Yes, that just happened

 Well. I'm really not sure how to document the last two-three weeks but I need to process so here you go.  Reading through some of the text messages I sent has been interesting- so many make zero sense.  Ha.  Apparently I was pretty sick.  

Somehow I managed a bit of foreshadowing in my last post.... "I did not sign us up for church caroling this year.... I love caroling, but for whatever reason I'm just feeling anti-social and I figured somebody would probably be sick anyway.... which was true.  And then Cecily had an opportunity to carol with a school group tonight and I was feeling crummy so I decided I couldn't take her to that.  Poor kid.  I'm hoping the rest of December is not like this, I mean, I know I won't have any extra energy, but still."

That was December 3rd.   By the 4th, I knew I was sick and I figured it was the same thing that Bob had.  Since we were both vaccinated I think we were maybe in a little bit of denial- I mean, Bob is prone to sinus infections that take forever to clear, and we didn't have any obvious covid symptoms.  Cecily was complaining that her toothpaste "felt funny" and things tasted weird, but... again, Cecily can't accurately describe a sore throat ("my neck hurts" Inside when you swallow? "no" When you take a drink? "yes.") so unless she has measurable symptoms I figure she's fine.  

I took the girls to get a tree and let them decorate it on Saturday... 

We stayed home from church, and then sent the girls to school all week (oooops) while I just kind of felt worse and worse.  A little bit of a fever, too tired to do much, coughing...  Thursday morning I got up and just about fainted.  Bob asked if he needed to get the girls ready for school and I said I thought he needed to get me help... I think I still thought it was just pregnancy weirdness.  So he called the ambulance (I didn't know anybody, thankfully 😂) and we headed to OSF while Sharon got the girls off to school.  Some of the GS teachers use the daycare next door, saw the ambulance and were quite worried about us... hooray for small towns. :D   

So Bob and I spent a few hours in the ER waiting room feeling not so great.  It's impossible to be comfortable or sleep in one of those wheelchairs... ugh.  I saw Tate very briefly- I was pretty out of it, but it's always nice to see a familiar face.  :P  I was still breathing ok, so they gave me fluids and monitored baby for a while.  Oh, and tested for Covid. Which was positive. woot.  So they promptly kicked Bob out (why??) and monitored me for a while longer, gave me a pulse-ox, and eventually sent me home.  

Friday the 10th I pretty much spent the day in bed.  The girls were officially quarantined from school and I really have very little memory of much of this day.  Dianne sent supper over and I tried to get up, I made it to the recliner in the living room, and just kind of sat there.  I think I maybe ate a little bit, I don't remember, but I did check my oxygen levels and I was not keeping them over 89%.  So we called the number they had given us and they wanted me back in the hospital.  

Bob's cousin Jamie's family had all just had covid, so he called her to come hang out with the girls and we went back to OSF.  And then a storm came through and the power was out- poor Jamie left her potluck and had to deal with tornado sirens going off and no power and of course most of our flashlight batteries are always mysteriously used up. :P  I was in pretty bad shape so I was pretty unaware of the weather, thankfully.  Tom H. happened to be working in the ER that night and he got me up to Labor and Delivery right away where they put me on Oxygen and started monitoring baby immediately.  As soon as they found out I had covid they kicked Bob out again and took me for a CT scan which showed pneumonia so I was officially admitted and in isolation that evening.  

I started off Saturday the 11th in an antepartum room, but I kept needing more and more oxygen to keep my saturation high enough for both the baby and I.  I really don't think I realized how sick I was- maybe that was a good thing.  :)  All I remember is sleeping a lot and feeling bad for making the nurses get all isolation gowned up every time I needed the bathroom which was a lot, because pregnancy, and they were pumping me full of IV fluids.  When my O2 saturation tanked again after another bathroom visit,  they decided to move me to ICU where they have "heated high flow O2."   There were two nurses watching me- one for me, one that spent her whole shift keeping baby on the monitors.  

So Sunday I finally had enough oxygen and meds were doing their job and I was starting to feel better and realize how absolutely gross I was.  Hospitals usually feel cold, right?  I don't think I was cold ever. I mean between meds and hormones and basically laying in a rubber boat of a "bed," I was so sweaty. And there was no way to be comfortable in those awful beds- can't lay flat on your back, it's bad for baby, can't sit up it puts lots of pressure on your tailbone, can't lay on your side, it messes up the baby monitors. Can't tuck your arms/hands under your head because they're full of IV's. So. Not. Fun. I think I listened to church on my phone.  One of my wonderful nurses was Serena M.... got to love small town/AC/family connections.  She was great and got me a bed bath; that was interesting.  haha.  But I felt almost clean and human again.  Monday was more of the same- sleeping, trying to get off of oxygen, watching national geographic and mindless hgtv and trying not to throw things (2,900 sq ft is plenty for your family of four!!!  Why do you think your kids each need their own bathrooms??? haha).   

Tuesday the 14th was spent weaning slowly off the high flow O2 and begging to be able to wash my hair...  The high flow O2 has extra moisture in it or something, which makes it easier on your airways and mucous membranes which is great until it starts condensing in the tube and you start randomly getting water running out of your nose down your face.  The tube connected to the nasal cannula would start making a percolating noise and I'd tip my head forward and shake the tube and water would come out and we'd be good for a bit....  ha.  And electrodes would come unstuck and the machine would start beeping at me and I'd re-stick them so the nurse wouldn't have to gown up, and I got pretty good at getting baby on the monitor by myself. I'd also had had pulse ox's on every finger and both earlobes by then.  I tried to be a good patient...  endure the rounding at all hours and meds and multiple blood draws a day. Honestly, overall the ICU did not feel nearly as scary or intense as I'd previously pictured.  

Sometime Tuesday night my next door neighbor had a really rough patch which led to the worst day of my stay.  Covid and pregnancy don't mix, and it puts you at higher risk for things like HELLP syndrome and pre-eclampsia so they were keeping a pretty close eye on my blood work.  My numbers were staying relatively stable and low risk, so when my 'liver numbers' suddenly spiked after the 4am blood draw everybody panicked and the morning of Wednesday the 15th my room was full of specialists- internists/hospitalists/neonatoligists/residents/my OB.... They were sure I was developing HELLP and they were ready to whisk me off to the operating room.  My on call OB (who is new to the practice and I'd never actually met her before) was being slightly less panicked and was trying to talk me through what was going on.  She offered to do a cervical check to see if induction would be an option.  I was just like WHAT IS HAPPENING.  They started me on magnesium as a precaution and I tried to wrap my brain around things.... I refused the cervical check until they could repeat labs, I think I asked the nurse to call Bob and update him (he said he doesn't remember), and I was mentally preparing myself for an awful reaction to magnesium and the looming prospect of a NICU baby.  The nurses were amazing.  They were putting in additional IV's and telling me it's going to be ok, we're right here with you, you'll be able to breastfeed, it's ok to cry-- me: If I cry I can't breath. them: fair enough.  All the while the oxygen tube is periodically pouring condensed water down my face out of my nose. I was a MESS.

AND THEN. In the most anti-climactic way possible the 10am labs came back and they realized that a mistake had been made.  My stickers got on my neighbors blood work in the middle of the night.  My liver was fine-ish.  All I got was an oh, hey, sorry, we made a mistake, you don't need to have a baby today we'll round again tomorrow.  😳 

I was reading through my charts...... like.... this is absolutely insane.  I CAN NOT wrap my brain around it. If you were praying, thank you.  

  So the rest of Wednesday was thankfully uneventful.  My wonderful nurse tracked down two CNA's to help wash my hair.... which was hilarious.  Hospital CNA's are often a bit rough around the edges to start with and I wish I had a video since I'm sure it was absolutely comical.  Picture two ladies in moon suits with a too small basin of water trying to wash my unruly mane while sitting in a hospital bed.  It felt like that historical fiction trope where they pull the dirty orphan off the street (sometimes with dog in tow) and scrub them under the pump.  Except it was me, in a hospital bed, being doused with water, complete with spluttering.  :D  I'm pretty sure they took out at least one electrode and completely soaked the sheets.  😂  But man, it felt really good.  

I mean, it's a ratty mess because they don't really stock conditioner in the ICU and I look awful, but my hair is clean and I'm thankfully still pregnant!  (haha..... things you never think you'll say....)

 By Thursday I had recovered from Wednesdays events and was back down to regular oxygen so they moved me out of ICU and back to Labor and Delivery (for the continuous fetal monitoring mostly)- it is weird to just be hanging out in a labor room, breathing.  :)  I don't think I did much but sleep, breath, try and get comfortable, and watch wolves on TV.  :P  

Friday the 17th was my birthday.  Woot.  My brother pointed out that not everyone gets to spend their birthday in the place they were actually born.  Haha.  I suppose that is true...  I decided to try and make the best of it by ordering cake with every meal.  (OSF actually has really good food- haha)  And once again my nurse was amazing and brought me one of the Trefzger's cakes that they give you after you have a baby.  :D 

So I ate way too much cake, and skyped my immediate family Christmas. (yes, they did schedule Christmas on my birthday. How nice of them. sigh.)  About halfway through the day I was completely off of O2.  Yay!!!  So they moved me to an antepartum room again.  Less monitoring, more boredom (I was in isolation so no visitors, no gifts/etc in or out) and I was starting to feel well enough to just want to come home.  

Of course on Saturday none of the Doctors or residents actually want to be there so I had only one specialist who was still worried about my liver numbers not wanting to let me leave yet.  There were probably more tears from me on Saturday than any of the other days... I was just so tired of being there and tired of being completely alone and uncomfortable and I just wanted out and this Doc was just so paranoid.  My own OB was fine with letting me come home, but they of course don't want to step on specialists toes....  

Finally Sunday morning she ordered an ultrasound of my liver and decided it would probably be ok to let me go home and just check in with my OB office more frequently, but then I had to wait for Dr. C to round in the afternoon.... I'm sure they all wanted to go to church in the morning, right??  ugh.  I watched church on my phone and waited so very, very impatiently and finally they got the discharge orders and I was free!!  After all that they basically very unceremoniously delivered me to the curb where Bob picked me up... ha.  It was so good to be home. And so comfortable!!! Miri came running over and sat on my lap and has hardly let me out of her sight ever since. 

Since then I have been resting.  I don't feel sick or sleepy, just wiped out. And sometimes my brain just feels foggy and I can't string sentences together.  I mean, I guess I went 9 days with only seeing a nurse or a Doctor a few times a day and skyping Bob and the girls at bedtime... isolation is weird.  I've been scrubbing medical tape out of my arms... that stuff just soaks in and won't let go and I had a total of 4 IV's, blood draws multiple times a day, oh and tiny little bruises/ pin pricks from the lovenox injections to prevent clots... my arms are turning all kinds of pretty colors.  :P

 And we've all been working on digging out of the Mom's-been-gone-for-9-days-and-the-house-is-a-mess and getting the Christmas chaos under control.  I've been so thankful for the food and activities for the girls that people have brought in, because I have so little energy.     Blessings.

Thanksgiving and things

 I'm not sure what all we've been up to the last few weeks.  Somehow the time gets filled and it's not monumental enough to remember.  

Some days my sister sends me lots of pictures of all of the mischief her kids get into... and I send back pictures like this- here is my perfect toddler, lining up blocks for the last 10-15 minutes.  hehe.

Bob and I went to potluck one Saturday evening.  

I tried to taper off nausea meds and it ended badly.... also, fun fact, puking your guts out while you're pregnant releases your pelvic floor so, double unpleasant.  huzzah.  So I stay on them and feel relatively human, if slightly tired.  

The girls had another watch week at tumbling. :)

The whole town was out of power for a few hours that evening because they were moving power lines around.  Bob is prepared though, so we had our battery light bulbs ready to go, and even had the modem on a battery so instead of going to bed the girls could watch cartoons on the tablet. ha.  Good to know we have the important things covered.

Little Miss Domestic is working on a gift for her teacher. 

 And Little Miss 'I helping you' is not helping me pin baste a baby quilt.  "I hop onna quilt."

Clothes are apparently optional around here.

So we didn't make any Thanksgiving day plans because I really only need to go to one Thanksgiving... and large group events are just not appealing right now for whatever reason.  I'll blame it on hormones... anyway, so Emmy and Bob were pretty sure we needed to smoke some ribs.  It was cold and windy enough that they had a hard time keeping the smoker at the right temperature, but they turned out pretty good anyway.

The Kochs got together on Friday... and Bob got to debut his prototype copy of their game.  :P

Saturday we spent cleaning and decorating! 

Ooo, a quis-mas!

I don't need naps any more! I don't!

This week has felt long because Bob has been ill.  It's the longest stretch of mostly solo parenting since, oh March 2020 probably. ha. Yes, I've been quite spoiled.  And of course no one wanted to eat anything I've made for supper this week.... woot.   But the weather has been great.  Most of the leaves are off the trees, finally, so I tried to pace myself and rake a little bit every day, and then the plan was to mulch them all at once with the mower.  

Except that the mower suddenly wouldn't drive forward or backward and rolled down the driveway to the road... sigh.  So I called Dad to ask what I should even be looking for- someday I am going to take a small engines class so I won't be so clueless, someday.  So he had me looking for broken belts and sheared bolts and cotter pins... uh huh, uh huh, I have a vague idea of what those things mean.  Also: Are you sure you should be doing this in your condition?  Me: Well I THOUGHT I was just going to be sitting on the mower for an hour and Bob is sick on the couch....   Anyway, after clearing away a bunch of grass and leaves and debris (oooopsss... not the best at lawnmower maintenance obviously) with a stick and the leaf blower, I got out my trusty blue tarp, lay down in the road (insanely uncomfortable btw) and could finally see where the drive belt had slipped off its guide.  Woot woot! I was very proud of myself.

So I did get to finish mulching leaves, and I'm getting old and too far along because I've been sore all over ever since- it's painful holding yourself on the seat of a bouncing mower with no working abdominal muscles. Things like this also makes me miss Grandpa-as-he-was, because I feel like he would have known right away what was wrong with the mower and how I could fix it.  I just needed a coverall, cardboard from a pallet of seed to lay on and a PAG seed cap....  :)

Looked out my kitchen window to find "Luna-kitty," as Miri calls her, perched on the wall looking for prey.  We're very glad she comes over and I really hope she takes care of whatever is making all of the new holes I'm finding in the landscaping. 

I did not sign us up for church caroling this year.... I love caroling, but for whatever reason I'm just feeling anti-social and I figured somebody would probably be sick anyway.... which was true.  And then Cecily had an opportunity to carol with a school group tonight and I was feeling crummy so I decided I couldn't take her to that.  Poor kid.  I'm hoping the rest of December is not like this, I mean, I know I won't have any extra energy, but still.   

Blessings.