HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MALACHI!

Today, my baby boy turns ONE!! Bless his little rotten heart, he's the sweetest thing EVER!! So, here's Malachi as a little baby.....


....and Malachi now!!!


Isn't he so cute? The first few weeks of Malachi's life were pretty uneventful. Kari was my sleeping baby, Malachi was the awake-every-two-hours-if-we're-lucky baby. Absolutely no sleep!! But one strange thing about him....he grunted ALL THE TIME. I asked the doctor about it and he suggested that he was just a loud baby and wanted attention. By 4 weeks old, he was spitting up so bad that he wasn't even using the bathroom much. I took him BACK to the doctor on a Wednesday and he switched us to Soy formula. Bad choice. By Saturday the poor little thing was puking so bad that my whole house smelled like Soy formula and he had no dirty diapers. BACK TO THE DOCTOR where I told them that it wasn't the formula and that we needed to be checking in to the worst case scenarios that they had mentioned in the first place. By Sunday morning, we were taking Malachi to the hospital for an Upper GI which confirmed the worst. He had Pyloric Stenosis. This is a situation where the stomach muscle is overgrown and they have to do a telescopic procedure to "shave" the muscle down to a normal size. The overgrown muscle blocks any food from passing through the stomach to the intestines and therefore causing any food or liquid to come back up. By the time we had rushed to UK, Malachi was dehydrated. My mother and father in law drove me and Malachi to UK Children's Hospital and we got checked in. My mom and sister kept Kari at home until the next morning. They quickly put an IV in him and did a few other preps to him.



He wasn't allowed to eat from that point on until they did his surgery the next morning. Do you know how hard it is to hold a sick, hungry baby for about 15 hours and keep it calm? Rough, friends, rough. I prayed so hard for my baby boy. Although they had assured us that this was a simple procedure and not life threatening since we caught it in time, it wasn't simple to us. I slept with Malachi snuggled in my arms all night and when we took him down to the surgery, I thought my heart would burst. They had to put him to sleep and that was the hardest thing ever. It makes me pray so hard for parents who have children with life threatening diseases.
Long story short (because I could turn it into a very long story, obviously) Malachi came through his surgery wonderfully! By the time we went for his two week checkup he was eating fine and sleeping better and everything! God was with my baby!

I also want to add a little note about when Malachi was actually born into this world. With Kari, my water didn't break on its own so I didn't really know how it felt. Well.....I learned how it felt in front of a waiting room full of people when I was in labor with Malachi. I went to the hospital because I thought I was leaking fluid and my doc told me to come pay her a quick visit. About the time I walked in the front doors of the hospital (which also housed the waiting room) the pipe broke. And I don't mean a stream. A gush, people. I was in sandals so I squeaked down the hallway to the bathroom to try to get myself together. Very funny situation here. I was cracking up.
Little Malachi was born at 7:55 am on a Tuesday morning without the aid of an epidural. Really funny story about that too but I'll save that for another day when I don't have anything else to talk about which usually doesn't ever happen because I always have something to talk about. But one of these days I'll share the epidural story with you. LOL.




Happy Birthday, Malachi David Noe. You are Mommy's little Prince Charming. :)