Our iPad Baby

Technology is absolutely fabulous. It can hold all our books in one place, it can track our baby's every move, it can tell us when to wake up, and let us write a paper. It can hold all our pictures, and let us draw more, it can help us teach, it can help us learn, and best of all it can give us funny nick names.

Throughout my entire pregnancy my husband joined me at each of my appointments, typing away notes on our iPad. He recorded what I weighed, my blood pressure, my measurements, and even the color of my pee. :0). My nurse quickly learned our pattern and made sure she let Matt know everything that was going on. She talked and he noted. Then James was born and nothing changed.

We had a new doctor now, our pediatrician. The notes this time were of James. All the way we we are tracking his growth, his shots, and the many questions that come with raising a little man.

The nurses here would joke and soon shared their method of remembering the new babies that came through the doors. They would give them a nickname that helps them remember the many different babies they see. They told us they have an army baby and many more. But our baby, yes our baby, is their iPad baby.

Indeed, James is our little iPad baby. It started out with note taking, and app tracking, and now we have even gone as far as laying him out in front and let him draw us some pictures.

Do not get me wrong, I love a hard cover book, and some good old pen and paper. But James is too young to pick up some crayons and do anything but eat them. But I don't have to wait to get some art from my boy.

So Apple, if you need an iPad advocate for babies, remember this, we have got the "original" iPad baby.

Art by: James Tolhurst

James' Brace

Today should be the day we are done with James' brace! We will head down to Salt Lake to Primary children's hospital and get an ultrasound done to see what our next step is.

To give a back ground, James was diagnosed with hip displacia about a month ago. We were at the doctors for a normal check up and she realized my son's hip was clicking. She referred us to an orthopedic doctor at Primary's and had us get an ultra sound and xray.

While it comes to no surprise to those who live in my town, I was not happy with my hospital. The ultra sound took a good half hour as the newbie complained about my wiggly baby and the fact that she had no clue what she was even looking for. Then I walked down to xray and asked what I thought would be a pointless question.

"Will you cover him up down there during the xray?"

First the nurse gave me a strange look and then replied, "You mean his gonads? Hmm...yeah that would probably be a good idea."

WHAT! I was so shocked that they were not thinking about doing that. They had to find a cover they normally use to cover the thyroid. Sorry, if I am being a bit overprotective, but I would really like not to ruin my son's chances of children over a test!

Well, after that process we went down to salt lake where more mature and sensible doctors live. Our doctor came to our room and told us after watching the ultrasound that our son did indeed have hip displacia in his right hip and would need to be placed in a brace.

You see hip displacia is when his hip bone is too shallow and therefore his hip can easily pop out of place. They could not give a reason to why this happens, only that it does happen. The brace he is placed in props his legs up and helps his muscles grow in the right place. This will help fix the hip displacia.

After telling us that James has about an 80% chance of the brace working he sent us down to get one more ultrasound done before we headed out. He called me later on saying with the new ultrasound, it looks much better than he thought and our chances have gone up.

If the brace has done its job, we will be done with this one challenge in parenthood, calmly waiting until the next one comes. If the brace does not do its job we may have to put him in a full body cast.

For now, I need to be calm and faithful that the treatment worked. We stayed true and kept him in for the time our doctor recommended. Now I must wait and see what is next.