Is there ever time for the mom?

Tommy is three, a very active three year old. To those of you who have no tolerance for moms complaining for a second, don't read. But I'm ready to blow. Its been a test today, to see how long my child goes without "needing" me...the longest spurt was 2 min. Being pregnant and tired, and trying to still stay on top of the bare essentials, there is no rest, ever it seems. I try to sit on the chair and put my feet up, only to hear crashing in the back room where Tommy fell of his bunk bed. Then seeing his room, I see every item of clothing removed from the dresser (I have no idea why) and the beds I had just made turned into some sort of hideout. 30 minutes of work for me was destroyed in 3 minutes. I yell and loose my cool, as I am so much more these days, and try to get him to help me clean up. I find myself giving into battles with him just cause I don't have the energy to fight or disciple. I take him swimming to tire him out, and give my pelvis some much needed weight off my feet release. I'm the only thing he wants to climb on or swim with. I become a jungle gym in second, and end up much more exhausted than I began. After we got out of the gym shower and getting dressed, Tommy empties the bottle of shampoo back into his hair. I almost cry and want to throw him in the pool. But only one change of clothes. On the way to the car, he runs away from me, only to loose his balance, and fall in the biggest muddy ice puddle. He screams in pain, and he is covered in brown water. I wrap him naked in a towel and throw him in his car seat and drive home, trying not to go crazy. As I'm staring a load of laundry of wet towels, Tommy announces he just peed in the middle of our carpet. WHAT? Hes perfectly potty trained? I fly off the handle again, and pray not to totally loose it. I then remember that our dryer (20 years old) is broken and cant be fixed as of a day ago, which means I'm going to be hauling all this to the laundry mat. The tears start to come...I hurt everywhere. i feel car sick. I cant do this one more second. I say I need a time out, and try to find a website with something inspirational to get me through the next 30 minutes. But that involved me not being there with Tommy, and he spilled apple juice (accident, I don't know). I make it through 30 seconds of a "Mormon message" and yell, "Can I not get 30 seconds to myself"?? Tommy begins to cry, and so do I. I know he didn't sign up for this, and some days I wonder why I did. But I calm down, clean up the pee and juice, and sit him inn front of the Disney channel for who knows how long he will last, and say "I'm sorry for yelling, I love you", and start to write here. I need to fall apart somewhere, and I'm sure others have felt this way. But where do you turn for peace? I think tonight will need to be a date night for myself...maybe a dollar movie or something. My husband will be happy to give me a few hours I'm sure, and I need it. Hopefully with a little break and a good bath, tomorrow I wont loose it by 9 AM like today.

Beaver and Baby Hearts

It’s been a while since I’ve wrote down anything, let alone in our blog. But I have a second today and wanted to update. Rob is doing his family practice rotation for Medical school in Beaver, where he grew up. It’s a month long rotation, and he is loving being back in his old stomping grounds and seeing people at the clinic. It’s a rare medical practice in that since the town in so small, these family practitioners are allowed to do almost all procedures…all. So Rob is getting tons of surgery, colonoscopies, baby deliveries, and about everything else. We are staying with his parents there in Beaver, and I thought I really could do the “small town” thing. Well it turns out the “small town” really isn’t so much my “thing”. Ive spoiled my child living in a super active area with preschool, weekly zoo & museum visits (season pass), pool, and play dates almost daily. It’s pretty easy when your whole ward in in one apartment complex to always entertain your 3 year old. Beaver, not so much. We needed to come home every week for my doctors appointments anyways, and after my week trying to figure out how to entertain my kid in the in-laws house with nothing to do, we decided that we’d come back to Salt Lake during the week, and do weekends with Rob, since that is when he saw us anyways. We miss Robbie, but are happy to have some things to break up our days here.

This week was a little crazy to start off with. While down with Rob this weekend, Tommy said he was feeling sick. Understatement. He was sick all day Sunday and through the night. At one point in the night, I went in to see him throwing up on himself but not waking up. He was unresponsive, and I panicked and threw him in a blanket and in the car to go to Primary Children’s. Upon having him evaluated, I was lectured on the risks of dehydration. I reassured them that they are dealing with the most OCD mom there is, and I don’t mess around with my kids being sick. His levels in his blood were so off the charts that they said this is when little bodies start shutting down. It made me sick that within 8 hours my kid was so dangerously ill. They admitted us to make sure that he could level out, and 13 hours, 4 ½ IV bags later, and Zofran, we were able to get home. That very same day I had the appointment for my baby that I have been dreading for weeks, and I knew I had to do it without Rob.

With all the karyotypes coming back normal, all of us were shocked. They said with the levels I had, it would be likely there would be heart problems however. This was still a relief to hear knowing that we could fix most of them so the baby could live. I had to wait till the baby was big enough that they could do an echocardiogram on the baby itself. Crazy how they can do it on a BABY! I had the EKG done, and had 2 different doctors come and do it, as the first one was sure that maybe she was missing something. But she wasn’t…WE HAVE A HEALTHY HEART! The baby is anticipated to have a perfectly normal heart at birth, and be normal. I sobbed of course and felt the urge to throw up for a few seconds, but called Rob. We both were thrilled, but still had weird reactions inside. It’s like we finally can be excited that this baby is going to make it, but we didn’t know how to handle that news and try to start to be excited. We have had nothing but worry and tears for months, and now in the matter of one day, we flip the switch and are supposed to be unworried and ready. We didn’t want to set cribs up, go through storage and get the baby stuff cause it may be too hard to put it back. Now we can, and we need to get used to the idea that all will be okay, and this baby is coming in about 12 weeks. Now we can finally soak up the miracle that is inside me and not worry about what will happen when he’s born. He will be like every other baby as far as we can tell, and it is a miracle. There are times in your life when you say, “Wow, we got so lucky”. This isn’t one of them. This isn’t “luck” at all. This is divine, and we know it. Drue is meant to come to us, and we are going to work on getting ready for this little powerhouse of a spirit.