Easter Holidays

... are nearly over! we have had a great time. The weather has been pretty great so we have spent most of our time outside. We have been for 2 nights to Llandudno and spent lots of time on the beach, parks, national trust properties etc. It was a great visit.

We have also been to Stockley Farm to feed the baby lambs as well as hold the chicks. It was amazing to see my rough and tumble boy cradling a new born chick, talking to it as if it was his best friend. We have decorated the kitchen, tidied the garden and othe small DIY projects that have been on the backburner.

Joel has given up his dummies this holiday. We have been warning him that it has been coming - for at least a month, and I am relieved to say that they are gone and without a fuss. He traded them for a red clima cool tshirt and a first size football. He takes his football to bed at night and puts it to sleep in a shoe box! He and I have had conjunctivitis, it is good to share but I would prefer him to keep his bugs to himself.

Emily has enjoyed girly days with grandmum, friends round to visit for tea, Easter Egg Hunt at church, birthday parties with school friends as well as bossing everyone around in the garden!

Jamie and I have been to the the Children's Hospital to meet some of the team who will be caring for baby. It felt a bit like pulling a scab because for the past 5 weeks it has been about my health and has felt like a normal pregnancy. This changed last week, when were shown, "this is where you will meet Mr. Whitby, this is where baby will meet the dental hygienist, the orthodontist, the speech and language lady, the psychologist!" We are so appreciative of the support... but yet again are bombarded with information without holding him in our arms. I suppose we are waiting to meet him so he can show us the extent of his clefts.

It is only 7 weeks until our due date. We wait impatiently but all the good weather has allowed us to wash clothes and bedding. This little one has a full compliment of clothing right up to 2+ years! We are as ready as we can be, we have been taught how to feed him using the different types of bottles should he need it, I have a stack of things to throw into a bag, Emily and Joel are ready to squabble over him and we are trying to sort out contingency plans to care for them when I am in hospital.

I am busy writing school reports, updating school policies and other work related things before I start maternity leave on May 24th. It is less than 15 school days away so I need to get a move on!

Well, I was supposed to be rewriting the school PSHE and citizenship policy - something I will do tomorrow night! SATs are in 2 weeks time so life will be pretty busy for the next few weeks. Jamie is busy with revision classes and parent's evenings and Joel and Emily are just great!

The wonders of technology

This week we met our baby! It was really quite amazing. we had 4D scans to see the extent of the cleft as well as an opportunity to see beyond his cleft and remember that we have another son arriving in 12 ish weeks! It is very weird for us, to know the gender of our baby but also to be able to see him and to notice that the parts of his nose that seem unaffected... looks remarkably similar to Emily and Joel! We think he is really cute! This week is a busy week with a midwife appointment, a consultant appointment as well as dentist appointments for the whole family. - You have got to love the NHS!

So, we are well, I am ballooning and blooming, feeling much better, although work is exhausting. Joel is excited that the garden is drying out after a long, wet winter so he can get out to play football. (I am pleased about this too as we have broken light shades, vases, cups and other fragile things in the lounge and kitchen!) Emily is going to the theatre to see our neighbour in Beauty and the Beast as well as her Ballet performance this Sunday... and Jamie is busy practising to play music with his friend Charles in a Tamil band!

Only 3 weeks til the Easter break, so that means 8 weeks of work left before Maternity leave... but there are bank holidays in there and I only work 3 days so you can do some maths... it is not long to go!

Thanks for love, prayers and kindness... we appreciate all that is said and unsaid.

Half Term

Well, the long awaited break has been and is nearly gone, it has been great. We have been very busy, I feel that I have made up for January of which I spent most of it in bed with flu and other viruses. We have been to North Wales, Eureka and Chester Zoo! Now we are back to our zoos on Monday! Enjoy the pictures.

Tuesday has come and gone

.... and we have more information. We hoped that this scans at St Mary's would confirm what the sonographers thought last Thursday. That Baby's palette is intact, as is his nose.

Sadly, that is not the case. He has a unilateral (one gap) cleft lip and palette. It is average in size and it does goes the full way up to his nostril and his nose is affected. His palette is damaged so feeding will be that little more complicated but the consultant is confident that all can be fixed with a minimum of two surgeries.

We are disappointed that it is as severe as it is, we had hoped that it would be only his lip, but now we really do have to consider speech difficulties, eating challenges and other hurdles too.

We are also very, very aware of the kindness of others, the pain and sadness that this brings. On the other hand we so many are excited to meet him and give cuddles. So form a queue... and be patient as June feels very far away.

Something to make you smile.

I picked Emily up form our childminder after our hospital appointment.
JA: we saw the baby dr today
E: Did he make my brother better?
JA: No, but when he is born.
E: What did he say?
JA: Well, your brother has a hole in his lip, but he also has a hole in his nose and mouth.
E: Mummy, there are holes everywhere! He is a holey baby!
JA: (Laughing) yes he really is!
E: But mummy, my baby brother is holey and Joel is holey, why am I not holey?
JA: I don't know Emily, we are glad you are not holey!

We are smiling, although we are hurting; we are laughing although we are weeping; we are praying and know that God is supporting us through people, friends and family and in silence too.

Round two

Well, the facial scans...

Where do I start? I suppose by saying that Jamie and I are hurting. Our little wriggly one, our much longed for and awaited one, our son... is going to be more unique than we thought. We eventually, after much walking up stairs, drinking sugary juice, jumping up and down... saw his face. He was still coy and at times pressed against my placenta but we have conclusive evidence that he has a cleft in his lip. A gap where both halves of his face have not fused together. We do not know how large, or how deep, we do not know if it affects his nose or palette.

We need more evidence so it is back to the children's hospital for round two of high level specialist scans.

What we do know is that we have been entrusted to look after this little boy..that he arrives into a world were vanity and the seeking of perfection is important. But he also arrives into a world where he is loved and celebrated. Where his choices are like any other; they just come after a bumpy journey for the first year or so.

We are anxious, we await these tests and hope that he cooperates and does not have his hands over his face. We go to Leeds for 4D scans at Easter to have high resolution images to see if that can guide his consultant prior to his birth. If not... we just wait for him to arrive in June, and then he will show us his face and we can work out what we and you and the NHS can do to help him.

We don't pretend that this is easy to handle. We already have Joel, his heart is still repairing, he is not at the end of his journey. Emily is an outgoing, busy 4 year old and into the mix we welcome a boy who needs a lot of immediate care. We would not have chosen this, but we have been chosen to be his parents and we look forward to meeting him.

So... we wait and pray. We pray for peace of mind. Peace of heart and soul. We pray for sleep in the long and sometimes short night. We pray for those who make decisions on our behalf, on our son's behalf. We pray for the staff who will care for him and help him. We pray for our families and friends as they hurt with us, journey with us, laugh and weep alongside us. We pray for Emily and Joel as we try to prepare them for a new brother. We pray that this little one will enter the world knowing that God made him and gave him to us to care for him.

We are grateful for all who have sent messages or called or just smiled. Hopefully we will have more information on Tuesday.

Phew!

This week we had high level, specialist cardio scan on baby. We knew that there was a 25% chance that this one would be like Joel or more complicated but when it is a statistic is feels far away. When it involves the little one so longed for, so wriggly in my stomach.. well it feels different.
We have had good care throughout this pregnancy with tests etc and this week was no different. Our 20 week anomaly scan took an hour... a very long hour! But all seems well apart from the fact that the baby was too shy to show his/her face so we are back for facial scans on Thursday.
Back to the cardio scan... we had to wait for ages as the families before us were complicated like us! But.......... after much looking, measuring, photographing, hmming and haaaaaing... baby does not have any holes similar to Joel. There may be small holes like any other baby but they will get sorted like any other baby at birth. What a relief! We are thankful and grateful.

Other news:

Joel is no longer in a cot, but a big boy bed complete with a gate on his door to keep him in.
Emily is now learning to swim on her back complete with arms... something I wish I was confident with.
It is only 2 weeks until half term!

Joel's first book reading

Enjoy

Flu and cookies

Well, I have been sick since before Christmas, I then picked up and felt better. I went back to school on the first day back and had to be brought home as I had a near fainting episode at my whiteboard. I got flu! Which one they don't know, but what I know is that nearly 2 weeks later I still don't feel 100% but I am better than I was and I have 32 children waiting for me back in class.

Today we had a pyjama day. It was a good way to recover as we were all tired and weary of routines, illnesses and life. It was so unusual for us that Emily didn't know what one was but she really enjoyed being in her nightie at tea time! So note in the pictures they are wearing their pjs despite it being 3.30 in the afternoon!
Yesterday we met up with the McCulloch clan from across the country to celebrate Christmas. It usually happens before Christmas but the snow stopped that this year. We have this great tradition of one family buys for another with a set budget. This year we received a great gift, we always do! Kids baking sets, a grown up apron as well as cookie jar and a gingerbread decorating book. So we tried out a few of them today. It was a little messy but so much fun and tasty too ! Joel has been back to the hospital last week for measuring and tests. His height has jumped massively and he is now 95cm! This means he is above the 91 percentile, something the dietitian thought would never happen. His weight has improved too (75 percentile) and he is no longer on infatrini! The milk he has been on since he was 2 weeks old has now left our home, not bad considering he is 2 and 5 months... and at 98p per 100ml we are no longer a drain on our doctors surgery prescription costs! (not that they ever questioned!) Joel continues to enjoy dressing up, he will use whatever her can find... including his underpants!

He did make me smile when I could hear, "yucky, yucky," coming from the bathroom when Joel was having his bath. I went to ask what was yucky only to be told... "my bottom, Mummy!".

A parcel arrived from Canada last week and in it were some homemade biscuits, which looked and tasted great. Thank you Soren, Kate and Sophie for sharing your cookies with us!

Well, I have successfully distracted myself with this for 30 mins so it is back to planning for tomorrow. Here's hoping I can get through the day without feeling faint or weak and that my class can forgive me for being off for 2 weeks and leaving them with a supply teacher!

Returning to a comfy pair of slippers

It has been a while, probably too long since I have updated my poor blog so here goes, a whistle stop tour of the past couple of months. I must say that I have been laid lower than usual as we are excitedly waiting the arrival of a new McCulloch baby, due to enter the world mid June. This pregnancy thankfully, has been like no other. Sickness, at night, lethargy never known to me and bugs and germs caught galore. That tailored with the start of term, Emily starting school, Jamie embedding himself in his new role at work and Joel starting with our new childminder, it has been a hard couple of months. That said, we have survived and are moving on.

Emily got her first school photo taken and was kind enough to share the experience with Joel. (note the flash, as it is a photo of a photo!)

It has been lovely to have the proper Winter season this year. We thankfully were prepared with sledges this year and have had fun down on the back lawn of NTC with the sledge. Mummy didn't have a go because, a, it was too cold, b, it was too cold and c, I had to keep baby safe!

We got the Christmas tree up and it stayed up, with a little help of daily moving decorations by Joel. The top half stayed the same, it was just the bottom that looked like a higgegly piggily house!

Emily was a star in her Christmas Nativity at school. She was quite proud of her mummy sewing the tinsel on the bottom of a t-shirt. Little does she know about the skill level required to create such a master piece. She received a headteachers award for her performance skills at the end of term. We are still unsure if this was related to the nativity play, her drama in the playground when she falls over or her interaction in class! Either way she was proud of a yellow piece of card with her head teacher's and her name on it!

Our church had our walking around the streets Nativity again this year. Emily was princess fairy angel and Joel was cold and stubborn shepherd! I believe Jamie may have been Caspar, but the details have escaped me... he did like the bling on his head dress!

Joel and her continue to fight one minute and love each other the next. It can be quite exhausting, but on the whole there is a lot of laughing going on as Joel is quite the character. At the moment he is refusing to sleep in his big boy bed instead opting for the baby bed or cot! Something I find mighty frustrating!

Santa visited Belfast and brought snow, family and presents. It has been fun trying to find places for everything, you know where the drums have gone?! The conservatory!

Well I am sure that I have missed lots of details and stories, we are ok, I am off work with some sort of Influenza virus. Jamie had to come and pick me up from class yesterday morning after a near fainting episode. I feel a little better today, it has been nice to sit upright for 30 mins, but I am ready to lie down again!

Hopefully more to follow I won't leave it so long next time and it is good to know that the slippers still fit!

We love the NHS

This week we had Joel's long awaited cardiology appointment. A 3.50pm appointment slot on a dark, rainy afternoon... doesn't bode well. Our cardiologist is great but she always runs late, this time she was over an hour late!

Joel started crying before we even got into the consulting room. Jamie had downloaded Peppa Pig to his Itouch hoping that would help, I packed sweetie hoping they would help but nothing helped. He cried it out and then surprising was very cooperative, whilst complaining that the wand thing was "owwie on his boom boom."

After an ECG... have you ever tired keeping a two year old still enough for an ECG? we received the results.

1. His ECG was more or less normal :)

2. His aortic valve is undamaged at the moment. :)

3. Open heart surgery will never be an option unless in an emergency. :)

4. We can wean him off the diuretics he has been on since 16 days old. :)

5. The hole may close. 50% usually by 5 years old. 75% by 8 years old. So Joel may be one of these but as time goes on the likelihood gets smaller. :) and :(

6. He may need surgery later but the success rate right now is not high enough to give this to Joel as he seems so resilient and unless there are knock on effects he may just live with it. :)

7. When he comes off the diuretics his weight may improve and then he can come off the milk and maybe the iron. :)

So we left smiling, Joel was full of sweets and crisps and had snow white stickers stuck all over his clothes, shoes and hands. We are back in 6 months to see if he can cope without the medicines, if the hole is smaller or improving... until then we only have to give him his infatrini and iron. A nice break in a 2+ year routine. No more trips to the dr for repeat prescriptions, no more waiting for special orders and the pharmacist reminding us to watch the shelf life or, "Wow, he's a lucky boy with the cost of this gold dust!"

We are grateful for the gold dust, but we are not sad to see it go! Thank you NHS for looking after us.

And to Joel... keep getting better little man, you are so much fun, we love you dearly and your smile and humour brightens up our day; but you are a cheeky monkey too!.

We have been busy, Emily got her first swimming badge! A big achievement for her. Also our neighbour is so cool. We came home the other day to this box of goodies grown on her allotment. How great is that?

All is well with us, we are just about hanging on to the holidays in 2 weeks. Joel is at the hospital on Wednesday for vaccinations for the Winter, Emily and I are going to Disney on Ice on Friday with some friends and Jamie and I are going to see Romeo and Juliet with the English National Ballet on Sat. Lots to look forward to.

Sunny Autumn Days

Days out at Dunham Massey and Crow's Wood at Lyme Park, complete with new winter hats and fleeces!

School Days

Emily started school last week. We can't believe it is time for uniforms and black shoes already! All is well so far but she is on half days until 27th! We are adjusting to the rhythms of term, Joel starts at our new childminder tomorrow- hope that goes well.

It has been a while... and it will take a while to read this one!

It is 2 weeks until the end of our summer break and we have nearly finished the DIY. The conservatory is done, we just need to save for two pieces of furniture. We all love it, it is a great place to play, read and look out into the garden. It is even a good place to do school work!

The loft has had its fourth and final coat of paint and all it needs is some blinds on the windows so that when we need to sleep in it (in two weeks) the sun won't blind us!

The weather has been pretty unpredictable so we have had fun in our 'lounge cinema' complete with beds, popcorn and blankets. We have also popped out to visit Stan at Manchester Museum and have been to feed the ducks at Woodford Park Garden Centre. Sun would be nice so that we could enjoy our own garden a bit more.

We have been on holiday with friends on the Isle of Wight. Our god daughter is 11 and about to start high school, it was fun spending a week with her and her family. It is bizarre that the tiny little baby we were holding all those years ago is now holding our toddler's hand and playing with him in the sea! The sun shone for most of the time, we played on the beach, picniced a lot and had a fun time. We stopped at Longleat and had a great time at the Safari Park. Our kids love animals so it was a fab thing to do. Emily was beside herself at the thought of meeting Sportacus and Stephanie as well as holding a millipede! Joel enjoyed the train ride and the safari boats looking for sea lions and hippos!

Joel has had his second birthday. He got a scooter and a football net as well as fire trucks, rockets, animals and books. He even got a personally addressed and signed copy of Cave Baby - the new Julia Donaldson book! I am so excited for him - thank you Auntie Nic and Uncle David! We went to Monkey Forest with the McCulloch tribe and had a fun time with the 140 Barbarary Macques (not sure how to spell them... monkeys will do,).

It is hard to work out where the last 2 years have gone, Joel has been an amazing addition to our clan, he brings so much joy and laughter to our house and has a real love for all things four legged. I am sad to see the baby time go but he will keep us busy in the toddler years as he is as strong willed as his sister and Mummy! ( He also has a great thowing action like his Daddy, but sadly it is not just balls that he likes to throw!)

Well 2 weeks left, we are off to Greenbelt - a Christian arts and music festival. It is the first time we have camped since our America Trip in 2003 and the first time with 2 children. It is only for 2 nights..... I will let you know how it went. It is also results day for Jamie on Tuesday. He will find out how the students did in their exams and how his department has performed this year. Emily, Joel and I are going to our church kids club - the theme is super heroes. I don't plan to dress up in a cat suit! My parents arrive for a dessert afternoon with friends and family to celebrate Joel and Jamie's birthdays. A little late for JoJo but lots of people are away in August!

Then, before we know it, the 5 weeks that I have longed for since Christmas are done and I am meeting my new class of 32 Year 6 children on Wednesday 8th Sept after 2 days of Inservice training. Before that, I need to successfully convince a very adament 4 year old that she needs to wear black shoes to school and not pink ones. I have tried all summer and failed but this week I am biting the bullet! Wish me luck!