Hi! I'm still breathing...

It's been a crazy week - My sister came into town on June 30th, we hung out at the house on the 1st, took a day trip on the 2nd (and got home at 3 the next morning... it was fun, but exhausting!), recovered on the 3rd, did some shopping and some fireworks watching on the 4th, Sunday we went to church and laid around the house, today (Monday) we did too much shopping and tomorrow she goes home. I'll miss her a lot, but I'll probably be able to finally get back on a "schedule" again. I'm ready for that - my life has been crazier than normal for the past 3 or 4 weeks. Someone else has always been around, I haven't been able to do things the way I normally do and it's starting to make me grumpy. I must be feeling better... I told my doctor I was a bad patient and it's the truth - I don't do "sit around, do nothing and just recuperate" very well.

Regular posting will resume soon... hope you are enjoying your summer!

Bits of Randomness From My Sleep-Deprived Brain

Baby Boy (who will be known as "Goose" online from this point forward) is doing great. He is a typical boy - wants to eat all the time oh and he belches and passes gas really loudly too.

Sugar loves her "baby broder" although she isn't too sure about sharing her toys with him and thinks that all of his toys should be hers. She likes to talk to him, to rock him and to hold him. Today she peeled the stickers off of her duplo box and tried to share them with him by sticking them on the front of his romper. It was very cute.

I work too much sometimes and not enough other times. Right now, I'm working too much. But I'm self-employed, I'm a graphic designer, I've only been working for myself for 2 years and I'm not comfortable with turning away my regular customers who happen to have some time-sensitive work even if it means that I have to put in a 60 hour week right after I have a baby. One of these days my business will be established enough that I'll be able to really take a break. Right? sigh...

Hubby goes back to work tomorrow and my oldest little sister will be here to help for a week!

Oh and me? I'm feeling pretty good and am pretty much off of the pain meds now! But the doctor still doesn't want me lifting anything heavier than the baby or doing much physical activity.

Blog updates? Blog reading? Hopefully I can get back to those two enjoyable hobbies soon. In the meantime I've been doing some reading, but not much commenting...

Too much excitement at the hospital - Baby Boy's Birth Story

After two false calls and two and a half weeks of pretty consistent contractions I was happy to grab our bags and head to the hospital early on Wednesday, June 17, 2009. At the hospital we were shown to our room, got our things situated and I changed into my hospital gown and hubby and I sat and talked while we waited for the nurses and doctor to get things ready. Soon I had an IV, we'd talked to the Anesthesiologist, warned them about my passing out problems, talked to the doctor and around 8:30 AM I was walking with my nurse and one of the techs to the operating room.

The operating room was abuzz with activity and I settled into a hunched over seated position on the narrow operating table so that the anesthesiologist could do her thing. With Baby Boy they gave me a spinal block instead of an epidural and I handled the prep for that just fine, including the burning local anesthetic before the spinal was injected. After the anesthesiologist was finished I laid down and they hooked up all the monitors to me and continued counting instruments, gauze pads and all the other prep that goes into a C-Section. As I was laying there I kept talking to the Anesthesiologist and shortly began feeling like I couldn't get a good breath. So I told her I felt like I wasn't breathing right - she checked everything and I was fine, explaining to me that the sensation I was feeling was due to the anesthesia. I was satisfied with that answer then I got light headed and knew that I would pass out - so I told them and promptly passed out.

When I came back around and began to be aware of my surroundings - 20 or 30 seconds later I heard my doctor saying, she's back, cancel the code purple, get a wedge under her to get her off her back and etc... then she noticed that I was alert, told me that I had passed out and my heart rate had dropped but that the baby was fine and asked how I was feeling. Soon she started the surgery and someone realized that in all the excitement they had forgotten to bring my husband into the room so they quickly went to get him and the surgery proceeded.

Hubby was there before baby boy was born, with the camera, and came by my side, asked how I was, held my hand and watched the doctors get the baby out, then took pictures of him being cleaned up, weighed, measured, and brought a bundled sweet boy over to see me while the doctor cleaned out the biggest of my "too many to count" fibroid tumors, took care of my tubal ligation and sewed me up. My doctor said that she was glad we had scheduled a C-Section because Baby Boy had the cord wrapped around him twice which would have been a difficult thing to deal with during natural birth. When everything was done they transferred me to my hospital bed and wheeled us back to our room where Baby Boy nursed for the first time and we settled in to marvel over his full head of hair, long fingers and sweet perfection.

After about 30 minutes or so Hubby went to the waiting room and brought Sugar back to be with us. Initially she was scared when she saw me in the hospital bed with the IV hooked up and etc... but I am her Mommy and she did want to be with me so eventually she climbed up on the bed beside me and looked at her little brother with intense curiosity. After about an hour had passed the rest of the family showed up and Baby Boy was passed around, loved on, cooed over and welcomed into our awesome family.

The next day I was surprised when the Anesthesiologist showed up to check on me. He wanted to see how I was feeling and to talk about my fainting episode in the operating room. Like most other medical professionals he had assumed that my fainting was brought on by a fear of needles or some other such nonsense and while he had listened respectfully as we explained to him before the operation what could happen he had not put much stock into my insistence that my passing out was not caused by some deeply seated psychological issue with needles. However, the next day he wanted to make sure I understood exactly what had happened when I passed out so that I could follow up with the appropriate medical professionals to figure out how to best handle the situation. Apparently I am blacking out because something causes my heart to stop beating. I was flat-lined in the OR for a full 10 seconds. This is the first time I've blacked out while I've been connected to monitors - it gave us the information we need to find out how to best handle my problem.

Later that night things got even more interesting though - I started having severe abdominal pain. I was 99% sure that the pain was caused by gas/indigestion/heartburn... one of those types of responses but the pain quickly became very intense, very sharp and filled my entire chest and back. My nurse was very busy that night and was slow to respond to my requests for pain medication and etc... so by 9 or 9:30 PM my pain was out of control, I was in tears. Nurse called my doctor who ordered a CT Scan which meant that I had to have another IV put in. I was in so much pain that I told the nurse I was concerned that the placement of the IV would make me pass out again. Also at this time Baby Boy began spitting up really bad and was choking so Hubby was working with him and knew he needed to be with me if this nurse was about to give me another IV. We asked her to get another nurse to take care of the baby and this request frustrated her so she hollered out in the hall to one of the other nurses to come take care of Baby Boy because my Hubby felt like he "had to hold my hand". That was the wrong thing to say and the wrong time to say it so as soon as a couple of the other maternity nurses came into my room hubby let my nurse have a piece of his mind about her comment and reminded her that I had basically died for 10 seconds the day before in the OR. One of the other nurses who had stepped into the room recommended that they call the boss nurse for the hospital that night and ask for back-up, "just in case."

My nurse did not want to call for help but the other maternity nurse insisted so they called the boss nurse for the whole hospital. That lady was awesome. She came up, quickly assessed the situation, looked over my chart and took over. Before long my room was filled with even more people - the hospital's first-response team from the ICU was called in, I was given a nitroglycerin pill, my IV was inserted, I had an emergency EKG done in my room, and although my pain was still completely out of control things were happening. The boss nurse and the first-response nurse from ICU took me to the CT Scan room where that was done, then brought me back to my room where they instructed my maternity nurse to give me all the pain meds I could have and instructed her on how to monitor me until my pain was back under control. 30 minutes later, after my nurse had slowly gone through the computer screens filling out all her initial reports I finally was given my oral pain meds. By this time my pain had been out of control for over 2 1/2 hours. An hour later she came back to see how I was doing, said that I could have some Milk of Magnesia. By this time I was thoroughly disgusted with her so I talked to Hubby who talked to her. She left the room and 15 minutes later came back with the Milk of Magnesia and a heating pad. She also offered to give me a shot of some other kind of pain medicine but I declined and asked her to check on me again in another half hour to see how I was feeling. She came back about an hour later and I was finally asleep.

I woke up a couple of hours after that and took some more pain meds even though my pain was completely under control and gone at that point in time. The nurse further irritated me when I asked how Baby Boy was doing and she snapped at me - he's fine, don't worry about him, it's you we're concerned about tonight. The pain meds had me drowsy, my hubby was asleep and I didn't have the strength to argue, but I was livid. A few hours later when I woke up again I buzzed her, waited the customary half hour for her to show up in my room, asked to be disconnected from the machines so that I could use the bathroom and told her that I expected my baby to be in the room waiting for me when I came back to bed. She started to argue with me again, took one look at my face and shut her mouth. It's a good thing she did.

Later that morning my doctor came to see me, checked my incision, told me I could take a shower and ordered a heart consultation for me while I was still in the hospital. So I showered, talked to some cardiologist people, had another EKG and an Echocardiogram. All of my tests - both EKG's, the Echocardiogram and the CT Scan came back normal. The Echo did show that I do still have the heart murmur I had at birth, but outside of that - I have no heart damage or visible problems with my heart. So that is comforting news. I was also given the name of a cardiologist to follow up with as soon as I'm healed up and back to normal from this surgery.

The rest of my hospital stay was uneventful - just the way I had hoped the whole hospital stay would be. I had awesome nurses, Baby Boy was very healthy and Sugar spent most of the day Friday with us and no one else. We came home Saturday, after straightening out a few other things that the bad nurse had checked off as "done" that were not "done" - like, inspecting our car seat, giving me my discharge orders, and etc... I don't like to complain about people, but I have seriously considered complaining formally about that particular nurse. I did talk to my doctor about her and a few things were said to my nurses the next few days, but her behavior was really ridiculous.

All's well that ends well though - and I'm home, I'm feeling as fine as I expect to feel less than a week after major abdominal surgery and I have a healthy, strong, handsome baby boy.

Baby Boy Has Arrived!

He is named too!
"Goose" (OK, that's just his blog name...)
June 17, 2009 • 9:12 AM
8 pounds, 14 ounces
20 3/4" long

Yes... all you waterfowlers, this is the inspiration:

Thankful for all these little things

They are so hard to see sometimes - the little things, insignificant wishes, long desired but not necessary for daily living so the desire is just tucked into the back recesses of your mind, beauty from unexpected sources - but when you get a week that is full of little blessings, one right after the other you can't help but notice them and be overwhelmed with thankfulness.

Last week was my birthday - the day dawned beautiful and then Hubby came home from work, sick. I figured we wouldn't end up getting to do anything, because he really was not feeling well. But he laid down and slept for a couple of hours, got up, feeling just enough better to take us to Bass Pro for dinner/lunch. We had never tried their restaurant out so we did it for my birthday - it was good, nothing spectacular, but I didn't have to do any dishes! Then Hubby was feeling icky again so he told me to look around and see what I wanted to buy for my birthday and then went to sit in a recliner and look at the lake while he waited. Because of the stage of life I'm in right now I couldn't find anything for me - some stuff for the family, yes... but I knew it would be more expensive than what we should spend right now and it wasn't for me, so I just got some fudge and we went home and he went to sleep and now I have some money to spend on me. Oh and the roses that he insisted on planting are blooming like crazy - I love roses, so that is another little gift just for me.

The next thing - Since Sugar was born I've wanted the Willow Tree figurine "Guardian" and since I've found out I was pregnant again I've also wanted "Angel of Mine" so between the money I'll spend from Hubby, plus what I was given from a friend of ours and from my in-laws I'll be able to pick up both of those pieces. But in thinking about that, and knowing that we are trying to de-clutter the house a lot to get it ready to sell I thought of the perfect place to display those pieces alongside a picture of each of my children as newborns - to do that I wanted matching picture frames that would match the figurines. I didn't say anything to anyone about this, but mentally filed the note and figured I'd try to get it taken care of after the baby is born and I'm mobile again. Then I received a package from an old friend of mine and in it were some baby things, a card and a check for the baby and... two matching picture frames that are perfect for what I want to do with my new figurines (as soon as I go pick them up!). Something so insignificant - but exactly what I needed. The past few weeks have been tough - physically and the past few months have been hard - emotionally. It's easy sometimes to wonder if God even cares, and then something like this happens and there is nothing else to say other than "Thanks" and nothing else to feel other than loved, cared for and remembered.

Also last week I received a big heavy box from my birth-mother and her husband. In it was a nice set of silverware - 12 place settings, complete with serving pieces! I have silverware, Hubby and I registered for a pattern when we were engaged and someone bought us a 4 piece place setting and then my parents gave us an extra set they had with 6 or 8 place settings in it. We really like the silverware we registered for but right after we registered for it, the manufacturer discontinued the pattern and so we've never been able to find additional pieces, and I've looked a lot. We really don't like the stuff my parents gave us - my mom thinks it's wonderful, but it's flowery and frilly and just not my style. So now we have something I've wanted for 10 years. Now I can have company and can set the table with not only matching dishes and glasses but matching silverware too! It's an insignificant thing, but just another little blessing that I'm incredibly grateful for.

When you take those three things - getting to celebrate my birthday with my Hubby, the picture frames/figurines blessing and the new silverware and add it to the big blessing of not accidentally blowing up our house last weekend and the daily blessings of safe travels to and from work, the grocery store, while running errands; having a family that loves me and that I love; being healthy; having food to eat, a roof over our head, clothes to wear; having a church family that cares about us; having plenty of work coming in for me; and I could go on and on and on... last week I certainly did have to say "I'm Blessed." I needed a week like that.

This week we get the added blessing of finally getting to hold our new baby boy... and I promise, he'll have a name before he's an hour old! I'll be away from the blog here until after he comes, then I'll post the news and take the rest of the week off too. But I'll be back next week and I'll still be reading your blogs!

Garage Sale Treasures

I love garage sales. I have found some awesome stuff at them before. I've sold a bunch of stuff at them before and they are just good therapy for my bargain hunting self. Right now I'm not even looking at the stuff I used to look at - cool old dishes, picture frames, vintage hats, etc... I'm so sick of dealing with clutter at home that garage saleing has lost a little bit of its charm. Especially since I knew I wouldn't be having a sale this year - at least not until the end of summer. However... I do have a little girl and a little boy on the way so there are still plenty of things to look for at garage sales.

Probably the best deal I found over the weekend was this chair that Sugar really, really, really liked... it was 25¢ so I figured we could afford it and it folds up so I figured it would be fine to have in the living room because if it got in the way I could simply fold it up and put it away.
She's looking at another one of my good deals - a wooden safari animal puzzle. The girl loves animals and loves puzzles. Until Saturday she only had two puzzles, now she has three!

But, Sugar and Hubby's favorite find is this deal right here:
Sugar's first 4-Wheeler. The lady having the sale was asking $20 for it, the stickers were peeling off, I wasn't too sure about getting Sugar a cycle like this just yet, but Hubby was really excited so I offered the lady $15 and she took it! The 4-wheeler is battery operated, has a forward and reverse switch on the handlebar and a foot peddle that makes it go. She's still getting used to the sensation of lurching forward when she pushes that foot pedal but believe you me - she loves her new "cycle". I just hope she keeps on riding the ones that need to be peddled too!

Momma's got to find a helmet now, because she is already a daredevil...

Happy Birthday to Me!

Not exactly sure how we'll be celebrating, but it is my birthday and Hubby says we will go out to eat and then do some "running around" - as long as he remembers that I can't run very fast right now we'll be all right!

In Baby News: My contractions were coming 6 to 7 minutes apart last night so I obeyed my doctor and called in. The Doctor-on-Call was different than the week before and was in the hospital I was supposed to go to so we went and spent three hours in the observation room where they decided that I'd had some change from earlier in the day when I'd seen my doctor but everything stayed the same while we were there so they sent me home at 1 this morning. And of course, the doctor never came up to see me while he was in the hospital, he just told the nurses to observe me for three hours and let him know if there was any change between the time I came in and the end of that three hour period. AARRRGGGG.... oh well, I think everyone should have their own birthday anyway so I really hope that tomorrow (or even tonight at midnight) my water breaks and they have to take this baby since a full week and a half of contractions is starting to take it's toll on my body!

In other news: I have some pictures to get downloaded and posted of Sugar's newest garage sale treasure. Here's a hint... she calls it a cycle and it has 4 wheels and a battery!