Grateful for the people in my life

Recently we had the Sister Missionaries over for supper. While they were there Kevin mentioned that one of the Sister Missionaries from our last ward had recently lost her husband. She had completed her mission, gone home, gone back to school, met a guy, fell in love, gotten married and then eight months into their marriage she lost him to heart failure. Today I went over to her facebook page to read up on what had happened and to give her my condolences. Reading through her posts took me back ten years to when Kevin was fighting cancer. I remember the fear, the sorrow, the realization that I could be a widow so easily. My heart breaks for our friend and for the loss she has had. How awful to lose your best friend so early in your life together.

How blessed I feel that my story turned out differently, that my husband made it through his cancer and is still here with me. How blessed I feel to have our little boy, to have been given the gift of him in our lives. I need to remember to be thankful on a daily basis for the people in my life and that I still have them here.

Lowering the bar

This morning while we were still asleep I heard Davy wake up over the baby monitor, he turned on his mobile and started making the little noises he makes when he is talking to himself. As this can go on for hours before he actually wants someone to come in and get him I rolled over and went back to sleep. Then both Kevin and I were woken up by the sound of Davy falling down and then crying heavily, the way he does when he gets hurt. I jumped up and started to get a bottle ready, thinking that he had just fallen back against the crib while he was playing with his mobile (the mobile does not have the hanging parts attached anymore but the base still makes music so we leave it for him to play with). While I was getting the bottle ready I heard this knocking noise coming from Davy's bedroom door. But I figured it was him banging on the wall or something. Imagine my surprise when I opened his door and found Davy sitting there with a toy waiting for me! Turns out the sounds we had heard had been Davy crawling out of his crib. I took him back to the master bedroom and told Kevin and then took Davy back to the living room and laid him down with his bottle.

While Davy drank, Kevin and I looked at the crib and figured we could drop the mattress further. So we lowered the mattress and Kevin went back to bed. I watched Davy for signs of a concussion, but after playing and crawling and seeming to be fine I finally put him down again for his morning nap. In a much lower bed. Scary the things that babies put us through.

The end of the beginning

So Saturday I made a decision, I decided to stop breastfeeding. It was a difficult choice for me, but as Kevin and my mom pointed out, it is not like I am giving up. I breastfed him for almost a year, through quite a few really tough breastfeeding trials. I was put in the hospital twice, I had a breast infection, I was put on medication where I had to pump and dump for two weeks, Davy went on a nursing strike, not to mention the pain that comes with breastfeeding. It has been a tough nine months, but I made it through them. And besides, Davy has basically weaned himself off. Over the last few weeks Davy was less and less interested in nursing during the day and more interested in the bottle. It got to the point where I was only nursing him at night when he woke up. Then on Friday night I went to nurse him at Midnight, he would have none of it. He nursed and then screamed, nursed and then screamed, rinse and repeat about ten times and I finally had enough and got the bottle. He drank the bottle and then went to sleep. It was about 2 am at that point. So Saturday morning I decided that we were finally done. He was no longer really interested in nursing anymore, not during the day or at night. So the breastfeeding days were over.

I kind of miss it though now that the choice is made. Breastfeeding was a bonding time for Davy and me, both of us snuggled up cozy and warm on the rocking chair, both slightly dozing. But all things have to come to an end sometime.

Turns out it was really good timing, today while playing with Davy I felt the beginnings of his first tooth. And considering that teeth were a really big fear of mine in regard to nursing I am glad that we are done. Soon his little toother will pop all the way out and we will move on to a new phase in his life.

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.