Wow. Our house has been in an illness coma, I think. I can't believe we missed so many days! So, as I last shared each child got sick but it only lasted a day or two each, BUT they did all three fall on a Sunday. Soooo, I missed three weeks of church with that. Then on the fourth Sunday when I was all ready to go, that Sunday morning I started feeling really under the weather. I didn't have a fever, just a big 'ol head cold, it seemed. So I decided to stay home so as to not expose our church friends (although, eventually I think nearly everyone in our church ended up with it anyway). I started garlic and homeopathics and my netti pot, but nothing got better. While I can say, amazingly, I never got a fever or any other signs of infection, I did stay good and sick for five days at least and I'm just now getting my appetite back (two weeks later). The head cold went to the chest which resulted with a painful chest and labored breathing. We just didn't go anywhere. And it was a horrible week to have a sick mama too, because Robert was on call on Tuesday and Thursday. Not my finest week, for sure, and I can't remember when I felt that aweful for that long. Well, near the end of my illness both Cal and Bryse started coughing, but seemed fine otherwise, until Saturday morning around 4am when Cal woke with one of his impressive fevers and diarrhea. : ( After four day of mainly on, rarely off fever and a cough that was NOT productive enough (AND ofcourse throwing homeopathy, garlic, and anything else alternative at him) I caved and made an appointment at the traditional doc for him on Tuesday and as a last ditch effort used my last 24 hours before his appointment trying herbal remedies (which I'm not super familiar with). I went over to my friend, Melissa's house and she taught me how to make an herbal cough syrup (with herbs specifically for expectoration) and gave me a tincture as well. I went home and hit it hard and within 12 hours, his cough loosened up, he started expelling some nasty mucous and his fever broke....for good! I waited all morning watching him very closely to make sure that he was doing well and then happily canceled his doc appointment! ; ) He's been slowly doing better ever since! Both of the little ones still have coughs, but other than that are up and playing hard and eating well. Darby threatened illness Wednesday night, with a slight fever and lethargy, and achiness. But we did garlic and Homeopathy that night and she woke up fit as a fiddle the next morning. I am sooooo hopeful that we are healthy for good right now. I want to get out and run errands and catch up with everything. I had some ideas for blogs but the haize of illness has deleted them from my mind. So, alas, just a quick update for now. I am hoping that after six weeks of missing church I will have a healthy family so that we can attend this Sunday!
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I can't believe it. I'm so blessed to know this little one! Each of our children teach us so much. Bryse is/was no exception to that! I must share the major things Bryse taught us during her tiniest stages!
My water broke at 6:30am on February 11th as I was getting ready for church. I quickly ate some food for preparation for the work of labor and called my doula. About an hour later my contractions started. We waited for a little bit and then went to the hospital, dropping Darby off at a friend's house on the way. Once there, we walked the halls until things got intense enough that I didn't want to walk anymore. Then I spent a couple of hours on a birthing ball with my doula and Robert taking turns pushing on my hips for me. Around noon the OB on call felt like I wasn't progressing quick enough and mentioned pitocin (I had been there for about three or four hours), we said no and about 40 minutes later I jumped a huge amount in my dialation and things started getting really intense. I chose to stay in bed from then on out and just vocalized through the contractions. My body started pushing about 20 minutes later and she was born 10 minutes after that! We did skin to skin immeadiatly and I loved it. She nursed immeadiatly which was shocking for me because Darby had had such issues with figuring that out. And so began Bryse's babyhood. When she was three weeks old I was learning very quickly what this "sleep deprivation" that everyone had talked about, but I never experienced with Darby. I was getting, on the average, about 3-4 hours of sleep and an emotional mess because of it! And ofcourse got mastitis, which i thought might just kill me. After three weeks of desperatly trying to treat Bryse like her sister was treated I realised that it wasn't going to work. Finally one night I threw in the flag of surrender and brought her into my bed and made sure she was nursing continually all night. The only time she woke (or I did) from then on was when she couldn't find me to nurse (or, as it were, pacify). And that first night I slept about seven hours and felt like I could run a marathon in the morning! Ha! During the days she screamed horribly whenever I put her down or stopped nursing her. My typical day looked like this: Me sitting on the couch, watching tv (or reading), and nursing. If ever I needed to go to the bathroom or take a shower, she screamed the entire time. I remember crying and thinking that she was just such an unhappy baby. But then I read Happiest Baby on the Block. And we totally adopted the term "fourth trimester" and the five "S's". Which helped immensly! And then I read some Dr. Sears and we developed the term "high needs baby". Once I stopped trying to force Bryse to be something she wasn't and just found a way to be content and even enjoy her the way she was, taking care of what MOST would call a "bad baby" or a "colicky baby" was easy! And rewarding! And so enters the era of babywearing!! Bryse taught me how to use a large amount of baby carriers. Not the mainstream ones, but the ones that would allow me to nurse her continually while I grocery shopped or cooked dinner or took care of her sister. Typically she would scream in her carseat until we got to our destination. I would pop her into the mei tai, get her nursing and then run my errand! : ) Robert and I also got closer through the first few months of Bryse's life. While I didn't experience much help with Darby, Robert made up for it with Bryse! He saw the need and filled it without me even saying anything and it was HUGE in our marriage! He did housework, grocery shopping, errand running, and dinner cooking all while I just sat nursing. And we both learned that there are seasons when God calls us to just sit and take care of what seems like nothing special, but really is. I learned to be still and not feel useless and Robert learned how to care for us in ways that he never had. And I called him my super hero. Bryse moved out of the needy stage all on her own, slowly weaning herself from needing to nurse all night and all through the day with little help from me. By 3-4 months old her crying got less and by six months old she was as happy as a clam! I could hardly believe she was the same baby and it just reinforced my belief that it wasn't a matter of her being a sad baby but more of a baby that needed more help in transitioning into this big world. (as a side note: PLEASE don't ask new mothers "Is he/she a good baby?" It is so rude and horrible sounding and it must stop. Just because Bryse cried alot does not mean she was a bad baby.) Since then she has been a little comedian! She has been such a fire cracker and I'm so thankful for her and for those first few months when she taught our family soooo much! Soooo, just an update on what's going on around our house! ; )
After bragging to a friend of mine about how rare my kids get sick.....you know what's coming next!! Two weeks ago Cal got a vomiting bug. We slammed him with some homeopathics and he cuddled all morning, vomiting very often but being passed the illness within six hours. By the afternoon he was running and playing. Darby got sick a week and a half ago. She was at a playdate and started complaining of a head ache and achiness in general. When she got home she felt as if she had a fever and she started feeling nauseous. So I made her a pallet in our room. I like to notice the differences in my children! Darby is super sensitive, toward others and herself. Which makes her a phenomenol friend and sister and daughter but not so easy of a patient! : ) So I keep her close when she is ill and answer a lot of whimpering and such. I chose to give her a tylenol for the night so that she wouldn't feel so achey. Friday when she woke she was miserable. We did an aromatherapy bath, stayed away from the tylenol so that her fever could get to work, started some homeopathy for the flu (which was my guess as to what she had) and started garlic. YUM! Poor thing, that wasn't fun for her. It's not fun for anyone. I minced a clove, poored honey over it in a spoon, put a cup of juice in her hand, and piece of gum in the other and we hit it fast! Garlic, juice, gum! We did that three times. Twice on Friday and once on Saturday. By Saturday she didn't have a fever and wasn't in pain anymore. Still a little tired though. So I kept her home Sunday to give her lots of rest but by then she was already 100%! Bryse had a fever yesterday. That's all, just the fever really, she said her eye hurt, but it didn't show any sign of pink eye and stopped hurting quickly. So I don't know if that was achiness or not. Bryse is not so sensitive. We have to work on her thinking about how she makes people feel when she speaks (or yells) at them. : ) But she's tough as nails, so she is a super easy patient. She still ate pretty well. And just laid on the chair all day falling asleep occasionally and not talking much. She felt warmer than Darby had. It was a descent little fever. I did no tylenol at all because she wasn't in any pain and I wanted the fever to work it's magic. We did, ofcourse, hit the homeopathics. I did a garlic poultice (because swallowing garlic did not work on her, it came back out and spewed everywhere!) on her feet that night along with jojoba oil + essential oils. She slept in her own bed and at some point her fever broke during the night. She woke up jabbering and bouncing around as if Sunday never happened! And my first sign that she was well was her hair!! All day with that dry fever racking her, her hair was so limp and gross looking! In the morning, after sweating it off, her hair was back to it's bouncing, crazy, curly self! As for me, I have been working on a "Fighter Girl" costum for Bryse. This something she made up a year ago so we have decided to have a Fighter Girl party for her birthday. And I looked into super hero patterns, $18!!!! No thank you! Geez! So I'm freehanding it, which does NOT come easy to me, but I'm just too cheap. So that means a ton of trial and error and lots of putting the sewing machine away because I'm fixing to toss it through the window. I thought I had finished it today, but the armpits are too tight. Sooooo, I took a break and will tackle it again in a couple more days. Otherwise we are gearing ip for Bryse-y turing four on Friday!! |
LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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