Born to be loved

Happy father's day, from a hospital room! Baby AK has been seemingly in a complete healthy condition over a week since the series of last hospitalization from 2 weekends ago . He stayed in hospital for bronchiolitis just over a night then the subsequent week he had to stay home for settling diarrhea that may or may not have been caused by the antibiotics he got. And two weeks after the hospital stay, now he's back again for viral gastrointestinal infection. Just a few mornings prior the big brother HG giving AK a breast milk bottle happily... Same as the last time he developed the symptom quickly. The previous night we were not aware of anything unusual, in fact it was the 3rd day after he started eating solid food and we thought he was doing great with that, despite that mom hadn't seen him until late Friday as she was out of town for job interviews. It was then 3am on Saturday when mom noticed he had a huge blowout. He had it again later in the morning. Then he vo

Finally fell asleep, with oxygen tube in PICU. On one Friday night, 2 days before his mom M was supposed to come back home for good from her 2-month long absence , baby AK had to go to ER, ended up staying over a night in a PICU (pediatric ICU). He got discharged within less than 48 hours. Still, this was his 2nd overnight hospital stay after his first time in February https://born2b-loved.blogspot.com/2019/02/2nd-baby-first-overnight-stays-at.html Turned out viral bronchiolitis again. Development and recovery was so quick. On Thursday I noticed his nose was runny. On Friday evening he fussed for a couple of hours in his crib even after finishing a good amount of breast milk bottle. At this point I didn't think he'd be in critical condition just in a few hours ahead. Then around midnight he woke up, kept screaming and making quirking sound no matter what I and a legal sister who happened to stay at our home did. At that point I still wasn't convinced whether I should t

Mom's 2-month assigned work away from home has finally come to an end. I ended up driving up to Lake Tahoe area, 2.5 hours away from Sacramento, taking kids every weekend and spent a few days in her temporary apartment. Lake Tahoe surrounded by snowy mountains. Despite people kindly sympathizing for me taking care of everything at home all - including 2 kids - by myself during this period, I was ok with that part. My life has been always centered around caring kids and taking care of (minimum) household chores since our first son was born 3 years ago, as my wife M's been always out for work as a surgery resident (they almost live in a hospital). She does amazingly great amount of kids stuff considering the limited amount of time she stays out of her work, but I've generally been spending a few hours on kids and household every single day. Only thing I don't do is cooking kids meal, which we resolved this time as M cooked meals for the next week while we're st

Past two weeks after Easter week have been rougher for us parents. After dad was done with the work milestone at the first week of May, he started feeling dull in unprecedented level even with good sleep, accompanied by strong headache and coughs. After managing almost a week with medication, he finally saw a family doctor, reluctantly expecting he would have been developing pneumonia, but the doctor's diagnosis was just a cold with fatigue. Month of April was just too rough - taking care of 3 + 0 year olds kids as "single" parent, tough work deadlines every other week, and working as a middle manager for the first time in his life. That time is over and hopefully the rest of May will be quieter. Mom has been working without a single day off since the end of March, as we already knew . While her work at her hospital in this smaller community seems to be quieter than a conglomerate hospital in larger cities like Sacramento, no off means no day to fully de-stress. Kids a

M is away for Apr + May for her work . The caregiver normally taking care of evening routine a few times/week was on vacation. Although I usually watch kids by myself for more than half of the week as M is mostly out for work, the past week was probably the first week where I handled all kids chores of a week (plus whatever household) by myself. Even went to Easter egg hunt at the daycare. At work I was able to lead making a new release + delivering a product. Busy week indeed, but I'm getting even more confident on handling chores, as long as nothing unexpected occurs. I feel like I've been thinking of how to manage my day all the time, but that's what most of adults do anyway. It's just you get less of your own time (will make up for this some day :) Because I wasn't expecting the baby Akytzki would show any interest in egg hunt at school, I didn't bring a basket for him. Turned out he showed an interest in picking eggs, and kept playing with them. As paren

Even harder days are ahead for us. m just finished the last call night at a pediatric surgery department. Then starting tomorrow, for the next 2 months she will be working in south Lake Tahoe area as part of her work training program's duty to experience providing medical service in a smaller community. Lake Tahoe is a phenomenal area for excursion, but she won't even have one full day off there according to the schedule she got...as these 2 months overlap the period where she'll travel across the country to get job interviews for the work that starts in 2020, and apparently the training program expects her to make up those interview travel days with her off days. Anyways, she'll be away for 2 months. Kids and I stay in Sacramento. On weekends we'll go stay with her as it's less than 3 hours to drive one-way to where she stays. She will have to cope with a new job away from home, will have to organize her interview trips, and of course the interviews. Multiple

Over the winter our 2nd baby AK has been coughing frequently but mostly over the night only so that we hadn't worried too much. At pediatric appointment a week prior, we discussed this but we'd been only on alert without feeling necessity for taking any special actions at that moment. The past one week, however, AK turned worse day by day, higher fever and frequent coughs. We took him to an urgent care, next day saw pediatrician (not our primary physician) where he was diagnosed as bronchiolitis , then on the following day we had to make a decision to take him to ER (emergency room) at UC Davis as he started refusing to eat (breast milk either from mom or bottle), in addition to more frequent coughs, and we felt simply out of hands to keep him hydrated. At the ER he started getting fluid via IV (intravenous therapy) then recommended to stay overnight. Multiple physicians there said the bronchiolitis for kids hits the worst on day#4 or #5, and while in hindsight he didn't