Trip to Mississippi

These are a couple of pictures from our trip to see Paul's family. The top picture is Lauren and Nana. Nana is Paul's grandmother. The last picture is of Lauren and G-Ma, Paul's mom. (Lauren looks funny in this picture because she has a jolly rancher in her mouth!) We had a good time. It was nice to get away from here and be able to to take a break from everything that has been going on the past six weeks or so. Lauren really enjoyed spending time with her grandparents. I have some more pictures to post later. Our trip home was pretty exciting. We ran into a storm in Tennessee and ended up staying the night with my brother and sister-in-law who live right outside Nashville. Thank you God for family! So it tooks two days to make it back to Indiana. We were all pretty disappointed to see that our part of the storm only left us with about an inch of snow!

Delight?

I was meeting with a friend today for a biblestudy on prayer and came across this verse...."Whom have I in heaven but you? And I have no delight or desire on earth beside You." Psalm 73:25   This should be the cry of our hearts! What does delighting in the Lord truly look like? This is a question that I have been pondering most of the day.  Matthew Henry says " What is the desire of  a good man? It is this, to know, and love, and live to God, to please him and be pleased in him."

Nothingness = Bliss!

 I attended a birth that was 27 hours long on Thursday. The most beautiful (and one of the longest!) experiences I have had as a doula. I can normally bounce back pretty fast from these marathon days, but not so much anymore! I had to work Friday and Saturday so that  could  have contributed to my fatigue. Paul and I declared a "Rest Day" today and it has been wonderful! We didn't even go to church. We laid around and played with Lauren all day. I have never felt so good doing absolutely nothing with my family. Lauren has been running a fever for a few days so one of  us would have had to stay home from the day's activities anyway. Everyone take a day sometime soon to just 'be' and hang out with those you love! Don't do any chores and order take out!

Babies, Babies and more Babies!

I just realized that it has been quite sometime since I have mentioned  anything about my doula work. I am getting ready to help with my 12th birth. I can't believe it! I have a pretty busy March and April planned. I have four scheduled so far.  I feel so privileged to be able to be apart of these new little lives! It's a pretty rewarding job. So, for any of you who were wondering, yes, I am still in the "baby" business and loving every minute of it! I just started a part time job at a little place in Louisville that has lactation consulting and everything you could possibly need for pregnancy and nursing. It's a really neat place to work having doula experience because everything that I talk about with customers directly relates to my baby job. I am learning so much!

Update...

So, after a week and a half Lauren is officially on her full dose of medication. We had to start her on it slowly due to it causing upset stomachs. Now the real test starts. We have to watch and see if  she continues to have any seizures on the full dose. We have definitely seen a decrease in the amount of seizures. It's hard to tell how many she is having because you have to be looking right into her face to tell if she is having one at that moment. I didn't realize this, but when she is having a seizure she is not in a daydreaming state at all, but she is completely unconscience. ( I try not to dwell on this! ) When we think that she isn't having anymore seizures after a period of time we will get a 24 hour EEG done to see if the medication has completely stopped them or not. Pray that it completely stops them! If not, then she will have to go on an additional medication. Ugh! So far the only side effects that we have seen is that she seems to be a bit more tired and has constant blue circles under her eyes. From what I have researched, this is normal. I was doing a bit more reading about CAE, and even though it is controlled by medication, kids can still develop learning disabilities with this disorder. This made me cry! I struggled (and still do) with a learning disability. I had a very difficult time in school. Dealing with these issues is not something that I ever thought she might ever have to do. The realization that she could have learning issues is very hard for me to deal with. God is in complete control. She is not our child, but His. I just pray that if this is what our future holds then God would equip all three of us to handle it to the best of our ability. I think I need to spend some time meditating on 2 Chron. 20:15!

Adjustments...

Hope this finds you all doing well. I am sad to see the holiday season end, but am excited to find out what will happen in the new year!
Well, life has been quite interesting here lately. Let me start from the very beginning. Lauren has had febrile seizures since she was about a year old. These happen when she gets sick and her fever goes up so high so fast that her little brain can't handle it and she has a seizure. She has had two of these that we know of. That being said, about a month and a half ago I started noticing that Lauren was having a hard time listening and paying attention to me. She has always been slightly clumsy, but seemed even more so lately. She developed a double ear infection right around this time and she had a lot of trouble hearing us. I had to make her look right in my face to get her to understand what I was telling her. I start noticing that when I was talking to her she would get this "glazed over" look for 5-15 seconds in the middle of a conversation. I didn't pay to much attention attention, but I did mention it to Paul and told him that I thought it looked like she might be having a slight seizure or something. I had never experienced anything like this with her before. Paul did some research on " Absence Epilepsy" and it described Lauren's behaviour to a T. I started to notice that the episodes started happening more and more often. She got to the point where she was having them every 5 to 10 minutes. I think I almost had a nervous breakdown! We got her into the pediatrician and she confirmed what we thought was going on. Lauren had an EEG and a neurology appt. and the neurologist said that she definitely has Childhood Onset Absence Epilepsy (CAE). It is treatable. From what the neurologist and all of the research that we have done say is that they don't cause any brain damage and the child has no idea what is happening. They don't even remember them. Lauren couldn't describe anything to us because she didn't know she was having them. This disorder develops between the ages of 4 and 9. The earlier they start, the more likely they are to grow out of them. There is a small percentage that they can develop into gran mal seizures later in life. Anyway, the neurologist thinks that Lauren's case is pretty straight forward and that she will grow out of them. It could be ten years, but he is hopeful. She is on medication now to help control them, meaning that they should go away completely. He believes that the febrile seizures and these absence seizures are connected and that this is some sort of genetic mutation that might have just skipped generations. I am so thankful for that double ear infection! Without it we wouldn't have noticed the seizures. Thinking about the future makes us a bit nervous. It's hard not to think about the what if's. What if she doesn't grow out of the seizures? What if she can't learn to drive because of them? What if her medication has some strange side effect? If anyone is on this medication for a long period of time it can lead to depression and suicidal tendancies in teenagers. It's hard to think about, but we just have to take it one day at a time and pray that she grows out of it. Life is so exciting! Everytime we have turned a corner this year it seems that God says " I need a little bit more faith from you!" I cling to Isaiah 43:2

More..

For some reason the blog site is limiting how many pictures I can download at a time.....Ok, in one of the pictures you can see that our little princess in making her way into the diva stage..sigh..we knew it would come some day! The wreath picture was my meager attempt at redoing our old one that was falling apart. The other pictures show some of what Lauren received for Christmas..thank you for the educational things! I think we have finished almost 1/2 of it already! The bathtub picture is an example of what happens when you give a child bathtub crayons....the package said that it would come off with water! Yeah, right! Took me 45 minutes using a bleach solution! Hope you all had a great holiday! Happy 2010!

Photos...

Lauren is just as in love with my new snuggie as much I am! Go ahead and laugh, but you don't know what you are missing until you have entered snuggie world! The picture of her in bed is how we found her on Christmas night after an exciting day. I couldn't help but get a picture!

November 2009

Time flies!

It has been too long since I have gotten on here. I apologize! Whenever we have a free moment I forget that I need to update you! There is a lot of stuff going on but for now I will give you the family update!
Paul is still working his tail off at work and trying to finish his degree. He is only taking one class this quarter and I have to say that I really like it. He isn't quite as stressed and Lauren and I get to see a little more of him!
Lauren is... well, she's four. Little girl drama all wrapped up with incredible sweetness and a love of life. She and I are doing four year old preschool together. She is having a blast and asks every morning when we are going to do her schoolwork. ( Let's see how long that attitude will last!) She has learned to write her name and we are working on the upper and lower case alphabet right now. It is incredible to watch her learn new concepts. Her memorization skills are astounding so we are getting as much rote memory as we can into her. This is the age, so I have been reading, to just get it in and then one day they will put it all together.
I am still staying busy with my doula clients. I have a month or so off and then I am going to have a pretty busy spring. I am also taking some classes with friend of mine here at the seminary. It has been so much fun. Right now we are taking a class on great leaders. It is so much fun! The history and the influence on the church is amazing.
Praying that you all are having a great fall season so far!

Oh, Boy....

Sorry it's been awhile. Life just keeps on going....This next week I will turn 30 and close on a house all at the same time. I know that there are those of you that are rolling your eyes and saying that I am being ridiculous, but I am really not looking forward to this birthday at all. In my head I am still 25. Life seems to be moving faster than it should be!
As for the house thing...we are very happy to FINALLY be buying a house. Hooray! We are supposed to be clsong on Sept. 4th if all goes well. So far everythig has been very quick and almost too easy. I think that over the past few weeks we have found ourselves holding our breath and waiting for the axe to fall. Anyway, so far so good. Lauren is very excited to have a new room. She has been trying to convince us that she needs Hello Kitty and purple puppy dogs on her wall. ??? No idea where that came from...

Summer Pictures

Spray Park

Well, Paul went back to work today after having three days off..It always makes me sad to see him go back to work. :( Lauren hates it too. She always goes to bed on the nights he has to work talking about how she really needs her daddy and he really needs to kiss her goodnight. It's sweet. Anyway, we had a girls night...we made home made pepperoni pizza that Lauren ate about 3/4's of the "roni" off of before it went into the oven! We had fun..we spent the evening pretend camping in the living room. She was so excited to find out that we have a "real live" tent and really wants to go camping with her daddy and wondered if they had a bathroom outside...very interesting conversation to have with an almost 4 yr. old! I hope you all are having a great weekend!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0 Go look at this video....how creative! I laughed so hard I almost choked!