Almost one

Hello everyone,

We haven't updated the blog in a while as we have all been battling a nasty flu. Alina's developed into tonsilitis no2- another quick trip to hospital but luckily no overnight stay- which of course went to her chest a few days later. We've already learnt that what Alina needs is wider spectrum antibiotics as everything she catches ends up eventually in her chest. We've finally been given a "passport" to our local hospital which means that we can bypass A&E and go straight to the pediatrics department. It's a great help and a huge time saver.

These past few months have been incredibly difficult. It's hard taking care of someone else when you are ill yourself and I always suffer when I see Alina being unwell. The doctors have told us that the first 2 winters will be hard on her and now we know what they meant. It feels like there's always something and it's hard to resist the temptation of rushing to hospital all the time. Luckily we've made some wonderful mom friends who've been incredibly supportive when I was at my lowest: Caroline and Jules, thanks a lot!

Alina's still on antibiotics and has lost quite a bit of weight but today she seemed much better and had gotten her apetite back- including for milk, which she went off for a few days. So hopefully we'll be back on the 9th percentile soon.

On a positive note, we finally have teeth!! Yayy! In true Transylvanian fashion (which is where I am from), Alina didn't get either the bottom or top teeth but the fangs. So we have a little vampire in the family :0). She's also very, very active, crawls really fast and loves being chased by Alex. After her bath- which is daddy's time- I can always hear Alina squeaking with joy as they play their hide-and-seek game.

Alina also pulls herself up in her cot and everywhere else she can and started taking small side steps along her toys and sofa. The other day she even climbed up a step but then got really scared and wouldn't move either up or down. Funnily enough she has no issues with thresholds, so I wonder if she is beginning to understand about heights?

Alina talks non-stop. She can say about 7 words in both Romanian and English like apple, water, finish, duck, daddy, mama and cat. She tells us off when we don't do what she would like us to, which is really funny. And every time she sees any of her little friends she always initiates conversations accompanied by lots and lots of smiles. Apart from also trying to feed them. Actually she tries to feed us all, most of them time stuff that she's chewed and didn't fancy finishing anymore :0).

On Saturday Alina will be 1. Wow, where has the year gone!? We have a little party planned so we'll post the pictures afterwards.

I know that I've always thanked everyone but I wanted to say a big, big THANK YOU to Alex who is the most wonderful husband and father. He's been so supportive throughout this whole time and it's obvious that he's got a very special bond with Alina. Thank you sweetie, we couldn't have done it without you!

Little Miss

Alina's healthy again. Today we met some of our friends for the first time in 2 weeks. You could tell that Alina missed her playgroup. She was so happy to see everyone and kept chatting to them, smiling and clapping. Clapping seems to be her favourite thing at the moment. Every time we ask her to do something which she can't, she starts to clap. It's soo cute. And yesterday, when we were out with grandma and grandpa she started waving for the first time. It's more of a "queen like" wave, just to let us know that after all she is a little miss.

Hello! What's going on outside?

Yay, I've made it to the front door

With mummy and daddy

Am I not the cutest?

Well done everyone! Thanks for checking my blog.

Pneumonia

Well, things turned out completely differentely than we had expected. We really thought that Alina was getting better but after a brief honeymoon period we had to take her to A&E. She had developed a very chesty cough and was having difficulty breathing. On top of that, she also started to have fever. An x-ray showed that she had an infection in her left lung- the small lung. The doctors diagnosed her with pneumonia. They were also concerned that she might have caught swine flu. We thought, oh no, does that mean that Alex also has it? Poor him, he had been struggling with his cold and even after 5 days he still wasn't able to shake it off.

Alina was booked into Outwood, the paediatric ward. We were given a separate cubicle and put in isolation. One might think- "great, we're getting privacy" but I tell you, it wasn't that glamorous. We were stuck in this sauna of a room, unable to open the door to get some fresh air in. Poor Alina was sweating the whole time as if she'd just run a marathon. All the staff were wearing masks, aprons and gloves- they really looked as if they had just landed out of some weird sci-fi movie. I wonder what Alina must've been thinking. Admitedly, the entire time she wanted to be held- she must've been terrified.

Alina was put on IV antibiotics. Poor little thing, after 8 months her veins still hadn't recovered so it took the doctors 2 tries to be able to put in a canula. Her saturation was around 91-92 so the nurse put an oxygen mask in front of her whilst she was sleeping to help her out a bit. The first night was really difficult for poor little Alina. Despite the antibiotics she was still coughing a lot. I really didn't want her to be suctioned- I still have nightmares about her suctioning in ICU- but in the end I had no choice. It was the right thing to do as a lot of the infected mucus came out and it helped her breathe better. The antibiotics also did the trick and in the morning she had improved significantly. She wasn't eating properly- she was just exhausted- so the nurse put her on IV fluids. When she was weighted I couldn't believe my eyes. In 1.5 weeks she had lost 500g. That is to show how fragile these little ones are.

After 2 days Alina had recovered and we were discharged this afternoon. We still don't know whether she had swine flu. It takes them 48 hours to get the results back. But thinking about it, we haven't received a call so she probably didn't have it. She is still on tamilflu for another 2 days and on some other antibiotics for 5 more days.

Alina was so happy to be back, she was all smiles the whole evening. She was trying to crawl but she's so weak that she only manages to crawl a bit and then collapses onto the carpet. But all in all she's in good spirits and loves being back amongst her toys.

So quite a scary weekend overall but it's great to see Alina feeling better. And Alex is also on the mend so hopefully we'll be back to giggles, smiles and lots of crawling soon.

Last night

Thank you everyone for your comments!
What an eventful night! Alina spiked a temperature- 39 and was really suffering. She was crying a lot and was breathing like a steam train. I got totally scared and asked Alex if we shouldn't take her to hospital. As he was going through the same thing as Alina he reassured me that most probably she was just bunged up. Poor little one, she was so miserable. We took turns holding her during the night and after an unsuccessful attempt to give her some antibiotics she finally managed to sleep from 3am-7am.
This morning she was all smiles and you could tell that she was feeling better. She was clapping - that's her new found skill :0), had a good milk bottle and a healthy breakfast. Plus, we're over the diarrhea--yay! I must say, I don't know what we would've done these past days without our dryer. What a life saver!
So after 1 week it looks like both father and daughter are on the road to recovery. And mum is looking forward to the lie-in on Sunday :0).

The Houchins

ILL

For the past week Alina has been very ill. It all started last Thursday, when she refused her tea and dinner. Even when I offered her her favourite biscuits, she would just hold it but not put it in her mouth. Then she started vomiting, which really made me think: " Oh, no! I hope she hasn't reherniated!" And then the diarrhea started. Poor Alina was totally miserable. A trip to the hospital confirmed that it wasn't hereniation- what a relief!
The good thing was that she only vomited 3 times and started taking solids again after a few days. It did take a lot of persuasion because she didn't want us to put the spoon in her mouth so I had to put the food on my finger and then put it in her mouth. Tricky when you are trying to feed her soup :0). The bad thing was that the diarrhea didn't stop for 5 days. She had lost so much weight and looked so pale that I had to rush back to see the doctor. As it turns out, she's got some viral infection. Her chest sounded clear but her throat was red. We were given some antibiotics just in case. But last night she was looking chirpier and her nappies were looking better, so I thought that she was over the worst.

How wrong was I! Alex caught a cold- more like a flu- 2 days ago. He's been pretty ill and even lost his voice today. Unfortunately Alina caught the bug as well. So just when we thought that we were sailing in clear waters, Alina started spiking a fever. Needless to say, today has been very difficult for her and on top of that she has also lost her voice. We've given her some antibiotics which we hope will help her. We feel so sorry for her. Poor little girl...what an awful week.

The Houchins

10 months old and crawling away

On Monday Alina was 10 months old. We celebrated by going to the Tandridge Teddies playgroup where each child was having their picture taken. Even though mummy had made a mistake and gave Alina a chocolate biscuit before the photo shoot- most of which ended up on her face and clothes- Alina proceeded to give the biggest smiles ever to the photographer. Very impressive :0). I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures in a few weeks.
At the playgroup Alina watched her friends crawling around and when we came home, she decided that she had had enough of crawling backwards. She's been doing that for 1 month now and she's probably thinking that it's just gotten a bit boring. So, in the past few days she's perfected her crawling skills. We're so proud of her and at the same time we can't stop laughing. She makes the cutest noises and it definitely looks and sounds like she's making a huge effort. Mind you, she's got quite a bit of weight to carry.: 0) She's almost 7.5kg ( 16 lbs and 8 oz) and even looks chubby. The other day she was sitting next to a friend of hers who is 11 months old and they looked very similar in size.
So gone are the days when everyone was telling us how small she was- which by the way, made me utterly furious. "

Alina is doing great. She's had a runny nose for the past 2 weeks but seems to be coping very well with it. We had a check-up at Kings and even the consultant couldn't believe it, that despite her cold, her lungs sounded very clear. Our appointment lasted literally 5 minutes because he had nothing to say. And the next time we will see him again is in 4 months- YIPPEEE.

Apart from crawling Alina also likes to stand a lot and is even trying to pull herself up in her cotbed. Alex caught her licking the bars...maybe I should smear them with chocolate :0). She still doesn't have any teeth but we are amazed how good she is at chewing. She basically will have anything and luckily we love cooking, so she gets spoilt with fancy French recipes (Alex's latest hobby), some Thai and lot of Italian and Romanian. My father-in-law after hearing that she had had venison said that she will have expensive tastes and he is probably right. I am afraid we are spoiling her a bit :0).

I hope you are enjoying the video. It really made us laugh. And thanks again for all your comments and for visiting our blog.

Big hugs from the Houchins

Updates

Alina's 9 1/2 months now. The other day we looked at some of the first pictures we took of her and couldn't believe it how tiny she was back then and how quickly she's grown. These 9 months have really flown by.

Alina's doing really well. She's incredibly active and even though she hasn't mastered crawling yet she is getting around everywhere and is even pulling herself up from sitting to 1/2 standing. A lot of her friends are walking so she wants to be standing all the time and especially loves standing on the windowsill, watching the cars driving by and banging with her little hand on the window. The doctors told us that Alina wouldn't be able to run marathons but seeing her- always on the move- I truly doubt it that that's true. We're convinced she's going to be the next Paula Radcliffe :0).

Alina's has had a cold these past few days but she's dealt really well with it. To be honest, this year has been peppered with colds but I think that her immune system is getting stronger and stronger as every time she seems to be able to get rid of them quicker. Apart from when she had tonsilitis we haven't had to take her to hospital and she's needed paracetamol only a few times- mostly related to teething. I feel so sorry for her, she's been teething for ages but we still don't have any teeth. They say the later they come the better- I truly hope this pain pays off in the long run. But despite being toothless Alina's able to eat anything and is very good at chewing. She loves to finger feed and gets really annoyed now when I try to spoon feed her. She's one headstrong little girl :0).

Alina said her first word to the delight of her parents and grandparents. It was "duck" and then she said "daddy" a few times. Of course Alex is extremely proud- she is already daddy's girl.

To be honest, Alina's a chatterbox. She talks and smiles to everyone and just loves interacting with her baby friends. She's getting a bit "playmat smart" as well- the other day she was fighting with a bigger girl for a book, which was hilarious to watch.

Being parents to such an amazing little girl is a wonderful feeling. We love every moment that we spend with her and her smiles and giggles are so rewarding. Alina is such a happy and sociable child, we can tell already that our house will be filled with silly games and laughter.

Thank you to everyone for your wonderful messages on our blog and for continuing to read Alina's story.

The Houchins.

Having brunch with sleepy looking daddy

My first picnic

At Wagamama with mama

Caught red handed trying some diy with my friends