Saturday, October 31, 2015

Halloween

Stake Conference was scheduled for Halloween this year.  Our ward did a trunk or treat the night before, which worked out great!  Thanks, Rhodehouse family for giving us such an awesome new baby Halloween costume. 



Cora and Katie were both bats and Sydney was a cheetah.  Those girls had a great time at the church, and with my mom around the neighborhood the next night with Jeremy at Stake Conference.  I'm grateful for my good husband so willing to go to all of the meetings he does.  I really wanted to sing in the choir, it was well done, but decided to stay home and keep recovering.  

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Baby Berek

 Whoever heard of a baby born on his due date?  Well, I went in for my apt at 8:30 in the morning.  His heart rate was still playing tricks, but I was dilated to a four, and (little did I know) I was strep B positive, so I needed IV antibiotics to be ready to deliver him.  They sent me to the L&D floor and we started the antibiotics.  Dr. Kuykendall came in around 2:30, by then I was a 5, and she broke my water.  Those membranes were as thick as the other ones were.  I was ready to do a natural delivery again, though I had been wondering if his lower HR would cause a problem for that.  For about two hours I did a great job of breathing through the "surges" (contractions), then I decided to take a "hot" shower to work through it.  Well, the water never got hot, so I was shivering, then going into convulsions, and I could not focus to breath through anything.  I started asking for an epidural, and I'm sure the nurses wanted to roll their eyes.  It was way too late for that.  I couldn't get on my back for them to check me because I was hugging the bed trying to stopped my body from convulsing and cope with the intensity of the contractions.  Jeremy had to pull me onto my back and once he did they saw his head was already out.  I gave one more push and he was out.  I was so exhausted from convulsing so hard I couldn't open my eyes for a while and was very out of it for a bit.  But it was a safe delivery, and he was healthy.  His heart rate still hung out in the 80s-90s and he'd skip a beat every now and then, but after being checked out by the NICU staff, they said he was in great shape and not to worry about it.  Instead I just listened to him at home with my stethoscope for the fun of it.  Jeremy had the next day off and we had a great time just being a family.  That boy loved to look at his daddy.  And Jeremy was one proud papa.  Berek David Huntington was born at 5:04 October 26th.  7 lbs 13 oz and 21 inches long.  








 These girls are so excited to have a brother!  



 Jeremy is so excited to have someone to watch ball games with!



 My mom came the next day and we were so happy to have Grandma around!  




I sure try to keep him in the sun since he won't really get outside to get it for a few months.  Here comes winter!  

It's been amazing having a boy in our family.  We're grateful he is so healthy, and this has been the best recovery I've had post-baby.  

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Happy 36th Birthday!

 Well, between Fall Break and wondering when Baby Brother is coming, there was not a huge party for Jeremy's 36th birthday, but there were some amazing coworkers of his that made a fabulous german chocolate cake for him to celebrate.  

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Fall Fun

We had our fall break and enjoyed the good weather while we had it. 

The best and only leaf pile we get from our struggling ash tree.  




Lindsay was good enough to make a picnic for the girls when they had their half day.  



These poor girls didn't get their camp out this summer due to a pregnant mama, so we had them camp out back with Lindsay.  

Pele was so excited to have all the girls out there!   


 I was so excited the weather was nice enough for us to go to Thane Creek.  We all needed that time out in the woods and in the creek.  It was beautiful.  









Friday, October 9, 2015

Always an Adventure


This has been quite the week for our family.  Monday morning I had my OB apt.  I had felt like baby brother had not been moving as much as he used to, but I had been sick (I swear we have been sick since the second day of school), and I also knew that as he grew there was less room for him to wiggle, so I didn't know how much to worry about it.  

Dr. Kuykendall (I didn't mention, but she's the mother of one of the girls' preschool friends), checked his heart rate and it was a bit lower, so they hooked me up to a monitor.  His heart rate baseline was in the 90s, then would have consistent variability up to the 150s.  They weren't sure to worry or not, so I was scheduled to come back Tuesday morning to make sure we're OK.

Well, Katie had been complaining of neck pain on Monday, and we just assumed she had slept wrong or pulled something.  That night she woke up screaming in pain at 11:30.  We gave her motrin and sent her back to bed.  She woke up screaming inconsolably at 1 and would not let Jeremy touch her neck.  I packed the bag I'd started that night in case I needed to stay in the hospital for baby monitoring and she and I went to the ED.  There they put in an IV (which was a bit of a fight), and decided to do a CT scan because we were watching a small lump grow just below her left ear.  She threw up once there, and kept complaining of wanting to throw up again.  They decided to start IV antibiotics and admit us to the peds floor.  Unfortunately, there is no in house pediatrician, so it took a while to get a good diagnosis and plan.  After getting her settled on the peds floor, Lindsay came and sat with her after dropping the twins off at school and I went to my follow-up monitoring apt.  His heart rate was still sitting pretty low, so they sent me to Labor and Delivery to get a more thorough monitoring.  I went wondering if he had the cord wrapped around him and  I would be having a C-section one floor above where Katie was.  I was mentally saying, OK, this is what we need to do, and we just want him to come safely.  Well, his baseline was in the 120s with beautiful variability, so they sent me out.  Downstairs I went to sit with Kate.  

Basically, she had an infected lymph node, but the antibiotic we were using wasn't touching it.  She was maintaining a low grade fever and was more or less delirious for several hours.  The pediatrician who came on called Seattle Children's Hospital and they recommended Vancomycin.  So we pulled out the big guns.  It got the fever to go down, then she broke out into redman syndrome while the ENT consulting doc was there trying to talk through what to do.  We stopped the infusion and started benadryl, which brought down her itching and redness.  They still wanted to give it at a slower pace in the middle of the night, which brought the redman syndrome back, though much less severe, and we were able to treat it with benadryl.  She had no appetite all day Tuesday, but by Wednesday morning she was ready to start eating again.  We kept her on the antibiotics, but fortunately we made the switch to PO bactrim after she pulled out her IV from tripping and we were able to go home Thursday.  She was still breaking out in a rash from the bactrim, so after meeting with her pediatrician for a follow-up, we were able to switch to PO clyndamycin, that treated the infection with no further side effects.  

It was amazing to me how crazy things seemed, but how well I was able to handle it.  Sleeping at the hospital was a little tiring, but I function really well in crisis mode.  It's much easier to assess and deal with life and death issues for me than it is to get the girls out the door without yelling at them.  

It was good to see the hospital Jeremy works in and to be impressed with the nursing care, yet appalled at the lack of support the staff have from the administration.  Either way, we are grateful there was nothing more serious going on and we were able to treat her as quickly as we did.  And also grateful that we didn't need to surgically have a baby at the same time.