WHAT A WEEK!

Life has been quite crazy since last Friday night. We've had some good, bad, and everything in between. I'll just take it all in order.

Last Friday night at bed I noticed I was spotting. Needless to say, I had a total melt down, full on sobbing and a TON of fear ran through me. I was just shy of 14 weeks last week and that is exactly how far along I was in January when I had some spotting and eventually found out that we had lost the baby. And being Friday I knew there was nothing I could do until Monday short of going to the ER. The good thing was I was  planning to go to Bloomington, IN for Zones to see my old team compete.

I left for the meet Saturday after my swim lessons and arrived in time to see the final 2 events of the day. My former team looked great and was qualifying divers to Nationals all over the place. I got a chance to judge one of the events, and of course I was the ref and there were all kinds of weird calls I had to make! I don't think I screwed anything up too bad, at least no one told me I did. That night I went to dinner with two of the families that I used to coach and had a great time catching up. Saturday I got to do some platform coaching which not only made me super happy, but my former divers were happy to have me back for the day as well :) And to keep me busy I filled in announcing for 2 events. It was a great time, just what I needed to keep my spirits up and keep my mind off what might be going on with me and/or the baby.

I got back to Cincinnati Sunday afternoon and had a nice time with Chris and the kids, but as soon as the kids were in bed and I was no longer distracted I was back to worrying and thinking of the worse case scenarios. I have the most wonderful husband who comforted me and kept reassuring me that everything was just fine.

So Monday morning I called the doctor as soon as the office opened and the wonderful office they are they got me in promptly at 1:30p that day. I saw Dr Z, who I had seen before and she was absolutely great. She did a full exam and everything looked great, the spotting had stopped and no signs remained, and the baby sounded perfect. She decided I should come back in 2 weeks instead of waiting until my next scheduled appointment which would have been 3 weeks and we scheduled my 20 week ultrasound for August 27th (Don't forget, you can make a guess about the baby on the link to your right).

So all ended up just fine, but with this constant anxiety that kept creeping up whether or not anything was going wrong I decided I would get a home fetal doppler machine. A friend of mine has one and recommended it and one of the doctors I had seen around 10 weeks had suggested getting one as well. I ordered one immediately Monday after the good appointment and it arrived Wednesday. The sound of that sweet baby's heart beat was so comforting and worth every penny. I have been using it at least twice a day since it has arrived. The baby's heartbeat has been great - between 120 and 160 bpm and usually around 140, just where it should be. After all that worry and anxiety everything ended up going from bad to good with a little extra piece of mind at the end :)

If you've been keeping up with this blog you know that 2 weeks ago Brenden had to have 7-8 stitches in his cheek. We had gotten the stitches taken out 5 days after it happened and everything seemed to be going well. As you can see from the below pictures it was healing great and it looked like it would be a minimal scar.

The day the stitches came out

Day 3 after stitches came out -
 you can barely see the scar!

Well that all changed on Wednesday when we were outside playing with the neighbors and I noticed the scar looked swollen. My neighbor agreed and I called the doctor and spoke with a nurse. Based on what I described to her they wanted him to come in immediately to find out if there was an abscess or other infection. Luckily I was able to get someone to cover my swim lessons and my fabulous neighbor was able to watch Jake and Rylan so I could get him to the doctor - I called at 4:30p and they could get him in at 5:20p and I was supposed to teach at 6p and Chris was out of town - THANK GOODNESS for Awesome neighbors and co-workers! The doctor was unable to determine if it was a simple infection that antibiotics would take care of or something more serious like an abscess that they would need to cut out. Regardless, the scar was now getting out of control and he would need to eventually be seen by a plastic surgeon to repair the damage being done by the infection. We started him on strong antibiotics that night and the doctors office would be calling the next day about getting him in with a plastic surgeon. I was instructed to keep a close eye on it and if it got any worse I would need to take him to the Children's ER to have it cut open and if the antibiotics didn't show any signs of improvement by Friday morning we would likely have to figure out how to get it cut open to have the infection removed. Here is what it looked like:

As you can see it was no longer a barely noticeable scar and a bump had formed and you could see there was puss on the inside - lovely, right? Thursday there was no noticeable change either way, but Friday when he got up he looked much better! The white "head" that had formed was gone and the swelling had gone down a lot. I was so relieved! We still need to have him looked at to fix the scar, but we don't have the added step of reopening the wound to cut anything out of it - HURRAY! However, later Friday night after his shower I noticed that the "head" looked like it was back. As I inspected closer it opened! YUCK! The good news though was the contents for lack of a better word came out cleanly and his scar looked almost back to normal. The infection was ready to leave without a trace. So now we wait to get into the plastic surgeon to see if the scar can be minimized more after this whole ordeal. Fun stuff for sure, don't you wish you could be me right now?

So as we left for the Doctor Wednesday evening there was a massive thunderstorm in our area. By the time I got to the doctor I looked like I had gone swimming in my clothes from the crazy rain. When Brenden and I returned home from the doctor and getting his prescription filled we discovered that shortly after we left the power in our neighborhood had gone out - sweet! One of the neighbors had heard it would be back on by 9pm, but that did NOT happen. So I was home alone with the kids with no power and my dad and brother were supposed to be coming to visit on Thursday. We were all up at 5am on Thursday still with no power and the estimates for it returning had been moved to FRIDAY - Again, sweet. My dad and Brother decided to come anyway and Chris decided to stay in Michigan one more night to finish closing up his office there. Luckily the estimates were wrong and the power ended up coming back around 1pm on Thursday, it's so good to know the power company has its shit together and can keep its consumers properly informed - can you sense the sarcasm? But whatever, we had a very nice visit from my Dad who left Friday morning and we are continuing to enjoy having Uncle Chris here until Monday. 

So hopefully after all the craziness this past week and really the month of July hopefully everything will settle down now. Jake is going to be leaving with my brother to go to Arizona for a visit with my mom. Then they will both fly back here on August 2nd so my Mom can stay with the kids and Chris and I can go to a wedding in Chicago. I am VERY much looking forward to having a couple days alone with Chris in Chicago to unwind from this crazy month!