Dieting...

On February 1, I purposefully set out to really try to loose weight. I don't have the money to join Weight Watchers, but I am using their philosophy and keeping track of points. The first two weeks were relatively easy for me, I had big hopes of dropping pounds.. lol Anyway, after two weeks I lost some inches in places I really would have preferred not to, and only lost 2.5 pounds. It has made my journey a bit harder now. I know that it will take time to get back to where I want to be, but I had hopes that the first couple of weeks I'd loose a bit extra. The first week I didn't drink any pop at all, was eating fresh veggies all through the day and in general was eating so much more healthier than I have in a long time. I never ate over my points for the day either. So I am trying to resolve in my mind to be adamant about it again. To recommit myself to it. I can see why being able to go to the meetings would be a great big help! I will not let this defeat me :-)

*Flower Girls*

This past weekend a cousin of my husband got married. Two of my girls were asked to be flower girls. I haven't been to a wedding in over 10 years, and my kids have never been to one. It was fun to be part of one. The wedding was out of state, so we went up on Friday afternoon. That night they had rehearsal and then we all went to the rehearsal dinner. The next morning the girls had to be at the beauty salon at 8 a.m. We got up at 6:15 and ate the hotel's complementary breakfast; then drove to the town the salon was in (during a pretty good thunderstorm). I might add that Friday morning I woke up sick and felt horrible the whole weekend... but I made it thru :-) For Elizabeth's hair it took over an hour and at least 78 bobbie pins! Then they started on Rebekah's hair; it took a little under an hour. They looked so beautiful! It was fascinating for me to see how they took all that hair and made it into a bunch of beautiful curls that lasted the whole day!

The wedding was beautiful and besides the mother of the bride having problems lighting a candle and a brides maid passing out, it all went wonderful!

In the pictures Rebekah is on the left and Elizabeth is on the right.

Last day of Bowling

Today was the kids' last day of Bowling. Of all the activities we do, I will definitely miss this one. I went around taking pictures and videos of the kids. Samuel, my 6 year old, is getting pretty good. Half way through the season he requested to play with no bumpers and his last couple of games he bowled between 76 and 81. The other kids are doing pretty good too. Kati's high for the year was 177, Zachary's 155, Elizabeth's 113, Rebekah's 98 and Nehemiah's 64.

The bowling alley gave us a really good deal for the school year. To make it more affordable they capped the amount a family would have to pay. It is such a blessing when a business will cap out an amount, instead of making a large family pay an amount that is way to high. Last year we could only afford to let one child play; but this year, thanks to their generosity, all but my 3 year old was on a league. They did take our home school group off the nationwide league, but that wasn't important to us anyways. They doubled the amount of families that participated this school year from last school year. It would be nice to see more businesses give breaks, I believe they would actually make more of a profit, because more families would be able to come.

Seeing old friends

This past weekend a friend of mine and her family came to visit. We haven't seen each other in 3 years. We may have talked a handful of times, but not much. Life got so busy for the both of us that we just didn't have the time to be on the phone. She has 2 children one 12 and the other 5. Her husband wanted to surprise my husband (his birthday was Sunday) so we met at Mazzio's Pizza. The kids were so surprised! Everyone was busy talking and commenting on how much each other's kids have grown; when my 8 yo came up behind me and asked "Mom, who are these people?" It was so cute!

Time went by too fast. They spent the night and went to church with us, then we came back fixed lunch and they left around 4 p.m. We're the ones who moved away. It can be hard keeping up long distance friendships, but it is so worth it! My kids got along with hers just like old times, it was such a blessing to have everyone get along great. There are some friends that just have an extra special place in your heart, and she is that kind of friend.

Proverbs 18:24
A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Easter

Our family had a nice Easter. I wasn't sure how it would all work out, but in the end it worked out well. Friday and Saturday I laid down as much as I could to get the muscle spasm to quiet down in my back. Then Saturday night my husband and I went to Wal-Mart, bought some cheap plastic buckets, candy and plastic eggs. Usually we boil and color eggs, but I wasn't feeling up to that. I took the plastic eggs and put candy inside each egg, then after church I ran into the house while everyone else stayed outside. I hid the eggs and set out their baskets with some extra candy inside; before I let them in I hid an egg under each child's pillow.

They came in and looked at their baskets, then went around and hunted for the eggs. It was pouring rain outside all day so everything had to be inside. My youngest, Ezra, had a lot of fun looking for eggs. It took him a minute to understand what we were doing then his face lit up and off he went.

With my first 5 kids, I used to do a lot of special things with them. Then one day I realized that my 3 youngest haven't gotten the same "fun" from me. I'm going to work a lot harder at being the "fun and creative" mom that my older children got. Its easy to put that stuff aside with the business of life, and when the older kids no longer enjoy that stuff like they use to. Thanks to reading blogs, I have realized how much I don't do anymore and reading those same blogs is giving me the desire and ideas that I much needed.

My husband has been buying buffalo steaks each time we go to the store. We had 6 steaks saved up, after the egg hunt we started fixing dinner. I worked on getting baked potatoes ready and he defrosted the steaks and got them ready. We don't have a good outdoor grill anymore, so he broiled them in the bottom oven while I baked potatoes in the top one. I also fixed a Caesar salad, plain salad and broccoli with cheese. His parents showed up and we had a nice dinner together.

Now for some pictures, remember that we just moved in and I am in no way unpacked all the way or organized :-)

The Easter "buckets"

Nehemiah, Ezra, Samuel and Zachary

Rebekah, Kati and Elizabeth

The Move

I haven't been on the computer much these last three to four weeks. We bought a house and moved in March 26. We had some friends available to help us move our main stuff that afternoon so we could sleep in our new home. Within an hour and a half of signing the papers, it was raining. Then that weekend it snowed! Just the week before had been upper 70's weather. You can pretty much count on the weather changing to the worse when it comes time for us to move. It is a fact that has been proven many times!

We worked slowly on getting stuff out, moving the dressers one night, the couch the next nice evening, ect.... Then I hurt my back. Sitting down was terribly (still is) painful. Once I sit down the pain in my lower back starts radiating outwards and down my legs. Then when I try to stand up it is even more painful and I have to walk hunched and slowly straighten myself out. I was able to go to the chiropractor a couple of days ago. It helped in some ways and made it worse in other ways. I might go back tomorrow if I'm not better. The only thing that takes the most pain away is to lay on my side. Not very practical when your homeschooling in the mornings and working on moving in the afternoons.

We moved to this town/state 4 years ago this month. We have rented the same house until we bought this one. Yesterday a dear friend of mine helped me clean the old house. We started around 11:30am and finished at 7 pm. We wiped down all the walls, fixtures, cabinets, swept, mopped, you name it we did it. It looked so sparkly clean today when my husband and I showed up. We had a few last things to do today and then we took our keys back. So now it is official. I no longer live there. Kind of sad, Ezra was born while we lived there, a lot of memories were made in four years. In fact that is the longest we have ever lived in one town or home before.

Tomorrow is a new day and I'll not have to worry about trying to move everything out of the old place. Now I can turn all my attention to our new home. There is still much work to do, but I look forward to personalizing this place and seeing how I can arrange everything.

Some nice things about our new home: five burner gas stove top, double built-in ovens (one is convection), a more open floor plan, single story (yeah! no move stairs!), two fireplaces, a lot more storage, the laundry room in the back of the house (away from the front door!)... so many nice things I can't even mention them all. I can't believe we finally own our own home again. I am truly grateful for what God has blessed us with. I am also so grateful for the many dear friends that I have made in this town. I love them all so very much and thank them for all their hard work and the time they gave up to help us! God is so good!

When things don't go as planned ~ Pre-eclampsia part 1

Now I'm ready for my last pregnancy!
It was April of 2005 and we were in the process of moving from Kansas to Oklahoma. Right after we moved I found out I was pregnant. Just a few months before I had my third miscarriage. One day I started spotting and I remember being terribly scared for the baby. I had spotted with one other pregnancy that didn't end in a miscarriage so it does happen. But for me it was 2 spotting out of 3 ended bad. I immediately laid down and put my feet up. I called my husband and I prayed continually for the next couple of days. I didn't have a doctor yet, but I did end up calling my last doctor. He was over an hour away, but at least I knew him. I couldn't get in right away but there really wasn't anything he could have helped me with at that point. I quit spotting after a couple of days and God blessed allowed me to carry him to almost full term.

The rest of the pregnancy was pretty uneventful. I only seen the doctor who was an hour away a couple of times and I realized it was just to hard for me to travel that far to see him. The move had taken its toll on us financially and we had no extra money to spend whatsoever. I'm a pretty shy person and going to a new doctor didn't thrill me at all. Finally I picked one and I had 2 or 3 visits with him. He told me I needed to pick out a pediatrician and get Samuel's records to him in case the new baby had the same problem that Samuel had when he was born. At that visit I told my doctor that I was swelling really bad. He made some joke about how much more swollen I would be in a few weeks. That kind of irritated me because I had been through several pregnancies and I knew my body, and even though I would swell up a lot, this was much more extreme. I went home and continued to teach my kids, sometimes having them put lotion on my feet to give me some relief. Not quite a week later I weighed myself. I had gained 9 pounds in 6 days! I called the dr.'s office and told the nurse that something couldn't be right, she agreed and had me come right in.

They did the normal urine test and blood pressure, then he told me that he was pretty sure I had developed preeclampsia. He told me he wanted me to do an overnight urine and bring it in first thing in the morning. He said it was pretty serious, that I would probably deliver in a couple of weeks or so. Well I went home did the lab stuff and showed up in the morning. He came back in and told me he would like to put me in the hospital right then to monitor the baby and my blood pressure. He said it wasn't real high yet, but that he had a bad feeling that I was going to be like a time bomb and suddenly explode.

So I called my husband and told him what I had to do. I drove home and took a quick bath to try to relax and get my Mother-in-law to come down to watch the kids. I stayed in the hospital until 4:30pm or so. They had started me on an IV gave me some medicine to relax me, my memory is so bad anymore I can't remember what they gave me. Next the doctor called me on my room phone and told me that I had to options. He said that my blood pressure was continuing to rise in spite of the fact that I had been in bed all day and he wanted to get the baby and me to a hospital that could handle premature babies. He told me I was going to have the baby within 3 days. My options were to take the chopper to Tulsa or ride there by ambulance. He said if it where him he would choose the ambulance. I figure I'd go with his recommendation, so while waiting for the ambulance they gave me one steroid shot to start helping the babies lung develop.

The paramedics arrived and they got me loaded up on the ambulance. My husband said he would go home and wait for my mom to get there so they could ride to Tulsa together. The paramedics were very nice and visited with me on our 50+ minute ride to the hospital. I would watch the blood pressure machine and it continued to rise, but I wasn't worried, I know the only way I was being peaceful was that God was keeping me together. It really felt this was just another adventure in life and I was cool with it. Labor pains started on the way there. I got to the hospital they got me right upstairs and this specialist, who my old doctor turned me over to, came into my room with a portable sonogram machine. He immediately checked the baby. He said he estimated him at about 5 pounds and told me they were going to have to get him delivered asap. He said he might let me deliver vaginally but would have to see. He left the room and when he returned he looked at my stats and told me they were going to have to take the baby by emergency c-section. He wanted to put me under all the way, but after talking with the anesthesiologist he told me it wasn't safe to put me out and that they would have to do an epidural. So they take me right to the operating room, the neonatal staff is all set up and ready to take the baby up to the 7th floor. I get my epidural and am laying there with everything all ready for surgery. My husband and mom haven't showed up and I was started to worry. My head started pounding so hard that I could barely stand it. They kept poking my stomach with a needle to see if I could feel it and I could feel it. It seemed like he was started to doubt whether or not I could, he said I would feel pressure but nothing sharp. I mustered up some energy and tried to sit up and I point blank told him I could feel it and needed more medication. I think that is when I started to worry. I must say that I would rather have a baby naturally any day over a c-section. I had some friends who had had them and not one told how awful they are. I realize that my experience in a whole might have been what made it so bad, but it felt like they were pulling and twisting my insides right out of my body and a lot of pressure too. They had me cut open and were just starting to take Ezra out of me when my husband walked in. I was so relieved that he made it in time. They took Ezra out and from clear across the room they got my attention so I could see the baby. I could barely focus on him, my blood pressure was so high I literally thought my head was going to explode. I can't remember exactly what it was but it was well over 230 and I'm not sure if that was the top or bottom number.

Now, I had been strong all this time, I had been told that as soon as the baby is delivered I would be better. But the valley for me had just begun. My blood pressure was so high, they kept telling me that relief was in sight. I'd delivered the baby and my body would be back to normal in a matter of hours. Lesson learned: it can take months to get the poison out of your system. and it is normal if you don't immediately get better so don't panic if this ever happens to you. Well I'm not sure of exact details but they kept giving me all kinds of medicine to bring my blood pressure down. And, when I would start to feel half way like I was going to live, my doctor would change the medicine to a different type to see if that medicine would bring my blood pressure down better.

Medicine can do some awful things to a persons mind and well being. I couldn't even close my eyes to rest because when I did I saw a demonic type face made of fire. I know that sounds weird and I am a saved, born again, child of God. I literally stayed up for what seemed like eternity, continually praying for God to deliver me from this hell that I was suddenly cast into. I had Ezra on a Friday night, I was very optimistic at first, I knew I had to give it some time, but I really didn't know what I was fighting and what to expect.

The nurses I had were not any help at all. The day after he was born I kept telling my husband and my Mom that I had to go to the bathroom. I was still hooked up to the catheter, so even though they had a nurse come in a couple of times throughout the day to check on me, the nurses told me I was fine and all was working well. Finally I was in so much pain, I told my husband that it felt like my bladder was going to burst and to get someone in there. This one nurse came in said everything was fine, I kept insisting things weren't fine and finally she looked by the bed and saw that the tube was pinched. When she unpinched it the bag immediately filled to the top! I'm not sure how long I went with it pinched but probably 12 hours or so. Next I wanted to try and get up, but I was very weak. This one nurse came in and asked me if I wanted to try and use the bathroom. I said yes, and she came over to help me up. When I got up I felt a little dizzy and very weak. I held onto her and she asked me if I felt like I was going to fall down. I told her I wasn't sure, she told me that I was not to hold onto her and that if I was to fall she would let me fall to the ground. So I got back into bed.

After you have surgery it is very important to get back on your feet as soon as possible. Every day you wait makes it that much harder to bounce back. I was feeling so weird with all the blood pressure medicine that I had them back down on my pain medicine and refused the strong stuff. I have a very high level of pain tolerance, I always have, but I did learn through this experience that you don't want to go off pain meds all the way because then the pain will hit you very hard all at once!

I wanted to get out of bed at least to stand, but no one would ever help me. My husband never got me up, because he was afraid I'd get hurt. Finally after getting to where my hair was nothing less then a grease pit, I finally got to take a shower. I'm not sure how I managed to get through it, I was in such a fog and terribly weak, just to pick up the shampoo bottle was a major undertaking for me. The nurses told me the same thing, if you go down, we won't catch you. I have never had a nurse tell me that before but I had numerous nurses tell me that at this hospital. I can't remember what day for sure that I got my shower but I'm thinking Tuesday or Wednesday. While taking the shower I was freaked out by the way my forehead felt. I thought my forehead had changed shape and that it immediately went straight back after my eyebrows! I felt that way for a couple of weeks. It was totally weird to me, I would rationalize in my mind it had to be normal, but I would feel it and then I remember telling my husband my forehead was definitely different. He assured me it was normal, but for me it was hard to believe.

I would lie awake at night watching the clock tick through every second, praying every second. My condition just kept getting worse. Wednesday, I finally tell my husband that the noise in my room is driving me insane. My room was as far away from the normal mom's room as possible. They put me on the end of the hallway next to their washers and dryers. The noise from them whining was driving me farther insane! My husband requested another room. That night they came in and got me and took me down to the opposite end of the hallway. They wanted to keep me away from the healthy mom's who had their babies with them. After they got me settled, I remember how blessedly peaceful the room was. It had a lovely view for my husband to enjoy too. Then the nurse came in and said the doctor wanted to try different kind of blood pressure medicine. I'm no doctor, but I believe I would have been better off if they wouldn't have kept switching stuff around on me. I also have a horrible history of being allergic to certain medications. Anyway, within minutes after she injected it into my IV I felt like I was going to die. I was so afraid I was having some kind of heart attack or something that they had the doctor come in. He told me I was fine, but then after waiting a little bit and not feeling any different I kept getting this urgent voice in the back of my mind telling me not to lay there. That I must insist that something wasn't right. So I did. The doctor couldn't get a heart doctor to come into my room. They are only allowed so many patients in one day and they had all met their quotas (what!)

What happened next, I'm not sure if its what helped me in some unknown way, or if I would have known what was going to happen if I would have been better off staying there in my room.

He told me that the only way to get the care I needed was to take me to the emergency room. I'm hurting in my chest, felt like a million pounds were on my chest, I couldn't be calm for anything and I really was trying to be. I wanted more than anything to get better. I wanted more than anything to be able to go and see my son whom I had never really got a good look at. I wanted more than anything to be a new Mom who had just had her baby and could be a part of his life. Even if he was born to early I would have loved to have been up there watching over him, knowing everything about how they were caring for him, but I still didn't have the help I needed to recover. But that was soon to change.

I really didn't feel like I had a choice, he couldn't help me and I didn't want my pride to keep me from getting the care I needed. I thought of all my kids waiting for me at home... I had to get better. So, a nurse comes in and sets me in a wheelchair. I only have my hospital gown on. Nothing else, not anything remotely modest, in my eyes. Next she looks around and then goes and gets a cart. Then she started loading the cart up with all my belongings. I asked her why did I have to get my stuff and she told me I was being discharged from my doctors care and therefore was being discharged from the hospital! She wheels me down to the emergency room in front of a lot of people and drops me off there. This nurse gets a room for me, remember this is the emergency room, the rooms don't have comfortable beds just a ambulance type bed/gurney. I get down there around 11pm, The on call ER dr. comes to see me, decides to do a MRI. I have to sign a waiver saying I'm not allergic to Iodine. That in itself scared me because my body was already so out of wack. They ran some test on me, and everything came back normal except that the MRI picked up the beginning stage of pneumonia.

Then the nurse comes back in and tells me that she has in her hands a medicine she has used a lot in the past with people with high blood pressure and she assured me that this would be the turning point for me. She said she had never given it to anyone who's blood pressure didn't lower drastically. So she injected it and the wait began. Finally after an hour I remember looking at the blood pressure machine and my blood pressure was 180/115. She seemed down and I asked her what was wrong. She said it took it down some, but it didn't do what she thought it would do. She said she didn't even know of anything better than what she had just used.

I believe that hearing over and over from doctors and nurses about how I should be getting better, did very little in helping me. I think I started worrying if I ever would get better. I really started to believe that my life as I had know it was over. I started to believe that I would never be able to fully function again and that I would never be able to take care of my children and be the mom I should be to them or the wife I should be. Depression started creeping in.
Well just so you know this is the fifth night after Ezra was taken my c-section. I still had the staples in my stomach and I had never walked to the bathroom since my surgery. Bed pans were all I knew. Another view into that night, imagine being on a bed hardly long enough to lay fully out on. One maybe two inches of padding on a hard board. One hard bend in it to push your head up, and very, very narrow. I was laying on that thing in the only way I could. I couldn't really move and the bed was starting to feel like I was laying on hard bricks. My stomach started hurting terribly bad, my heart is pounding in my chest and ears, no peace was to be found. I am not exaggerating in saying that I watched the second hand go through every minute of every hour of that night, except for when the nurse came in to see me. It then hit me that I needed to go to the bathroom. Task #1 I couldn't go on the bed pan, one there was no privacy. So I couldn't put it off anymore, this wonderfully nice nurse helped me get out of bed and with a walker to hold onto, helped me walk around the corner to the bathroom. I made it! Then she left me on the stool and closed the door, because I am really, really bad about using the bathroom when someone is in there with me :-) I made up a rhyme to help me concentrate and let me tell you it was a battle; but I finally went! So she helped me get back to my bed. Then I had to go again! So I was successful a second time. Then probably from the exertion of getting up and walking to the restroom for the first time I was in horrible pain. I told the nurse I was in terrible pain and then she went white. She said that since I didn't have a doctor and wasn't officially a patient of the hospital anymore, I didn't have any way to get pain medications! Morning came and her shift ended, I ended up with this nurse who became my advocate for me. Breakfast time came and went, I was still in a lot of pain. Now on top of that I was also getting hungry. No room... no food. She called up to the floor I should have been on. I heard her out there saying it was inexcusable and that she didn't care if they didn't know what to do with me, I needed to get into a room and get proper rest and care. Every so often I would hear her calling up to them. They told her they had no room for me and that none of them could really take care of me anyways. Finally, she got through to someone who said that I could go the the floor up about the maternity ward. Hope was finally in sight, after over 12 gruelling hours in the ER I was finally going to be admitted back into the hospital. Only one problem. They had to get me a doctor. Well they admitted me back in under the care of a cardiologist. So even though I had missed breakfast and lunch, the nurse whose care I was under found me a meal to eat!

I will never forget that nurse. She was a large, heavy set woman. She came into my room and told me that I should already be up and about and I was very behind where I should be, but that was all going to change! She said she wanted me to page her every time I had to use the bathroom. She said she did not want me walking anywhere without her. She held me with one of my arms and another nurse came in and held my other arm. She told me not to worry, she would not let me fall! She walked me to the bathroom and walked me regularly throughout the day around my room. She told me that she felt like it was an unspeakable thing that I had never been up to see my son. You could tell she was horrified by what I had been through. In fact I became the talk of the floor. No one could believe what I had to go through, no one had ever heard of a patient getting discharged who still needed so much care. That evening I asked the nurse what I was suppose to do about my staples. She couldn't believe I still had them in. Somewhere in the night my old doctor came in to see me. He was red with embarrassment. He apologized over and over for the way I had been treated. He removed my staples and asked me to forgive him. He also told me that the maternity ward had nurses who did not know how to care for a high maintenance patient. So he became one of my doctors again. I had him and a team of heart doctors.

That night, at midnight,after getting up through the day, I was determined to go up and see Ezra. My parents bought me some new slippers and they bought them way bigger then my feet, but my feet were still way to swollen to wear them. I went up in a wheelchair, so the big men's socks my husband bought for me worked fine :-)

I still felt incredibly weak, but seeing Ezra made my world stand still. Wow! What a beautiful baby boy! What a blessing from God! God is so good, He brought me through all those horrors to this quiet peaceful place where time seemed to be on hold. The Neo-natal nurse was getting ready to feed him. She fed him for a little bit, then she asked me if I wanted to feed him! So on Oct. 20th I finally got to hold my son! She handed him over and I was so afraid I would do something wrong. My arms felt like rubber, but when she put him in my arms I couldn't believe how light he felt. I asked her how much he weighed and she said 2 lbs. 3ozs. He had lost a couple of pounds since birth. His birth weight was 4 lbs. 3 ozs. and 15 or 16 inches long.
I couldn't stay up there very long, I was afraid I would pass out, but it was such a wonderful moment to remember.

I'm going to post this,as this post is getting really long. I'll work on the next part and post it whenever I can finish it!

This is the first picture I got of Ezra. They took this pictures after they got him situated in the neo-natal clinic. They gave it to me the day after he was born.

This is the second picture (and last) the hospital took of Ezra to give to me. This is day 2 and he has been taken off the respirator!

The nurse getting Ezra out - the first time I personally saw him upclose!

This picture is taken later that day in the afternoon, 10-20-05

A picture of Ezra and I on 10/20/05.

Ezra 6 days old.

Daddy and Ezra day 6.

When things don't go as planned ~ the background

I have been working on the following post for well over a month now and I'm not sure of the best way to post it. It is getting rather lengthy, so I am going to break it up. That would help me as I'm not done yet, and would feel better if I could post some of it. I wanted to write about my experience with preeclampsia, in case there is someone out there who could be helped by reading this.

Before I got pregnant with my last child I had had 7 healthy children and 3 miscarriages. I did have one of the miscarriages right before my last child. All of the healthy children were healthy pregnancies. I did start having complications with two healthy ones that were born before my last one.

(note: I wanted to post some newborn pictures of Nehmiah, but couldn't find them, so I will post some later)

It all started with Nehemiah. He was born close to his due date, but not late. He was a big baby 9 lbs. 3 ozs. My pastor, his wife and a couple of missionaries who were in town for a missions conference had come to the hospital and came in right after he was born. I started feeling uncomfortable and as soon as they left I asked to go to the bathroom. My husband walked our company out and I got up and started feeling funny. I sat down on the stool and a massive amount of blood and blood clots come out and I felt like I was fading out of reality. So I called for the nurses and 2 of them came in. They got me right to my bed and as I was laying down all I remember was being all cold and peaceful, except for the hollering going on. Next I remember my husband looking right into my eyes, looking very worried and scared, I could hear him talking to me but it was so far away and I couldn't move or talk by then. My uterus couldn't clamp down (something like that) and my blood pressure dropped way down. They got the doctor back up to see me and he had them get some medicine that he injected with a needle into my abdomen, to get my heart beat to go back up. Next he cleaned out my uterus in case something was still in there. After he was done 2 nurses took turns massaging my uterus (pushing down on my stomach and rubbing) which by then I was coming to and it was getting to be a bit more painful. If I remember correctly I was all better about two hours later and finally got to just lay down, rest, and enjoy my new boy!

The doctor said that having multiple pregnancies might have weakened my uterus, but he mainly thought that he was big for me and that my uterus was just floppy afterwards because of that. He said he felt like it would be safe for me to have another baby. I was weak for a couple of weeks, and other than developing a problem with dropping dishes a lot, nothing new came from that.

We ended up moving about 2 hours away and were living in a camper when...
Next came Samuel, the doctor wanted to take him early so I wouldn't have the same problem. Even though I had moved away I wanted my same doctor and my in-laws lived close to that town so I went to stay with them the week they induced me and my husband met me down there the night before. I think he was due in the 20 something of May. So we picked May 16 to induce him. He was born 7 pounds 5 ounces. Labor and delivery went well with him. He seemed healthy and I was feeling fine so the next day he sent us home (which was my in-laws home). That first night he cried and was fidgety the whole night. It was a very long night for me I was sore and very, very tired. Since I had been released before he was 24 hours old I had to see the doctor one more time before I could leave to go to our real home. When we got him there he was as orange as a pumpkin. He sent us for lab work and then asked us to wait for the results. They put him right back into the hospital. He said he had severe jaundice.

Rebekah, Kati, Nehemiah, Zachary and Elizabeth 5 months after Samuel was born.

Well I stayed in the hospital with him and thankfully my mother-in-law was able to take care of the other children (who at the time were 15, 8, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 0 ). He ended up spending a total of 12 days in the hospital. Every morning they would stick him for blood, it was horrible watching them. Sometimes it would be more than once a day. He seemed way to little for needles. He had to spend all his time in an incubator with lights on him. They couldn't get the levels to go down so they made me quit nursing him for 24 hours. I fought them on it, I really didn't see the point but they said my breast milk could be causing it. So after a couple of days that's what they did. So there I was a new mom, away from my kids and husband, wasn't allowed to hold my baby unless he was eating and then I had to quickly put him back.
Finally they released him to a pediatrician that my Mom had picked out of a phone book in Wichita. He needed to be under the care of a specialist and to get that I needed to have a pediatrician to refer me to him. There was only one hematologist that specialized in children so that was who we ended up with. Oh and the first visit to the pediatrician was a nightmare in itself. The nurse (which I quickly found out wasn't a nurse) had to take blood from his foot. She couldn't get any blood to come out and is sticking him over and over. I showed her a trick this lab tech had showed me to get the blood to come easier. Well she tried it for about 30 seconds then quit and went back to her old way. Her reason... it was just to hard to hold his feet in that position... she was too tired.....! It took her about 45 minutes to get a little tiny vial of blood. I'm a very easy going / forgiving person, but that was the first time I ever truly wanted to punch her and grab my baby and run.

We found out he had hemolytic anemia . Every week I had to take Samuel to the lab to have his blood drawn. Then, when he was about 6 weeks old, his levels dropped to a dangerous level (can't remember all the correct terms) and he had to have a blood transfusion. I was a bit nervous of him having to take in someone elses blood, but the doctor said we wouldn't have enough time to get the blood drawn and tested, so we had no choice but to proceed with it. I thought having his blood taken was bad, but it was much worse getting the IV started. It took at least 3 tries to get it started, his veins were so tiny compared to the needle they were using. In a couple of days I took him back and his levels were much better.

He got critical one other time, but the doctor saw some good numbers in the lab and had us wait over the weekend, then we came back to have it checked out. His levels were rising back up on their own! He never had to have another transfusion, and eventually we went from every week to bi-weekly, then to monthly on the lab work. When he was a little over a year old we met with the doctor again and he told us that we could do lab work to find out which part of his blood was causing it, but he felt like he might not ever have any more problems with it and the test took a lot of blood. He gave us symptoms to look out for, such has bluish lips, yellow eyes, ect.. but praise be to God, Samuel has never had anything more to date.

Kati and Samuel at a little over 24 hours old.







Samuel on 2nd or 3rd day looking a bit more orange.





Samuel back in hospital under/on top of the light.

Knitting Scarf #2 & Raw Milk

I got Rebekah's scarf completed last night on the way to a dairy (about an hour trip) to get raw milk and raw cream. The milk there is wonderful and the cream very, very yummy :-) The dairy is right on the outskirts of Claremore, OK . I wanted to linger there a bit to look at their stuff (even though its not a lot), but they were very busy, so we got 6 gallons of raw milk 2 pints of raw cream, cheeses and cheese curds (a wonderful snack!). We have never been there, but have had their milk and cheese when at a friends house. They have a long narrow room where the cows get milked at that has a full glass front. We parked in front of that and one of my boys got excited when he saw the cows in front of us. Rebekah says "silly, those aren't real cows they're fake!" I turned to her and said those are the real cows and she had the cutest surprised look on her face and seemed embarrassed. Anyway, it was cute!

It's been about six years since we used to drive to a dairy out in the country, around 40 minutes from our house. I would load up two coolers and six - gallon jars. They would let me go in and fill the jars up from their big stainless still tank. Then I'd leave $1.50 per gallon on a small table and leave. I miss those days. I think there is nothing better than raw milk. The taste is indescribably better and I believe it's a lot better for you.

After we got back in town the girls and I had a Keepers of the Faith meeting where we are making cards for orphans in Romania. Then when we got home from that I added the fringe. I had never put fringe on anything; it really seemed to dress it up. This scarf was made with an eyelash yarn, size 13 needles and 15 stitches across. It took excatly the entire skein to make it with the fringe.

Knitting - Scarf

I learned how to knit when I was in third grade. Off and on I get the urge to knit. When I was in third grade I made a chicken shaped pin holder, pot holder, and house slippers. I've always wanted to knit something big, just never have had the time.

Three years ago, I started knitting again. I made dish clothes in several different patterns. Then I put it all away and only until recently did I get the urge to knit again. I made some dish clothes for Christmas gifts and then started on this scarf, that is being modeled my Nehemiah. He liked it so much that I gave it to him.

For this scarf I used Lion Brand Homespun yarn and size 13 knitting needles. I cast on 15 stitches, and knit the whole thing. It used less than one skein of yarn. I didn't make this one with a fringe edge, but for the girls's scarfs I will.

I am now in the process of making a scarf for Rebekah and one for Elizabeth. I'll post them when I get them finished. I am really enjoying knitting again and the girls are having fun learning. These projects are easy to take with you where ever you go, so even when I'm sitting around waiting on someone or something, I can accomplish something at the same time!

Please tell me they aren't all yours....

I have eight children so I think I have heard just about all the comments out there that rude people can come up with. On another day I might even list some, but I don't have much time. I don't remember stuff like I use to, so I figured I had better post this before I forgot!

Today my husband had the day off and we went into town to buy 2 of them shoes. We tried Wal-Mart... nothing. Then we went to K-Mart.... well we got Zachary a pair of shoes there and went to check out. The cashier next to the line we were in leans over her booth (in her boy as can be short hair cut) and starts pointing her finger at each child and verbally counts them. She gets louder with each number and stops at 7. Then she proceeds to say "Wow, that's a lot of kids, tell me your babysitting." I said "No". She then says "Please tell me they are not all yours!" I said "Yep! They are all mine" Honestly I don't remember at the moment what else she said. I just stood there, smiling and waiting to get out of there. I wish I could be bold and stand up to people like that. At least think of something to say, but then I figure that it wouldn't make a difference anyways.

I guess I really don't understand people. Why does it matter how many children a person has. And what does it matter to her? Why in the world would anyone say please tell me.... I don't get it. After over 10 years of hearing it, I still don't get it. When I had my last child, he was born 6 1/2 weeks premature. I was sent by ambulance to Tulsa to have him taken by an emergency c-section at a hospital that could handle that premature of babies. I was in the hospital for 8 or 9 days, and during the middle of the stay I ended up having a group of doctors to help control my blood pressure, ect. and this young lady doctor who was the main one I had to talk to, comes in one night and proceeds to tell me she was from a large family and that she believes it must be an addiction!!!!! WHAT! A doctor telling someone who hadn't even got to see her son, that it must be an addiction for women to have that many babies.... WEll that's a whole nother long story, see I ment to post a couple of paragraphs and now I could write all night long. Guess I shouldn't have brought up those feelings.

Cleaning the girls room....

Today the girls and I started on their room. I decided to have them bring down all their clothes so we could go through them in the living room. It was much easier that way. Usually I just keep everything in their room, but that doesn't give us much space.

I had them go through stuff and get rid of stuff they don't wear, stained, ect. we ended up with 2 outdoor leaf size bags of clothes to give away (we thew away the bad stuff). Hopefully that will make a big difference in managing their clothes. We are still going through all their toys, I am taking a break and then I'll join them again.

My oldest daughter is working on the boys room. She's good! She is 14 (almost 15) and has no regrets when it comes to getting rid of someone elses stuff! lol However, I now have a ton of laundry to do from stuff she is finding in the boys' room. I knew Ezra had some clothes!

I am excited about the change, just don't like the fact that to get stuff really clean we have to really mess stuff up :-) I was wanting to do this over Christmas break, but I got sick, then different things kept going around the house. So my goal is to try and have it done by Monday night. My husband took Monday off, so Tuesday we'll start school back up. Which after having the break, I need to get back on track with that too! Well I'd better take one thing at a time and concentrate on their rooms. My biggest problem is I start looking at everything that needs to be done and then start trying to do too many at one time and I never really ever get one thing done well. But! No more! A new year and a new attitude!

New Years Day 2009

It just seems like yesterday that we were ringing in the year 2000 and now that was 9 years ago. Time seems to fly by faster and faster. Last night we celebrated New Years Eve by playing games with the kids. My husband fell asleep by 10:30 and my 6 yo boy fell asleep by 7 p.m. (he had a headache and fell asleep on the couch). The rest of us ate chips 'n dip and drank pop, played games and when it was 12 am walked out back and watched the fireworks. They were kind of far off but still neat for the kids and it sounded like thunder rolling across the sky. It was pretty cold last night, maybe around 24 degrees, but there was no wind. Still after standing outside for 10 minutes or so I had had enough. I let the kids camp out on my bedroom floor and they still weren't tired. So they laid around reading and I worked on knitting a scarf, while teaching my 10 yo how to knit. It was a fun evening, and we finally fell asleep sometime after 2 am.

Today we all slept in, got up and went to Quick Trip to get a cheap lunch while we road by a place in the country we are interested in buying. Before we left we put 2 chickens on in a smoker/roaster oven. I had 10 pounds of potatoes that needed used up so I made them all in to mashed potatoes, made quite a bit! Tonight we played a few more games and now the kids are in bed.

Tomorrow I am going to start going through each room to start my major rehaul of slimming down our possessions. We have too much stuff, its hard to keep stuff organized and clean. I admit I have the tendency of being a pack rat and can find 101 reasons why something is special or needed. I need to break that cycle. I know I'll be much happier because my house will be much more organized and easier to clean. I've read everything a person can read about it, now I need to put all that reading into practice.

One of my biggest problems is clothes. I always kept all the kids' clothes so that when I had the next one they could wear the last ones clothes. Well that worked out for the first 5 kids, then started becoming a major undertaking. Now I have given away a lot of clothes, but their rooms are so full of clothes that most of the time they are all over the floors. I might try keeping so many sets of outfits and give away the rest. The girls share a room and the boys share a room. So imagine 3 girls in one room and 4 boys in the other! I need to get more creative! My youngest stayed in my room until he was 3, now that he is in the boys' room I can never find an outfit for him. Hopefully this year will be the year that I really accomplish all the things I keep meaning to do :-)

My top priorities for this year that I hope to accomplish is to read through the Bible, organize my home and our school, loose weight, and hopefully buy a home and move!

My own Blog!

I've been reading blogs daily for the past few months and really enjoy them. I would have loved creating something like this 5 years ago, I hope I can get myself motivated to set this one up!