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It has been a busy past few days here. I feel accomplished though, by getting a lot of things done. So I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been up to an give a little update.
Friday I made about a billion phone calls including;
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Calling to find out when Kayla’s next neurology appointment is. It still isn’t until May, even though were are on the cancellation list. For some reason, the neurology appointments at Children’s hospital are booked out in advance at least six months at all times. Highly frustrating. I really want to know what this new neurologist thinks of Kayla’s ‘ticks.’ (I’m not really sure what they are, this weird arm flapping, jumping motion she makes that seems to only get worse with time. They seem to occur more and more frequently. The nurse practitioner we saw at the neurology office last time said it may be a movement disorder of some sort.)
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Set up an appointment to get Kayla state disability checks. I don’t know why I didn’t do this when she was first born, I guess I wanted to prove so badly that we didn’t need any ones help to take care of our daughter. But with the medications, occupational, speech and possibly physical therapy she is starting now we just can’t afford it. The co-pays alone are $15 dollars per doctors visit with our insurance. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but factor in the fact that she will have a MINIMUM of 3-4 visits a week, we will be paying $45 + plus a week for her treatment. And I don’t work so I can stay at home and take care of her. And we live in San Diego (holy cow it costs an arm and a leg to live here!) We barely make it by most months, so any help we get will be heavenly.
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Set up Kayla’s occupational therapy appointments. Every Monday, for the next 24 weeks, we will be doing occupational therapy. I am extremely excited to see how much progress she makes! I can’t wait!
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Talked to my psychiatrist about the medication he prescribed. I was supposed to have an appointment today with him so he could find out how the medication was working for me buu-uut I hadn’t actually been taking it. He told me what all he other doctors had pretty much told me, about how there aren’t a lot of other options out there for breastfeeding mother’s with Bipolar disorder. He decided to prescribe Lexapro to at least help with the depression and anxiety, but he wanted me to double check with Ava’s pediatrician to make sure he thought it was safe enough to take. Her pediatrician told me it was not recommended because it hadn’t been studied enough. So I didn’t take it. But I forgot to call the psychiatrist for a week to let him know. When I did call him, he stressed the importance of me taking the Lexapro. He told me discontinuing the nursing would probably set off hormones to spiral me into a deeper depression and that wouldn’t be good for me or the kids. His recommendation; don’t stop breastfeeding, take the Lexapro in an extremely low dose. He also told me he had consulted with two other doctors about it. He told me that her pediatrician was covering his butt, that he doesn’t know the benefits to risk factor, and told me that the studies had only found high doses of the medication to cause drowsiness in infants. So my low dose should not affect her, and if it does, he told me to discontinue it.
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So I started taking it on Friday and I swear, I feel better already. I know, it has to take a couple of weeks to build up in your system but I think it’s working already. Maybe it’s just that I want it to work so badly that I’m working it up in my head with kind of a placebo effect, but I don’t care. Whatever it is, it’s working. Although side effect wise, it makes me feel like I’ve had six cups of coffee, a little shaky, but I’ll deal. Ava seems to not be affected at all by it. She seems they same as she did all week before I started taking it. She was teething before I started, though, so it’s hard to judge.
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I got car insurance…YAY!
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I also paid the gas and electric and the cable bill. Blah.
Saturday we went to visit my parents and we played some guitar hero and Wii bowling. The mood is pretty heavy over there (understandably) due to the fact that my Great Aunt decided to evict them from their house. I kind of want to kick some butt over that. Oh! I also got to feel the baby belly of my little future niece or nephew. I have a feeling he’s a boy. But, of course, I thought both of MY girls were boys.
Sunday we relaxed around the house a bit, went to Sears Essentials and bought new car seats for the kids. Kayla had outgrown her car seat and was ready to move to a booster type seat. We bought a bright pink one and it’s so cute! We decided Ava needed one to match, also hers was dirty beyond belief. I figure car seats are not really one of those frivolous things. They are kind of a necessity. So no splurge there.
This has turned out to be quite a long post an I still have a bunch more stuff I was going to type but I guess I will get to that later. I probably lost most of you by bullet three, but the caffeine overdose effect these pills are giving me is kind of making it hard to write, or stay on subject for that matter.
Off to take a nap (I hope!), I finally got the kids to go down at the same time and I am going to take full advantage of it.
I love long exposure photos, there is just so much you can mess around with. Sometimes, if you mess around enough, you end up with some pretty crazy pictures. I’ll get to those in a minute.
First, sorry no Thursday 13 this week. We spent most of the morning at the dentist office for Kayla. She needed two fillings in her front two teeth. It was a traumatic morning for the both of us to say the least! Instead of putting her under like some dentists do (which is good because her body never takes that well), this one straps her to a board, straps her hands to her legs, and then her whole body to the board.
It’s pretty much a giant straight jacket for kids.
They would still give her shots to numb her mouth and everything-although they didn’t need to for her since hey were just surface fillings- but it’s simple a way to get them to hold my giant amazon kid still. She has the strength of thirty men. I swear.
I still couldn’t stand watching her. Although I could tell she wasn’t in pain because she screamed the loudest during the part where they were cleaning her teeth with the polisher that [I think] actually feels good, and while they were rinsing her mouth out with the sprayer and suctioning. She calmed down when they were doing the drilling on the surface of her tooth which I thought was the part where she would cry more, but it turned out she was getting quiet because secretly under her straight jacket she was freeing her hands while devising a secret plan to stick that drill in the dentist’s eye. Lucky enough for him, his lovely assistant managed to grab her escaping hand about half a second before it was too late.
After that we took her to Toys ‘r’ Us. We wanted to make up for making her go to the dentist and reward her for being good. Even if she did try to take out the dentist with his own drill. So what, I have the urge to do that every time I go to the dentist as well.
Anyway, there was a lunar eclipse on Wednesday night, for those of you who missed it! It was pretty freaking cool looking! There were so many clouds out there though it was hard to get any pictures. The clouds cleared only twice, so I got what I could. It’s sad that I stood out there in the cold for an hour trying to take pictures of this thing and I only got a couple usable pictures! But not as sucky as it went for my mother, who upon arriving outside; set up her tripod, camera and adjustments, just to find out that her camera was dead. Dead camera = no usable pictures. It was very nice of her to stand out there with me for an hour, complaining about the great shots she was missing keeping me company in the cold.
Here are some of the lunar eclipse shots I got. Like the two.
And one towards the end when the sunlight hit the side of the moon.
As the night progressed I played more with my camera and took various other night shots.
No, I was not the one driving during those pictures!
My favorite pictures, however, are the following three. They may not look like much, just some pictures of some hills and all, but the story behind them is actually pretty cool. My husband and I are thinking about moving into another place soon. There is a waiting list for them, which I’m told we will be at the top of next week, and we are seriously debating whether or not to move. We love our place now, it’s big, in a very high class and pretty area of San Diego, and we have lived here for the last two years. We in no way feel cramped (it is a rather large floor plan) but I know we will be very shortly as the children grow. These apartments would add an extra 10-15 minutes to my husbands already annoyingly long commute and would cost us more in rent per month but there would be a third bedroom, 300 extra square footage, beautiful views, in an even nicer area, and we would be living right next to my brother and sister-in-law, which would be really cool.
After I shot those pictures of the lunar eclipse and hung out for a while at my parents house, we headed for home, but decided to drive an extra 12 minutes out of our way to drive by our potential new home. We decided to drive up the road from them to see what else was around it and when we got about ¼ of a mile up the road the road ended in this little turn-about. It was 11:30 at night and the kids were asleep in the back so we decided to get out. It was so incredibly dark out there, we couldn’t see city lights or anything. We could barely see the outline of the hills reflecting from the moon. My hubby said,
“Why don’t you take some pictures?”
“Of what?” I replied. “It’s nothing but dark out here.”
“Leave the shutter open for as long as you can.” He said.
So I did. I couldn’t even tell what I was going to be taking a picture of. I was somewhere I had never been before, in the middle of the night, setting up my tripod. So, I set up my camera and set the shutter to say open the longest it could. These were the pictures I got. You would never believe I took these at 11:30 at night, in pitch black.
It was pretty crazy to see these come up on my screen when I couldn’t even see what I was taking a picture of, and all I was expecting to see come up on the screen was darkness.
Here it is in all it’s glory.
Yes, it looks simple enough, but when accompanied by lost screws and screaming children, trying to put this beast up while the hubby was at work was possibly the worst idea I’ve had.
After trying for about three hours, I gave up and waited for Mr. Fix It to get home. He found the lost screws (they were right near the rest of the screws–so technically they were not lost at all, I’m just blind) and put the rest of it together in about 20 minutes.
…Show off.
Her first night in it I was bracing myself for very little sleep. We’ve tried this before, her crib turns into a toddler bed, and she was always TERRIFIED at the thought of not having that rail there, to the point of crying until we put it back up. I wanted to do this transition a long time ago but I didn’t want to force it on her. The closer we were getting to her third birthday, the more I worried why any toddler would still want to be in a baby crib. So we thought, maybe if we got a whole new bed she would focus more on how cool it was she has a new princess bed and less on the fact that it was a big scary change like in the crib when we took of the rail.
It worked, this is day two and we haven’t had a single problem. Actually, she thinks she can’t get out of bed, like there is some invisible rail there –we were also worried she would just get out of bed and play with her toys all night instead of sleeping, but that hasn’t been a problem at all! She sits on her bed and will actually yell “mama! mama!” until I come pick her off her bed. I’m not sure why she doesn’t realize there is not anything stopping her from coming to get me herself, but hey, we will take what we can get.
My daughter, the only child on the face of the planet that refuses the ability to get out of her bed a million times a night whenever she feels like it.
I’m sure my time will come soon enough.
For dinner tonight; an order of complete an utter chaos with a side of total insanity.
Never try to care for two small children at the same time while putting together a toddler bed. Screws will be lost. Tantrums will be thrown, tears will be shed, and yes, you will lose your mind.
Why does it feel as though I have done so many of these WordlessWednesdays and I have actually only done nine? Hmmm. The questions that keep me up at night… ; D
This is a locket I got my daughter on her first trip to Disneyland in January. I promised that I would fill it with a picture of mommy and daddy for her but I keep forgetting. I don’t want to cut up any pictures so tonight that is my goal, putting pictures of mommy and daddy in.
See I told you those pictures of me would serve some sort of a purpose!
Earlier, I was preparing mine and Kayla’s breakfast (Turkey sausage and strawberries, mmm…) and I decided I needed a cup of coffee. As I started cleaning out the coffee pot the baby started crying. She has a sort of sixth sense for when food is about to be ready, she starts crying right as I’m about to eat. Why? Because she wishes me to starve to death so that she can roll about the house freely to search for every single one of Kayla’s toys small enough to fit down her windpipe.
Just as I finished cleaning out the pot and filling the filter with coffee grounds, Kayla snuck up behind me and grabbed my leg. I startled, throwing the filled filter into the air like I threw the bouquet at my wedding, spewing the coffee grounds in every which direction.
You know how they make wrinkle creams with caffeine in them now because caffeine is supposed to stimulate collagen or something?
I don’t think this is what they had in mind…
And yes, I got some up my nose.
I am so bad at making these things Wordless.
This picture is of a Barbie (or “Bawbie” pronounced with a Jersey accent as Kayla would call it) that I got Kayla for her 18-month birthday. Yes, you heard that right, 18-month birthday.
I don’t know about any of you moms out there, and I may just be sounding crazy, but I celebrated every month of the first year of my first-born’s life. Every month she had a home made cake on the 3rd (whether she could eat it or not) and when she turned one I decided maybe I should only celebrate half years after that. We are currently a part of the birthday ONCE a year club, as mom cannot bake a cake once a month for the rest of your LIFE and isn’t quite sure what she was thinking once she started this.
Now that I have another kid, I’m like, how old is she again? Four or five months? …I don’t remember… Not because kid number two is any less special or anything, but because celebrating a birthday every month requires energy. Energy that would be better used on say, fighting off a kicking, screaming, flailing toddler that absolutely will die if she doesn’t get to watch Blue’s Clue’s at that very exact second no matter where in the world you are or what you are doing.
Maybe I just clung to the fact that she was still alive and celebrating on the third of each month was just my way of coming to grips with the fact that, yes, she truly was there, alive and breathing next to me.
Anyways, back to my not-so-Wordless Wednesday. This is a picture of the Barbie I gave her on her 18-month birthday as one of her gifts. She could have cared less about it at the time seeing as how it is not really an age appropriate toy for an 18-month-old, but now it has become her latest obsession. “Bawbie” must eat sleep, bathe, and yes, my friends, even sit on the potty with us.
After our bath the other day, Kayla told me that “Bawbie” needed a diaper. I tried to explain to her that Barbie was a big girl that used the potty and tried to tell her that she should take some pointers from Barbie, but it was a no go. So after much persuasion, mommy cut up one of Sissies diapers that she had outgrown and taped it to Barbie. Because Barbie poops herself.
I came across a video on YouTube just now that had me crying in hysterics within just a few minutes. I honestly cry for the children that have been affected by child abuse. I am happy in knowing my children will live a happy abuse free life and I know I will make sure of that, but I wish I could help the other children out there. Maybe re-posting this for you all will help make a difference and more people will visit the web site. (Click Here)
Please take a minute to watch the video and visit the site. Don’t sit idly by if you suspect child abuse of a child you know on any level. Don’t hope someone else will call. Don’t sit by because you don’t want to cause trouble, or because it would require too much effort on your part. Don’t let this happen to another child.
You can visit her memorial page here.
Wow. Can you believe how long it has been since I wrote a blog? Seriously. Don’t ask me how long I am going to continue doing it, since I hate it and all, plus I NEVER finish anything I start…but I felt compelled to write. For the past few days I have been slowly going through the archives of another “blogger”, and let me tell you, this guy could inspire a drinking straw to write. Yup that’s how good he is.
My mom has actually been following his blog for over a year now. She tried to get me to start reading it last year, but with having an 18 month-old, working full time and a new baby on the way, I politely tuned her out so I could cope with my own problems. I couldn’t understand why when I would come for a visit she would be crying or upset.
She informed me that a friend of her’s was dying. I would say, “Oh no, who?” She told me that she has never actually met this woman but she has come to know and love her through her husband’s writing. I’ll be honest, I thought she may have lost it. Especially after I saw her crocheting a prayer shawl for this woman she had never met or even spoken to.
It wasn’t until actually a few days ago that she was showing me a post he wrote titled “Dear Tori,” and even though I didn’t know anything about him, or his family, I started crying. After that I felt as though I needed to know his/their story. So my mom said, you have to start at the beginning.
I read some posts BJ (his wife) posted, she was a funny woman, and then I read the entire ordeal around her death. I couldn’t tear myself away from the computer and actually ended up spending until about 4 am reading (and bawling) through his archives. I still haven’t finished, actually, I’m only to about January of 2007 (he writes A LOT, but it’s worth it).
It’s weird reading a blog about someones real life events, their real pain and raw emotion, even if it’s about someone you don’t actually know. Somehow after reading and reading you feel like you may have known them your whole life, and that maybe you are grieving along side him. He is such an honest writer it’s sometimes shocking, but that’s what makes the whole ordeal so painful yet so heart-warming. I honestly feel that him and his wife have touched the world (and most definately the Internet world) which is why his blog has so many …followers? Am I turning this into a cult? Okay, what’s the right word….friends. There that’s right. Anyways, I recommend reading it. It will touch you.
It has inspired me to get back into my blog. Because I guess I did like it.
A little.
From now on I think I will write whatever pops into my head. Because I used to have so much trouble coming up with “material” for my blogs. But hey, I am a stay at home mom of a toddler and a newborn. I don’t need material, it’s everywhere.
Anyways, so I guess you have been wondering what I have been up to.
Well, I POPPED OUT A KID! Lol. Avalynn Lacie was born on August 23, 2007 at….
are you kidding me? I don’t remember what time she was born at! It’s only been two months and I already don’t remember! What kind of a mother does that make me?
I think it was 3:48? 3:47? 4:37? Pm. Or something like that. Mom do you remember? Damn, that’s gonna bug me that I forgot that… She weighed 7lbs. 5oz. and her apgar scores were something good that I also fail to remember because I was so damn happy that she was okay and didn’t have to go to the NICU the only thing I cared about was holding her.
Hmmm, how do I sum up the past two months or so into a very short story? Let me see, Ava was born. Here is a picture of me waiting patiently to hold her for the first time while they weighed her, here is my ‘don’t freaking take pictures of me I just gave birth… fine… I’ll smile’ face. One of Kayla seeing her little sister for the first time. Happy to be a big sister, and clapping. And here are some pictures of the little angel herself when she is two days old (she is a little jaundiced). One more!
Okay, hmmm. Kayla grew up. Like way big. I don’t know what happened. She is 2 and 1/2 now. Before I gave birth she was my baby, then all of a sudden, she was my baby-in-the-form-of-a-small-adult. She grew three inches since we’ve brought the baby home. Geez. Speaking of growing, the newborn isn’t much of a newborn anymore. Only a little over two months old she is weighing in at a whopping 11lbs, 1oz (which isn’t that much) but for some reason now is only fitting in 6 month clothing-like a 6 month old child should be wearing. She is a huge amazon baby like her sister was. I don’t know how two relatively short people made such gigantic-ginormous amazon children. Must be something in the water.
Oh and the house I lived in for 10 years burned down in the “San Diego Wildfires of 2007.” I like how it has it’s own proper name and everything. Because I was just going to call it “Big fucking fire that ate my house.” Here is a picture of it before, and one of it after. You can read more about it on my mom’s blog here and here. I evacuated to her house so she was pretty much there for most of my experience of it except for when we were being evacuated before we got to her house, but maybe I’ll tell you that story some other day for now you can just read about it from her POV. Plus, I am really am that lazy, and it saves me having to type it.
After we came home, life resumed as normal, although I had a hard time convincing Netflix that it had.
The kids went trick-or-treating, not in our old neighborhood, seeing as how it burned down and I wasn’t sure they would have any good candy. So we went to a neighborhood about five blocks down from us and the kids had a blast. Kayla went as a sailorette, but the hat that went with it was a lost cause from the beginning so everybody said she looked like Sailor Moon, which I never watched so I don’t know if she is a specific character or if that’s just the name of the show…whatever… Ava went as a fish (Get it, Sailorette, fish? Get it? Get it? Psssh, well I thought it was cute).
Oooh, and here is me on Halloween. The only thing that is costumey (??not a word) is the wig. The rest I guess is just, me.
And this is a really really long blog. With lots of those little linkies. Yeah. Okay I ran out of stuff to say. So I should probably post this.
Night night!
I don’t know why I started a blog. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but my life is so incredibly dull I can’t even think of entertaining things to write about. I leave my house about twice a week and it’s been this way since I was put on disability. Occasionally I have a doctors appointment or something that is vaguely exciting to me, but I know it won’t be to a perfect stranger. Anyways, I don’t have a ton to say about anything and I have never been well spoken. I read all these other blogs from people that are entertaining, and I can’t help but think, why can’t I be witty? I do, however, have family out there that reads my blogs to hear stories that they have probably already heard form me, but they are typed now! So that makes a difference! Lol.
Anyways, today I had my ultrasound. I am 34 weeks tomorrow and my little Avalynn is weighing in at 5 pounds! I am pretty sure I will deliver around 38 weeks like I did with my first child (because sometimes mothers just know), and I bet baby will weigh about as much as her older sis did when she was born (which was pretty much 7 pounds even). I talked with the doctor today who told me that my blood test results for certain clotting disorders weren’t back yet (I had them done in April). I figure by the time they get them back the pregnancy will probably be over. They are going to start doing non-stress test from here on out. I thought they would wait until a little later in the pregnancy to start them but when I told the doctor I would be 34 weeks tomorrow he replied, “We better start them now then,” which actually kind of frightened me a little.
It’s about one week until my baby shower (Yes, I know about it!) and everything that used to seem so far away has suddenly crept up on me and is right around the corner. I’ve got about one month left until we have a new family member, and I am trying to get in as much quality time with my toddler as I can, which may not be so beneficial once the new one arrives. She will be much more angry because she had my full and undivided attention (unless there is a cheesecake in the house) for the little while before her sister arrived and will probably be more so upset that I am even alive at that point let alone feeding this intruder instead of watching Dora with her.
My feelings about this [unwanted] c-section have consumed my dreams even making sleep more impossible than it was already. I keep having nightmares that as I am climbing the THREE FLIGHTS OF STAIRS to my apartment after my c-section and my staples split open and all my organs come spilling out. Let me tell you, this is a very fun nightmare. I wonder if I went to our apartment manager tomorrow and demanded that an elevator be installed so that I do not have to climb these THREE FLIGHTS OF STAIRS after having major abdominal surgery if they could have it installed in less than a month… Well, it was a nice thought.
Last night around 12:40am I started having contractions.
I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions for the past couple of months, but these ones were different. They felt like my whole belly got really tight (as they do with my braxton hicks) but I felt pain during them starting in my back and even in the tops of my thighs. So I started timing. I was getting them around every seven minutes and was getting more than four an hour, which, in all the baby books says it’s time to call the doctor.
Well, first I called my mother, because thinking you might possibly be in labor at only 32 weeks is pretty scary and I wanted to hear what she thought. Of course she told me to call the doc, who told me to go to the hospital. My husband (who works nights) was still at work and I had to wait for him to get home before I could go. I was still having them while I waited and nothing in the books were working to stop them (drink a glass of water, change positions, lay on your left side). He got home not too long after I called the doctor and we woke up our toddler and headed to the hospital.
They put me in a bed and hooked me up to all the monitors. My contractions were still coming, a little sporadically but still enough to have 7 in the first hour. The nurse told me that the contractions weren’t very strong and very probably Braxton Hicks but they wanted to monitor me for another 30 minutes. In the next 30 minutes the contractions got stronger and longer. The nurse stayed in the room for a couple of them and felt my belly during them. She told me that she thought they should call the doctor and give me a shot of Terbutaline since the contractions were getting stronger and I was having a lot of them.
She left the room to call the doctor and almost as soon as she did, the contractions stopped. Twenty minutes went by with nothing. Another nurse came in (shift change?) and told me she thought that it was just false labor since they had stopped. She also didn’t tell me who the hell she was which annoyed me, but oh well… Just as quickly as the contractions had started, they were over and the doctor gave me the okay to go home. So around six am we started to head home.
A whole nights sleep lost, but one very important thing to be grateful for, no NICU baby. I told my husband I felt bad that my parents came an hour just to watch our toddler in the middle of the night for nothing, but at the same time I am so glad they came for nothing. Trust me, I am anxious and impatient to see this baby, but believe me, the last thing I want to see is this baby hooked up to tubes and wires like I did my first daughter. I would stay pregnant for a million more years to make sure we don’t have to go through that again. I guess we will just wait and see. I have still had more contractions today, but not close enough to go back to the hospital. I hope this baby waits a little bit longer to come meet her big sister, it would make me the happiest woman alive to be able to bring this baby home with me, happy and healthy, and at full term.
Okay, so maybe I’ve got a few MONTHS (sh#t.f@ck.) to go, but I am already counting down the days until I get to hold my new baby girl and I get my body back (although I’m not sure it’s going to be in the best condition once it’s returned to me). I wonder…since this child has hijacked my body only to ditch it on the side of the road somewhere torn apart and rolled over, can I call my health insurance and report this incident? Do you think they will recommend a good body shop?
Well I passed my glucose screening test, which is good. I put it off for a long time because I kept getting too hungry when I woke up and forgot that it is important NOT to eat when you are fasting. I have another doctor’s appointment next Friday and I am pretty excited that after this appointment I get to start going every two weeks instead of once a month and it makes everything go by a little bit faster.
Well, we got through the MRI, although, it was harder on all of us than I thought it would be.
We woke her up early and she was in a really good mood. Smiling and excited like we were taking her on a suprise trip to Disneyland or something. I felt really guilty that we weren’t. We got there at 7am and checking in and waiting for the MRI took longer than I thought it would but she got to watch Dora and hang out with another little girl waiting for her surgery at Children’s.
When we finally went back for the MRI I could tell she was scared because she was clinging to me and hugging me tight. They told me to lay her down on the table so they could begin the laughing gas and once she was asleep we could take out her earrings and they would take her back and start the IV for the general anesthesia and start the MRI. I told her not to be scared, and that I was right her with her but she didn’t want to lay down on the table, she grabbed tighter around my neck and I didn’t want to let her go. They told me we were going to have to hold her down so they could put the mask on if she didn’t lay down willingly. SoI laid her down and held her shoulder and arms while zech held her legs and she started to cry and tell ‘Mommy, mommy!’ I knew she was so scared and all I wanted to do was pick her up and hug her. They put the mask over her face and she was still crying. I cried the whole time and tried to hold her hand. Her crying got softer and weaker until she was sobbing and her eyes closed and her hand went limp in mine. I was pretty hysterical at this point. Zech put his arm around me and I saw he was crying too. The nurse and anesthesiologist were looking at us like we were one screw loose because we were so emotional and they were only taking her to do an MRI but we didn’t care. If they had been with us after she was born and had gone through what we had with her they would understand. They aren’t in our situation and no one knows the kinds of feelings that came rushing back to me and my husband going through this again. When my daughter was only five days old her doctor took us into a special room and told us that we didn’t have to live like this we could explore all of our options and ‘If we wished we could remove her form the feeding tubes and “let her go” because in situations such as this she might not have the quality of life we had wanted for her.’ We told him to go fuck himself. Literally. We told him that and then we walked out of the room.
Anyways, unless you have been in a situation like ours, lost a child or come close to it, you don’t know what it is like to have all the feelings an emotions of that time come rushing back to you. To go on with story, anyway, they wanted us to take of her earrings so they could do the MRI but we couldn’t get them out of her ears. Both me and Zech were trying as hard as we could but they just wouldn’t come out for some reason. Her pediatrician had pierced them himself and we had kept them in ever since. We only cleaned them and turned them but never took them out. They were getting frustrated with us and kept asking why they wouldn’t come off and if they were bent or something and I told them that I need to just take my time with this and that I didn’t want to hurt her. The nurse actually responded to me by saying “It doesn’t matter she can’t feel it anyway.” (Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard?) Some nurses are idiots. I’m sorry if you are a nurse and are NOT an idiot, but a lot nurses are. They seem like they have seen so much and have gone through so much the lose all empathy and only care that each patient doesn’t make their shift more difficult. I know this by working with them day in and day out-I actually work as a nursing assistant-and I know this by all the experiences I have had with them when I have been with my daughter through all of her health issues. I have met a few GREAT nurses that I wish more could be like that are so caring it melts your heart.
Once my daughter started finally eating when she was born and I came every three hours day or night to give her a bottle and be with her, through the times a mother should be there, a nurse once came up to me as I woke her up and started changing her diaper and got ready to feed her and said “Is this your first child?” “Yes,” I replied. “Well it shows,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “You’ll learn after a few months with this one not to wake them up when they are sleeping.” I was so pissed Zech had to put his hand on my shoulder cuz he knew I was about to punch her. I really had to hold back. That memory still gets to me after two years. I came to feed my newborn baby and change her diaper (which was soaking) and at the time I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible because everyone told me she was going to die….and I KNOW the only reason the nurse said that to me was to make her job easier for when we went back to the Ronald Mcdonald house so that she wouldn’t have to rock her or anything if she cried. Just keep her asleep and she can go have a fucking coffee break or something.)
Oh yah, story…Yes, she couldn’t feel it right that second but if I wasn’t careful I could tear her cartilage and it would hurt when she woke up. Besides just because your child can’t feel something painful at that moment doesn’t mean you want to do it to them with the knowledge that you are doing something hurtful. We finally got them off and we were escorted back to the waiting room while they started the IV and the MRI. It was hard leaving her there her mouth open and her whole body limp. I never want to see that again.
The spectroscopy MRI takes longer than a regular MRI so it was a very long two hours waiting hand in hand sobbing with my husband recapping what had happened, what we were feeling, and how we never wanted to ever have to take her back to Children’s hospital ever again because it just brought back too much emotion for us to handle. When she came out she was still asleep they wheeled her in a bed to the recovery room with us scampering after her.
They told us we weren’t allowed in there until she started to regain consciousness and then they would only let one of us in at a time. It was supposed to take about 15 minutes or so but by about two minutes I was sobbing and went back to the nurses station to explain to them that I didn’t want her to wake up without me there, all by herself. They told me I could come back right then, she had just woken up and was crying for me.
When I got back there a nurse was holding her and she had her eyes closed like they wouldn’t open and was crying and drooling and couldn’t hold her head up but kept trying to with all her might. It was very hard to see. She was crying ‘momma momma’ over and over as I grabbed her and sat in the rocking chair to tell her mommy’s right here and comfort her but it wan’t really helping. She was really confused and didn’t understand I was there. She still wouldn’t open her eyes and was trying to hold her head and body up but kept slumping over crying and confused. They finally allowed my hubby and mom to come back there with me and a half hour went by of her crying loudly out for her mommy and being extremely frightened. Her face was breaking out in a rash and she wasn’t coming out of the anesthesia as smoothly as most children do. Her nurse even told us that. (When she had her first MRI at two days old, she had a reaction to the anesthesia to the point where her breathing slowed too much and she was placed on a ventilator for four hours after her MRI.) Luckily enough that didn’t happen this time but this reaction was not fun as well. I watched as a couple of other toddler’s came into the delivery room they gently woke up, fell back asleep, woke up, fell back asleep on and off for a few moments then sat in their moms arms and watched Aladdin on the TV and ate a Popsicle. A couple of them cried for a few minutes but were comforted by their moms arms and the movie and stopped after a minute or two and then they got discharged and left. Kayla on the other hand seemed so terrified she could not stop crying and begging for her mommy even though I was rocking her the whole time saying mommy is here, I love you, it’s okay. She still wouldn’t open her eyes and when the nurses came up and started talking she couldn’t see what was going on and started crying even more, which didn’t stop the nurses for coming over every five seconds to try to stick Popsicles or juice or graham crackers in her face that I had already told them she wasn’t interested in at the moment –Her bed was right by the nurses station and her crying was interrupting carne asada burrito hour or something. One of the nurses came up and said ‘why don’t we give her some tylenol?’ (Which is nurse for ‘Pain medication is our answer for everything when someone is crying or bothering us) She hadn’t had surgery or anything but I though I guess we can try it but I don’t think tylenol works on terrifed toddler/bad reactions to anesthesia. She tried to shove it in her mouth and Kayla started crying harder so I told her nevermind just throw it away. Then the nurse asked us if we just wanted to leave and they could discharge us. I actually didn’t want to leave because she was still broken out in a rash and couldn’t open her eyes or hold her head up and it had been quite some time. After a little while another nurse came over and suggested the Tylenol again so I was like fine just let me do it. After that I just went over and signed the discharge papers and took her out the way she was. As soon as we got down out of the building and parking lot and into the van she started to realize where she was and started coming out of it more and more, was holding her head up and keeping her eyes open watching the telletubbies on the screen in the car. I think that when I could finally breathe and relax and it felt great to drive away from that hospital and closer to home. She still couldn’t walk without falling over or running into things for about an hour after we got home (and it’s a half hour drive home plus she spent over an hour in the recovery room) I don’t know if a lot of kids have had reactions like that but it really sucked and am glad to be rid of the whole situation. I love her more than anything in the world and I want to protect her from everything I can, especially when she was just absolutely terrified like that. I’m sure any loving parent would.
Anyways sorry this story took so incredibly long, and I am impressed if you are actually still reading this. They said her neurologist should have the results in the next four days and then we just need to go hear what’s up from her. At this point though, I don’t even care. She is perfect. Nothing is going to change that.
Kayla went to her friend Anthony’s birthday party yesterday. Here she is showing off her cool shades…
I had a good time at her little friend’s party, but I couldn’t help thinking that the other kids had quite a spectacular vocabulary compared to my little one. A little red haired girl that was there used the sentence, “That is Anthony’s mommy.” Anthony himself can say “They swung the stick at Elmo’s head and it fell off.” (Referring to my daughter’s party last month in which we had an Elmo shaped pinata that I guess was pretty traumatic to see beaten with a stick. So traumatic, in fact, that this kid that was at her party still talks about it everyday.) Of course when that sentence is said out loud by a toddler it doesn’t sound quite like that, a little more like “Day swung da stick ad emo’s hed init fell owff.” But still, not the point. My daughter is still running around the party saying nothing but “Ball!” Which isn’t even correct in that sense because she is referring to the balloons. Every time I bring up her speech to family or friends they say one of the following statements;
1. She will catch up I’m sure.
2. Well if she walked out of this whole thing with only a little bit of a speech problem then we should be happy! (For all that don’t know what I’m referring to is that my daughter suffered two strokes when she was born that caused quite a bit of brain damage and according to the prognosis that her neurologist gave after seeing her MRI, she isn’t supposed to be doing the things that she is…we don’t know how or why, she is just a miracle.)
3. Yeah, but your daughter is really smart when it comes to other things!
I guess I don’t really like any of these statements because although she may catch up in her speech, to me, it still foreshadows her future in school. Of course I am extremely grateful that she can do the things she does. Of course I am proud of everything she does and how hard she works. Of course I think she is a very intelligent little girl even if we pretend this whole thing never happened. But she is already having trouble at two years old. What problems are we going to have when they expect her to learn to read, spell, figure out an algebra equation? Will I be trying to get her into every new tutoring program I can find? Sticking her in “special education” classes? Taking her out of regular high school to put her into a specialty school just so she can graduate? Will she even have a chance at going to college?
I will love every bit as much if this is or isn’t the case, DUH, I just can’t stand the fact that I won’t know the extent of the damage until we are there, the not knowing. I will learn more and more each year and I guess I am just supposed to tell myself that we will cross that bridge when we get there, but how am I supposed to do that? Do I pretend like nothing has happened like the rest of my family (especially my husband) does and say, ‘she will be fine, she will be normal?’ Or do I get extremely proactive on the whole situation and make sure she gets all the help and resources available to her? I think choice number two is the obvious answer. She is starting speech therapy soon, which I think is a great plan. Why not give her all the help I can, maybe minimize the damage in the future? When we come to the next bridge, we will cross it. I just HATE not knowing now and I can’t even wait to get to the bridge.
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