June 2016… the month of miracles. Real actual miracles. Matthew decided that he wants to be like his twin sister and he wants to eat food at the table with her. He doesn’t know how to use a fork or spoon but he has mastered picking up the food with his hands and putting it in his mouth. He hasn’t mastered chewing very well but he knows to suck on food until it disintegrates and he is able to swallow it safely. Absolutely incredible.

Kidney babies go through so much when they are on dialysis.  When a baby is on peritoneal dialysis (PD) they are usually NOT hungry. During PD, a liquid is filled into the body cavity. It has a bunch of stuff in this liquid that cleanses the body of toxins. After about an hour of sitting in the tummy area and making a person feel bloated and full, it is then sucked out like a vacuum and drained. Then it is filled to capacity again for another hour, etc. etc. This goes on for hours. In Matthew’s case it went on for 16 hours a night. Well, this liquid, this medicine, it has so much stuff (don’t ask me what, I have no idea…lol)  it can and usually does make a person nauseous. One of Matthew’s nurses who used to be on dialysis described it as having the flu without flu like symptoms. Just the vomiting and being nauseous. You don’t want to eat, you don’t want to smell food, you don’t even want to think about food. And with baby’s, they are almost always put on a feeding tube and special kidney diet. This is the reason why so many people lose so much weight while on PD.

With kids, they sometimes “forget” how to eat or drink from a bottle and many of them are so young that they never get a chance to “learn” how to eat. So as they grow, many of our kidney baby’s are in occupational therapy, speech therapy and physical therapy. They are delayed in learning how to do “normal” baby and kid things. So with Matthew, it wasn’t expected for him to “learn to eat” until after his kidney transplant. It wasn’t expected for him to even want to eat until after transplant.

Well…. God had different plans for Matthew. He was never like the “other” babies. He has always been different and special. He is now eating. He is eating food with his hands. He will sometimes let me feed him with a spoon or fork, but he mostly feeds himself. It has been so neat to see how much he is learning to do.

And then there is the walking…. YES!!! MATTHEW IS WALKING!!! HALLELUJAH.

This was one thing that doctors said may never happen. He had such low muscle tone and such low control of his muscles… With his two grade three and one grade four brain bleed near his cerebellum and behind his ear lobes, cerebral palsy was a huge possibility… it was  a probability. I was told to do baby massage to get the neurons in his brain to start sparking and connecting. Anything and everything I could read and research about preemies, brain bleeds and cerebral palsy, I read. I had to help. Did it really make a difference?? Who knows…. but I like to think it did. Because now… Matthew is walking! He is growing and eating and WALKING!!!

It has only been about three days that he has been walking but it is AAAAAAAMAZING!!!

Please check out Matthew’s Miracles on facebook for up to date info.

Blessings-

xo