Family - Pocketful of Joules

In & Out of the Hospital

Those of you following along on Facebook already know this, but we ended up taking another trip to the ER on Monday.

Jack’s wheezing had gotten progressively worse and my mom was concerned that it had turned into stridor. Long story short – Jack was diagnosed with bronchiolitis and RSV. His oxygen levels were low and dropping, so he was admitted into the hospital Monday night.

We were given a room with a crib that looked like a baby cage in it and a small couch which converted to a miniature bed. I spent the entire night fighting with Jack to keep the oxygen hoses up his nose.

It pretty much went like this:

Step 1: Hoses are inserted into nose. Jack cries so hard that his overtired body relaxes and he starts dozing off. He sleeps for 2 – 5 minutes.

Step 2: In his half-asleep state he swipes at his nose with his hand, ripping the oxygen tubes out. His oxygen levels lower, causing the machine alarms to go off. Jack wakes up fully and starts crying.

Step 3: I jump off the mini bed, lower the side of the baby cage which makes a huge squeak each time, wrestle Jack into submission to reinsert the hose. Soothe him back into a half-asleep state. Put up the crib railing {SQUEAK} and shove my arm through the rails so that I can continue patting him into sleepytime. Slowly walk away and get back into bed.

Step 4: Repeat

So that was life from about 9:00 pm – 2:00 am.

Then, it was time for another nebulizer treatment so I put Jack in my mommy ninja hold and kept him restrained while holding the dragon-shaped apparatus over his face for 10 – 15 minutes while he screamed.

At this point, I begged the nurse for something to knock him out so that he would just get OVER that hump of being half-asleep and finally get some actual sleep. I asked for anything – Tylenol, Benadryl, a tranquillizer dart to the neck…whatever! She came back a few minutes later with both Tylenol and Benadryl and we dosed him up and waited for it to kick in.

Finally, Jack fell asleep.

For about 20 minutes. Then, he went back to trying to scratch his nose and pulling out the oxygen hosing. We tried the crib, we tried the mini bed with me, and we tried the crib again. I finally got him to sleep on top of me like a scarf around 3:00 am. Of course, that is when MY sickness started kicking in even more and the next few hours consisted us sleeping together, me slowly extracting myself from his hold, me vomiting in the bathroom, rinsing mouth/brushing teeth, return to bed and scooch myself back under him. Rinse and repeat. Oh wait, there was random kicking and punching from him too. I can’t forget about that because I’ll most likely find some odd bruises in a few days and wonder how in the heck I got them.

We woke up around 7:00 and spent the day just hanging out around the hospital room. To get a good idea on how that went, try to imagine keeping an almost one year old confined to a small space for more than 20 minutes. Yeah, it went that well. Luckily, Jack went down for a nice, long nap around 10:00 and my mom arrived with some small toys for him to play with.

Even better, when the doctor stopped by to check him out she said that we were allowed to leave the hospital that day! It took a few more hours for us to get released, pack up all our crap, drive to pick up his new nebulizer prescription and get the little guy home. Pretty much the second we got in the door I stripped us of our germy clothes and gave him a nice, long bath. He then went down for a nap in his own (non-cage-like) crib and I took the world’s longest shower.

I’m back at work today and my husband is home with Jack. They have a pediatrician appointment scheduled for this afternoon, so hopefully she sees enough improvement that we can cut back on the nebulizer treatments (I had to give him one at 2:30 am, which made my morning alarm clock hurt a little more than usual).

Jack is doing so much better now though and I really appreciate all of the kindness from everyone on Facebook, Twitter, my email box and in real life. Except for those two people who “unliked” my Facebook page in the midst of my hospital updates. You guys suck.

Everyone else is fantastic though, so do me a little favor – wrap your arms around yourself and give yourself a big hug from me. Don’t do this in public though, that would be weird.

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Let’s Just Be Awesome

Do you guys watch How I Met Your Mother (or HIMYM for the cool kids)? I got into it a few years ago and did that thing where you rent all the old seasons on DVD and watch them back-to-back. Then, once you catch up with real time you get all angry that the episodes only come on one at a time. Yeah, I did that and became totally addicted.

Travis and I are totally a version of Lily and Marshall. Travis is Marshall and I’m Lily, of course, even though I typed it the other way. For some reason saying it in the order of “Marshall and Lily” sounds weird to me. I actually do have a lot of Marshall qualities, especially the singing about everything as you do it. I’m going to blame that on Jack though because it’s helping with his word development. Yeah. But there I go again, wandering off another path…

Back on track – I love me some HIMYM* and we usually have a few episodes waiting on our TiVo at all times. One of my favorite characters is Barney, the male slut who has a very super-high opinion of himself. Much like me on a good day, Barney likes to use the word “AWESOME” way too much, which makes me like him even more.

Which is why I’d like someone to buy me this poster:

We all have crappy days. Yesterday was a pretty bad one for me because I had to take Jack to the emergency room (third trip in 10 ½ months if you’re keeping track) for yet another case of croup and stridor. I’m hoping that he grows out of this phase soon, because frankly it’s hard on all of us.

Each time when I leave the hospital, I’m covered in a thin and sticky coat of gloominess for the rest of the day. I have a mini freakout over the fact that we sat in a germ-filled hospital room for hours and pretty much strip everyone down for baths as soon as we enter the house. I then mark another hospital bill in my expense book, which makes me thank the university gods for providing me with awesome health insurance.

I shouldn’t be gloomy though because most of the time Jack is a healthy, incredibly happy and bright little baby/almost toddler. For a baby born at 31 ½ weeks, it’s incredible that he has hardly had any issues at all. A couple trips to the hospital and needing to wrestle him to the ground to use his dreaded inhaler isn’t that bad in the scheme of things.

So, sometimes I just need to suck it up and… well, BE AWESOME.

*For those of you who are poo-pooing this season in their head while reading this post, I agree that this season has not been the best. But even a crappy episode of HIMYM is better than a lot of the stupid TV out there!

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Strangers in my Business*

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog post for a while now, probably at least a year or so. But every time I start imagining the post in my head, I decide not to open the can of worms and move on to something else.

And then, inevitably, the issue comes up again.
And again.
And again.

So, let’s do this. Are you ready? Because I’m totally about to drop a bomb on you…

My husband and I are only planning to have one child.

BOOM! Did the world just explode?

Are you freaking the frack out, trying to scroll down to the comments so that you can tell me what a horrible person I am?

It may sound like I’m over exaggerating, but you would not BELIEVE the reactions I’ve gotten from people.

It always starts the same way, a well-meaning stranger or acquaintance smiles at my little boy, turns to me and asks, “Is he your first?” If I were smart, I would just say yes and shut the poop up. But no, I just cannot help myself from proudly blurting out, “Yes, my first and ONLY.”

The conversation NEVER ends at this point with a smile and nod. No, apparently my response is code for GAME ON for people to tell me how wrong and stupid I am for making this decision.

Here are some of my favorite responses I’ve had to politely listen to:

You don’t know what you want.
You’re just scared because the pain of pregnancy and labor are still fresh in your mind.
OH NO. No. No.
You’ll change your mind.
You owe it to your son to give him a sibling.
Your kid will be a spoiled brat.
Only children are odd with no social skills.
You will have nobody to take care of you when you’re old.
But he’s so cute!
When you die, your son won’t have anyone to share the experience with.
(laughs) That’s what you think; you’ll probably have an accident.
That’s terrible! Don’t you want to try for a little girl?
You’d better change your mind before you’re too old to make that choice.

YES, these are actual things that STRANGERS have said to me. I usually just smile and laugh their comments off, but frankly I’m sick of hearing it.

This is Jack, my amazing and wonderful ONLY child — This is Jack, my amazing, wonderful and adorable ONLY child

What’s funny is that I was actually starting to type up a list of reasons that we have for only wanting one child, but then decided to just delete the whole thing. You know why?

Because it’s nobody’s damn business.

What it comes down to is the fact that we are happy with our one child. We love him more than we could have ever imagined and truly revel in the way that he fits into our lives.

I don’t have anything against big families – both my husband and I come from 4 kid families. If you have a larger family I fully admire and respect you for that decision, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for me.

Much like I wouldn’t be presumptuous and ask if ALL those kids are YOURS, I would hope you’d give me the same respect in the choices I make in MY life.

When it comes down to it, my uterus is none of your concern. Unless you’re my doctor, of course. But I really doubt my GYN is one of my blog followers. But if she is, “Hey girl, can you call in a refill of my prescription? I kind of feel like I’m going to accidently get pregnant now that I’ve said how much I love having my only child…”

*I almost named this blog post, “Talking about my Hooha with Strangers” but then thought I might get a bunch of random blog hits from pervs.

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