Heather Tales #3

The Birthday Cake

When I was either 3 or 4, my Dad made me a birthday cake for my birthday. I was very excited to have my cake, but I had to wait until the next evening after my parents got home from work to have it. My Daddy had come home from work and laid down on the couch. I happened to walk through the kitchen and saw an empty cake pan on the counter. I was devastated and angry. Daddy had eaten all my cake. I promptly marched into the living room and right up to my dad. I then punched him square in the nose yelling "You ate all my cake!" Dad, nursing a now bloody nose, manages to tell me that he actually baked 2 cakes. One he took to work and the other one, for me, was in the fridge. My reply, "Oh, ok." Then I walked off. Moral of the story: Don't touch my cake. ;o)

Why? Why? / Plus Side

Why does bedtime continue to be such a problem? Am I being to hectic right before bed that Sydney can't calm down enough? It's just so frustrating. I want to be able to get to bed on time and get some rest. I'm so exhausted.

On the plus side of things, Sydney is starting to behave much better at the sitter's. I think she may be, finally, getting used to all the new things going on in her life. That really makes me happy :o) After Evan was born her whole life got turned upside down. She had a new baby at home, new child at the sitter's, then another child added to the sitter's along with her brother. It seemed to really overwhelm her there for awhile. Thankfully, things are improving. Now we just need to get bedtime down and Mommy will be a super happy woman!!

Hospital Trip

Friday morning at 2:30am, I was awoken by Evan's wails coming from his room. I went in to try and get him back to sleep and ended up giving him a small bottle of milk then rocking him back to sleep. By this time it's about 3:45am. I'm thinking, "Well, great. It's gonna be a rough day." Little did I know, it was about to get way worse..... By 4am I was suffering a seriously runny nose accompanied with non-stop repetitive sneezes. I decided to camp out on the couch so I wouldn't wake Sydney. Eric was getting up and getting ready by this point. At about 4:30am I decided to take some DayQuil to try and battle the sniffles and sneezes. By 5am Eric is gone off to work and my sinuses had swelled shut, my eyes had become increasingly itchy and started to swell shut, my whole face started to swell, then my mouth, tongue and throat started to swell. At this point, it's 5:15am, I down 2 Benadryl and call my sister to come stay with the kids so I can head to the hospital. She gets there and I take off after jotting down a few notes about Evan's morning meds. She asks me to call Ana to come over so that she can come meet me at the hospital. It takes a couple of try's but I finally get Ana and she agrees to get up an head to my house. This is while I'm driving to the hospital with my head tilted back to be able to see through the slits that are my only source of vision. I, miraculously, make it to the hospital with no problems. They get me back fairly quickly and get me hooked up to an IV. (I attached 2 photos of me from the ER). I go through the standard questioning you always get when taken into the ER, then I get a dose of steroids and, oddly enough, a dose of pepcid that has an antihistamine in it. They praised me on the quick thinking of taking the benadryl. I don't know about all that, I thought it was just common sense. Anyway, they then proceed to question me about what I could have eaten, taken, bathed with, smelt or any other way of taking something into my body that was new. As far as I could remember, absolutely nothing was new. We ate at a restaurant, we've eaten at numerous times, for dinner. The DayQuil I took, I had taken 2 doses of Thursday and had no problems. Eric pointed out that I had taken a single bite of this new popcorn he brought home that was 'Loaded Potato' flavor. I had forgotten about that. But, wouldn't that have effected me when I ate it? I had that around 5:30pm Thursday night. You would think if I was going to have a reaction, it wouldn't have taken 11 hours to hit me. Maybe Mi Pueblo changed some spices they used to season their food. Or maybe it was a combo of things that triggered the reaction. I really don't know. The ER doctor suggested I get in touch with an Allergist and get an allergy test done. He also said, based on my reaction to the last yellow-jacket sting I received and my reaction to it, I could be in serious trouble the next time I get stung. He wants me to get an Epi-Pin. Yay........ I have a serious aversion to needles and in the event of an emergency, I'm supposed to stick myself with one? Yeah, that's gonna go over well.... It took over 24 hours for me to look semi-normal again. I'm still doped up from the steroids and benadryl making me super sleepy. I'm kinda surprise I've managed to write this with minimal mistakes (thank you auto correct, and that's probably the only time you'll hear me say that too). Poor Sydney. When I got home and Sydney saw me. She gasped and said "Mommy! What happened to your face?" instead of try to explain an allergic reaction to a 3 year old, I just told her that Mommy had gotten really sick. So now she's calling the puffy me, my "sick face". Nice huh? Well, my eyes are getting droopy and I'm starting to forget what I've said. So, I bid you good night. Hopefully tomorrow is less eventful.

Sleep Over

Sydney went and slept over with her Ma-Ga last night for the first time. I think I did better than Eric did, and it was his Mom's...Lol. She stayed over last night and then spent the day with her today. She had a good time. Although, Ana said she had nightmares last night and talked in her sleep a lot. She seems to do that more when her normal routine is out of whack. Between Eric passing on his 'sleep walking' and me passing on talking in my sleep, that poor girl has some seriously crazy nights.

Sleeping Arrangements

The saga of bedtime continues. Thanks to my cousin's zombie spoof, Sydney still refuses to sleep in her room. She is terrified of the dark. It's not even dark in her room. She's always had her radio that emits a bright glow. We recently put a night light in her room too. After Saturday's episode, we tried adding a second night light. She also has her own flash light. She still won't sleep in there. As soon as I turn out the light and close the door, she starts screaming in fright. Saturday, Sunday and Monday she ended up sleeping with us. Well, she is a busy body until she finally passes out at night. She wiggles around, bounces her babies, sings to herself, etc. I'm a very light sleeper. Any small sound or movement will usually wake me up. So all 3 nights she kept me up past midnight from all her antics trying to go to sleep. Eric decided last night he wanted to try putting her bed in our room and see how she did with that. We tried putting her to bed in her room first, but that was a disaster. So he moved her bed into our room. I had to take away one toy before she complied with staying in her bed and not getting up or talking. She was still awake later than she should have been, but not as late as the past 3 nights. We shall see how tonight goes. Hopefully we can get her back in her room soon.

Heather Tales #2

**Disaster Week**

I'm not sure of the order of these events except for the last one, but I have a pretty good idea. Just don't expect it to hold up in court ;-)

Accident #1
At the first house I lived in as a child, we had a big cement step to get into the back door. We also had a rather large frame along the floor for the bottom of the door. This was partially made of metal. One day when coming in the back door, in all my grace, I tripped on the step and fell face first. I was just tall enough for my forehead to hit smack dab on the metal door frame. I split my head open, accompanied with a lovely grape sized knot and 2 black eyes.

Accident #2
My Mom's parents lived next door to us and I happened to be over there at their house playing in my Mime's room. I can't remember what it was I picked up, but it was something metal. Being the curious child I was, I decided I wanted to stick it into the plug outlet to see what would happen. You're thinking "Oh Shit!" right? Yeah, you should be. I electrocuted myself. Instantly my whole arm was black. Ambulance is called, obviously, and my Mom calls my Dad at work too. She tells him I electrocuted myself and that my whole arm is burnt black all the while screaming hystrically. (Remember this is what has been relayed to me) Dad rushes home. The paramedics have me all taken care of. They have cleaned off my arm that was actually covered in black soot (I'm guessing that's what it was. I don't know what else to describe it as). Turns out, only the tip of my finger got the damaged.

Accident #3
My Mom decided to take us to visit her cousin and her cousin's kids to go swimming. We get to the pool and are gettting ready to go swimming. At this age, I'm still using the little arm floaties. My oldest cousin, Dawn, is the one who was helping me get them on. Being a teenager at the time, she decided to make it easier on herself and blow them up first, then put them on me. As she is trying to force the floatie onto my right arm, she is twisting and pulling on my arm as well as the floatie. Well.........I was what they used to call 'double jointed' (not really sure what that even really means other than I was really flexible). It was very easy to pop my arms out of the joint at that age. And......that's exactly what she did. I, of coarse, started screaming bloody murder from the pain. My mom throws me in the car and rushes me to the emergency room. They get me into a room and I'm on the bed still screaming in pain. The doctors are refusing to set my arm until they speak with my mom. Now remember, I have a knot with a cut on my forehead, 2 black eyes, a burnt finger, and now an arm out of socket. What do you think the doctors were thinking??? Yep, they thought my mom was beating the hell out of me. So while they are questioning her about child abuse, I'm screaming in pain. She finally screams at them to 'Please set her arm then I will tell you whatever you want to know!"


Need I say more? My Dad's nickname for me growing up was 'Knothead' because I was always falling or running into something and getting a big goose egg on my head.

Heather Tales #1

Some of these tales will be memories and some will be told to me, about me. These were told to me.

The Flaming Bed:
I was somewhere around the age of one.I was playing in my brother's room on his bed and he (Beau) was playing on the floor. My Dad and my oldest brother, David, were in the living room. David smells smoke and looks over and sees smoke coming out from underneath Beau's door. They rush in to find me screaming in the middle of a flaming bed and Beau on the floor just watching it burn. I don't remember if they told me whether he had a lighter or matches he was trying out.

Potty Terror:
I was around 3 years old when the infamous potty terror incident happened. I was getting to the point where I would go to the bathroom to potty by myself. One day I did just that, but I accidentally fell in. No big deal right? I could just pull myself back out right? Well, I unintentionally flushed the toilet in my efforts to climb out. Dad hears my blood curdling scream come from the bathroom. He comes in to see what was wrong and sees me tushy down in the water, a look of utmost terror on my face, screaming bloody murder. I just knew I was going to be sucked down the toilet. Dad could only stand there and laugh. My Mom comes in because she too heard me screaming. She yells at Dad to help me out and he replies "I can't. She looks so funny!!" Thanks Dad. Love you too. :-)

Research

So, I've been quizzing my parents about what I was like as a child. I'm hoping that by understanding my personality as a young child I will be more able to understand why my children act the way they do.

My Mom described me as: outgoing, not at all shy until probably first or second grade, very gullible as to anything said by Amber and Beau (older sister and brother), were most often a pleaser, and overall a happy little girl, quite curious, a girly girl turned tomboy, loved to be read to, busy, a momma's girl and a helper. She also said I was very persistent about asking questions about everything and wanting to understand everything.

I definitely remember being gullible, but not only about what Amber and Beau said. I tended to believe anything from someone I trusted (ex: my Dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) I have TONS of stories of things I was tricked into doing or believing.

I don't remember being outgoing. I only remember being painfully shy. I didn't like being out in public and new people scared me. I got picked on a lot for being so shy.

So far, my Dad has said that I was naturally goofy, very clumsy and of coarse gullible. I haven't had the chance to finish our conversation yet.

I remember being all 3 of these things. My cousin was babysitting me at my Dad's and I fell down the basement stairs. When I got to the bottom, I jumped up and said, "I broke my wittle head! I broke my wittle head!" that's just one of my goofy moments that also happens to be a clumsy moment as well. Another weekend at Dad's, Dad was working on some electrical stuff in the house and had a light switch in his hand at the kitchen counter. (insert duh here) several other family members were in the kitchen as well. Dad looks to me and tells me to go check if the light in the bathroom comes on when he flicks the switch. (Insert another duh here) needless to say he had me running all over the house checking rooms for flickering lights. I eventually realize they are all hysterically laughing at me and get pissed an lock myself in Dad's room. There are many more moments of gullibility in my past.

I will continue my research and post as I find out more. I've also decided to start a series of "Heather Tales" about significant times/events throughout my life. They aren't really 'Mommy Trials' but I think they will be amusing all the same.

Censoring

We try our best to censor what Sydney watches, sees, hears, etc. I feel like I was exposed to things I shouldn't have been exposed to way too early on, and I don't want that for my children. Don't get me wrong. I don't want them sheltered by any means. I just want their early years to be care free and full of age appropriate things.

This past Saturday we had Thanksgiving with my Dad's side of the family at his house. My cousin, Kevin, decided to show this new app he got on his phone called "zombie spoof" or something like that. First, he took a picture of Evan and turned him into a zombie. I didn't appreciate that much. I absolutely HATE zombie movies and anything zombie related. Now that's an image I can't get out of my head. The worst part about that stupid app is that when he transformed my uncle's girlfriend into a zombie and was showing her, he wasn't paying attention and Sydney saw it. I didn't realize that at first because I was doing something with Evan. I heard her behind me ask, "Is that you?" with the zombie sound in the background. It terrified her. She came over to me burying her face in my leg with tears in her eyes. I tried to tell her it wasn't real but she said she it scared her. I haven't been able to get her to sleep in her room that last 2 nights because of it. The whole thing just really pissed me off. All 3 of my cousins have kids that are older, and I'm pretty sure they have never censored what they say and do around them. They always say and do things around my daughter that are inappropriate for her age. It really frustrates the hell out of me. How do you protect your child from things that are out of your control?

Small Victories

Last night was a small victory in my quest to establish dominance over my 3 year old. As my dear friend Tara keeps reminding me, if I give in just once I'm going to have to start all over again. So I stuck to my guns. Even after the fiasco that was Tuesday night, she didn't seem as brave to test me last night. Eric got her bathed and dressed for bed while I got Evan down for the night. We went through our routine fine and started story time. She decided to sit next to me on the toy box while I read. Well, then she started goofing around and managed to face plant into the floor. I told her she needed to sit still and listen to the story or I wasn't going to read. She immediately got up to do the same thing that had just caused her to fall on her face. I closed the book and put it up, and at the point she started screaming bloody murder. You would think I just beat her or something with the way she was screaming. I gave her a hug, laid her down, and walked out. A minute or 2 later she came out saying she was sorry and could she please have her story. I heard Tara in my head saying "Don't give in. Don't give in." So, I gave her a pop on the bottom and she started screaming again. I told her if she didn't hush I would start taking her toys away. She got quiet and I left. She started screaming again shortly after I closed the door. I turned around and went back in her room. She started trying to snatch all her toys to keep me from taking any. I got one of her dolls she had and said she better be quiet and go to sleep or I would take more away. All of this transpired over a span of about 20 minutes total. She finally stopped screaming and slowly got more quiet then fell asleep. Ahhhhhhh! Small victory, but I will take 20 minutes verses 2 hours any day.

Ugh, what a night.....

It's nights like tonight, that have me seriously questioning my sanity on wanting another child. Although, it's not Evan that's causing me grief. At some point, over the summer I think, Sydney started ignoring the rules of bedtime. She has gotten increasingly worse about getting back up after I've put her to bed. I went through the whole bedtime routine, and even added a few of the things she has come up with as excuses to get up. We went into her room and I explained that if she got back up, I was going to put the "baby bed" (pack and play) in her room and she would have to sleep in it. Then I read her a story, tucked her in, turned out the light and shut her door. She clearly didn't believe me. No sooner had I walked out of her room and into Evan's, her door opened and out she came. "Mommy, I can't find my flash light." I told her it was on her night stand and she needed to stay in bed. I didn't even go in her room, I just shut the door. 5 minutes later she comes trotting into the kitchen to throw something away. I didn't even acknowledge her. She actually went back to her room and shut her door. I thought, well good she didn't get a reaction so she will go to sleep now. Humph! I got Evan up and in the bath then here she comes again. She came in, hugged my leg, then left. I said nothing, didn't even look at her. By this point, I'm trying really hard not to scream in frustration. I get Evan finished with his bath and I'm headed back to his room, then there she is yet again. "Mommy, I love you." It's so hard not to melt when she does that, especially with that breath taking little face she has and her sweet little voice she uses when she wants something. I held strong though. Again I said nothing, just carried Evan towards his room and closed her door without a word. I got Evan all lotioned up and dressed in his jammies, then went to get his bottle. Her door was open and she wasn't in her room. Clearly, she had gone into our room. Eric, being the heavy sleeper he is, has no idea that she is hiding at the foot of our bed watching whatever he fell asleep to, Austin Powers I think. He is completely useless to me after he falls asleep anyway. He is well known for agreeing to anything in his "sleep walk" stage. He frequently does and says things during this stage that he has no recollection of doing. It's both amusing and annoying. Anyway, I had to make good on my threat so I went and got the baby bed and put it in her room next to her toddler bed. I put her blanket, pillow and baby in it then went to retrieve her. She immediately started screaming the instant she walked in her room. I just picked her up, put her in the play pen, told her she needed to start listening to mommy, and walked out closing the door behind me. Poor Evan has now been screaming for a good 5-8 minutes waiting on me to bring him his bottle. So I get him fed, burped, and rocked back to sleep which takes a good 45 minutes since he has to be kept upright for 30 minutes after meals due to his reflux and colic issues. Sydney was full blown screaming for a good 30-35 minutes of this. By the time I lay Evan down and go to walk out of his room, I hear Sydney calling my name. It's not the bawling, pleading she had been doing, but more of a request. I open her door and she asks if she could please blow her nose. I grab some tissue and help her blow her nose then leave again without a word. I head into the kitchen to throw the laundry in the dryer, grab some water and switch off all the lights. I'm about to flick off the last light when she materializes right in front of me. I'm sure the utter astonishment was all over my face, after all I had left her in the play pen. Well, she misreads my reaction and before I even say a word she starts crying. The look on my face must have scared her. She manages to squeak out that she needed to go potty. I snap at her to hurry and go. She finishes up quickly and heads back to her room. At this point, the play pen is obviously useless, so I follow her in her room to get her blanket, pillow and baby out of the play pen. Well, it gets even worse. Not only had she climbed out that one time, but at LEAST once more because there were a whole bunch of toys in there that I didn't put in and she couldn't have reached. I then chew her out for climbing out of the play pen and did she know how dangerous that was to climb in and out of and how bad she could have gotten hurt..... She just looks up at me and says "I like that bed Mommy. Can you leave it in here? It's just like the one I use at Ma-Ga's house." All I could do was throw the covers over her and turn around and walk out. I feel completely defeated by a 3 year old.......

Laundry & Dishes

It's amazing my kids aren't perpetually naked. Well, Sydney tends to run around the house in her undies, but that's her being silly. But seriously, I do more laundry these days than I think I've ever done in my lifetime. Between Sydney's potty training accidents and Evan's spit-ups, messy eating habits, and diaper disasters I'm constantly changing clothes and cleaning up messes. All of that adds up to be a ton of laundry. That's not to mention mine and Eric's laundry too. With my frequent wardrobe changes due to freak accidents by my children, I almost have as much laundry as they do. It doesn't hurt to mention that laundry is rated 2nd in my most hated household chores. Dishes rate number 1. That's a whole other topic to rant on. Evan goes through at least 6 bottles a day. Sydney tends to do pretty good about her dish usage. The worst offender is Eric. Every time he gets a new drink he gets a new glass. If he fixes himself something to eat, I swear he tries to figure out how to use as many utensils as possible. Then when he's all done, if he even manages to pick up his dishes, they make it to the counter next to the sink but not in the sink. Same goes with trash. He will put his trash on the counter above the trash but not in the trash. Sometimes I wonder if he does it just to irritate me. That or it's from a lifetime of getting away with not cleaning up after himself. I'm not really sure. Needless to say, I have asked for a maid as my birthday and Christmas present. Even if it's only a couple if times, I would be so appreciative.

Balance

I was so worried, while I was pregnant, that I couldn't possibly love another child as much as I loved Sydney. It just wasn't possible in my mind. Then the first time I got to hold Evan, I knew my heart just grew bigger to accommodate my love for him too. The first doctors appointment I had after I found out I was pregnant, some office lady made a comment about how early I was having a second child. I thought the lady was totally rude, but I was also puzzled. Me, Amber and Beau are all a year apart so I thought I was doing good with a 3 year difference. Now that Sydney is coming into the monster stage of 3, I'm so happy I spaced her and Evan the way I did. With all her craziness and defiance, I get to balance that with the sweet happiness of Evan. It makes Sydney's behavior a little more tolerable. With all the asking around about Sydney's development, she seems to be right on track with a typical 3 year old, she just has a bigger vocabulary than most. Evan is doing good. Still having some reflux and colic issues, but it's way better than it was. He is still so tiny though. He's 4 months old and in the 10th percentile on his weight and I think 25th on his height. I'm almost worried he's going to be a little person or something :-) The twins call him Gnomeo from 'Gnomeo and Juliet'. Poor thing is so tiny and has pointy ears, he really does look like a gnome. Totally cute though!

Terrible 3s

Ugh! I'm starting to despise this age. What happened to my sweet, independent, obedient child? She turned 3 and some switch was flipped. She has become increasingly whiny. One minute she wants everything done for her the next minute she's being ugly and wants to do everything herself. I can't keep up. Not to mention all the the out right defiance I'm getting from her. I swear, some days I feel like she will be lucky if she lives to see 4. That girl is making me crazy. Of course I've told her this several times so now she repeats it when I tell her something she doesn't want to hear. I feel like I already have a teenager in the house! I never thought having to manage my life with 2 children would be so drastically different. I have absolutely no free time to just rest and watch tv or what not. It's really been hard for me. Hopefully I can get this down eventually and feel less stressed. I know my hair would appreciate that seeing as how it's been falling out in huge wads lately. It would also be nice to get a decent nights sleep. I'm not sure I even remember what that is or how good I will feel when I get it. It's like a totally foreign concept now. I really and truly wish I could be a stay at home mom. Maybe I should start crunching some numbers and see what I can come up with. We shall see I guess.

Relapse

Well, I haven't posted anything in a month. I was doing good and feeling like things were getting better, so I just didn't feel like I had anything to talk about. Odd really. Why can I not talk about the good things that are happening? I'm becoming increasingly depressed again. I think it started about a week and a half ago, just after Evan's check-up. He isn't putting on weight like he should and dropped down to the 10th percentile in his weight. The very next day I found out that a friend of mine's son (who is 6 weeks younger than Evan and was born well over a pound smaller) was weighing more than Evan. I know you're not supposed to compare your child to another because they are all different, but it just made me so upset. Why does he have to be going through all of this pain and suffering? It's not fair, he's just a baby. I, again, have this overwhelming since of helplessness. "I must have done something wrong. All of this has got to be my fault. It's a result of my bad karma." All of these things, and more, keep running through my head. Against everything I believe in, we started him on cereal, already, to try and help him gain weight. I feel like I'm shouldering everything all alone. I feel like I have no support and no help. Eric keeps promising to do things to help me, but he never seems to get around to it. If does, he either waits until it's too late or half asses it so that I have to redo it and end up just telling him not to bother. I really just don't understand why he is doing this to me. I've told him over and over how much I need his help and that I can't do this on my own. I don't know if he just doesn't care or just doesn't understand. I get up early every morning so that I can get ready first, then I get the kids up and ready before we leave. Eric has to be up and gone even before I'm supposed to wake up in the mornings. But thanks to his lack of preparation at night, most mornings he wake me up way too early when he is getting ready. That doesn't even take into account however many times I may have been up through out the night with Evan or Sydney. Then I miraculously make it to work and through the work day. After work I pick up the kids and come home only to spend the evening cleaning, feeding Evan, taking care of dinner, washing bottles, doing bath for Sydney AND Evan, reading Sydney her story and putting her to bed, feeding Evan again and putting him to bed, repacking bags for the next day, getting my clothes ready for the next day and plenty of other things that would continue this list for a long time. All of this done only to have Eric come home sit in the couch, ask "what's for dinner?", and complain about the things I wasn't able to finish doing. It just really hurts my heart to feel like I don't enough and I'm not appreciated for what I do.

No Good, Very Bad Day

This has been absolutely the most horrible morning I've had in forever! Evan woke up screaming 2 hours before he was suppose to get up, which means an hour before I get up. I couldn't get him to stay asleep even after I gave in and fed him way early, thus throwing off his entire schedule for the day. Our dog decided that the kitchen table needed to have a yellow flood around and under it. It took my 20 minutes to clean up and mop that disgusting mess . I finally got in the shower, an hour late, after strapping Evan into the swing to keep him content. Sydney was being difficult this morning and didn't want to get out of bed. I finally get everyone ready and in the car to leave. The starts, but not without some weird sounds and what sounds like quite the effort. I get the sitter, get the kids situated and head out to leave. Now my car won't start at all . Try calling my husband with no answer. Call my brother but he I already on his way to work and too far to turn around. Finally get a hold of my brother in law who graciously drives all the way over to jump my car after just getting home from working all night. I get to work 2 hours late. If anything else needs to go wrong, it might as well happen today......

New Begining

So I've been on PPD meds for a little over a month now and I will be starting an appetite suppressant tomorrow. I'm on a journey to get me to a happier healthier me. I'm working with 2 different doctors to achieve this. So far the PPD meds are helping a ton! I just hope with this new medication I can really start to drop all this pregnancy weight (and then some). I've been on it before and it made a huge difference in what I ate and how much I ate, it even gave me more energy. Being a mom of 2, I could really use the energy booster! Plus, I think once I start dropping some weight I will feel better about myself and I think that will help the PPD too. I'm so ready to get back to feeling like ME again. The journey has begun! ;-)

Breathe

Whew! I can breathe easy now. This mornings procedure was a complete fiasco though. Got to the radiologist's office at 7:30 to register for the appointment at 8am. They didn't call us back until after 8am. Then at 8:30 they finally came in to tell us that the radiologist didn't want to do the UGI because of Evan's age, he thought it would be better to do an ultra sound. At this point I am no longer able to keep Evan happy and distracted, so he proceeds to scream for half an hour because he is so hungry, then passes out from exhaustion. Then the scheduling lady said they couldn't do that until 10:30am. Evan hadn't eaten anything since 1:30am. Eric was upset and the lady said she would bump someone else and go ahead and do Evan first. Ultra sound went fine despite all of Evan's wiggling around. We could clearly see him refluxing but I couldn't see about the pyloric stenosis. About an hour and a half after we got home the doctor called and said there was no pyloric stenosis! I'm so relieved!!

Waiting & Nail Biting

So as tomorrow grows nearer, I find myself dwelling on the what if's of the outcome of Evan's UGI. What if he has to have surgery? What if something goes wrong? What if he can't have anesthesia? What if he's allergic to anesthesia? What if he's allergic to pain meds? It's not even for sure that he'll have to have surgery, but for whatever reason my mind has decided on the worst possible scenario, and therefore is playing out all the possibilities of what could go wrong. I don't normally consider myself a pessimist, but maybe I am. Every time I try to steer my thoughts to something else more pleasant, they just drift right back. I've tried to keep myself busy, but inevitably, he wakes up or starts to cry or whatever, then I'm back in his room alone with him and my mind is racing all over again. I am so ready for some answers, and ready for him to get some relief from all this pain and discomfort. I really hope that tomorrow brings both to us.

Helpless & Guilty

I find myself feeling increasingly helpless and guilty as my son gets more and more sick. I feel helpless because I don't know what to do to make him feel better, if there even is anything I could do. I can't help but wonder if this is all my fault, if there's something I did or I'm doing that's making him sick. It's just so frustrating when I'm doing all the things the doctor is telling me to do and he's still in pain and vomiting and screaming all the time. Then I feel so guilty that I'm spending so much time with my son and seemingly so little with my daughter. I know that it's only because he's sick and needs more attention, but the hurt on her face when I can't come play right that second or help her fix something, or even get her more juice right then because she's thirsty, really tears my heart out. She just doesn't understand. She's trying to be understanding and help with the little things that she can do, but she obviously misses her mommy, and it kills me that I can't give her the attention she wants right now. I feel even more guilty and like a horrible mother for wanting sometime for myself away from it all. I keep thinking 'what kind of mom wants to be away from her kids? Especially a sick baby?' I know experts say we, as moms, need personal time to keep ourselves healthy, but for some reason it just feels wrong to want that. I'm really struggling to find a balance between Mommy/Wife/Me. I'm terrified to see what things are going to be like when I have to go back to work in a week. I'm sure that's going to bring on a whole new level of guilt.

Stress

So, I'm totally new to the whole blog thing. I thought this may be a good way for me to vent about the stress and trials of being a mom and wife. I recently became a mommy of 2 beautiful children. My daughter is 3 years old and my son is 3 months old. My daughter was a total blessing and such a super easy baby and toddler until about 2 months before her 3rd birthday. Now we have entered the terrible 3's! Overall it wouldn't be such a bad thing, because truthfully, it's not that bad. BUT, since my son was born the stress level for me has increased tenfold. It started with having to stop breastfeeding at like 4 or 5 weeks because of a severe lactose intolerance. That was super hard on me because I wanted so bad to be able to breastfeed. It also made me feel like I had been torturing my child by giving him something that was making him sick. Let's not forget that about this same time we had to have his tongue clipped because he was born tongue tied and was having physical issues eating anyway. Then 2 weeks later I find out that he is NOT lactose intolerant and that we should have continued breast feeding. His issues were actually due to colic brought on by a protein allergy in the supplemental milk we were using. All of these wonderful things threw me into serious PPD. So, at this point I'm dealing with a stinker of a 3 year old, and colicky baby and trying to fight my own demons within. Fast forward to this week and I've got a handle on the PPD, working on the 3 year old, and. The baby's problems get worse.

I take the baby back to the doctor because now, the colic seems to be good, but he is projectile vomiting after feedings, ravenous after a feeding even when he keeps most of it down, and apparently over eating based on his size and age. The doctor tells me it could be GERD or it could be pyloric stenosis. GERD can be treated with meds and typically outgrown. Pyloric stenosis is hereditary and requires surgery. His twin uncles both had it has infants and had to have surgery. So at 12 weeks of age he has to have an Upper GI done to determine the cause of all his tummy issues. The UGI alone scares me because of the possibility of them having to stick a camera down his throat, but add the possibility of needing surgery and I'm a basket case. I'm hoping they will tell me something Monday at the UGI appointment and not make me wait to see his doctor. We shall see how it goes. I feel so helpless and just hope that it all turns ok.