About Adam

Birth...

 

Little Adam was born in time and naturally on  August 19, 2013 in a Prague Thomayer's Hospital in Krč. The first three days it seemed that everything is perfect. As we later learned, most hospitals in Czech republic have a habit of monitoring weight gain after each breast-feeding of a newborn during lactation because it says how much milk the infant had and if it’s well nourished and gaining weight. This is a routine procedure, however the hospital had somehow forgot and we, as inexperienced parents, did not have the knowledge and unaware we continued to try to feed the baby from breast where was literally no milk. In part because of the attitude of nurses which were supposed to assist mothers with breastfeeding as if they were bothered to do so. Not every mother, especially new mothers, manages breastfeeding without any help. That is why we have relied on aid of the trained staff. The hospital staff did not care whether small Adam has adequate fluid intake and consequently nutrients. Thomayer's hospital is a home of the Lactation League, which is reportedly comes together with the title of Baby Friendly Hospital, due to encouragement of natural breastfeeding. Unfortunately, we did not receive any help. We paid for a higher standard care, where one was expecting a little more concern from the hospital when pays for a room as if visiting a hotel (almost the same price). Assistance from sisters was really mad. Their whole breastfeeding assistance took place through the recommendations within instructional DVD "How to breastfeed." They acted as if everything was a matter of course, that we should know everything and if we don't it's only our problem.

 

Because Adam did not get any nutrition or sufficiently fluid income during first three days, since doctors didn’t control increments of breastfeeding, the fourth day was Adam already lethargic, tired and even cried. Doctors took blood samples and found that he has a very low blood sugar and increased liver levels. Followed by immediate transportation to children's intensive care unit, which took place without the knowledge of his mother. On the ICU he go glucose and spent two nights and during that time they finally began to feed him with supplements. After almost 3 days spent in the ICU Adamek returned back to normal room and basically nothing was happening. The chief doctor was delaying release of our son home for a reason of still elevated liver levels test results. By that time it was weekend and nothing was happening, no doctor came to check on our son, no nurse visited our room, no tests were performed, so we have decided that for our sons health it would be better to go home to be in a much more nicer and friendlier environment. So we signed discharge documents and finally went home after that horrible experience.

 

After two days at home, a paediatrician came to us to check on Adam and found that it is absolutely healthy and beautiful boy, and that we will only check liver function in a few weeks just to be sure.

 

Around Adam's second month we noticed some little things like not kicking his feet or moving his arms. He didn’t reach for toys and when on his belly he wasn’t able to raise his head or at least he’s wasn’t trying and was very "quiet"... We said everything to our paediatrician, but each time we were told that everything is fine, it's just a typical lazy guy... When this is said by a doctor with experience, so we obviously believed him.

Around fifth month we started attending exercise children's where the trainer told us that it really isn't quite normal, a toddler in his 5 months not being able to use his hands or attempting to crawl.Trainer advised us to have Adam examined at neurology. Due to our paediatrician’s approach, we made a decision and changed paediatrician and underwent examination at neurology, unfortunately again at Thomayer's hospital.

At the end of January 2014 was Adam hospitalised at Thomayer’s hospital for 1 night, they took his blood and urine, made basic neurological examination and sent us home, saying that it is a muscular hypotonia and for the complete blood tests results we have to wait 2-3 months, because it's being sent to a specialised facility in Brno.

They sent us to rehabilitate to the hospital, where we had commuted once in three weeks otherwise practiced at home. But it was the only a very modest stretching and exercises that led to nothing.

Through our friends we had finally reached to a rehabilitation centre Spirala to our current physiotherapist Lenka, which finally begun proper exercising with Adam according to method of Vojta two times a week. We have been practising Vojta’s method since April 2014 and we continue practice it for days to come. Thanks to it there has been some progress in Adam’s abilities to move, it’s a slow process but it works.