Lullaby

E had a bad night. There was a lot of coughing and snot and just all around unpeaceful sleep for her. This was more than evident this morning when we got up and she was acting yucky and tired and grumpy. I finally had enough of the grumpiness and sat down with her and started rocking her in the front room recliner to help soothe her as her being in her crib was not cutting it. She was just screaming and that wasn't my goal by any length. As I started rocking her, M came over and started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to her. She has never heard me sing a lullaby as I am not very good with them so I just watched her sing to her baby sister as I rocked her. It was beautiful. The funny part is that instead of making E want to sleep, she started trying to sing along with her as best she could! I love moments of such tenderness between my children. That is something to really bring in the holiday of Thanksgiving if ever there was one, my children loving each other.

Good morning...

I've been trying really hard to take time out of each day to sit and watch and take in what my kids do and say and behave like. I feel this need to be aware of them and record special and precious moments that give me sunshine. My most recent thing of note is a M thing. Every morning, G will come to climb into bed with me long before her sisters are up. She will either go to sleep next to me or she will monkey around until I kick her out of the bed and into her room to play. Well, around 7 am every morning, M will find her way into our room and say, "good morning Mama, it's a beautiful day! The sun is shining! Get up Mama, get up and get dressed!" It is a great way to wake up, I have to admit. For as long as I can remember with M she has always woken up so happy. Just radiant that a new day has come and she gets to be in it and live. It helps when I am starting to feel so incredibly exhausted all the time to have such a positive force in my life to drag me up and out of bed. Kids are such a blessing in reminding us how lucky we really are to be here and be alive. And how blessed we are to learn that from them and not get too caught up in the adult concerns in life.

Bring on the Donuts

I have to admit that in comparison to my first and even second pregnancies, I have been relatively oblivious to my trimester and even week in pregnancy with this one. It was worse with E because of the denial and depression I had with her, but all in all I have been pretty relaxed with this little guy. I think the majority of my disinterest comes from the fact that I don't bother to think about things like I used to in order to not be miserable or annoyed. Plus, I am used to the whole being pregnant business and just sort of go with it while chasing three children around 24 hours a day. Very distracting.

Well, in my state of oblivion, I was very confused when I was all of the sudden eating food like a bear gearing up for winter. I mean, I am only 26 weeks and I have barely gained any weight outside of the required amount up until this because I didn't feel the need to eat more than it took to feel comfortable. I was deliriously happy to have finally figured this out after all the work I did to lose the weight before I got pregnant this last time. I was thinking to myself, "at this rate, I won't be a cow when the baby is born! Woo Hoo!". Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and it is a whole new ballgame. I am ravenous! I want to eat until I see food in my eyeballs! I wondered to myself what on earth was going on?

I figured it out. I finally hunted down my pregnancy journal that follows a pregnancy from conception to birth and when I got it all caught up on the dates, I realized I am in my third trimester. You know, the one where the baby is sending messages to your brain that you must eat and make them fat and you can get fat too while you are at it. Yeah, that trimester. I have to admit that I am excited at already being here since I feel like I was told about the pregnancy yesterday and here I am only three months from having my little boy now. But come on with the food! I am not interested in the 200 pound version of myself so I have got to find a way to convince this little man that mommy has all the yummies he needs without eating four servings of it! Oh well, that is making babies for ya. At least I started this pregnancy at my lowest weight since my first baby and have a chance at not blowing up all the way this time. Sigh...

E has actually gotten on the growth chart! Last month she was barely touching on the 1st percentile and this month her weight and height together were in the 25th! That is HUGE. She still is a miniature baby and the five month old in the waiting area was bigger than her, but I can now say that she is making honest improvement. I am very happy about that. Her speech skills are still very behind, but I have noticed that she is communicating better anyway. She has a special way of whining where I know exactly what she is trying to tell me, be it "I'm happy" "I'm tired" "G took it away from me again" or "Daddy!!!!". I am still trying to get her to an ear doctor to make sure that she is hearing well because of how delayed her speech is getting but that is a whole other subject.

G is taking on the "I am two and defiant" roll like a champ. She has taken on the all over great response to everything said to her... "NO". So, right now, if you are to ask my dear middle child any question (other than if she wants candy), she will promptly answer with "no!" and throw her arms together to cross them. Another favorite these days is the word "mine". On an average day, I will feel as if I am raising a parrot that knows the words "no", "mine", and "candy". Awesome. But hey, the times where she remembers the words mama or please or thank you, I drink it in and I about burst into song and dance when I hear the words "yeah" or "yes".

M is about to have her own room. We have decided that she is in need of some alone time or personal space. With Christmas sneaking up on us it is going to be difficult to get M the gifts we want to if she will be sharing a space with her 2 year old destructor of a sister, so to her own room she will go. It should be fun and exciting for me to do for her since I am starting to nest or manic or some mixing pot of the two, but all the same, it will be a good outlet for me.

All in all, things are pushing right along. We are just enjoying these kids so much and looking forward to having our last little one. We have decided that four is our cut off unless God decides that he will just give us another regardless of my tubes being tied. It has happened to women before, but I will not think about that LOL.

20 Weeks and Counting

Well, I have finally earned my way into the 20's in weeks for this pregnancy. I look terrible in the picture because I look terrible in person ha ha. It has been rough for the last couple to few weeks and it takes its toll eventually. But my bump is fun all the same. So enjoy the bump and not the Nae...

Our Ultrasound!!!

Drumroll Please.... That is a little BOY! That is right, we are having a son! This first picture is of his little boy part and there is an arrow pointing at it if you can see it. We are stoked beyond words! The second is another boy shot but I couldn't get a good shot of it and the third is of his little face and body profiles. Enjoy and leave me a comment to let me know you know!!!!

Unthinkable

I have been dealing with Little Miss E's mystery smallness for her whole ten months of life now. I have fought endlessly for her to get medical attention and get a diagnoses that will enable us to get weight on her and have come up with nothing. After we got home from the hospital in LA, we started having a nurse that comes to visit twice a week and record weight gain and loss and monitor what we are doing that works and doesn't. Recently, I have even been able to get her seen by a civilian doctor in pediatrics that saw her as a newborn and got her through her infection at ten days old. About two and half weeks ago we went in and we had just started adding rice cereal to all of her bottles and she had her first significant weight gain in months and he was all happy with that. He told us to come back in two weeks to see how things were coming along. Well, when I brought her in, the weight had stopped again and she was still the same weight as she was the two weeks earlier, if not an ounce less. I went in knowing this because the visiting nurse had just weighed her the day before and told me the weight and that she was personally concerned and wanted to know how the dr. visit went.
When her doctor came in, I told him that her weight hadn't changed and he started grilling me about all kinds of things. He questioned how many people were in our family and the ages of our kids. He then questioned me about their health and implied that they had issues also, which I corrected because they eat like there is no tomorrow. He asked me if my husband spends much time with her and if he ever feeds her and if he knows how to feed her. I told him we both know exactly how to feed our child and that he is very good with her and taking care of her. He then says to me, "Well, something is wrong!" And I agreed immediately but he cut me off by continuing that our daughter's problem was D and I not being in tune enough with her emotionally for her to want to eat for us! I told him that I had spent a whole week at UCLA hospital and that the first two and a half days nothing was done with her and they just recorded every move I made with her and observed me. I told him that after watching me they were so convinced I was doing everything I could that they didn't even speak to a case worker and they put the NG tube in her nose to make her eat. I have tons of documents showing how hard I have been fighting to get her seen and helped and that I have even had to go through medical professionals implying I am overreacting to my child's size.
The doctor didn't even acknowledge my words and just kepting clicking away at his computer until he was done and just told me he was done and that I could leave now. He told me he wanted to send her up to Loma Linda hospital to see Behavioral Pediatrics and a different GI doctor and dismissed me by saying someone would call me and walked off. It was surreal and unthinkable to me that that had just happened. I was crushed and I just got her dressed after he didn't even look at her and checked out and left.
I called my husband and told him what had just happened and he was speachless. I drove home and did my normal thing in an almost fog until D ran to the store with the older two kids while E was asleep. I had a monster of a cold and wasn't feeling well so I just sat on the couch and finally broke down and cried. I prayed very hard then and asked Heavenly Father to do something to let me know that He was around and that I wasn't a horrible mother. Shortly after, D came home with flowers for me and within an hour of that, two of my friends just showed up at my door feeling concerned for me without knowing what was going on. Later that evening, our Home Teachers came over and I asked for a blessing and they were more than willing. In my blessing, I was told that God knew I was doing everything in my abilities and that he was more than aware of our situation. He then told me that I know myself that I am doing everything I can for her. He told me that understanding people would enter our situation in her care. There were other parts, but these ones pertain to this blog.
It helped to know that things were going to be okay. D is a guy and guys act when these things happen and that is exactly what D did. D went straight to our insurance and told them what happened and they encouraged him to make a discrepancy because they take these things very seriously. They also had our doctor call us at home since she is our primary care physician and not the pediatrician and is military. She was really good to me and we discussed what we should do and I decided to go through with what the pediatrician was saying just to rule it out and have that out of the way but to do it through the military instead of through him. Plus, I looked into Behavioral Pediatrics and some of the clinics actually have feeding clinics which could be huge for us even if we have to go through the trauma of them investigating us as parents to make sure she is emotionally and physically looked after. I have nothing to hide and just want help and for someone to actually know what is going on with her. I can't imagine ever having real answers at this point, but just someone coming up with an answer of any kind is more than I have now.
I went through the last few months waiting for someone to make accusations and now that it has finally happened, we can just deal with it and move forward. I love these children more than I can express and give them my heart and soul and attention. I nurture them and I know all these things just like God told me I do.

Guess it doesn't stop at 3

About a week and a half ago I went in for my physical exam for my pregnancy. This exam is the pap and breast exam and has never really meant much more to me than ruling stuff out and making sure all the parts are working right. This time that changed because there were a couple of different things that were found from this exam. During the breast exam, my dr. immediately located a slightly painful and swollen lymph node in my armpit. She asked if it hurt and I nodded that it had and she told me she would really like a breast ultrasound to rule out anything serious. She wanted to do it that day, but our insurance wasn't having it, so I was scheduled for Tuesday the 26th, which is this coming Tuesday. I was pretty unconcerned due to the fact that things like breast and lymphatic cancers tend to be more genetically connected and I didn't know of any problems like that in my family. Except I didn't know much of anything from my biological father's side, so I made a phone call to his mother, my grandmother. As soon as I layed it all out, she told me that her mother and both her sisters died of breast cancer and one even had lymphoma along with the breast cancer. She then told me she had a tumor removed herself from her breast and said something about my aunt that I can't remember because I was reeling by that point. I went from no fear of anything being wrong to there being an actual threat in a split second. I am fine now and the fact that I can blog about it is significant considering I found out a week and a half ago and it took me this long. It hasn't been fear that I actually believe something to be wrong, but fear of others going through that fear. My husband had to really struggle at first as he processed it all and he knows as well as I do that the odds are against anything being wrong at all. Personally I believe that I just have some breast tissue in there that is prelactating because any time I have nursed, my armpits are the worst part of the pain. I am confused why both sides aren't doing it, but maybe one side is just more active than the other. I don't know, I will have answers soon enough, but there is that.
The other thing that was caught was that I suddenly have Group B Strep. What is so weird about that is that I have had three kids before this where I never had it and now I do. I didn't even know that could happen to be honest. It is just a harmless bacteria for the mom, but it has potentially devestating affects on the babies if they pass through and it gets them. So, I am going to take a round of antibiotics now and then have more through my i.v. when the baby is delivered. Nothing scary, just weird to get it with the last baby and not at all with the first three. So far I have been super happy with my dr. and the amount of attention to detail that she has afforded me. I feel pretty safe with her and I love that because it is affirmation of a blessing I recieved at the beginning of my pregnancy. D gave me the blessing and in it he told me that my doctors would be guided in my care by the Lord and that I would "face challenges I can't understand" in the course of the pregnancy and that we would have a healthy baby. So far, I have had very guided medical care and I have gone through some things that I don't understand, but I know it is going to be okay. Blessings are amazing that way...