Halloween At Home

This is kind of late, but I just wanted to write a post about our Halloween. We like to take our kids to the nursing home most years because the older people LOVE it (well, so do our kids)! This year we had church/Awana that night so we didn't get out. My mother-in-law was visiting and decided she wanted to just pick up a bunch of candy for our kids. When she got home I had a brilliant idea to send each adult with some candy to a different room in the house and have Brains lead her siblings to those rooms and do several rounds as if they were trick or treating. I went to our bedroom, J went across the hall to his study, and my mother-in-law went downstairs to the playroom. The first time I answered the door I was dressed as myself; the next time I put on a supergirl outfit; next I put on my wedding dress; then I put on a normal dress and shoved a pillow in it to look pregnant; and lastly I put on some exercise clothes, a sweat band on my head, and a shirt around my neck like a towel. I was quite impressed with myself and my creativity (I usually lack greatly in that department). It was SO much fun and the kids LOVED it! It was actually really funny because my hubby also scrounged up things in his study to throw on too. We would open our doors and check each other out as we giggled. So fun! Once we finished I asked my hubby, "Was that too dorky to post on fb? Does it match the homeschool stereotype too much to put it out there?" since we do indeed homeschool. He's like, "Yeah, don't post it. Are you kidding me? The guys at work would think it's so lame." So… I decided to post on here. :) Thought we would live up to that stereotype, lol (which I have to say is totally ridiculous!).

Sentimental or Practical?

Happy Feet was supposed to have his cochlear implant surgery today but he's not 100% yet from a cold he's had so the doctors decided to postpone the surgery just to be safe. We're good with that!

So, is it strange my hubby and I are a little sentimental of Happy Feet's deafness? We LOVE our deaf baby and as crazy as it might sound we're kind of sad to "change" him. He's perfect exactly as he is, and being deaf is WHO he is. As sentimental as we might feel about this, we are most definitely not going to pass up the opportunity Happy Feet has to be able to hear though. Sentiments or a lifetime of hearing? We choose the gift of sound. It's just so cute how he babbles with his hands (and feet actually), how he blows raspberries ALL the time because he can feel the vibrations, or just his normal deaf sounding noises that he makes, it is SO cute and we LOVE it. So there it is. That is how we feel. That being said, we are still really excited about his surgery and watching him as he hears for the first time when they activate his implants. I get giddy just thinking about it :) Bittersweet says it well.

"Kids... We're Going in the Ditch."

The morning of March 24 was a drizzly morning, a very wet snow covered the roads. As we readied our family for church we had second thoughts about wether or not to go. We decided it would be fine, left our house, piled into our van, and headed off. The drive was uneventful and the roads seemed fine till we hit a slick spot. My hubby was driving and the van started to fishtale, he attempted to straighten out and realized it was to no avail. I remember looking over at him while he put his hands in the air, turned toward the kids and said, "Kids (really matter of factly), we are going in the ditch." He was so calm that we all just sat there ready for impact. I noticed that the backend of the van and the angle that  we were approaching the ditch at, were most definitely not going to be compatible and thought to myself, "Oh man we are SO going to roll" I let out a very comical, "Ahhhh" while I braced myself for impact. OH MY WORD!!! We so underplayed how dramatic our accident was about to be. The 10 or so seconds it took for us to come to a complete stop felt like forever! First we hit on my side, rolled upside down, and landed on my husbands side. With every crash I wondered how the kids were and when we were ever going to stop rolling. The hits were hard and everyone was VERY quiet. We finally stopped I asked J how he was and looked behind at our kids. "Brians, Curly, Smiles, Judles are you all okay???" They all hung sideways and hardly made a peep, but they were fine, praise the Lord! I looked at the baby's seat and saw just a base buckled into his seatbelt. NO BABY!!! This was all seeming a lot slower than it was actually happening, but I yelled, "WHERE'S THE BABY?" Total panic filled my body while I took off my seat belt and stood up in a sideways car. I was dizzy, super dizzy, but all I cared about was finding Happy Feet! The girls started to scream too and the boys started to cry, but there was no baby cry - where did he go? I yelled to my husband, "GO GET HIM, FIND THE BABY?" My hubby crawled out of the broken window, obeying my very demanding order to find the baby (what a good hubby, lol). Then I noticed Happy Feet's seat under the window/side door of the van all looking as if the weight of the van was on our baby boy. Still no cry, I thought, "No not again. I can't loose another baby." I hustled over, pulled a blanket off of his head and there he was eye's closed and not moving. I jostled him and was beyond relieved when he reacted to my touch. Then I wondered if his legs were in tact because his seat was literally jammed into the edge of the car. In order to get him out I had to pull his shoulders up at just the right angle and wiggle his legs free from the tight quarters of his carseat and the van. He was just fine! Not a scratch on his body! So I have to wonder how he got there, what his trip was like, and "Was he sleeping this whole time???" Meanwhile my husband was stuck outside of the van. He had managed to wiggle his way out of a little hole between the broken window and snow, but there was no way to get back in that same hole. He then decided to climb up the bottom of the van and grabbed the exhaust pipe for leverage and managed to burn his hand. Whelp, he was stuck outside while I got all the kids out of their seats and passed them over and out of van to my hubby outside. We had some friends from church (one who actually saw our accident happen) and another who got there soon after who came to help us. It wasn't a freezing morning, but being in the snow unprepared for the cold, did make for some cold hands/feet/ears etc... It was REALLY hard to get our kids up and out of the ditch because it was so slick, my poor hubby slid several times in each attempt. A very simple thing that made me really happy was the choice I made that morning to wear my boots. I actually thought to myself, "I think I'll wear my boots just in case we end up in the ditch" never dreaming of the drama to follow. If I had worn my church shoes my feet would have been SO cold and wet. Actually I found several small chunks of glass in my boots afterward, crazy. So aside from a little seatbelt bruise on Curly's shoulder, some scrapes on my hubbies forehead and a cut on his wrist everyone else seemed to be just fine. Our adrenaline rush stuck around for a bit, but PRAISE THE LORD for protecting us through what could have been a horrific accident. In fact, if we had gone off the road anywhere else the outcome would have been much more drear. Trees, high hills, a little creek, oi, it gives me anxiety just thinking about what could have been, but then I need to realize that the Lord kept us safe and "what could have been" didn't even happen. Poor Judles was a little traumatized for a couple of months following our accident. Every time we came to a curve in the road or took an exit with a roundabout dealio he grabbed his seat for dear life while he nervously whined/cried, yep it was quite the ordeal. We totaled our van which was really sad, it was a really nice van, but a sweet family from our church gave us their van that they were no longer using! WOW, can we say generous and sweet?! We have a good God who looks after us and even cares about the small things like a new van. Our church family and friends, near and far are the best!

J got us both coffee's, they ended up all over the roof of the car. Later in the day I noticed a sweet smell  of coffee in my hair and found some crispy spots where it had splattered in it, lol :)

                                                     Happy Feet's carseat under the van

What? Say That Again? Deaf... Bad Eyes?

Two days after Happy Feet was born a nurse came in and told us that he had failed his newborn hearing test, I sat there shocked and said, "Whaaat? What does that mean?" They said they would check his hearing again the next day. So the next morning a nurse walked in and said the same thing. He failed his second hearing test! I knew that if our sweet little bundle of love was indeed deaf that it wouldn't be the end of the world, but like any mommy I had to have my couple of emotional days just to grasp the whole idea. They said he would need further testing so we got that all set up and Nov 16th it was confirmed that our baby boy was profoundly deaf. By that point we had had time to take it in so that moment of "confirmation" (though we had pretty much already determined it to be the case) was not a doom and gloom moment. We were just like, "Okay, we have deaf baby, let's learn sign language!" 

I took Happy Feet to his 4 month check up and his eyes weren't really registering "normal" with their little machine, the doctor told me they would check his eyes again at his 6 month check up and maybe they would get a different reading then. I thought, "What? We have to wait 2 months to find out more on his eyesight?" Let me just tell you, those 2 months seemed like an eternity! I took him to his 6 month check up and SAME thing! Well actually the machine wasn't even reading his eyes at all! Totally stressing out on the inside because I just wanted to know what my baby was or was not seeing. I thought "Deaf AND bad eyes!??? Really?" We took him to a pediatric opthamologist May 10th and were told that Happy Feet had a really bad astigmatism, that his pupils don't respond to light properly, and that the pigment in his eyes was really light. What does that mean? Of course I started googling everything I could think of when it came to eyes/astigmatisms, pupils not responding to light, and blonde pigment. It's really hard to be your own doctor though, and worse case scenario can leave you feeling pretty down so I decided patience was the better option, because let's face it - I didn't get a degree in opthamology so what am I kidding myself, lol. The eye doctor suggested we take him to a specialist so that meant even MORE waiting. We took him to a huge hospital, got his eyes further investigated and after 2 different trips there we were relieved to hear that his pupils were responding better to light and the pigment in his eyes had darkened a little! Great news!!! They advised that we see a geneticist though because things aren't normal when it comes to his eyes and because of the fact that he is profoundly deaf. So that is where we are right now, they drew mine and J's blood and will draw Happy Feet's when he has surgery (I'll talk about that in a minute), and we'll wait several more months to get results from that. Basically they want to rule out a couple of diseases (the scariest of them being Usher's which ties into his profound deafness). Ugh, I hate waiting! My husband is such a logical reasonable person when it comes to waiting for stuff like this. While I sit and fret, he's kind of like, "We don't know anything yet so what is the point of worrying and besides he's in the right family if he does end up with major eye problems on top of being deaf." He's right! No matter what, we LOVE our Happy Feet! He has a lot of siblings, cousins, and grandparents who love him too:) He is delicious and lovable, I seriously can't get enough of my sweet boy! He is completely adorable in his glasses and hearing aids and you know? I wouldn't trade him for a different baby if my life depended on it. LOVE HIM!!!

So more about that surgery, eek :) Happy Feet is a candidate for cochlear implants and we've gone through the whole process to get that done. We actually just got our call today that his surgery date is scheduled for Oct 18th! We still plan to learn sign language and make that like a second language in our home, but we are super excited about the opportunity for our boy to hear! It is amazing what medical science/technology is capable of these days! 

Our New, Not so New Butterball

I am SUCH a blog neglector! I have so much I could blog about, but for some reason never take the time to sit down and do it. I haven't even blogged about our newest additions arrival into the world. I'm trying to think of a good name for him... He's super sweet, totally laid-back, very popular (with everyone in this house), wonderfully chunky and delicious, I can't get enough of him! He has the busiest feet and hands and when his feet get going it makes me think of Happy Feet (that penguin movie), so that will be his name Happy Feet:)
So I never had gone full term in a pregnancy before Happy Feet came along. Brains was 2 weeks early, Curly 13 days early, Smiles 10 days early, and of course the twins were 5 1/2 weeks early so yeah I guess you could say I was spoiled:) No really, I was quite comfortable and doing pretty well, just that typical I'm ready to have this baby stuff, but who doesn't feel that way at the end? According to the doctors due date Happy Feet was actually 4 days overdue, but according to mine he was born on his due date. I guess the major let down was when the doctors told me 7 days before he was actually born that I could be induced depending on how many medical inducements came about the day I was to go in. Well... I got the phone call, "We're sorry but we are too busy to induce you today". I kind of thought, "Not a biggie, I'll just wait and probably go into labor on my own anyway." We went ahead and set up another appointment after a couple of days had past and I still hadn't gone into labor on my own. This time they told me to head straight to the hospital and we could try again for another induction... I got a room, had my gown on, they noticed my blood pressure was up, BUT... they were too busy to induce me yet again. Since my blood pressure was high they told me to come back in the morning and this time I would be considered a medical inducement so I wouldn't be sent home. Yay!!! We were having ourselves a baby! FINALLY!
For some reason our little guy was hanging out pretty high up in my ribcage so they opted out of breaking my water for fear the cord would come out before him. So they started me on the good old pitocin. I didn't get a lot of action but it did help bring him down some, not until they finally broke my water did the contractions pick up (almost instantly actually). I opted out of an epidural (which I really do love btw) and decided to go natural. I just have to say I really hate how I can't seem to be in labor without puking every time I start with a new set of contractions, grrrrr - THAT is annoying! I puked a LOT and can't say labor was fun, but things were moving along and it finally came time to push. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but pushing has actually been something I would consider myself to be pretty good at. So strange how I was pushing harder with Happy Feet than I ever have before (according to my hubby) and he just wasn't coming out! He was crowning, but wouldn't come out??? After 5 previous babies and no problems in this area it did seem pretty strange to be having such a hard time. The doctor kept telling me, "Just ONE more big push, you can do it!" Okay that didn't work... "ONE MORE big push you've got it!" I had such enthusiastic cheerleaders and I was giving it my all, but push after push and no baby was getting pretty discouraging. Soon my cheerleaders got less enthusiastic and I could see on their faces that they were getting discouraged too. They mentioned a c-section and honestly that was sounding pretty good at that point. My body was tired of pushing so hard and to no avail. My theory is that his head was angled toward my hip (I had quite a bit of hip pain) and when Happy Feet was finally born the cone shape on his head was off to the side not on the top where it would normally be. He also wasn't lining up when he finally dropped, it was just weird??? Anyway, I am glad I had the c-section just for a peace of mind. I don't know if I'm just paranoid after nearly losing Linc during delivery and then actually losing him later on or what, but I was getting pretty concerned for our little Happy Feet (even though there was no indication that he was struggling), I just wanted him out and to come out alive and healthy! It seemed to take forever to prep me for the c-section. They finally got me wheeled back and guess what? That crazy epidural I decided against wasn't an option any more and let me just say, it is so much easier to get an epidural before labor is intense. I waited 9 hours for my epidural with Brains and then this one... it is SO hard to sit perfectly still while you have to push and they are poking your back :/ It's almost an instant relief though and I LOVE how epidurals just make that pain go away *sigh*. I thought, "Alright now I will just lay here while they cut the baby out, this should be cake!" Umm... not even close! I have a whole new respect for women who have multiple c-sections. I hated how cold I was and how miserable I felt. Not sure what c-section are normally like or if my loss of blood amplified everything to be complete misery, but it was torture to lay there! J says there was blood EVERY where, all over the floor, even on the lamps above the doctors heads. He said he it looked like a horrible scene from horror film or something (not that he watches horror films) he also said I was freakishly pale, he was getting a little stressed, but managed to hide it well! I just laid there with my eyes closed, shivering and cold. The doctors kept asking me silly questions that I really struggled to answer. I was MISERABLE! Finally our little bundle made his entrance! A whooping 8 lbs 5.5 ounces and 20 inches long :) After they stitched me up and wheeled me back to my room it took awhile before those miserable chills would go away - I hate that too! The uncontrollable chills... Have I mentioned yet how miserable I felt, lol? Apparently because of pushing so hard my skin on the inside of my belly tore bilaterally along with my incision ... Yeah c-sections, they HURT!  My sister and her hubby came by to visit later that evening and even though I was super excited to see them and show off our hearty little boy I could hardly stay awake. I kept barely nodding off and waking myself up, in a hazy cloud I couldn't get out of. As the night went on my nurse started to become concerned about how little urine was actually leaving my body. They gave me 4 bags of fluid and medication throughout the night while I drank an endless supply of water, I couldn't get enough! I would guzzle my water only to have my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth seconds later. I probably sent my hubby to fetch me more water (in the big hospital cups) like 100 times, or so it seemed :) I have never been so thirsty (and unnaturally so) in my entire life. My morning nurse showed up and really started investigating and discovered my hemoglobin was low, like really low (6.9) and that I would need a blood transfusion. My kidneys weren't working right because of my hemoglobin levels, it was all making sense!

I came into the hospital with my hemoglobin level at a 14 and it dropped to a 6 (so I lost a little more than half)! The blood transfusion got my fluid flowing almost immediately and brought my level up to a 9, what an ordeal! All that drinking with no urine output made for a LOT of urine once it got a flowin'. They gave me 3 bags of blood and while they were hooking me up I noticed some blood on my sheets. I thought, "Eww, someone else's blood is on my sheets..." Then I thought, "Never mind, that blood is now in my veins." Such a strange thought!

I go back to that day and often wonder how necessary that c-section was. What if I had pushed longer or harder? My husband and the doctor said it was necessary, so I'll just agree with them and be happy for my healthy baby, that's all that matters in the end anyway right? Well and a healthy mommy (which is lacking a little in my case for the time being, but I was alive and well and that is a good thing). I had the same doctor for Happy Feet's delivery that I had for the twins (well one of the two that I had) and both weren't ideal deliveries. My postpartum doctor said that me and that doctor just have bad Juju, we thought that was pretty funny :)