Updates and Changes

With everything in constant change and movement the past couple of years I have severely neglected my blog, and for that I apologize.

Let's see where I left off.... October 2011. I had just had Analeia. Since then we have moved twice, once to Arlington when Tom's parents moved in with us and again when Tom's job transferred him to San Antonio. I went back to work when we moved to Arlington to help make ends meet and a few months after we moved to San Antonio, Tom got a promotion!

Here's a "Cliff's Notes" style update on the kids:


Analeia is 2 years old now. She had to have been the most sensitive and attached child out of the bunch, which definitely taught me patience in a new way. She has grown into this beautiful, fiesty, red-headed toddler with an opinion all her own. She is able to read other people's emotions so well that it affects her emotionally. I'm pretty sure that's why she is so sensitive. She has sass, singing skills and dance moves that could put a few pop stars to shame ;-) She is very shy and takes a long time to warm up to people she is not close to. My side of the family thinks she looks just like I did at that age. She currently goes to daycare and breaks Mommy and Daddy's heart each time she is dropped off because even though she doesn't always cry, you can see sadness in her eyes and sometimes a little tear will roll down her cheek as we say goodbye.

Jaina is now 5 and although she is old enough to go to Pre-K, she does not qualify due to income restrictions so she homeschools for now. She is sweet and kind but she also knows how to push her siblings buttons, especially her brother's! She loves all things girly, especially princesses and ponies, and is convinced she will grow up to be a hairstylist someday. I look forward to seeing how her passions grow and evolve throughout the years.

Alex is now 6 and definitely all boy! He is rambunctious and loud but sweet and loves his Mommy and Daddy. He's currently in Kindergarten and doing so well that the teacher nominated him for the Gifted and Talented program! He is real big into Ninja Turtles, superheroes, Cars, Planes, and computer/Wii games. Right now he's fighting off a bout of Pneumonia and is snoring in my bed as I type this.

Myranda is currently 10 and in the 5th grade. She likes to read and collects American Girl dolls and Monster High. You can tell she's definitely a preteen and going through her transition to becoming a teenager because she's stuck in between stages, and I can tell it's bothering her from time to time. She's learning where she fits in the world, if that makes sense. She's very helpful around the house and loves to sing little improv songs that she randomly makes up. She also enjoys going to church with me and memorizing Bible verses.

Andrea is 13 now and full of spaz and spunk! She is quite the clown, and there is never a dull moment around her. She is always coming up with silly comedies and making her friends and family laugh. She is currently in band and is the first chair flute. She amazes me with her musical talent and math skills. When she's not goofing around she sings beautifully and she is a very compassionate soul. Analeia absolutely adores her.

Samara is currently 14 and I can't believe how fast she is maturing! She is growing up to be a smart, talented young lady and it amazes me how grown up she can be. Don't get me wrong, she still has a lot to learn about life and being independent but she seems to be learning through the lessons life throws at her with a grace that is beyond her years. She's currently in Theater Productions at her school (advanced theater) and is doing very well. She plans to go to college and major in theater when she graduates. She's also taking advanced Biology so she's definitely got a lot on her plate right now but she's doing well.

Update on Tom and me:

Tom and I are growing more and more in love each day. He's my best friend and soul mate. In fact, many times we end up saying the same things at the same time, which makes our kids roll their eyes at us lol. We will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary on March 11th and we look forward to the rest of our lives together.

This song pretty much sums up our love:

 

Church Update:

When we moved to San Antonio, the kids and I (As many of you know, Tom does not go to church.) had to find a new church home. A couple months after moving, I found Harvest Hill Baptist Church. They are a wonderful KJV Bible believing Independent Baptist Church with warm, friendly members who made us feel right at home. We have now been members for several months and the children and I enjoy getting the privilege to serve and praise the Lord with our new church family. We still love and miss our church family at Spring Valley Baptist Church in Fort Worth and think of them often.

Job update:

Like I said earlier, Tom got promoted recently. He's now a Network Engineer for +Rackspace. In fact, Rackspace is the reason why we moved to San Antonio. They gave him the option of transferring to Virginia or San Antonio early this year and after careful consideration, he chose San Antonio.

I recently joined a home health agency called National Nursing & Rehab in September as an Administrative Assistant in the Recruiting and Marketing department. Recently my job has evolved to focus more on graphic design requests, recruiting graphic ads, social networking and SEO tasks, as well as various other tasks requested. I absolutely love what I do as well as NNR's mission, and look forward to growing with such a wonderful company.

So I guess that's it for our corner of the world. I will try to come back and update more often. I apologize also for not being so interactive online. I used to participate more in discussions and posts but I've kind of become more of a lurker since I've gone back to work. When I went back to work I got very down and when I'm depressed I tend to quite joining conversations. I haven't really told anyone about being depressed but I'm sure those close to me could sense I wasn't as chipper. That, and it takes me forever to come up with something meaningful to post. I like to compare myself to writing genres - I'm a poet, not a novel writer, so my posts and comments tend to be short bursts of words. So, if something requires more than a couple words I over analyze what I want to say and spend way too much time trying to say it. I then get distracted or something comes up that by the time I remember to post, it's usually too late. But now, I'm in a good place and hopefully my memory won't fail me and I will post more often!

Here's a good song that sums me up :-)

 

God Bless!

October 15th

In memory of my two babies in Heaven....

Good Song :-)

Analeia Christine's Birth Story

On August 23rd, around 7pm I noticed I was having some mild contractions that were a little irregular but for the most part every 2-4 minutes apart. I decided to recline on the couch to see if they would go away and after a couple hours they were still there and settled into a regular pattern of 3 1/2 minutes apart and about a minute long, so at around 9-9:30 pm I decided that I might want to go ahead and go to the hospital to get checked since I was Group B Strep + and at a 4 already. I had Tom help my grab the carseat, hospital bag and Analeia's bag just in case I was admitted. It took a few minutes to get him motivated enough to leave the house since the little league world series was on and the game was getting good but I finally got him to go lol.

When we got there they put me in a triage room so I could be checked to see if I was still contracting and if there was any progress. Now, at my last checkup the week before my cervix was still pretty thick but when the nurse checked me I was 80% effaced. I was also contracting every couple minutes. The nurse called my doctor and the he said that since I was contracting and had progressed since my appointment that I was going to stay! They then moved us to a labor and delivery room and hooked me up with a hep lock for the IV for my antibiotics but I didn't have to have the IV just yet so I was able to walk to halls to encourage labor along. Every once in a while I would go back to my room to take a break and let them monitor the baby. At around 1:15 am the doctor got there so the nurses hooked up my IV and the doctor broke my water to get things really moving. They also brought me a birthing ball since I wanted to use one for labor :-) For the first 30 minutes I had to lay down in bed because the baby was still high up when they broke my water. They wanted to make sure that the cord didn't come down. During that time I didn't feel much which surprised me since with my last two babies I had intense contractions within a couple minutes after my water was broken. After the 30 minutes was up I got on the ball to help the baby come down and get the contractions to intensify. After a few minutes it worked because I started getting really good contractions. Every once in a while the nurse would come in and check the baby's heartrate and said that whenever I feel like it I could have her check my progress. It was nice because I felt like I was in charge the whole time. Things got done when I was ready. I wasn't told what to do or when to do it. Once things got really intense an hour later I asked the nurse to check my progress. I was at a 6 so I got back on the ball and toughed it out. I had the ball next to the bed so I could lean against the bed when needed and grabbed the rail (I was worried I would crush Tom's hand if I grabbed it lol.) After a while my legs got tired so I climbed back in bed and tried to relax through the contractions though they were pretty intense. By 3:30 I was curled up in a ball on my side in the bed I was in so much pain so I asked the nurse to check me one more time and I was around a 7-8 (if I remember correctly lol) so they started getting everything ready and then I felt the urge to push so she checked me once more and I was ready to go so they got the doctor and she was born at 3:51 am after just one push! She was 8lbs 13oz and 20 inches long.

Because she was born so fast she had a lot of fluid in her so they had had to suction her really good and Tom followed her to the nursery because she was still having a little trouble with fluid. In the meantime I was bleeding a lot so they had to give me a shot to control the bleeding and clotting... That didn't work so they gave me cytotec and that didn't work right away either so finally the doctor had to come in to fix me up. Not sure exactly what he did but I think they pushed down on my uterus while he removed the massive clots and blood, which hurt almost as bad as the childbirth! Finally the bleeding/clotting was controlled so I was wheeled over to postpartum. Shortly after that they brought Analeia to me and I have been on cloud 9 since :-)

Stretch Marks

A mark for every breath you took, every blink, every sleepy yawn. One for every time you sucked your thumb, waved hello, closed your eyes and slept in the most perfect darkness. One for every time you had the hiccups. One for every dream you dreamed within me. It isn't very pretty anymore. Some may even think it ugly. That's OK. It was your home. It's where I first grew to love you, where I lay my hand as I dreamed about who you were and who you would be. It held you until my arms could, and for that, I will always find something beautiful in it.



(A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and I thought it was beautiful.)

Raspberry Filled Butter Cookies

As a mom of five children (and one on the way) I am always looking for quick and easy recipes, whether it be for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or in this case, cookies. I love to make butter cookies, especially when I have two very impatient toddlers begging for a snack, and I'm out of my usual arsenal of graham crackers, nilla wafers, and bananas. This time I decided to try something different. I put raspberry preserves in the middle :-)

Here's my recipe for a delightfully easy/yummy cookie:

1 stick of butter (may use 1/2 cup margarine)
1 cup flour
5 tablespoons of sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla
raspberry preserves (or whatever flavor you prefer)

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix ingredients together and roll into balls. (I used a tablespoon to measure out the dough so the cookies would be the same size.)
Press thumb into the center of the balls to make a place to put the preserves then add enough preserves to fill that thumb indention.
Bake 10-13 minutes or until done.

I've recently made these using sugar free strawberry preserves and they turned out yummy too!

My Preterm Labor Scare

Late Monday/early Tuesday of last week I had a bit of Déjà vu... Just like my pregnancies with Alex and Jaina, I had an episode of preterm labor. Last Monday afternoon I began to have contractions that were a couple minutes apart so I drank a bunch of water and laid down to rest. After a little while they stopped but I had a nasty headache so I took some Tylenol (didn't help). A few more hours go by and at around 9pm the contractions start up again. They were a couple minutes apart and I still had the headache. I laid down again and tried to relax, drank some more water, but this time they weren't going away so finally (after much debate because I didn't want to wake the kiddos) I went to the hospital to be checked out. Tom stayed home with the kids because it was so late.

By the time I got there it was 1:30 Tuesday morning. They hooked me up to the moniter and saw that I was definitely contracting every couple minutes so they did an internal check and found that I was dilated 4cm... I had the nurses pretty concerned lol. While all this was going on a lady from registration came in to get my info and while I was answering the questions, one of the nurses got onto the lady for asking too many personal questions. The lady apologized and said that she was new and that she was just following the questionaire sheet then left. The nurses then had me move to a different room and hooked me up to an IV of fluids, antibiotics, and Mag Sulfate. I also had the joy of getting a catheter since they had to make sure I didn't OD on the Mag Sulfate. A lab tech then came to draw my blood and missed my vein the first time. The nurse went off on him saying if he couldn't get it the first time to get someone else to do it then proceeded to draw my blood. I was thinking in my head by this time that I shouldn't make this chick mad lol. Otherwise she was very nice to me at least... Another nurse then gave me a steroid shot for the baby's lungs.

After I got all settled in for the morning, the nurses would come in every hour or two to check on me to make sure I was doing okay and checked once or twice to make sure I hadn't dilated more. I also had to have my blood drawn every 4 hours to check my mag sulfate levels. After a little while the meds did their job and made the contractions almost non existent. Around mid morning the doctor came by to see me and made sure I wasn't dilated any more also. He told me that I would get the mag sulfate for at least the next 24 hours and then if things were okay then I could possibly go home.

A little before lunch time Tom was able to come up to the hospital when my mother-in-law came to the house to watch the kiddos. She helped them pack up and brought them by the hospital that afternoon to see me before going to stay with her for a few days. The rest of the day Tom and I spent time together watching tv while I laid in bed resting. I didn't like being stuck in bed and getting "poked and prodded" lol but I knew it was for the best and I had Tom with me which helped a bunch. He even stayed the night with me in the uncomfortable chair after I begged him to go home and get a good night's sleep! When I was ready for bed they gave me an Ambien to help me sleep and it did a good job :-)

The next morning Tom went home to shower and I was taken off the mag sulfate at around 8-9am. Shortly after that they took out the IV and catheter then around 11-11:30 the doc said I could go home on bedrest...

Today I had a followup appointment and the doctor said I don't have to be on bedrest anymore but "no marathon trips to Walmart." Those were his exact words lol. He also said that at this point, if I go into labor, they won't do anything to stop it since I'm 35 weeks tomorrow.

So that was my preterm labor experience for this pregnancy. It was unpleasant but luckily the process was made easier to deal with because of wonderful supportive friends, family, and medical professionals. I want to thank everyone who kept me and baby Analeia in their thoughts and prayers. I love you all and God bless :-)

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New Doctor

My first appointment with the new doctor on Tuesday went well. He seems to be pretty much on the same page as me as far as labor and delivery wishes. Since I was Group B strep + last time though they will probably make us stay 48 hrs after baby is born regardless if I'm positive or not this time to monitor the baby. On another note, I asked about permanent birth control options and found out that as long as I don't have a nickel allergy then I should have no problem with the Essure procedure :-)

Pondering...

As the time for Analeia to arrive approaches, I find myself wondering about how she will look. Will she have my brown eyes like Alex does? What color will her hair be? Will she have any hair at all? It's fun to imagine what she will look like. All of our girls have blue eyes so I'm wondering if she will too but I will be happy with brown eyes too. I also wonder if she will be an easy baby like my last two or will she break the mold. Who knows... I guess in the end it doesn't really matter all that much, as long as she is healthy :-)