Spring: Finding Hope in New Life

29 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by Natalie in Dealing with Death, Pregnant After a Loss Tags: , ,

I think sometimes I could sit on my couch all day with my hands on my middle, enjoying the kicking, wiggling movements of my unborn son.

Each jab and nudge are a miracle to me. A miracle I tragically took for granted last time I was pregnant. I still can’t believe I am going to have another baby.

I wrote last year about how spring seemed like a slap in the face. The birds chirping, the flowers blooming, were all salt in my wound — reminding me of the son I buried in the spring of 2010.

This year my attitude is somewhat softened. Today, spring is a reminder to me of the miracle of life. I have come to know how close the line between life and death can be. How easily it can be crossed.

Something as simple as a little more water would have meant life to my poor pine tree. And a simple true knot in a vital life chain meant death for my third baby boy.

It’s crazy how fragile life is.

And although I still miss my Luca like crazy — last weekend I cried until I thought my eyes would melt as I thought about his loss and the changes it has forced into my life — I have been thinking more on the miracle of life than the tragedy of death.

With Easter coming I talked to my boys about the meaning of Easter eggs — how they can be a symbol of new life. Now whenever I see a colorful egg I can’t help but think of new life. And more specifically the new life that is growing inside me.

I guess I am kind of like a giant Easter egg. (We all know I am starting to look like one.) My round, bursting belly is a symbol of new life. A life I can’t wait to meet. No matter what happens.

And although I still take far too many things in this life for granted, this year I am trying to enjoy the warming of the Earth, the rebirth after winter.

Derby Time

22 Mar 2012 5 Comments

by Natalie in What We Do/Make for Fun, What's a mom to do? Tags: , , , , ,

My boys are 3 and 5. Well below the typical Cub Scout age. And yet this past week I found myself whittling away at a rectangular block of wood, trying desperately to make it resemble a racecar.

All because my church is putting on a Pinewood Derby Party tonight for people of all ages.

I heard about the party months ago but brushed it aside. It wasn’t until church leaders started talking it up to my 5-year-old that I had any desire to participate. He got so excited at the idea of making a racecar that I couldn’t tell him “no.”

I tried to get my dad to help him. I remember him and my brother working on their Pinewood Derby cars for hours when I was younger. I think they actually won the grand prize a couple of times.

But time ran out and we needed a car. Fast.

So I spent two afternoons hacking at two awkwardly shaped pieces of wood transforming one into a “shark car,” the other into a “fire jet.”

If it weren’t for my friend Heidi, I don’t think I would have ever thought I could do it. But after I saw the awesome Ghost Buster van and Mermaid mobile she made with her two young kids, I was inspired to grab a hack saw and try making our own cars.

Of course the boys wanted to “help” but their poor little arms couldn’t make the old-school saw move up and down. They mostly played on the lawn while I sawed until my sides hurt.

For double what I paid for the wooden block, I could have bought a precut car at the store. But this frugal mom wanted to save $4.

Thank heavens for my parent’s electric sander. It helped smooth out and camouflage the rough and uneven saw marks. If you look closely you can tell that one side of the shark’s fin cuts in more than the other, and you just may see fire jet’s curves in its slant, but it’s the best we could do.

And my boys LOVE their cars. They have been carrying them around ever since we made them. We probably won’t win any type of award tonight, but we had fun working on our first cars.

Luckily the party isn’t an official Pinewood Derby race so there aren’t any official rules. We didn’t have to worry about design or weight restrictions. Who knows what we will do when we enter a real race.

Just Shoot Me Now

15 Mar 2012 4 Comments

by Natalie in Pregnant After a Loss Tags: , ,

Thursday nights have become a real pain in my butt thanks to a new medication I’m taking.

As if I weren’t in enough pain already, I decided to add a shot into my life every 7 days.

Since my second child was born 4½ weeks early, my new doctor suggested I start taking medicine at my 16th week of pregnancy that should prevent me from going into preterm labor this time.

Little did I know that medicine was administered by weekly injection. Oh, and in order to save $30 a week, I was going to have to give the shot to myself or have my husband administer the shots instead of a registered nurse at my doctor’s office.

It has been a real learning experience. The first week doing the shot at home, my two little boys wanted to watch. But as soon as the needle was ready they started screaming bloody murder in the hallway outside our bathroom.  That did wonders on my nerves.

I know I’ll never forget the week we lost the needle off of the syringe somewhere on our bathroom floor. Then, found it again when it stuck my husband’s thumb. I sure hope he doesn’t go into preterm labor now.

But all joking aside, I am a big baby when it comes to needles. Normally I have to turn my head when a nurse draws my blood or I’ll get lightheaded. I have been poked and tested more times in the past 18 months than ever before in my life, but that doesn’t mean I have grown to enjoy the skin pierce.

Not to mention the pain that comes after the shot. Normally the medication makes my whole leg sore for a day or so.

But despite all of the pain, I have never wanted to have a baby more in my entire life than I do right now. I am scared, anxious, ecstatic and thrilled to be pregnant. Too bad being thrilled does nothing to soften the needle’s point.

I think that no matter how many times I go through with this weekly ordeal, and no matter how many times my husband tells me to “relax,” I will stiffen up like a corpse during every injection.

But I am determined to do all that is in my power to ensure that the baby I am carrying has a fighting chance at life. For me that means things like no Ibuprofen and weekly shots.

The things you do for love. And heaven knows I love this baby — a lot more than I ever thought possible at this point.

One day I’ll look back and be glad I did this, but for now I’m going to keep my eyes closed and try not to flinch.

Up All Night

08 Mar 2012 5 Comments

by Natalie in Parenting Battles, What's a mom to do? Tags: , , ,

It happens at least twice a week. I am slumbering soundly when I am jolted awake by an outcry from my offspring.

It’s 1, 2, or 3 a.m. and one of them needs something. Usually it’s something simple, something they could easily fix on their own, but they seem to forget how to do anything in the dark, cold night.

My husband and I end up taking them to the potty or tucking them back in. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather they holler out than wet the bed, but I am left wondering where I went wrong.

I have failed to teach my children how to climb out of bed, walk five feet to the bathroom and go potty on their own. I have also failed to show them how to tug on their sheet corner to pull covers back over their little cold bodies.

They just can’t seem to do it without help.

Every once in a while they actually NEED help from a parent. But they cry wolf so many times I don’t know when to believe them.

The worst is when they wake up sick. I am ashamed to say I am not a good parent when it comes to helping them feel better in the wee hours of the morning.

I should be patient, loving and consoling. Instead I transform into a grizzly she bear who is woken from hibernation and just might devour her cubs.

I can’t help myself and normally after I go back to bed and get a couple of winks of sleep in, I wake up feeling like a complete jerk.

A few weeks a go my oldest went to bed with an earache. He ended up sleeping a record of 2 hours before hollering out for help. At 10:30 p.m., when I was just getting ready to tuck myself in, he shouted out in pain.

We tried relieving the pressure and pain by using an old home remedy of steamed onions and a warm rag. That helped for about five seconds. At 11:30 my husband ran to the nearest Wal-Mart and got numbing eardrops.

By midnight he was a whole new kid. And we were ready to go back to bed. Well at least my husband and I were. My oldest was wide awake. We set him up downstairs watching Netflix on the LoveSac. Thirty minutes later he was up by our bed wide eyed and whining.

We forced him back onto his bed but he wasn’t going to go to sleep. He wasn’t tired and he wasn’t happy. I lied in bed listening to him scream at us for 30 minutes. He wanted me to sleep by him.

We hollered back and forth to each other for what felt like forever. I was so tired I was delusional and immature. I had some pretty stupid comebacks including something like, “Don’t you realize that I have to get up in less than 5 hours?”

Yeah, I am sure that my 5-year-old with an earache can calculate his mother’s sleep total.

My husband hit the breaking point at 1 a.m. and went to lie by him.

We got about 4.5 hours of sleep that night – way too little for a tired, pregnant mother.

But it’s sort of my fault. I should have gone to bed an hour earlier. And, had I laid by him when he was wide awake at midnight, I could have got at least six hours.

I just can’t think clearly in the moonlight. All the sick little boy wanted was his mommy to lay by him while he fell asleep. I should have done that.

I’ve got to learn to control myself when jolted from bed in the night. My boys are 5 and 3. It’s okay for them to holler for help in the night.

But I think I might try having cover-pulling-up contests and potty-break practices to get them trained on what to do when they wake up with minor incidents.

Then maybe we can all go a couple of weeks between nighttime episodes. Until we have a newborn that is.

I’m dying to know, how do you keep your cool when woken up by your babies at night?

My Artistic Son Update

01 Mar 2012 3 Comments

by Natalie in What We Do/Make for Fun

Several months ago I wrote about my artistic son who was drawing me out of house and home. I am happy to announce I have finally finished putting together a crafty way to keep his masterpieces. Well, most of them.

After my original blog post I had several great suggestions on what to do to keep his work. I decided to bind his best work into three books – his big book of artwork, his medium book of artwork and his little book of artwork.

I am so thrilled at how the books turned out I decided I’d share what I did – just in case you too are living with a mini Picaso.

I had hundreds of pages with sketches of Megaladon sharks, monsters, dragons, dinosaurs and more. If I would have hung his work up on my home’s bare walls, the pages would have made a wall paper several layers thick.

He has drawn hundreds if not thousands of pictures during his lifetime.

I gathered up his work from all corners of our house. There were stashes of his drawings in my bedroom, hall, closet, kitchen, van and any baby bag we have ever used. I had armfuls of pages that I laid out on our kitchen table.

I sorted out his best work and recycled the rest – yes I did let go of a few of them.

Then I placed them into three different piles based on page size. I trimmed each page’s edge to make them all uniform in size.

My good friend Jolene let me borrow her do-it-yourself binding machine. After getting each pile in an order I liked, I used the machine to punch the sides. My boys were so excited about he books they wanted to help. (It probably took twice as long with their “help” and I know I lost my temper a couple of times, but oh well.)

I bought thick comb-style binding and plastic covers from my local office store’s copy center. When all the pages were punched, I laced the binding through and voila! Instant art books.

I made six total – three for my 5-year-old and three for my 3-year-old.

It took me several weeks to get all of this done and of course my sons haven’t stopped drawing, so I’ll have to do this all again in a year or so. But I love flipping through the pages and seeing their talent grow.

I also love that my oldest has moved past his mom’s-always-angry-in-my-artwork phase. He has now started drawing me straight-faced. It’s not a smile, but it’s a vast improvement.

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