we'll touch base soon.

Much love, Adam & Jenn. (Malachi, Olivia & Logan)

I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the LORD; the humble will hear it and rejoice. O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together ... Psalm 34:1-3

Answered Prayers

"Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings."
Psalm 36: 5-7
 

Today was a great day. It's very rare that I've said that, but really how often can you have a "great day" in the hospital? One of my dearest friends Jocelyn told me last night to find joy in the small things today. Thank-you Jocelyn, it was a great reminder and that is exactly what we did. For once I didn't dwell on the negative aspect of our situation, instead we forgot what we are dealing with and just enjoyed our day together!

This morning we took Logan for a nice long walk through the hospital to see his nurses in 3b from the first admittance. As much as they'd love to see us go home soon, they also love seeing his face light up with big smiles whenever he sees one of them. They've come to a conclusion that he is a big flirt, a charmer and LOVES the ladies. hehe. We then stopped for coffee at the Ronald McDonald room in the hospital for a coffee & treats that were once again graciously donated from Starbucks & cookies from the girl guides that came to sing carols for us .

At 10am we met with our social worker to express our feelings of frustrations and idea's, she was able to advocate for us to Dr. Brille before we were to meet with him after lunch. We had a great talk and it was really good to get it all out on the table. We had a busy morning as just after our meeting ended, in walked Santa Claus! He came to the lounge today to read all the letters that the kids wrote and put in his mailbox here at the hospital. He then went to each room to bring the kids a gift and get a picture with Santa! Of coarse Logan is really little & doesn't understand, but his mama is one BIG Christmas fanatic! If you know me well enough, you know I enjoy every little detail about the month of December. It's infact my favorite time of the year :) So yes, I got Santa's little elf helpers to take a picture of him with Santa Claus for his memory box that we've made from the hospital. Logan liked Santa's beard and started trying to eat it - so typical of him to put everything in his mouth. All we could think was better Logan then Olivia, she'd probably try to pull his beard right off!! The quality of my picture isn't that great since I took it on my phone, but they printed one off for us and it is adorable!



After a busy morning we had McDonalds for lunch, which was also donated to the hospital. It is amazing how special Mac tries to make Christmas and they're stay in general. Although the days are long and often monotonious, the staff here at Mac has been great to us and we've made friendships with some of the nurses, child life specialists, O.T.'s, dieticians and more. And after the afternoon we had with Dr. Brille we may have made another friendship! Dr. Brille came by to see us around 3pm to chat. Thanks to the residents, our nurses, our O.T. & our social worker who advocated for us & really filled the doctor in on how we were feeling and our game plan, the meeting went surprisingly well. We were prepared to have to be firm and fight for Logan to get the g-tube or go home on the bottle this weekend, and we didn't even have to. Dr. Brille told us he is actually happy with even the little bit of weight gain Logan is having and that he seems to be tolerating the bottle ok, so he is willing to discharge us tomorrow as long as Logan still gains weight tonight. If he loses weight then we won't be going anywhere, but we are pretty confident that Logan had a good day & will do well. We'll know by 9pm tonight!

If we are discharged tomorrow Logan will go home on bottle feeds every 2 hours. We will work with a dietician to increase these feeds and push them to every 3 hours (for my sanity!) and to increase the calories so Logan will gain faster and be up to where he needs to be. We will give it a couple of weeks and if the bottle feed doesn't seem to be going as great as we hope for, then Dr. Brille will have us come back after the holidays to get a g-tube inserted, no questions asked. He says by that point we will really have tried everything and it will be very evident that he would need a g-tube. But let's not think about that! We just hope & pray Logan continues to thrive on bottle feeds so we don't even have to go that route! Our dietician will come once a week, we will have appointments at Mac & with our pediatrician in Welland, and we will probably be extremely exhausted from feeding him every 2 hours. But honestly none of this matters, we are just so SO excited to be taking all our kids home again! Please kindly remind me of this when I'm home & going crazy again ;)

Today we received some AMAZING news! We are so thankful to hear that we can go home and we want to thank you all for the multitude of prayers that you stormed heavens gates with on our behalf. We pray that God continues to bless Logan & help him to grow & thrive. We also pray that this may possibly be the end of hospital stays, at least for awhile. When Logan starts on solid foods we will be coming back to meet with an allergist to test Logan and see what other sorts of allergy's he could have. We will also cross this bridge when it comes. One day at a time.

Dr. Brille just had one more question for us..."So are you done having children now?" Adam laughed, "Absolutely not. If the Lord decides to grant us with more children someday, we would be thrilled!" The doctors think we are nuts as this is something that can be hereditary and the chances of dealing with this in future children is quite high. "That's ok, this will never stop us from wanting to have more children, after all we've truly learned from this that the Lord will never give us more then we can handle." Dr. Brille just smiled, ok and chuckled a bit. I would love to know what he was really thinking!

PRAYING that Logan maintains his weight or goes up tonight because then tomorrow we are going home...PRAISE THE LORD!!

A Small Ray Of Hope

"The Lord is faithful to all His promises, and loving toward all He has made." Psalm 145: 13b

Tonight we weighed Logan at 9pm and he surprised alot of people when we seen that he had gained 50grams. "How can this be?" we all thought, he's never been able to gain for over a 24 hour period, especially since he had just lost 100grams in a 24hr period the night before. But hey why are we siting here wondering how this can be?? The fact is is went up again, let's be happy!! All the nurses know us well as we have been here for quite sometime - so when they heard/seen this they cheered. "Yay Logan!! I knew you had it in you to fight", proclaimed our night nurse...."you just prove those doctors wrong!". I just smiled with a slight feeling that I was going to get weepy again (with joy of coarse!). I don't dare get too excited yet, but I can't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, Dr. Brille will still consider discharging Logan on Thursday or Friday. I know we have had hopes before & then had them taken away so we don't want to jump the gun, but I can hardly sleep waiting for our meeting tomorrow to know the verdict!

As the road we are walking seems to get longer & longer we continue to ask God to give us a peace that surpasses all understanding & a hope in Him that all things happen for a reason, though we may never know what that reason is. There is eventually an end, and we need to wait patiently on te Lord for that. In the meantime we will try to maintain those positive attitudes that we had not so long ago, and remember to just take it one day at a time, to breathe, to pray and to trust in Him. If we do not like the answers we are given in our meeting tomorrow we will obviously be disappointed, but may we still hold tight to Him and not have anger in our hearts for feeling like we are getting no where.

Time to start the midnight feed and try to get some sleep yet tonight. Tomorrow is a new day, and we plan to go into it with a joyful heart as we dwell on these words...

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." - Phil 4:4-9