Sick little Faye

It seems Faye is the one getting hit this season.  Croup again this season and now a massive ear infection.  Of course, really, she's been more fortunate than Maddox.  She's had croup twice, this one ear infection, and very minor run in with the flu and a few very small colds... mostly just nasal drainage.

Faye got a stuffy nose [maybe] over the weekend.  Poor thing has not been able to breath out of her nose at all.  She sounds nasal-y when she talks.  I don't think she has ever been this stuffed up in her little life.

Last night she was tossing and turning and crying all night long.  Around 11pm I finally figured out it was her ear (she finally said).  We were up pretty much all night.  I gave her some Ibuprofen at 11 and that helped a little.  I started out thinking it was pretty minor, but by the early morning hours, I was convinced that she was in quite a bit of pain.  At about 5:45am, I grabbed my phone to check the hours of minute clinic.  It was hard not to wake Clayton up that minute to tell him that we were going to have to bring her in.  I managed to wait until 6:33am!  Minute Clinic opens up at 8:30am, so we were out of the house at 8:14.  Grabbed some Caribou and got to CVS and signed into Minute Clinic by 8:27.  Strangely, we were beat there and the not-yet-open clinic was already attending to another patient!  We only had to wait 20 min after the schedule opening to get in.

Faye is pretty much FILLED with snot.  Poor thing is swollen all over with filled sinus and and bulging ear drums.  Her right ear (the one that had been bothering her) got an 'oh my!'  The doctor said it was likely that Faye's ear drum would burst.  It actually didn't.  At least not to my knowledge.  She's on antibiotics (she was just so infected and in so much pain, I didn't feel like not getting antibiotics was a good choice).  We also got her some benzocaine drops.  I was completely undecided, but took them just-in-case and only after an hour of being home, I had to put them in.  She was rolling around on the living room floor, gripping her ear and crying and whimpering.  It was very sad.

After that and some more pain killers, she was attached to me.  I didn't think I was going to be able to make lunch, help Maddox get ready for school, etc.  I almost thought about calling Maddox in because Faye was so miserable.  I was wishing for a sudden snow day.

She ended up passing out on my chest and I was able to lay her down.  She slept for 2 hours.  She generally doesn't take naps during the day.  Regardless of giving her Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen all day, she still kept a near 103 temp all day.  She isn't one for fevers.  The two times she had croup, yes, but she never rose over 99.9 the time she had the flu!

She has been pleasant today, but not terribly active.  We've been reading books and smuggling all day.  She insisted on taking a shower, so we did.  She screams bloody murder when people get water on her eyes, so she's dirtier than when she went in.  I just didn't have the heart to torture the poor girl.

Hopefully tomorrow she will feel better.  Amoxicillin, Ibuprofen, and ear drops in before bed.  Hopefully tonight will be a much better night.

New with Maddox

It's hard to do an update when it's been so long.  I forgot to write about our trip to Tennessee over Christmas, so I'm going to have to do that soon too.

Maddox has been really good sofa this year.  Yes I realize it is only the 2nd of February!  We've had a couple little run ins with illness.  The first being what we thought might be Hand Foot & Mouth while we were down in Tennessee.  Maddox ended up developing a staph infection in two of the blisters around his mouth.  After being home for a little over a week, I brought him in to the doc to get checked out.  After some oral and topical antibiotics he was as good as new.  He still has a bit of a scar from one of the sores, but otherwise, all infection is gone.  Then about a week ago he came down with a cold.  I was a little nervous because it hit really fast and he had a near 104 fever.  We were at the doc for Faye, so I decided to have him checked for flu.  We were going over to my mothers and I figured it was probably better to just rule it out than possibly pass it on to her and then to one of the residents at the nursing home she works at.  He turned up negative and after three days of a high fever, he was feeling much better.  Glad it was a long weekend and he only missed one day of school.

The picture attached to this post is of Maddox the morning we had him tested for flu.  I felt really bad having to drag him around when he felt so terrible, but Faye needed to go in to the doc and it was his only day off from school.

February is 'I Love to Read' month.  Maddox is in a read-a-thin fundraiser at school.  I keep forgetting to ask his friends and family for sponsorship and donations.  I better get on that!  Maddox's goal is to read a minimum of 17 min per day.  So far he is doing great.  He has several days that he did way above 17, but we've also missed 3 days, so we're just about on track.

Of course all of this reading has his reading skills going way up.  I hope that after the fundraiser is done I can still get him to read even just half this much every day.  He is doing so awesome and it is so amazing to listen to him.  He is reading books from school, BOB Books, and some older (or just plain old...) 1940-60's books from great grandma.  It's kind of entertaining to listen to him read "the red book", he has never really heard names like Gus, Ed, and even Ann.  And he wonders why they keep talking about guns!

Also for 'I Love to Read' month, I get to go into Maddox's class and read them a book.  Hopefully.  I still need to make sure that I have a babysitter for Monday.  It's so hard to volunteer in his class.  I need to have people take off work just so I can help out every once in awhile.  I really want to go in though and I think it's very important for Maddox to see that his school and class are important to me.

Mobile Blogging! Yay!

So I finally got my testing to blog thing to work!  Yay!  But I will be sending this via email because I believe it will be too long for text!

I just published the starting of Maddox's birth story.  I realized that I had never actually written one out.  It was such a big deal for me for so many reasons that I decided to write it...6 years later!  Of course if you read it you will see that I have not finished it yet.  Hopefully I can get that done sooner than later!

Girls are nothing but trouble!

I can deal with this child's attitude. Okay, well, some days it's really really hard... But all these "vagina issues" are going to make me lose it. And she's only 2 years old!

A couple months back, Faye has been complaining (yelling and crying, actually) every time I changed her diaper. When she would poop and I would have to clean the poop out from her vaginal opening, she shook and cried that it hurt. One of the days it was red, so I thought I'd keep an eye on it, but even after the irritation cleared up, she still shook in pain. I investigated and found a little flap of skin that looks like some of her vaginal tissue had torn. I FREAKED out. I took her into the doctor and they told me that is was actually just a vaginal tag and that it was very common in young girls and that Faye's was actually pretty small. We didn't really figure out what the pain was from, but the doctor suggested vaginitis, so we have just been trying to treat her very delicately, with non-irritating soaps, changing her diaper more often, etc. She hasn't complained of pain in quite awhile now.

While we were on vacation in Tennessee (over Winter Break), Maddox developed a rash over his entire torso. It spread to her neck, upper arms, ears, and cheeks. He had a fever and then he developed some blisters around his mouth. His cousin, Kaden, had been exposed to Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease before we came down to Tennessee and a child that came to visit us, had had HFMD, so we thought he might have gotten that. It never really developed, but he ended up developing a Staph infection in two of the blisters around his mouth (Kaden also had a Staph infection in his nose). We brought him to the doctor and he got an antibiotic ointment and oral antibiotics for the staph infection. We also got a tube of 5% cortisone for his fingers and toes (the dermatitis/eczema that he's been battling since he was 2 years old).

About 2 weeks ago Faye developed a rash (very similar to Maddox's rash) on her pubic area. We let her air out in underwear and it is cleared up. It has been coming back (less severe) on and off for the past two weeks. She itches through her diaper and then two days ago, she was crying because she hurt, so before Daddy closed up her diaper, I decided to check it out again. I was looking at her and found that she had a 1/2 inch by 1/4 inch laceration separating her inner labia from her outer labia near her bottom. She was scratching a lot in the middle of the night that night. I called immediately in the morning to make an appointment for her and we saw the doctor yesterday at noon.

We rode downtown with Daddy and got downtown around 9AM. We got brunch at The Brother's Deli (never going there again. It was good, but the restaurant was a mess and the staff were not terrible friendly and were quiet unhelpful). We walked around for awhile. Maddox had developed a cough and fever the day before and was still 103 all day yesterday, but insisted on walking around (slowly) instead of finding a place to rest until we needed to take the bus to the doctors office. The poor kid felt miserable and we ended up going to the fountain right outside of Pacifier at Gaviidea Commons and he knelt down and laid his head on the edge and just stared into the water for 10 minutes. After that we left to go to the bus stop. Hopped on the bus and got to the doctors office 30 minutes before Faye's appointment.

It did us good getting there early because we got into the office 10 minutes before her appointment and saw the doctor right on schedule. The doctor did not address the rash/itching issue, but said that her cut could either be from her scratching (which is doubtful as she only has scratched over her diaper) or from injuring herself from jumping around naked or with just undies on. I still don't really know what to think about it. She said to put an antibiotic ointment on the cut and aquaphor over that. She was able to look up Maddox's antibiotic ointment prescription and said we could use that, so we didn't need to get anything else for her.

While we were there, I had them do a Flu test on Maddox. His cold & fever hit so suddenly without any other symptoms, I figured we might as well just get that out of the way in case his fever and symptoms persisted. Fortunately it was negative.

Last night, I put some of Maddox's antibiotic ointment and aquaphor on her cut and on the rashy bumps that she has and this morning when I changed her diaper, the spots were almost cleaned up. Her cut actually looks better. I'm kind of wondering if she somehow managed to get staph in her diaper? Hopefully this all clears up very soon.

NO MORE VAGINA ISSUES!

Maddox's Birth Story; as I remember it 6 years later.

I'm going to start out for the beginning of my pregnancy. This is care through an OB/GYN and birth at a hospital.

When I found out that I was pregnant, I had already been seeing a Family Practitioner. A very sweet, young woman that was trying to treat my headaches. Unfortunately, she was also pregnant. About 8 months along. She referred me to an OB/GYN in the clinic, Dr. Agbeh. She said that she would be honored if Dr. Agbeh showed up for her delivery.

I made my first appointment with Dr. Agbeh and felt uncomfortable around him. He was very quite, didn't answer many questions, didn't ask many. I saw him three appointments before switching doctors. While I was in the care of Dr. Agbeh, I had some early pregnancy spotting. It was over Memorial Day Weekend and we decided to go into the ER. We didn't know what was normal and were afraid of a miscarriage. After being discharged, we were instructed to make a follow up appointment with one of the Doctors at the clinic. The one available for the appointment was Dr. Bryz-Gornia. He was an odd little man with a bow tie. He was nice and he scheduled me for my first ultrasound, to make sure that everything was fine with the baby.

When I decided to switch Doctors, I decided that I was start seeing Dr. Bryz-Gornia. A friend of mine had heard that I went to see him and told me that her mother saw Bryz-Gornia and he saved my friends little sisters life during her birth. Dr. Bryz-Gornia was very nice, chatty, quirky, and well... he had a bow tie! Unfortunately, visits with him were not at great as I thought they'd be. It was always a 30 minute wait to get into the office with the nurse, another 15-30 minutes before the doctor came in, and only 10-15 minutes total with the doctor. All my questions and concerns were blown off.

I was 34 Weeks and 1 day and taking the bus to my prenatal appointment. It was mid-November, cold, and most likely snowy. I cried halfway to the bus stop because I was having such bad stomach pains. I got on the packed bus and not a single person would get up for the incredibly pregnant woman to sit down. I cried after getting off the bus, all the way to the doctors office. I told the doctor all about how I had been feeling and the pains in my stomach. He told me "There is no way you are delivering early. First time moms do not deliver early. You'll probably go late."

35 Weeks and 2 Days, after feeling like I had been leaking fluid (not urine) for about a week, I decided it was time to go in and have it looked at. I had been reading the [very large] book that I had gotten from the clinic at the beginning of my pregnancy and it was starting to look like Preterm Labor. I called my doctor and he was not in. The nurse at the clinic told me to head over to Labor & Delivery at the hospital. After spending 2 hours in the L&D unit, the nurse came to the conclusion that it is urine. She came to this conclusion after doing a fern test. No fern grew after the fluid they had collected dried.

35 Weeks and 4 Day I went to work in the morning and was still leaking fluids. I went to the bathroom before I left work and realized that I was leaking even more, through the pad I had been wearing and onto my underwear. I called the doctors office when I got home. Of course my doctor was not in and another doctor told me to head over to L&D. Basically the same thing. They did the fern test again and nothing grew. They said it wasn't a leak. I thought I'd be leaving soon after that. When the nurse came back she had a shot for me. She said I had been contracting and she needed to give me a shot of terbutaline to stop them. About an hour and a half later, she came in with more. After I stopped contracting, they let me order some food. I think it had been 3.5-4 hours since I had first come in. If I remember correctly, I ordered some rotini with red sauce. It was OK. The terbutaline was awful. I had uncontrollable shakes and a massive headache. I still remember that horrible headache. Clayton had to wheel me down to the car in a wheel chair because I wasn't stable enough to walk after the two shots. The shot itself stung really bad too. We spent a total of 5.5 hours in the L&D unit. We left with instructions for me NOT to go to work the next day, no sex, no baths, and the likes of that, just in case I actually DID have a leak.

35 Weeks 5 Days I do not remember anything about this day. Just that I didn't go into work. I do remember the assistant manager at my work sounding like she did not believe me when I called her.

35 Weeks 6 Days I went into work in the after noon. I worked until close. I was a cashier at a Dollar Tree store and stood the entire time I was at work, with one 15 minute break. By the time store closed, my back was in a lot of pain. I was hunched over and my lower back felt swollen and numb. The managers wanted me to push the industrial sized vacuum around the store and I said no way! There was always one associate that needed to sit in the office while the money from all the drawers were counted and the rest of the associates would do put back and vacuum. I was no longer in any condition to be standing, so I was the one that sat in the office. I got home around 10PM and stayed up for a couple hours after that.

36 Weeks I woke up at 4:30AM - I remember waking up thinking that I was in labor. I sat at the computer (which was next to the bed) with Microsoft Office Spreadsheet up timing contractions and talking on (possibly Yahoo) messenger to a woman that was on the "mommy board" that I was on. She had 3-4 kids already and had been through this quite a few times! I remember typing in contractions that were 7-10 minutes apart. I thought I remembered going up stairs and sitting at the kitchen table with my MIL, but after reading old posts, that seemed to have happened on Thanksgiving Day (35w3d), not this morning. I also remember talking to Clayton at some point, either at 4:30AM or a little bit later, telling him to go to school because I didn't think anything would happen while he was at school. I could call my mom for a ride to the hospital (since it was a Monday, her day off) and that I'd call him if anything did happen.

At close to 11AM, I called my doctors office to talk to my obstetrician and tell him that I was having contractions and that I'd most likely be having this kid today. I was having contractions about 5 minutes apart, but not painful, so the nurse had me call L&D and go into the hospital. I had some laundry to do, took a shower, straightened my hair, put on make up. I hadn't packed yet.

To be continued...

I Still Want a Home Birth.

After I gave birth to my son, Maddox, I vowed I would never seen another OB/GYN again. I went to see my OB/GYN for my postpartum check up, 6 weeks after having Maddox and have never been back to see a single OB/GYN at any clinic.

About 5-6 months after Maddox was born we moved to a new city. An excuse to find a new doctor. I was eventually going to be do for an annual check up, so I looked for Midwives in the area. I cannot even remember how I originally learned about midwives. I do not remember reading ANYTHING about them while pregnant with Maddox. Baby Center and all the other mainstream websites regarding pregnancy and child care did not talk about them.

I found a midwife, I loved her. She was unlike any other practitioner I had ever met. We eventually decided to have another child and got pregnant again. It was no question that I was keeping Kathrine as my doctor. Kathrine delivered at a near by hospital. Originally, I was OK with this. I was under the assumption that the hospital I had delivered Maddox at was a terrible hospital and that this one would be better. After all, they DID have midwives delivering babies at their hospital!

It wasn't until about half way through my pregnancy that I learned the difference between a "Med-wife" and a midwife and really began to realize that I did not want to deliver in a hospital. My midwife was a med-wife. Still, I completely adore her and I honestly believe that she is caught between the lines. Limited by her hospital affiliations and maybe she, herself doesn't REALLY know what it means (what the benefits are) to have a natural, physiological birth. Or maybe she is caught between wanting to treat woman the way that they should be treated, but still does believe in all that your average obstetrician believes. Either way, she's incredibly caring.

I decided to go ahead with the hospital birth for a few reasons:

1. I completely adored Kathrine. And though I know she would have understood if I told her that I wanted to have a home birth, I stuck with her. Probably, mostly because of the other reasons.

2. I'd read A LOT about philosophical birth. A lot for a newbie. And I read all about birth emergencies and unassisted childbirth, but I did not feel like it was something I could handle.

3. I was not confident in going unassisted. Really, besides the books, I have had no training, I hadn't read enough about it.

4. I didn't want to find a new midwife this late in the game. Yes, it would have been very possible. But I didn't know if my insurance would cover it. We wouldn't have been able to afford it. I like Kathrine and I thought that even though I were delivering in a hospital, it couldn't possibly be that bad. They were not going to force to into electronic fetal monitors, hook up antibiotics "just in case", or pump me full of pitocin so that I didn't have a "dry birth".

32 Weeks gestation, my daughter, Faye, is breech. Kathrine doesn't say a thing! 34 Weeks, Faye is still breech. Kathrine says that if she is still breech next week, we can think about trying to turn her. 36 Weeks, the Inversion works and Faye has flipped vertex! Woohoo!

37 Weeks, 9 Days - My "38 Week Appointment", Kathrine offers to strip my membranes. At this point, I'm a day away from being 2 weeks more pregnant than I ever have been. Maddox was born at 36 Weeks, to the day. I agreed and she did a membrane sweep. I went into labor, for 36 hours. Lost my entire mucus plug with bloody show. I went to bed and woke up the next morning to nothing. We went to the Minnesota Zoo and walked all morning til the afternoon and nothing.

38 Weeks, 9 Days, same thing. But this time, I got a couple cramps and then nothing.

39 Weeks, 9 Days, same thing. I went in to labor again, it drifted off by morning. I was crampy all day. Maddox and I made cookies to forget about it. My husband, Clayton and I watched 40 Year Old Virgin to pass the evening. I was contracting all evening and night. Then, just after crawling in bed around 10:30PM, my waters broke. We called Kathrine and were given a couple options:

1. Try to get some sleep. Which was her top recommendation.

2. Take a warm shower for some relief. Which I didn't really care about, I wasn't looking for relief.

3. Meet her at the hospital, if that would make me most comfortable.

I choose the first option. I laid in bed for about 10 minutes, pushing Clayton away from me because every time he touched me, the pain grew more and more intense. It only took me the 10 minutes in bed and then I was sitting on an exercise ball, bouncing up and down like a maniac. I went to the bathroom to potty, then came back. I went to the bathroom again and then something amazing happened!

I was sitting on the toilet and had a contraction. I had been feeling like I had to push previously and there was no exception with this contraction. All of a sudden, part of Faye was coming out. I say part of Faye, because it was her POOP that was coming out. In hindsight, I know it was meconium, but at the time, all I could think was WTF IS THAT?! She got out up to her waist and that's when we realized it. She was BREECH! Of course If I had thought about it early and done a little investigating, I probably could have figured that out before she was born. When I woke up that morning, she stretched my entire abdomen out. For a few seconds I was forced to hold my body pin straight as her body lay vertically across my left side. Faye NEVER went that high. Then all of a sudden, she just slipped back down. If I had thought about it, I could have felt out her head in my ribs. I'm glad I didn't though. I'm sure everything would have turned out much differently.

We got her out, cleaned off, wrapped up, suctioned out. Still sitting on the toilet, umbilical cord attached, barely long enough to get her up into my lap. My mother in law called the paramedics. We called the paramedics because I had no idea how to deliver the placenta. I didn't feel like I would have anything safe to cut the cord. There was really no where for me to go from the bathroom (and instructing my husband how I wanted things to be set up so that I could leave the bathroom might have been more trouble than it was worth!). And though the birth was completely uncomplicated and Faye was beautiful, we were still worried about taking care of her on our own.

Since giving birth to Faye, I have done so much more reading. I have so much more reading that I can do. I have so much more time to prepare. I still want my home birth and I feel like I will get it. Whether it is with a home birth midwife or unassisted. I will have my home birth!

___

Note - Shortly after I had given birth to Faye, possibly after telling her birth story, woman at a natural childbirth forum told me that Sweeping Membranes is a huge risk and intervention. Now I realize that it IS an intervention (a non-medicated one), but now I am addressing the risk part. I was searching around for the risks of membrane sweeping and found this study from The Cochrane Collaboration... All other information that I was able to find on the topic said that there was no significant difference between the woman being stripped and the woman being left alone.

___

Series of Maddox's Birth Story:

Rant about Leaking Fluid - 5 Days before Birth

Labor & Delivery Again - 3 Days before Birth

Not much of a Birth Story

Series of Faelyn's Birth Story:

38 Week Appointment - Update #1 - Update #2

39 Week Appointment - Swept Membranes, nothing happens.

She's due! - Faelyn's Birth Story

Stomach Bug

Today was Faelyn's first time ever experiencing throwing up. Last night she woke up crying several times. I brought her into my bed and she stayed asleep for awhile. I figured it was teething. She is cutting her very last 2 year molar and just the very points are out so far. She woke up often through out the entire night, crying, and upset. She woke up this morning dry heaving. She never really eats too much at dinner time, so she didn't have anything to throw up. As soon as I heard her, I jumped up, picked her up and carried her off the bed. We sat on the floor and I told her to lean forward. I guess when it's 6:30 AM, I'm going to decide that it's better for her to puke on my bedroom floor than to puke on my sheets?! She was laying in my lap, in my arms and she says to both Daddy and I, through her dry heaving "I keep having the hiccups and I do not feel good." It was really sweet. She is such a sweet girl.

We were up for the day at that point. I handed her to Daddy in bed and went into the bathroom. That woke Maddox up and he was up too. They both wanted to watch TV in the living room, so they did for awhile. It took Faye about an hour and she started again. She got some mucus and stomach acid. I brought her lemonade and saltines.

She acted fine all day. She was running around, bouncing off things, and being her normal self. I figured the two times was it and she was done, but later on I went to lay her down to change her diaper and she was looking like she was going to puke. I asked her if she was going to puke and if she needed a bucket and she told me "No. I ate the puke." She was swallowing and smacking her lips... She ate her puke. Later on in the day, she climbed up onto my back and I could hear the burping, her belly growling, and her swallowing it back down. YUCK! But I guess I'm glad she was eating it because otherwise it would have been all over me (in my hair!).

We skipped open swim tonight, she didn't finish her ice cream, and she's barely had anything to eat today. Hopefully she will be feeling better tomorrow.

Success!

I'm not sure if I believe it, but I think I have succeeded in transferring all of the journal entries that I want to keep onto this blog from Maddox's LiveJournal. I think I just went through every single title and compared side to side to make sure that I got them all, but I do not totally trust myself because it seems like it was too easy. I pray I did not miss anything.

Now over to Faelyn's LiveJournal. I do not even know what all is over there. I had her blogspot journal that I've already exported and imported onto this journal from Pregnancy to Birth. I should have quite a bit over on the LiveJournal blog? But I'm not sure. Then to my journal. And our "community", which I do not know if we even have any entries on there that are not on their separate journals.

And now I just hope that I will succeed at blogging from here on out. Wish me luck!

2 Years!