Don't you ever grow up

Dear Abrie,

You are the sun to my shine

and the happy to my grey skies...

Stay small. Stay happy. Stay silly. Stay kind. Stay accepting. Stay forgiving. Stay loving.

Just stay exactly the way you are.

Love, Mom

♥

. . . . .

Say HELLO to my little friend

She's cute...

She's crazy...

She has sharp teeth...

She's an ankle biter...

And a toe biter...

Did I mention she has sharp teeth?

She's lazy...

And she is officially my 5th child.

Meet our new puppy, Millie.

Part Shih Tzu, part Benji dog.

. . . . .

She Whips It

Just a sample of the love my children have for each other.



:13- Macie displays her talent of intense pelvic thrusting
:32- Abrie loses it, but quickly regains her cool
:49 & :52- Abrie practices her swift back kick, but like a professional she covers it up with a smile
:55- Abrie calls me for back up

Apparently, making a music video is not as easy as it seems.

. . . . .

She's Home!

This month has been a whirl wind to say the least. How about I give you a little recap...

May: Eden's eating progressively slows down. She's whiny and irritable, I pass it off as teething.

June 4th: Take Eden to the doctor for fever and vomiting. Doctor says she just has a virus.

June 6th: Take Eden to the doctor... again, for fever and vomiting. In the mean time, going through a bottle of ibuprofen and tylenol. Doctor says possible UTI or roseola.

June 8th: Back to the doctor with Eden, fever still going strong. This time she's starting to act a little lethargic. They test her urine and UTI comes back positive.

June 17th: Follow up with the Doctor. Eden's still not 100%. He orders an ultrasound and a VCUG. In the mean time, he puts Eden on a low dose of antibiotics to ensure no repeat UTI's.

June 21st: We take a trip to the hospital for Eden's ultrasound of her kidneys and her VCUG (where they sedate Eden, stick a catheter up her and fill her bladder with dye. Then they watch on an x-ray to see if her urine reflux's up into her kidneys... it's not a very fun test.)

June 22nd: I talk to the doctor, he informs me that Eden has grade 3 VUR . So basically, every time eden goes to the bathroom her urine reflux's into her kidney's. Generally, the reflux in and of itself is not a problem since urine is sterile. The problem is when you have bacteria in your urine (a UTI) and the urine full of bacteria reflux's into the kidney's causing a kidney infection... which can lead to kidney scaring... which can lead to kidney damage. Not good. So to prevent further UTI's Eden is to stay on antibiotics everyday for at least a year and then do another repeat VCUG.

During this whole month I still feel pretty uneasy about Eden. She's still not herself, she's still irratable, and she's still not eating like she should be. Before she was sick she was drinking around 40 oz a day and would eat 1 to 2 jars of baby food in a sitting. Now it was more like 18 oz of milk and 1 jar of baby food a day, if we were lucky.

I expressed concern to the doctor, during one of my many phone calls, that Eden is just not getting better. I told him I felt like the infection had not been completely annihilated and that the low dose of antibiotics was just keeping the infection at bay (it kind of sounds like a war). He assured me that that was not the case and that it would just take some time for her to get better. I felt like I was crazy, like I was making this up all in my mind, that I was overreacting.

June 27th: I called the doctor and asked to be referred to a pediatric urologist at Primary Children's hospital and again, expressed the same concern for Eden.

June 28th: Eden starts throwing up again. We go to the doctor's and they do another catheter for a urine sample. This particular doctor (who is not my doctor) was performing the procedure and it was almost as if he had never done it before. It was like he was fishing for something, tying to get it in the right spot, mean while me and two other nurses are holding her down screaming and crying uncontrollably... it was terrible.

June 30th: The urine sample comes back negative for a UTI... and again, I feel crazy.

July 5th: Eden starts a fever again along with vomiting. I call the pediatric urologist and they fit me into their schedule.

July 6th: We visit the urologist. She looks at the x-rays and finds that Eden as a duplicated ureter on her left side. We talk about the options of surgery, but decide to wait for a year and then reevaluate. Eden gets another catheter for a urine sample and the doctor writes me out a prescription for an antibiotic and sends me on my way.

Throughout the day, Eden progressively gets worse, I try to give her Tylenol to keep the fever down, but she throws it up. Eventually, she starts throwing up overtime she drinks. I call my doctor and ask for a shot of antibiotics since I'm feeling worried about her, by this time it's about 5:00 pm. We go home and Eden is not doing any better, she's so sick that she doesn't even care who's holding her. At this point I try to stop second guessing myself and call the doctor on his cell phone. I explain the situation and he sends us to the hospital.

July 6th-9th: We call the hospital our home. Eden is diagnosed with a kidney infection and cries at the sight of nurses. My biggest concern was that the infection was going to go septic (which, fortunately, was not the case. Although I felt like it was starting to.)

The highlight of her hospital stay is seeing her brother and sisters. She would light up the second they walked through the door. Poor Kaleb, the first time he saw her he began to cry. When I asked him what the matter was he said, "I just can't help it, Mom. Every time I look at her it makes me cry and I can't stop!" I told Kaleb I knew exactly how he felt.

Eden is home now and doing better. She's no where near as sick as she was, but she's still not 100%. Her eating is still poor and she's not completely her happy little self. The doctor says it will take her a while to get back to normal since she's been sick for so long. The true test will be when she finishes this round of antibiotics.

If she continues to not thrive and do well, surgery will be considered sooner rather than later... we shall see.

Thanks so much for all the well wishes and thoughts via facebook and here. It reminds me that I need to be a more thoughtful person and that I've been fortunate enough to surround myself with such amazing people.

. . . . .

Eden Update

Nate slept at the hospital last night so I could come home and get some sleep. I can't sleep, so I'm doing laundry instead. I know, so uncharacteristic of me.

Here's a quick update on Eden:


Yesterday's blood test result showed that the bacteria was resistant to the antibiotics they had been treating her with, hence why she wasn't getting any better. They have since changed her meds and she seems to be acting a bit better. We won't know for sure how she's doing until we get the results of this mornings blood test back.

We might be able to come home today if her blood test result show that the antibiotic is doing its job, and if she can manage to keep meds down orally, and if she starts eating again. Fingers are crossed...

. . . . .

We've had better days

I should be sleeping right now, but I'm not. Instead I'm sitting here on a makeshift bed wearing dark green scrubs that the hospital was nice enough to lend me.

Eden is sick. Not just kind of sick... but really sick. She has a pretty good kidney infection. And by good I mean not good. At first I thought I was totally okay and with it, but now as I'm writing this I'm finding I'm really not. I'm not so much scared... just tired of her not feeling well.

Long story short, we brought her to the hospital they are running some tests on her blood. All the levels that should be normal are not. Her blood shows a rather high bacterail infection, most likely in her kidneys.

Speaking of kidneys, Abrie has informed me that she has four of them. The two that are inside her body and the other two that are located between her thighs and calfs... "because, get it Mom, they're KID-KNEES!". Watch out folks we've got a comedian on our hands.

We're doing good. My coping mechinism is changing subjects and making jokes (see above paragraph). So as you can tell I'm managing just fine. I've been staying at the hospital and family and friends have been helping out with the kids.

But Eden has seen better days. She keeps spiking a fever and is not able to keep meds down orally. She's also been throwing up liquids as well. She's decided that she is doesn't want to eat anymore... just a few ounces here and a few ounces there. We will be doing more tests tomorrow to make sure her body is fighting off the infection. We are also waiting to make sure that the infection has not spread into her blood. For now she's on IV fluids and antibiotics and they are watching her closely. So we will see what tomorrow brings.


And I know this sounds so very cliche, but perhaps, if you feel so inclined, shout out a little prayer for her... a reverant shout, that is.

. . . .

Confession:

I sometimes leave my floors unswept intentionally.

I don't have a dog, but I do have a baby and this baby can sometimes double as a vacuum.

I know if I leave something on the floor long enough it will eventually get picked back up.

I make sure to leave only edible, non-spoiling items on the floor.

Those crackers, I think, are from Wednesday.

The floors were mopped Monday... of last month... or the month before that.

I see it as my way of building up her immune system, just as mother did for me. Except my mom wasn't feeding me off of the floor, it more like food items where the expiration date had conveniently been smudged out. And I would hear things like, "Oh, expiration dates are more of a guideline. The milk might say it expired two weeks ago, but really it's good for at least another week."

To this day, I refuse to eat anything within a day of its expiration date.

I've been scarred for life...

just as my daughter will be from eating food off the floor.

And so the vicious cycle continues.

. . . . .