Gideon (for a while now) 2 years!!!

Hip hip hurrah! Gideon is 2 years old!

From a fragile baby who could not live without a ventilator, to the toddler Gideon is today. 2 years old, happy, stubborn, sensitive, humorous and our miracle! 

We had a small party with some family on his birthday. But apparently this was a bit too much for him anyway, because this whole evening he spit everything under several times. We notice that he is very sensitive to fussiness, and physically cannot cope with as much as we sometimes think. We really need to (still) pay more attention to his limits.

We had this blog-post, with some more info on how things are going, ready to put online after his birthday. But from his birthday to Christmas, we had another couple of weeks of illness and lots of spitting up where this weather took a back seat. During such a period, we try to give him as much rest as possible, but apart from the necessary things in life, everything else kind of stands still for us. Not that we completely slip into survival mode like we did in the beginning, but there isn't really much energy for extra things. But we do notice that it saves a lot for Gideon when he gets that extra rest.

Between Christmas and New Year's Eve, we had 3 weeks in which Gideon did extremely well. Better than ever actually. He seems to come out a lot stronger every time after a sick and spit-up period. We prefer him to just be healthy and not suffer from anything, but we particularly enjoyed Christmas. The feeling of being a real family and also enjoying these days together carefree did us a lot of good. On New Year's Eve, too, it was especially nice to enjoy the fun and fireworks together. We had woken Gideon around 12 o'clock, and he found it particularly interesting 🙂

A week after New Year's Eve, Gideon caught a cold and started spitting up again. The link with being snotty and spitting up is familiar to us by now. His stomach apparently cannot cope well with processing the mucus, so he often has to spit up. It can be particularly troublesome during sleep. Then he wakes up from nowhere and has to vomit. It then goes on and on until all the phlegm is out. This also means that if this is in the evening, he wakes up at night because he is hungry. Then around 3 o'clock we sit downstairs cosily eating a breadstick or something similar.

But this time, we went to see if we could do something with his diet that might contribute to less mucus formation, in the hope that he would then also spit up less. Marieke started researching the extent to which more or less dairy/lactose in a diet makes a difference, and when children can suffer side effects or allergic reactions. We don't feel that Gideon is allergic to lactose, but we thought it would be good to see if it would help anything. We do know that children can be temporarily more sensitive to certain substances and products if they are ill or have a lower resistance.

So when he started spitting up again, we stopped giving him dairy products to see if this would make a difference. And whether it was because of this experiment or something else, Gideon had to spit up significantly less. While he did have/stayed with just a cold. We will continue avoiding dairy (especially milk and yoghurt) for a while to see if it makes any further difference, but it does seem to be improving. He has been snotty for a few days now, with no spitting up as a side effect. Whereas the spitting up usually stopped only after he no longer had a cold. Who knows, maybe we are on to something with this that is going to help him (and us) a lot to be able to use his energy better.

So we keep searching and discovering. But above all, what we do a lot is enjoy him. Gideon has started chatting more and more and making more different sounds. Until recently, "mummy" was the only word he said, but now "yes" and "those" have been added. And he is increasingly trying to make clear what he means with sound in addition to gestures. It may not be going fast, but we are seeing growth. At his own pace.

And there is nothing wrong with his head in any case. He actually understands everything you say to him and ask him, and he usually does what you say. He now weighs just over 10 kg, is 84 cm tall, and is sometimes wonderfully stubborn. Who did he get that from...