God is Good

As you read this blog you may at first wonder why I entitled this God is Good, but I have seen God’s hand in the way everything so far has worked out.

Monday, Russ and I were working on cleaning out our garage. It has been a work in progress since we moved into this house. He got a lot cleaned out and sorted out a couple of weeks ago, but had been waiting for me to help him finish it up. We both had gone up to the attic area above the garage and were surveying what was up there and getting down some of the things that we needed from up there. I had just made the comment that it wouldn’t been good if the ladder fell since neither of us had our phones on us, before Russ headed down the ladder. As he started going down the first few rungs, the ladder fell and he landed on the concrete floor on this rear. I was still in the attic.   Tyler came out the garage to investigate and tried to get the ladder back up for me.  He didn’t know/understand were to go to find a phone to call for help. Russ ended up lifting the ladder back up for me and holding the now bent ladder so I could get down. On after thought, I think that if Tyler could have gotten a phone, I think I would have ended up having Russ call 911 without moving to get me down and got him a little bit quicker treatment. I really didn’t know who to call to help us, if it had been summer and our neighbors were back I would have sent him over there.

As soon as he landed, I knew a trip to the ER was in the near future. I called my mom and got the boys packed up for the night. When we left our house I wasn’t sure which ER we were headed to the one 5 minutes away or the one 35 minutes away where our insurance covers better. It quickly became apparent that driving a long distance was out of the question, so as soon as we dropped the older boys we headed to the closest ER. On CT, they found that he has an L1 fracture (one of the bones of the spine). Defiantly explained the pain he was experiencing, they broke out the stronger pain meds. The plan was to admit him there, in fact he even had a room assignment. After they talked to the neurosurgeon who wasn’t going to be able to get to him soon (my guess people out of town for spring break), they were talking about transferring him. I told them to do it, since transferring him meant we could get to the hospital that we have better insurance coverage at (I think we would have had a 20% copay if we had stayed there).

He finally got admitted to a hospital bed about 3 am and I was exhausted by this time, but I didn’t want to miss any of the doctors. I had run home while they transferred him to get clothes for everyone, take a shower, and drop off to my mom what the boys needed for morning. I am so glad my mom told me to take a shower (I hadn’t managed to take on that day). I still managed to beat him to the second hospital. The nurses were very nice and got me a recliner that I could sleep in for the rest of the night and into the morning. Daniel has done well sleeping in the stroller.

The neurosurgeon finally came to see him about noon yesterday, at that point was not sure what if he was going to do surgery or not. He did finally let him eat, since they were not letting him eat not knowing if or when he would do surgery. The nurse came in about 5 pm and said that the office called and said that Russ was scheduled for surgery 8 am Thursday morning. We now know some of Russ restrictions – not lifting more than 10-15 lbs (Daniel is 12.5 right now) for at least 6-8 weeks, the older boys for up to 4 months or more.

I went home to sleep and gather up fresh clothes for Daniel and take care of my trashed house. I did stop at my mom’s to see the older boys. I think Tyler understands what is going on as much as a 5 year old can. William pretty much rejected me. I am pretty sure he will come around.

How I could see God’s hand –

• It is spring break in Midland.  Mom is not working at the preschool this week and is proabably (in my mind) why they were having a hard time with the neurosurgeon, which brought up the transfer.
• He did not have worse injuries.
• In the last 2 weeks, I learned how to update my status on facebook from my cell phone.  We were able to get lots of prayer from putting out short status messages (I hate entering text messages from my phone)
• I was still in the middle of a 5 day stretch of day off work, so didn’t have to worry about work yesterday.  (I did call in for 2 days, Wednesday and Thursday and am hoping to work Saturday to help stretch out my remaining FMLA days).
• Our church just started an attender site, so I was able to put status messages up for our small group there.
• We got our tax refund last weekend, and I had paid all our bills before this happend and had gotten the bills caught up from maternity leave.
• Daniel is a good baby and still young enough to sleep most of the day and night, since I am keeping him with me.  He likes sleeping in the stroller.

Things to pray for over the next few days

• The actual surgery will go well and he will heal quickly and correctly from the break and surgery.
• Everything will fall into place so I can continue to keep working while he is recovering.

As I started typing this I had started listening to Pandora.com on the Contemporary Christian channel.  The first song was a song we sing in church,  Strong Tower, by Kutless.  The chorus is exactly what I needed to hear. (emphasis added)

You are my strong tower, Shelter over me
Beautiful and mighty, Everlasting King
You are my strong tower, Fortress when I’m weak
Your name is true and holy, And Your face is all I see

Maternity Leave Over

I can’t believe my maternity leave is over and I have already been back to work for 2 weeks, though I have only worked 4 of the 6 shifts I was scheduled.

I think we have settled in pretty well being a family of 5. I really enjoyed my maternity leave this time, I didn’t have near the same money concerns this time (though money is really tight right now) and the transition wasn’t that bad.

Russ and I were able to work out a lot of routines while I was off, now to translate them to going back to work. It didn’t help that the first week back to work I ended up calling in twice because the whole family got sick. The doctor thought William might have menigitis so we were sent to the ER. It turns out he just had a high fever that was making him look bad. Two days later Tyler wakes me up with “My ear hurts” so back to the doctor with him and Daniel who wasn’t feeding well. Tyler had a double ear infection and she thought Daniel might have RSV. He tested negative for RSV, but still was a goobery mess of several days.

Daniel James is Here

Granted he is already 9 days old and I am just posting this on my blog.  If you are my friend on Facebook, you have seen my status updates over the last week and if you are Russ’ friend you got to see a running cometary the day Daniel was born.

Daniel was born December 27 at home.  What an awesome experience!  The whole end of his pregnancy was nothing like I experienced before with the other 2 boys.  I had pretty consistent contractions for over 2 weeks.  While they were not all the time, they were decently strong.  Sometimes they would go on for a while and sometimes they would stop.  We kept thinking this kid would come any day.  As you could tell by the ranting posts at the end, I was ready to be done being pregnant.  I love being pregnant – the kicks, knowing that I am growing a new little person, but I was getting tired and hit the emotional end of pregnancy.

The day he was born couldn’t have been better for everybody.  My midwife and her assistant had minimal plans for the day, we had no plans, my mom was free and we had sent Tyler up north to Boyne the day before so only William was home.  We all knew that God had his perfect plan in the day Daniel would be born even though it wasn’t our plan.

I woke up about 3:30 the morning he was born and could not get back to sleep.  I was having pretty consistent contractions and couldn’t get comfortable to fall back to sleep.  Finally about 5:30 – 6, I headed down stairs ate something and called my mom about 7 and the midwife shortly after.  Everyone was at our house by 8:30 and with my history we thought we would be further along by then (William was born after a 4 hour labor.)  The contractions were not staying regular, at one point I was wondering to myself if this was really it.

I unloaded the dishwasher and in general took turns resting with being active.  Activity helped keep the contractions going.  Around noon things got a little bit more serious.  I was starting to get tired, just because I had been up for so long and was looking forward to a nap, still thinking at things would go quickly at this point.  I was wanting to start to push, so the midwife said I could.  She then discovered that there was still a lip of the cervix so we quit pushing and started walking and squatting if I wanted to.  I moaned through a lot of those contractions as they seems to come in waves of 3 close together then a break. I ended up laughing at the end of one of those contractions because of my “little labor assistant” William was moaning with me.  It was too funny.  Shortly after my mom decided that it was time for him to take a nap, which I doubted he would sleep but he did.

After a while I wanted to get in to tub, so I went and laid in the tub.  Initially the midwife wanted me to lay on the couch and switch sides as we were pretty sure at this point that Daniel was posterior and if we could get him to turn it would be easier for me.  I did manage to switch sides in the tub.  I had not realized that I was getting out of control until the midwife came in and talked to me about why things were going they were and I had serval contractions that I was able to totally relax though, in fact, I was almost able to fall asleep.

After a while it was time to get out of the tub, I couldn’t tolerate the hard tub on my bottom any longer.  I didn’t realize how close we were to delivery.  I just knew it was hard to get out of the tub.  The plan was to go to the living room and kneel over my ball.  It was hard enough for me to move the few feet from the tub to the toliet in the bathroom, my legs were so shaky.  Daniel was born at 3:11 pm in our bathroom with me kneeling over the toilet with the stool and pillows on top of it so I could be mostly upright.  Russ was able to catch him.  The coolest part was that he was born “in the veil”, the amniotic sack had broken up high, so he came out with the sack over his face.  The midwife was able to quickly get it off so he could breathe.  I was the one who announced we had another boy.  Russ knew we had another boy, but I did not know again.  8 lbs, 8 oz.  21 inches long.

It was nice to be able to get to the recliner after taking a shower.  Daddy and “Mena” (my mom) had bonding time while I was getting cleaned up.  Russ got William up shortly after, he had to be with his brother for the next couple of hours.  It was very cute.  Tyler, my dad, his wife, and my half-sisters came and saw him the next day.

Hopefully in the next couple of days, I will get some more pictures up.  The picture in the header is from the day after Daniel was born.

Still Cooking

Yes, this baby still hasn’t made it appearance.  We have joked that maybe it will be today with the snow storm.  I am off work.  When I couldn’t make it though my entire shift on Sunday, I decided that it was time to be done and my OB office agreed and took me off.  Because the OB office took me off I don’t have to worry about my paycheck.

I saw on the news this morning that Michelle Duggar, the mom of now 18 kids that was due New Years Day had her baby yesterday.  If you would like to see a story about it, click here.  Now it most people that I knew about that were due around me have delivered, granted my earliest due date is tomorrow.  My midwife is planning on going to visit her dad that is in the hopsital 2 hours away tomorrow, so I woud really like to have this baby today so that she can do that and not worry about me.

“I’m Done”

“Come on baby make your appearance.  Mommy is ready to hold you in her arms instead of in her belly.  My hips hurt.  I am having a hard time sleeping.  I am sick of being uncomfortable.  I am ready to see you!!!”

I am still working, I think.  I am going to see if I can get my OB office on Tuesday to take me off work.  I was going to to work 2 more days, but I am so tried now.  I only made it 8 hours yesterday, instead of my 12 hour shift.  Thankfully my co-workers we very nice and while they didn’t have another nurse to send, they took over my patients for me so I could go home.  We had lots of nursing assistants, which was helpful.  Everyone could tell that I was tired and I was doing way more waddling that I had been.  Russ drew me a bath even before I got home, so I could get right in, then I laid on the couch for another hour or so before I did anything or wanted to do anything but rest.  We were watching the Flintstones version of “A Christmas Carol” on Boomerang.  It was good.  Russ, William and I just cuddled on the couch (Tyler was at Grandma’s).

Now I am just doing my end of pregnacy insomnia.  I hear William awake, but I think daddy has him cuddling with him now, so he will be back to sleep soon.  He is definately my cuddle boy.  Tonight it was finally writting a blog post instead of facebook.  Well I might go over to facebook next, if I don’t start knitting on my brother-in-laws Christmas present and turn on the TV.  I hope I can get comfortable enough to go back to sleep soon.

Just what I needed

My friends who I see on  regular basis have heard how busy these 2 weeks are that we are in the middle of.  I am working my 3 days each week on top of everything else.  Tuesday ended up having 5 appointments scheduled, though only 3 ended up happening because Monday night William started vomiting so that canceled 2 of the appointments. Next week we have 5 appointments spread through out the week, though 2 of them are at our house, so I need to find time to clean the house, plus I am in a wedding on Saturday.

One of the appointments last Tuesday was to meet with the surgeon about a breast tumor my grandma had.  Thursday she ended up having a surgery for breast cancer.  I had to work that day so I haven’t seen her since surgery, but I hope to see her today.

Thursday night we drove down to the Lansing area, since my mother in law also had surgery yesterday, a new knee.  That is where the blessing comes in.  I went and got some yarn (at Threadbear) for  project I want to have done for next weekend, that I got started right away.  Then Russ and I ended up sitting with my father in law while we were waiting for the surgery to be done.  It was so nice to be able to just relax and not have much to do except knit, listen to my MP3 player (something I almost never do) and enjoy the time with my father in law.  I wasn’t able to take a nap, about the only other thing I would have liked to do.  Sandy (my dad’s wife) was watching the boys, so I didn’t even have to think about them.   We had almost 4 hours to practically do nothing, but wait.  So nice, since it was not a stressful surgery to us and something she had wanted done for years.  (Unlike other surgeries she has had in past years)

With all the stress I have been having recently, it was so nice to have a lower stress day.  It was a day I could just relax.  I think I am ready for the next crazy week.

Gasp, I am actually blogging

Life is busy, busy right now and the next few weeks are going to be even busier.

We are doing well.  William’s lip has healed up very well.  It is still sore to him sometimes, but most of the time it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

I have been wanting to take him to the doctor for a while, since I suspected that he might have exema, we needed to discuss more of the concerns with his walking, his slow speech, and since our doctor retired shortly after we established in the practice we needed to meet the new doctors in the office.  Well for those concerns — he does have exema.  I was right in my guess.  He is being referred to an orthopedic surgeon, as a second oppion, to make sure we are doing what needs to be done for him with physical therapy and that he doesn’t need any more treatment.   As for William’s speech, she did feel like he needs to be evaluated, but instructed me to contact the local health department for a hearing test and the intermediate school district for an evaluation for speech therapy.  I tried to contact both today, but was unsuccessful so I have to call them tomorrow.

I really liked the doctor we saw today.  She works for Covenant, like I do, but actually lives in Midland, where we live and did her residency in Midland, so she knows the Midland doctors and who to reccomend for us to see so we don’t have to go to Saginaw for everything.  That is great news to me, since I don’t like driving to Saginaw anymore than I have to.  She didn’t blink an eye about my homebirth plans and actually has done a fair number of deliveries herself and has been told that she does deliveries like a midwife.  I think we have a new doctor we can work with for our family.

The next few weeks are very busy for me.  Next Tuesday our family has 4 appointments, 3 for me and 1 for William.  That Friday, my mother-in-law is having knee replacement.  The next week my best friend is getting married and I am in the wedding.  Because of a scheduling conflict the rehearsal is on Thursday and the wedding is Saturday, so I have Thursday, Friday, & Saturday off work.  I always have Tuesdays off because of William’s PT.  Those 2 weeks I still have to get my 3 days of work in, so everyday is scheduled with something between now and the wedding.  Our wedding aniversary also falls right in the middle of the craziness. I am actually working that day so I could get all my hours in.  I am really looking forward to maternity leave, since I won’t have as many doctor appointments, I hopefully will be sleeping a little better, and will have a new little one to snuggle.

I also have a new stressor starting.  My grandma has an appointment with a surgeon tomorrow.  She had a routine mamogram done last month and a mass was found, so who knows what that is going to bring.  I guess I will know more tomorrow.  Thankfully not all the care falls to me, but most of it actually goes to my sister and my dad does what he can.  Toi and I try to split the drives between us as we can and each of us have our own things that we do for her, though Toi does more than I do, but then she is not working full time and doesn’t have kids of her own.

So if you could pray for us over the next few weeks, the bullets would be

• whatever is going on with my grandma, that we as a family will know how to deal with it and make wise decisions
• energy for the next few weeks
• a safe birth
• wisdom in decisions about William’s speech and physical concerns

Praises

• Russ and I like the new doctor
• our household is primarily at our normal state of health, Russ has his daily issues with his health
• the main concerns with this pregnancy have been laid to rest

First Stitches

We finally had our first injury emergency visit for the boys.  Not bad considering that Tyler is 4.5 and William is almost 2.5 and how active they are.  I was right on which kid would be the first to get stitches or a broken bone, William.  Thankfully it is only stitches!!

After physical therapy today we went to the yarn shop, Apple Valley Yarn Company, to get some yarn and pick up my block of the month pattern.  The boys were there normal selves, looking at everything and running around a little bit.  While we were checking out they were up in the open area by the door, we don’t know for sure what happened but think that William tripped (not an uncommon occurrence) and fell face first onto the rug.  He split his lower lip open pretty good and deep.  I am amazed that it didn’t go all the way through.  Russ went to see what happened since he immediately started screaming, not normal with a fall for him.  He immediately brought William to me and all I saw was a mouth full of blood.  I asked where the bathroom was and started trying to calm him and clean him up.  I could see how deep it was.

Then came the decision as to where to go to have him looked at.  From my ER experience I was pretty sure that he would need stitches, though the yarn shop owner didn’t think so.  I figured it was worth the co-pay to be sure that it didn’t need stitches.  My first thought was to take him to the ER, but then I realized that it was really more an urgent care stitches, than ER stitches.  But which urgent care/ Med Express – Bay City or State Street?  I decided that State Street was closer to where we were, so that is where we headed even though I wasn’t exactly sure where it was or how to get there at that moment.  Don’t laugh at me those who are familiar with the area, I am not.  I know roads, but not always road names or how they fit together.  Thanks Lydia for confirming where I thought it was.

We didn’t have to wait long at Med Express.  As we walked in the nurse had one of the doctors look at his lip and ask his opinion on sutures – definitely.  William did really well with the sutures the first time, yes, the first time.  He even seemed to fall asleep as she finished.  He ended up with 5.  Tyler was very good as well and curious about the whole thing.

On the way home, he was not too aggressively playing with the sutures with his fingers and teeth.  Somehow he managed to pull out one of the stitches and untie a second one.  Of course they were the most visible ones and could leave the most cosmetic damage if not sutured.  So we turned around and headed back to Med Express.  I called to make sure that we needed to go back, since we were already in Freeland (again).  Yes, since it was gaping a little bit and the most visible area of injury.

He didn’t do as well the second time.  He wanted to lay down on the table himself instead of having me hold him.  Too bad I didn’t figure out what he was trying to communicate until we were all done, it would have made it much easier the second time.  He kept patting the paper.  The doctor ended up putting 3 more sutures in with longer tails since William was fighting and screaming so bad.  Tyler wanted to come over and hold his head and try to help comfort him.  I didn’t like how the nurse held his head still either, I am sure that just scared him more.  You could see the terror in his eyes that time.

After we were all done, he sat on the table for a while and calmed down.  He is eating and drinking well, even ate chicken nuggets and french fries (yes, fries with a cut lip).  We are to keep him with a straw for a day or two to help with comfort and healing.  Now to get him and Tyler to take naps (that is whole nother blog post).

Have to Share

Russ told me Sunday night that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was in Holt where we used to live. Today we were watching the ABC12 news 5pm news, which we don’t usually watch and I found out who the family is. I know them!! Arlene Nickless is one of the sweetest people I know. I knew her husband a little better. Tim was one of the ICU nurses that we would call on night shift if we had a hard IV start. He taught me lot about IV starts and different areas of nursing as well. I almost never do an IV start without thinking about him. I knew he had been ill and last I had heard he wasn’t doing well. I had not heard that he had died, but I haven’t talked to my old co-workers much since we moved from the Lansing area.

I am so excited for them. One of the last times I talked to Tim, he had mentioned the condition of the house and how he wanted to get it fixed up for Arlene and the kids before he died. Here is a link to a story about them and if you play the video pictures of Tim and Arlene, not the Tim I first remember as a new nurse, but Tim of recent years.

Congratulations Arlene!! I will always remember Tim with fondness.

Jib Jab Cartoon – I love these

These are always fun cartoons and have gotten so much better over the years.  Enjoy.

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