MuseOddity

She’s Here!

{ July 6, 2011 @ 9:00 am } · { Family }
{ Tags: Baby Girl, birthing, Cambria, Family, pregnancy } · { Comments (1) }

Ok, so she has been here for three weeks and this is the first time I have even looked at my blog, but whatever! Cambria Elizabeth was born June 14, 2011 at 9:55 pm. She was 8lbs 7oz and 19.5 inches long. Labor was only 7.5 hours and the best part… only three pushes! A cardiologist was on consult during the birth but thankfully I didn’t need him because my heart did awesome! Cambria (pronounced with a long “a”) is healthy and already closing in on 9.5 lbs but she has reflux… really bad reflux. Baby girl pukes darn near everytime something goes in her and sometimes for no reason at all. Sometimes it is just normal spit up but sometimes it is projectile puke pouring out her mouth and both nostrils all at once. It breaks my heart to watch her gag and choke and hold her breath. Her antics with breath holding landed her in Children’s Hospital for two days at two weeks old. All this aside, we are so proud of our beautiful new girl and I could not be more in love! Roland is doing awesome and he adores his little sister, hugging and kissing her every chance he gets. I love my little family and I could not feel more blessed!

Because things have been so hectic I am forever behind on editing photos but I am linking to my facebook mobile album so you can at least see what she looks like! She has a newborn shoot tomorrow with the fabulous Kristin Frost so I should have more awesome pictures to share soon! Thanks for everyone’s prayers, positive thoughts, and support!

Facebook link: Cambria (Sorry, this is my entire mobile album so there are a lot of old pictures in there too, just a little peek at the crazy).

Almost There

{ June 13, 2011 @ 4:50 am } · { Family }
{ Tags: baby bump, Baby Girl, birthing, dysautonomia, Family, health, POTS, pregnancy } · { Leave a Comment }

Time is up. Tuesday at noon I check in to labor and delivery for an induction. To say I am relieved is an understatement. I love carrying this precious girl but she has ran out of room and my heart seems to be very irritated by her presence so it is officially eviction time. I am 39 weeks (at my last ob appointment my due date was officially moved from the 26th to the 21st as my OB and I had long discussed). Truthfully I wanted so badly to try to go into labor on my own this time (I was induced at 39 weeks with Roland too) , something about the excitement of figuring out if it is “time” and getting to labor some at home before heading in. I am totally fine at this point with an induction just as long as baby girl gets here safely and my heart holds up too. Plus since they are predicting her to be on the large side I want to have her before they say she is too big and her size warrants a c-section.

I would normally be running around the house in a flurry of activity this morning trying to do last minuite cleaning, cooking, packing, etc… This time I am not allowed to be on my feet more than absolutely necessary. Do you know my heart flipped out AGAIN! Saturday morning and I had to take ANOTHER squad ride? They already had in my order for admission to ICU again and it looked like I was going to have to relive the same nightmare I had lived just a week prior. My heart rhythm ended up converting before they could get me to ICU so they held me for observation instead and eventually discharged me!!!!!! I can’t tell you how happy this made me. Plus Saturday was supposed to be my day of pampering and even though I missed my hair appointment I was able to reschedule my mani/pedi and even thought I showed up tired, looking gross with hospital adhesive and patches all over me, I made it and it was great.

I have so many pictures to show you but I am way behind on editing so those will have to wait. For now I just want to let you know that all the messages I got of encouragement , positive thoughts, prayers, … I cannot tell you how much they mean to me.

So, ways I need your prayers and positive thoughts right now…

* That I can continue to make it until Tuesday’s appointment with no further episodes of atrial fibrillation (or any other major health scares)

*That my body, specifically my heart , will handle labor well. They are inducing me and I will deliver naturally unless an emergency arises and a c-section becomes needed. In the end the c-section recovery would likely cause more problems for me so it is a last resort. However, all the strain and adrenaline of labor makes it very possible that my heart will go out of rhytm and I know my cardiology team is working with my OB team to be a part of labor. I don’t know what the plan is if this happens, just that cardiology will be there while I deliver.

Hopefully next time I check in here will be to announce the birth of our baby girl. We are holding out on the name until she is born but I will give you a hint: Curt and I love music, music inspires us and influences nearly every ascpect of our lives… her name is no exception.

Again, I love you guys for supporting me, you all rock!! Here’s to one kickin’ and safe and healthy delivery, cheers!

And Then Life Happened

{ June 8, 2011 @ 10:56 pm } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: crazy, health, POTS, pregnancy } · { Comments (2) }

My life has exploded all over the bathroom wall since I last posted. I’m tired and feel like poo so here is the wrap up… in bullet form.

*Saturday at 11pm I completely cleaned out our fridge and reorganized all its contents (completely irrelevant but man my fridge looks good)

*Sunday at 4 am got up from bed to go to bathroom, laid back down, felt heart palpitations, sat up after they persisted for several seconds, checked pulse, realized pulse was a chaotic mess that could not possibly be counted.

*Woke my hubby, made him check my pulse while he was still mostly asleep, he concurred it was jacked up, made the decision to call 911 since I am responsible for other life growing in my belly.

*Hooked up to heart monitor in living room, screen flashes 210 (beats per minute), EMT asks which hospital we are going to.

* Take my first ambulance ride, EMT asks what my previous all time heart rate was. I respond 228, he informs me we have shattered that record with an unbelievable 247. They give me iv meds, they do nothing, I am pretty sure I saw the monitor in the 250′s before reaching the hospital.

* After arriving at ER they determine I am in atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response. I stay this way for about the next TWELVE FREAKING HOURS. They pushed soooo much medicine in my iv’s (yes I had multiple iv’s) and my heart rate was barely hanging out below 200… then eventually it got to the 140′s.

*They discuss emergency c-section and then shocking my heart. I am too out of it to process any of it (but still manage to update Facebook several times, it is an instant virtual prayer chain).

*I am given iv pain med for unrelated reason, within 10 seconds my heart rate drops to 100 and I spontaneously convert back to a normal sinus rhythm.

*Diluadid really does cure everything.

*Stay in ICU a couple days, have ultrasound, find out baby is estimated to be 9lbs 9 oz plus or minus 10%.

*I freak out more about the size of baby than the condition of my heart.

*Had OB appointment today. Find out this Tuesday is D day unless I go sooner on my own.

*Again, I freak out.

* I slowly filter through the events of the last few days and am left with a mixture of thankfulness, anticipation, with a pinch of anxiety thrown in (no one can tell me this won’t happen to my heart again, in fact the cardiologist said at some point it probably will).

*Appreciate my decision to live for Christ. You may not think this is an intelligent decision for a science loving fool such as myself… when you are riding in a squad quite unsure if you will ever see your babies and family again you can tell me your opinion on the matter.

*The End.

Crazy Ramblings of a Hormone Crazed Woman

{ June 4, 2011 @ 6:50 pm } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: Baby Girl, crazy, Family, pregnancy } · { Comments (2) }

So many things are running through my mind right now. I am 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow, officially “full term” (although I definitely want her to hang in to as close as her due date as possible). I have really given little thought to giving birth again… until now. I had been coasting by on the thought that I did this once, I can do this again. Now I am suddenly flooded with thoughts and insecurities. I spent a good chunk of Roland’s pregnancy researching breast feeding and Curt and I took a class. I went into it armed with as much book knowledge as possible and it went great. Tonight I realized I have yet to look at a single breastfeeding resource this time around. I guess I assumed I did it once and will have no problem doing it again. Tonight while digging my breast pump supplies out of storage I flipped out. I don’t remember all the positions! The correct presentation! A good latch! Noooooo!!!!! Okay, deep breath…. I know it will be ok… but ….

I am alternately excited to give Roland a sibling and heartbroken he will no longer be the sole focus of our world. I am excited to bring our daughter into a loving home and sad she will never have the opportunity to be the only child and be showered with the one-on-one attention that Roland got for almost three years. I am an only child so the concept of siblings is foreign to me, I just don’t get it. I am about to get a crash course!

Then there is this other thing on my mind…. When I found out I was pregnant I immediately had this deep down feeling it was twins. I was soooo sick (which I never got with Roland), I was showing so much more quickly, I had several dreams there were two babies, I truly went into my first OB appointment more than half expecting to see two heart beats on the screen. So when the ultrasound started my doctor said here is the baby, here is the heartbeat, everything looks healthy AND here is a second gestational sac… but it looks empty. So there WERE twins, at least in the very beginning. The doctor said the second baby just failed to develop past that first point of conception. I walked out so grateful for the healthy baby with a strong hearbeat in my womb but there was just a slight sting that what I felt all along was true, but never meant to be. Honestly I have thought very little of it through the pregnancy but now that we are so close to meeting our daughter I occasionally wonder if she would have had a brother or a sister in there with her and what it would be like to be preparing for two newborns right now. I know… it wasn’t meant to be.

I know all these things that are suddenly swirling through my mind will work out in the end. I know Roland will be a great big brother and I know I will figure out how to nurse my child. I trust I will have another safe and healthy labor and delivery. The bottom line is my hormones are in overdrive and it doesn’t stop me from laying in bed at night thinking about these things! In the end all this is completely overridden by overwhelming joy that I feel in my bones. Our family wasn’t complete, it was missing a daughter, and we are set to meet her very soon… and I could not feel more blessed.

Jam Session

{ April 4, 2011 @ 11:13 pm } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: music, Roland } · { Comments (1) }

One of my favorite things about my boy is he definitely inherited his parents affinity for music. He carries his guitar around all day sometimes and makes up songs for us. I love this video my husband grabbed on his phone. Ignore the mess in the background, this is taken in our still-in-progress basement family/media room.

Attitude

{ March 16, 2011 @ 9:50 pm } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: dysautonomia, health, POTS, purpose } · { Comments (6) }

Tomorrow is St. Patty’s Day and it is somewhat of an emotional anniversary for me. It was St. Patrick’s Day 2006 when I had my first very major heart episode caused by the dysautonomia. Of course then we had no idea what was going on (and wouldn’t for quite some time) but I knew my life had changed forever… and I was right. Curt rushed me to the emergency room, when I arrived my heart rate was 228 beats per minute and every minute felt like an eternity as the hospital staff buzzed around me and I floated in and out of reality. I felt like a ghost hovering above my body as if I was watching what was happening to me in third person. The i.v. in my arm was pumped full of one drug after another as each failed to lower my heart rate to acceptable levels. I remember being very, very stoned. A nurse practitioner came in and was trying to ask me questions. She asked repeatedly if I had done any drugs or taken anything to cause my heart rate to be so high (I guess that is the first thing they suspect when a 26-year-old comes in with such severe tachycardia?). I vaguely remember Curt and I reassuring her the only drugs I had done that day was two puffs off an albuterol inhaler hours earlier. Being St. Patrick’s Day, the nurse was wearing a green headband with two antennas that had glitter covered green shamrocks on the top of each one. She also had obscene amounts of glittery gold and green eyeshadow caked around her eyes. As she leaned over my gurney and aggressively asked me for the tenth time if I had used cocaine recently , the antennas on the headband shook back and forth and a fine mist of green glitter rained down on my face. It all seemed to happen in slow motion… it was surreal. Shortly after she told Curt she was giving me another med to try to slow my heart… suddenly I was paralyzed. I literally could not move any part of my body and could not talk. I thought for absolute certain something horrid was happening then I heard her mention to Curt , “oh, by the way that med causes temporary paralysis, she will be able to talk again in about twenty minutes”.

Anyway… a few days later I was discharged from cardiac intensive care with a list of new meds that were still barely keeping my heart rate out of the tachycardia zone. As I sat at home I was trying hard to process how much my life had just changed. From that point forward nothing ever felt the same again. I was sick. It wasn’t getting better. I was pushed to specialist after specialist and each one had a differing opinion on what was causing it all. I remember thinking to myself this is temporary. I will get through this. It was March and I knew we were moving in July, I thought by then this will all be better and I will be back to normal. Then July came and I had hardly any improvement and was still searching for answers. We moved and I thought by my birthday next March things will be a lot better. March came and I was actually doing worse. It had been a whole year. Then my husband got a job in Columbus (we were living in Toledo at the time). It was somewhat of a dream job for him and I had always wanted to live in Columbus. I thought, things are going to be better, we are moving to our dream apartment in a swanky downtown building and I am going to go to grad school at OSU and things will be better by then. Well, you get the point…

Now, five years later are things any better? Yes and no. I still have dysautonomia, it still affects every aspect of my life and strongly influences my daily routines and how I live, where I go, what I can do. We do know what is wrong now, I am now very educated on this syndrome, I have almost grown used to the meds I have to take, stockings I have to wear, precautions I have to take, limitations I have. But am I still fighting the same stupid illness that caused my world to cave in that morning in the ER five years ago? Yes. But the best news is…. I am happy. I mean truly happy. I have learned to live life from a perspective few get to see and because of that I don’t take things in life for granted anymore. I love deeper, laugh harder, and attack each day with abandon because I am grateful to have that day. Sometimes it is hard not to wonder about the future. We don’t know the path this disease will take. Doctor’s tell me patients like me experience everything from spontaneous complete resolution of symptoms to progressive, some times life threatening, disorders like multiple system atrophy. I do not know what the future holds but I love my life and the people in it and I know they will be there with me regardless how things turn out. There is some scripture that sums up my attitude and how I chose to live my life.

Matthew 6:25-34

25 ”So I tell you, don’t worry about the food or drink you need to live, or about the clothes you need for your body. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. 26 Look at the birds in the air. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them. And you know that you are worth much more than the birds. 27 You cannot add any time to your life by worrying about it. 28 ”And why do you worry about clothes? Look at how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t work or make clothes for themselves. 29 But I tell you that even Solomon with his riches was not dressed as beautifully as one of these flowers. 30 God clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today but tomorrow is thrown into the fire. So you can be even more sure that God will clothe you. Don’t have so little faith! 31 Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 The people who don’t know God keep trying to get these things, and your Father in heaven knows you need them. 33 The thing you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what God wants. Then all these other things you need will be given to you. 34 So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Having joy in your life doesn’t have to be dependent on your circumstances. Things don’t have to be going perfectly to be able to walk in peace. God has a greater purpose for my suffering. He has ordered it, allowed it to be in my life, and I know it is not in vain. I certainly don’t have all the answers but I am thankful for peace that surpasses all my understanding. I am surrounded by beauty, love, and light and although life hasn’t turned out to be anything like I thought it would, I am okay with that. It is not a lost cause.

I Love to Shop.

{ February 9, 2011 @ 10:32 pm } · { Family }
{ Tags: Baby Girl, pregnancy, shopping } · { Comments (2) }

These are all the baby clothes I have purchased since I found out we were having a girl.

(Which has been exactly 13 days)

Can you tell I am excited to have a little girl to shop for?

Now, there is a lot more pink in there than I would normally pick.

Anyone who knows me at all knows I love to scour clearance racks looking for good deals.

I am willing to make concessions when the price tag on the clothes justifies it.

But just to balance it all I am ordering some adorable red, black, and white rock and roll chic items from Etsy.

Bump

{ February 8, 2011 @ 2:18 pm } · { Family }
{ Tags: baby bump, Baby Girl, Family, pregnancy } · { Comments (1) }

I am halfway to the finish line!

Here is a twenty week shot of our little lady.

Twenty Weeks

Thanks Kristin for grabbing this shot with my camera.

Hope everyone is having a great week.

Good Reality TV Alert

{ February 1, 2011 @ 2:21 pm } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: Baby Girl, birthing, pregnancy, Roland } · { Leave a Comment }

So there is a new show premiering tonight on Lifetime called “One Born Every Minute” . It chronicles life in the maternity ward at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, OH. This is exciting to me because that is where I delivered Roland and I will deliver this baby there as well. Actually my OB is part of a (all female) practice called Women’s Physicians and they are located inside Riverside and only deliver at Riverside. At my first appointment this pregnancy there were flyers in the exam rooms advertising for mommas to be a part of the series. I was not far enough along in my pregnancy to qualify… lucky for you guys as I am sure no one wants to see me deliver anything more than a pizza. I am anxious to see how deliveries there are protrayed. Curt and I LOVED our birthing experience. I read about so many negative hospital experiences filled with unnecessary interventions and scare tactics and I have to say I am so fortunate to have had such a positive experience. Riverside delivers a very high number of babies so some people tried to warn me it would feel like a “baby factory” there compared to the smaller hospitals in the suburbs. Grant it I have nothing else to compare it to, but we didn’t feel that way at all. I love my OB and thankfully she was there for my delivery and the rest of the hospital stay was as personal as I think it could have been. They had lax visiting hours and our son never left our side except for a couple very short exceptions. It was awesome. Anyway, with that being said I will be interested to see how things play out on the show.

In other news I finally have a noteworthy baby bump so I will have to get some pictures of it to post here soon. I hope everyone is surviving the snowpocolypse or whatever they are calling it. We have some ice here but overall nothing too bad.

Update: Just found out there is a twitter party tomorrow regarding the show. I have never participated in one before but may give it a try. If anyone is interested you can find info on it here.