Wow

The things that have happened since I posted last. I went to write a post tonight, about something completely not having to do with the last few months and got a message saying "Restore previous post?" So I thought, "Oh what the heck, let's see what I was posting." This is what I found:

"What a night I had. Woke up in the middle of the night in intense pain. My first thought was, "I shouldn't have eaten right before going to bed." I woke up and came into the living room and eventually threw up everything I ate.

Update: The doctor thinks I have food poisoning, I have thrown up three times since last night. I feel awful, but am feeling better since taking some pain killer and throwing up. I just hope I feel well enough tomorrow that I can pick up Kevin's parents from the airport."


This would have been in March or so I think. Anyway it was around the time we had Davy's baby blessing. After that I ended up having intense pain followed by throwing up and feeling better quite a few times after that. Finally around April I went to the emergency room for it. I remember dropping the baby off at my parents, saying in a weak voice "Baby" to my mom, who told me that they would take care of the baby, and then we went up to Rockford to the hospital. I threw up along the side of the road on the way there. By the time we got to Rockford I was feeling better so Kevin and I got some food. Not long after eating the food I started feeling pain in my abdomen again. So we continued our journey to the emergency room, it seemed to take quite awhile for them to get me in, but once they did they did an ultrasound and after looking it over told me that it looked like I had gallstones that I was passing and that they were going to keep me in the hospital, do a few more tests and probably remove my gall bladder. Within the next eight days they starved me, did a CT scan on me, removed my gall bladder, and put a tube down my throat and cut a larger hole in one of my valves and released what they called "sludge". Then they sent me home.

Looking back I realize that I was stupid not to have gone to the hospital sooner. But I tend to tough out painful things and put them off as nothing. During the whole hospital stay I managed to pump and nurse when my parents brought Davy in. I am still nursing now.

Davy is currently breastfed with formula supplements. It is cheaper that way but after this whole year of breastfeeding adventures I would not say easier.

For my birthday I got a sewing machine and I have turned into a sewing fool. I have sewn a loopy ball, a loopy block, a stuffed axe, a ball for grasping, and am currently working on a terry cloth cat, a fake fur vest and a pair of leather boots, all for Davy. And I have patterns I have found online for many other things. All for Davy. Kevin thinks it is funny that all my interest at the moment is for Davy. And he is right, I shop for Davy, I craft for Davy, and I spend a good part of my day with Davy.

He is currently crawling, he just started, and he just began to start standing (with the support of different objects). He is beginning to be dangerous to leave unobserved.

Though it is stressful life is still good, and I am happy I have my family. So much has happened this year, and yet it feels like it is flying by. I am making Davy a viking costume for Halloween (thus the axe, fur vest and boots) and am excited about it all, as well as by the idea that we have Christmas coming up as well as his birthday soon. It seems so crazy that I began this year by having a little baby.

Blessings

Sometimes you don't really see the blessings that come until they plop right into your lap. So lately we have been on the poor side of things. We don't really have any extra money at all. Each of our pay checks go towards bills or food. So getting things for the baby doesn't really happen. And yet somehow every time that we need something it somehow happens. For example, right before we began to need a high chair for Davy I won a contest that got us a high chair. And right before we needed a home safe proofing kit I logged on to my Blue Cross Blue Shield account and discovered that I had enough points to order up a home safe proofing kit.

Blessings, they come in ways that you don't realize. Currently I am teaching Seminary. For those of you who are not Mormon this means that I am teaching a scripture study course every morning at 6 am to a group of teenagers. It is wiping me out, but it brings such a great spirit to our home, and I think it is good for us. Sometimes we find ourselves forced into doing what we need to be doing, and I think for Kevin and me this is it. It makes sense too, I have been praying for help with remembering to read my scriptures, well now I have to read them everyday to prepare my lessons. It is amazing the way God will bless you if you just live your life in a way that allows him to send the blessings your way.

Phobias

Before Davy I had lots of things I was scared of. Spiders, the dark, heights, monsters that hide in the dark, etc. Yes my imagination fed into a lot of those fears, but these were honestly things that scared me. Now that Davy is a part of my life my fears have changed drastically. I am still scared of spiders, but much less so than I was previously, we now have two large spiders that live on our garage door that I feed every time I find a stray bug to throw into their webs. I caught and released a jumping spider I found in our house and now find myself thinking about catching one and bringing it into my house to take care of our earwig problem. I find myself climbing up on things to do home improvement, the most recent of which was climbing on a chair to put letters up above Davy's closet, something I would have been fearful to do before. And I find myself in the middle of the night staggering through a dark house to get the baby and nurse him in the dark and then stagger back to my bed after he is done.

So what do I now fear? Well many of my fears have now changed. I fear that I may wake up one morning and find Davy dead in his crib from SIDS, I fear that he may get sick and die, I fear that he may choke on something and die, I fear that he may hurt himself and die. Do you see a pattern here?

Shortly after having Davy I went onto the Birth Board that I was part of (a forum board of women who were due during the same month that I was) I stumbled upon the baby picture thread and found in that thread a woman who had posted pictures of her twins who were stillborn. The pictures broke my heart, these little dead babies dressed up in beautiful clothes by their mourning parents. It made me fear for my own little one, scared that I could lose him, scared that one day I would wake up to a little dead baby. After so long of waiting for him, I don't know how I could take something like that. So I check on him every day and every night and make sure he is still alive and well. And I pray for him every night. I will be glad once he is past the SIDS risk.

Snatch and Grab

I have really gotten behind on writing about Davy. It is sad really because he is probably the cutest baby I have ever seen. Lately he has gotten really good at this thing called grabbing and he has been using his little hands to grab anything that comes into his personal space. And I think he has figured that if he doesn't grab it quick then he probably will have whatever it is taken away. So his current tactic is snatch and shove into mouth as fast as possible.

Monday (August 22) was my mom's birthday, Dad made her two lemon merange pies, but while he was making them she kept telling him that all she wanted was cake. Which was strange since she had asked for pies earlier. Anyway Dad had brought home fixings for cake but had made the pies. So Tuesday morning I went over and while Mom was distracted I stole the cake fixings and took them home. I made a two layer chocolate cake with coconut frosting in the middle and chocolate butter creme on the outside, then Kevin, Davy and I took the cake over to my parents to surprise Mom. Both she and Dad were surprised and we decided to have pie and cake. So Dad dished everyone up some pie and then we started to get the cake ready to be dished up. In the meantime Mom was holding Davy and had first let him touch the cake, so he had chocolate frosting on his hand, then she decided to let him touch a piece of pie, namely my piece of pie. She thought he would just touch it, like he had done with the cake, but instead he grabbed the merange, and when I say he grabbed it I mean he grabbed the entire thing off the piece of pie. Then in typical baby fashion he shoves it into his mouth and gets this "what did I just eat????" look on his face.

I don't know who eventually ate that piece of pie, but Mom did not make me eat it. I think it is hilarious what he grabs and eats. Today while feeding him he got impatient with how long it was taking me to put the spoon in his mouth, so he grabbed my hands and shoved the spoon in his mouth. These were of course banana baby food and baby rice cereal covered baby hands. So when food time was over both of us smelled like bananas and the dogs thought that we were both tasty.

I have more things to write about, but I will cover those things later, hopefully tomorrow.

TV Ruins Me

TV ruins me. Seriously it does. For example, today I am in the restroom and this huge jumping spider crawls out from behind the towel we have hanging up for drying your hands. Now when I say huge I mean huge in the size range of jumping spiders. Jumping spiders in general are pretty small little things most about the size of a pea, but this thing was about the size of a dime legs and all and it was black. Overall it was a neat looking thing, but it scared me, and I think I scared it. We both sized each other up and I, rather than grabbing a piece of convenient toilet paper and squishing it, looked it over and began talking to it. I was kind of stuck where I was for the moment and so I told it that I wasn't too happy to see it as I was sure it wasn't too happy to see me. Then I thought about Monster Bug Wars, a show that Kevin and I watch on Discovery Wild, and what that show says about jumping spiders. Very smart, very good predators, and as I watched it I realized that I didn't want to kill it, rather I wanted to get it out of my house, alive. So after I washed my hands I went and got a glass and a piece of paper and then trapped it and took it outside where I let it go. Later I sent a picture that I took of it to Kevin, who seemed genuinely shocked that I not only took a picture of the thing but caught it and let it go outside. Yeah, I am more of a scream and squish type person than a catch and release type person when it comes to spiders. TV is ruining me.

So a few days ago I was driving to my parents house and I saw this bird in the road, it was just sitting there in the middle of the road and when I drove by it didn't hop away, just sat there. So I turned my car around, parked it, and went and chased the bird off into the grass so it wouldn't get hit by a car.

Today I had a similar experience. I went over to my parent's house to visit my dad and when I was about a block away I came across a female mallard duck standing in the middle of the road, she moved away from my car slowly which seemed odd to me. But I went on to my parent's house and parked and got Davy out and stood around talking with my dad as he cleaned his garage and fixed up his work room. As I stood there I looked back down the street and saw the duck, still there in the middle of the road, dodging around cars and other vehicles that passed her but not really moving away from where she was. So I figured I would walk down there with Davy and see what was up. I scared her off the road and into the grass where I found an interesting thing, she had six chicks that were trying to follow her.

The subdivision my parents live in is new construction and around the lots they haven't yet built houses on they have put up little plastic fences, short enough to step over if you are a person but tall enough that you wouldn't ever be able to get over if you are a duckling. So I went back and told my dad about it and decided that I would gather up the ducklings and get them across the road for the mama duck. This was easier said than done. I chased the ducklings, which were all very good at running away and hiding from me. Eventually I caught them all, which confused the mama duck, as she could not see her ducklings anywhere. But she could hear them, so I led her across the road by walking with the box of ducklings and having her follow the sound. Eventually we all got across the road and into a protected area, and into an area that led directly to a pond that mama and babies could all take sanctuary in. I gently let the babies out of the box and the mama duck flew right to them and began walking like nothing had happened. And all the little babies lined up and followed her in the direction of the pond.

It really makes me think about what it would be like if I didn't have arms and couldn't grab my baby and couldn't easily protect him from nature and humankind and the elements and things that got in my way. What would it be like to give birth to him and know that I had to get him to safety but safety was a dangerous obstacle course away? It makes me grateful that I can keep him safe, and can keep him from harm. It makes me happy that I can help another mother out there keep her babies safe and get them to safety when she can't.

The adventures of Baby Davy

Click here to view this photo book larger

Time and the lack thereof

Having a baby I have found leaves a person with very little time. Things kind of go like this: Wake up to baby crying, change baby, feed baby, try to get baby to fall asleep again, while baby is asleep try to get things done, these things may include: cleaning, eating, sleeping or trying to de-stress. Baby usually wakes up during this time and everything starts again. This is why I boggle at the advice that you get as a new mom.

Sleep while your child is sleeping is something I have often heard. Problem is sleep is not something you can always do when you have other things that need to be done. Things like feeding yourself, doing laundry, washing bottles, washing dishes, trying to get the house looking somewhat presentable, etc. The feeding yourself part seems to be my greatest hurdle. My baby seems to have a inborn sense of when Mommy is trying to feed herself, because almost every time I start putting anything together for consumption is when he begins to fuss or flat out bawl. This has led me to wonder if the baby has some strange desire to keep me from eating. Logically I know this is not the case, but there is a part of me that wonders.

This leads me to my next topic, hysteria. When I was in high school I took a class where we covered Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes. And hyster was one that we discussed. The word hyster has to do with women, which is why hysterectomy refers to the removal of the uterus. It is also part of the word hysteria. This is because hysteria was generally attributed to women, or rather only women were the crazy ones, which is why they were not allowed to vote in ancient Greece and Rome. When I was younger I really wondered about this, women were just fine, there was nothing insane about them. Then I had a child.

Truthfully I was lucky, I went through In Vetro Fertilization (IVF) to get pregnant and during the fertility treatments I did great! No crazed hormonally imbalanced woman going crazy all over everyone. Then I got pregnant and nothing really changed. I was good, even keel, absolutely fine. Then the baby came and suddenly the hormone change happened. I had mood swings, a stress level that was insane, I snapped at my husband, it was terrible. Then I got medicated and things began to calm down. But I began to see why women would be considered insane.

Thankfully in my medicated state I have two sides to me, an emotional side and a rational side. The rational side keeps me chugging along like a normal well adjusted person and the emotional side leaves me in a squirmy pile of goo over my cute baby. But thank goodness for that rational side, otherwise I would probably start to believe certain things that come to my mind. Things like: The baby doesn't want me to eat, or the baby doesn't want me to sleep, or the baby is out to get me, or the baby hates me because he cries half the times he looks at me, etc. My rational side grabs onto those thoughts and says, "Really? That makes no sense at all. The baby has no idea about you eating, the baby just needs something and is communicating the only way he knows how to at this point, by crying." But I can see how someone could easily go off the deep end if they started to believe the crazy thoughts that come into your head when you have just had a baby. And it makes me wonder about what comes next.