An Acute Life Threatening Event

I know Michael posted a quick update on Isaac’s condition that he wrote earlier today, but I just wanted to give a quick update on what the doctor said about Isaac today.

As Michael mentioned earlier, he and I spent a good day in the NICU with Isaac today – he was breathing much better today than he was when he had that episode of difficult breathing while we were there last night. And it was really nice to be able to hold him a lot today and feel like he was doing better. We spent the whole day there with him, and later on in the afternoon the doctor who performed his surgery the other day came to talk to us and answer any questions we had.

Last night when Isaac had the trouble with his breathing, we knew that it must be kind of serious, since there were all of a sudden 8 medical staff in the room. But it didn’t take them too long to give him the oral airway, which resolved the problem pretty quickly and relaxed his breathing a lot.

So, when the doctor came in to talk to us this afternoon and he called what happened to Isaac last night an “acute life threatening event” we were both a little shocked. We knew it was serious, but we had no idea it was that serious. The doctor said that the problem last night was not directly related to the surgery or the anesthesia, and said that their best diagnosis was that the problem last night was caused by reflux, especially since it happened shortly after the nurse tried to feed Isaac a little milk yesterday. We knew that they had given him two different medicines and they said that those would aggressively treat the reflux. When I asked the doctor if the reflux was going to be an ongoing problem for Isaac, I was also surprised to hear that he will continue on both of the reflux medications for 18 months to make sure that he doesn’t have another similar episode like last night.

We asked if the doctor had any idea when Isaac might be ready to go home, (since the original estimate had been that he might be ready to go home today or tomorrow, but we could tell he wasn’t ready for that). The doctor would not give us an estimate, since he said that he couldn’t predict hot Isaac would do in the future. But he did give us some idea when he said that they plan to wait until Isaac is off of all the tubes, the oral airway, the IV, the monitors, and until he is nursing like normal, and then watch him for 48 to 72 hours to make sure that he can do well without any of those extra things before they will send him home. So, we don’t really know how long it will be, but I would guess maybe that it will be another week before we can bring him home from the NICU, as long as there are no more setbacks.

So, it was good to get some more information about his condition, and although we’d love to have him home with us now, we are glad that they are going to be thorough and make sure that he is fully recovered before letting him go. We are glad that he seems to be doing so much better today, and please keep him in your prayers so that he will not have any more setbacks and he can recover quickly. Thank you!

Still in the NICU

Well, it is Sunday afternoon and Steph and I have spent the morning at the hospital in the NICU with Isaac. He seems to be recovering really well from his surgery. The ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctors operated on his nose on Friday to remove excess bone that was blocking the nasal passageways and making it difficult for him to breathe. Before the surgery he had an MRI of his brain. The condition he has, called Congenital Pyriform Aperture Stenosis, can sometimes be associated with other developmental problems, especially in the brain. Some of those abnormalities include having only one central incisor instead of two, Holoprosencephaly (which is when the brain doesn’t split properly into the right and left halves but stays one big piece), and problems with parts of the brain called the hypothalamus and the pituitary (which controls release of several hormones, including thyroid hormone, growth hormone, and Cortisol – which helps to control blood pressure – and others). The MRI of the brain came back essentially negative, so the doctors are going to run a few blood tests probably tomorrow, after Isaac has had a few days to recover from the surgery.

Congenital Pyriform Aperture Stenosis is a recently described condition that occurs before birth. It is a pretty rare condition, though there is not an exact number of how often it occurs, since it has only been described since 1988. There is another condition, called Choanal Atresia, which is similar to what Isaac has, but a little worse, since in this condition the entire nasal passage is blocked off and the baby can’t breathe through their nose at all, so they need surgery right away. The doctors think that there may have been many more babies before 1988 that had what Isaac has, but because the CT scanning technology wasn’t as good back then, it was not detected properly and was misdiagnosed as the Choanal Atresia, and treated with the same kind of surgery.

As part of the MRI study and surgery, Isaac had to have a breathing tube put down his throat (intubated), which Steph and I were able to watch Friday morning. I have seen many times when people had to be intubated, but it is a lot different when it is being done on your own child, especially at a teaching hospital, where they let the resident try first, and then the fellow, and then the attending doctor if the others are unsuccessful (which happened in Isaac’s case). According to the doctors, Isaac’s surgery went very well, and he did well overnight on Friday. Steph’s mom had arrived in town Thursday night and spent all day Friday with the other boys, since we had been in the hospital all day for Isaac’s surgery, so we thought it would be good to spend the night with our other children. There was a ward Halloween party, so we took them to that, with Kolby dressed as Tigger, Eli as a dinosaur, and Camden as a lion. They were so cute and had so much fun trick or treating and getting so much candy. It was nice to get them out of the house and spend some time together.

We spent the good part of Saturday morning cleaning up the house and then Steph and her mom went grocery shopping since the cupboards were bare after us being gone for the few days at the hospital. Isaac got the breathing tube out in the morning, so once they got home, we got the boys all cleaned up and took them over to the hospital to meet their new baby brother. We weren’t sure what to expect, and the boys ended up having a hard time, since the NICU is not an ideal place for loud, active little boys who like to touch everything they see and don’t like to sit still for more than 2 seconds (although for the first 10 minutes or so while they were first meeting Isaac, Kolby and Eli at least were good and well behaved and enjoyed seeing him and asking questions about how long it would be until he came home). The nurses had tried to feed Isaac some of Steph’s milk that we have saved for him just before we got there, and they said he seemed to enjoy it, but by the time the boys were done visiting with him, he was struggling quite a bit to breathe. The nurse tried to turn him and suction in his nose and mouth to see if that would help, but his tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth, blocking his airway, so they finally had to call the ENT doctors to come take a look. We had to get the other boys some food, so the ENT doctor called us later and said that after looking down Isaac’s throat with a scope, it seems that he had some acid reflux after getting the milk. She said this is common in babies, but with the other stresses of the surgery, having a tube down his throat, swelling in his lip, and tubes in his nose, the combination probably put him over the top and caused the throat to close. They gave him some morphine, put an oral airway in (a piece of plastic that is curved and rests just over the tongue to keep it from falling back into the throat and blocking the airway) and started Isaac on some acid blocking medicines. He seemed to calm down a lot after that, especially with the oral airway, so they have left that in for now to let him continue to wake up from the anesthesia and recover from the surgery. He is getting nutrition through an IV and the doctors said we will wait until tomorrow before trying to feed him again.

This morning Stephanie and I each got to hold him for a long time and he was very happy. He even tried to open his eyes a few times for us, though overall he is still very sleepy, and rightly so. And it was really nice to finally actually be able to sit down and hold him like a normal baby. The doctors had originally hoped (very optimistically) that Isaac would be able to go home tomorrow, but given how things have gone a little slower so far, it will probably be a few more days in the NICU, although the doctors still think he is healing nicely and will make a full recovery in the next few days.

Some More Photos of Isaac

Mommy and Isaac after he was born on Tuesday night, 23 October 2007.

He looks more chubby in this photo than in real life, but I

liked the little smile and you can see his dimple here.

He looked so small when he grabbed my ring finger with his little fingers.

Isaac takes a rest in Daddy's arms.

Sweet dreams!

Isaac visits the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).

Isaac with an oxygen hood over his head to help him breath easier.

Isaac after his surgery today. They intubated (put the breathing tube down his throat) for an MRI and the surgery they did today. During the surgery, they made an incision under his upper lip to remove some bone from the nasal passage, and then they inserted tubes in his nose. So his lip is pretty swollen, and his nose is a little swollen too. But the surgery was successful and it seems like things are going just as planned. He should have the tube removed from his mouth either tonight or tomorrow morning, and then he can try eating. They said that if all goes as expected, he should be able to come home with us in 2 or 3 more days.

Isaac

Baby Isaac Has Arrived!

On Tuesday I started having contractions in the morning. I had them irregularly all day, and by that evening I was having them every 7 to 10 minutes. Michael and the boys and I went and ran a couple of errands, and when we got home around 7:00pm I started having the contractions about every 2 or 3 minutes, so Michael put the boys to bed and we called a friend to come stay with them while we went to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital about 8:30pm, and I was dilated to a 7. I got the epidural, which worked just right this time, and then they just had me wait. I was strep B positive, which means that they try to give the mom antibiotics for 4 hours before the baby is born, so they didn’t want to break my water because they were trying to wait the 4 hours. I got the first dose of the antibiotics, but my water broke on its own before they could give me the second dose. After my water broke, he came really quickly. I pushed once and his head came out, and I pushed a second time and he was delivered. That was definitely the quickest delivery yet!

Isaac Steven Bradshaw was born at 11:43pm on October 23rd, seven days before his due date. Michael told me later that he had the chord wrapped around his neck when he came out, but I didn’t even know that. I held him, and then they checked his weight and height and cleaned him up a little bit. He was 8 lbs 13 oz and 21 inches long, so he was our second smallest baby – Camden was 9 lbs 8 oz, Kolby was 9 lbs 1 oz, Isaac was 8 lbs 13 oz, and Eli was 8 lbs 8 oz. (I’m rather glad he wasn’t a 10-pounder).

He got a chance to nurse and we held him and called all the family members, and then we moved to our room. They took him to the nursery for a little bit, and the nurse must have noticed how tired Michael and I looked, because he was all bathed and dressed when they brought him back to us. By then it was quite late, and we got about 4 hours of sleep before morning. Isaac was a noisy breather – kind of making little snorting sounds every once in a while and breathing loudly, but he slept well that entire time. I tried to nurse him a few times the next morning, and he didn’t really latch on well at all. A little while later we let the nurse know that it seemed like he was having a little trouble breathing, and she said that she would take him to the nursery to give him some saline drops and use the bulb to suction his nose. We thought that would be a good thing to do so that he wasn’t so stuffy and he could then nurse without any trouble.

After a little while, we were informed that the bulb had not helped, and they had talked to the pediatrician who had ordered a few tests to check on why he was having trouble breathing. A chest x-ray didn’t show anything abnormal and they put a tube down his throat, but it went down fine, so they didn’t suspect any problems with his throat. They said that they tried to pass a tube through his nose, but couldn’t – so they suspected some kind of blockage. Some NICU doctors came and said they were taking him to the NICU and they were going to see if they could figure out what the problem was.

So, when we went down to the NICU a little while later to see him, they told us that they thought it might be a dermoid cyst (a blockage of dead skin that would have to be removed in surgery, but which was not any type of cancer) in the nasal area which was making it hard for him to breath through his nose, but that they would have to wait until they got a CT scan to see if their hypothesis was correct. Later that night we returned to the NICU and a resident showed us the CT scan. It did not show a cyst, but just that the nasal passages looked more narrow than they should be. We had to wait until this morning until we talked to the ENT (ear, nose, throat) doctor to find out his diagnosis and plans for treatment.

So, today the ENT told us that Isaac has a pretty uncommon condition called Congenital Perform Aperture Stenosis, which just means that the nasal passage is really narrow. They said there is no real reason that this happened, it is not genetic – it just happens to be the way that his bones formed, and they didn’t separate as much as they should have. I guess this is a pretty uncommon condition. But they made it sound like it isn’t going to be a serious problem, and he shouldn’t have any long-term effects from it.

Isaac’s scan showed that the bones in this area were a little closer together, and on one side the soft tissue looked like it was really close together. This is a pretty rare condition, and there is not much information about it online. We did find a few articles that mentioned that babies with this condition could also have one large tooth in the middle, instead of two top teeth in front – but Isaac’s scan showed normal teeth. Other articles mentioned a triangular palette associated with this condition, but we haven’t noticed anything like this in Isaac. In fact, except for the breathing problems, he seems to be doing just great, and he looks like everything else about him is just how it should be. The doctors told us that other articles say sometimes this condition is associated with problems with the hypothalamus and pituitary, two organs in the brain that control many of the hormones needed for growth and development, like thyroid and growth hormone. They want to do an MRI tomorrow while he is already sedated for the surgery, just to make sure that everything looks ok. The doctors seem to be doing everything possible to help us out here.

They are going to do surgery to correct this tomorrow morning. They will remove some of the bone and put in two tubes to make the passages stay open, and then the tubes will be surgically removed in about 3 weeks. They will do this all through an incision under his upper lip, so it won’t leave any scars. I am pumping now, and they hope that he will be able to start nursing normally after his surgery. And they said that as long as everything goes well, he will be able to go home from the NICU two or three days after his surgery. We are not allowed to sleep in the NICU and I got discharged from the hospital today, so we will be home tonight, and then I will probably return to be with him in the morning. My mom is arriving tonight, so that will be helpful to have her here. (By the way, my parents were able to return and see their house last night since the evacuation for the wildfires down in San Diego, and their house was not damaged by the fires at all. A couple of the houses up the hill from them were burned, and the fire burned down the hill to within 50 yards of my parents’ property, but their house and yard were not touched). So, thank you to all of you who have helped out with watching the boys for us this week. And thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. We really appreciate it! I’d better head back down to Isaac’s room now to be with him.

I will post photos of Isaac once I’ve had a chance to get them off of our camera on our home computer. But he’s really cute – he has light brown hair that looks kind of golden in the light, just the same color as Camden’s was when he was born, little round ears, dark eyes, and it looks like he’ll probably have a dimple on the left side. Michael thinks he has the Bradshaw nose. And Tyce Kearl said that he definitely looks like a Bradshaw boy. He is long – he looks tall and he has cute long feet and long toes. And he is strong – when they rolled him on his tummy yesterday, he was lifting his head up over and over. I can’t wait to take him home with us!

Carving Pumpkins

Fall Pictures

After church yesterday we went out and took some pictures with the fall leaves. The boys gave us lots of big smiles (after we bribed them with chocolate treats if they would be good for the photos). I think they turned out pretty cute!

San Diego Wildfires

Last night I was on the phone with my mom and she was telling me that there were three serious wildfires in southern California, and that one was near them. She said that they were evacuating thousands of people, but that they didn't think it would get to them. She said that the fire was burning in Ramona and coming west (towards their house), but it would have to go across the whole town of Poway before it reached them, so they weren't too concerned. But they did say that they let out church early yesterday and the air quality was very poor because of all the smoke and ash.

So she called me a couple of hours ago to tell me that their neighborhood was under mandatory evacuation. She didn't sound too concerned that their house was in danger of burning, and she thought that they would probably be allowed to go back in a few hours. But she did say that her friends, Rod and Angel DeGuzman, had to evacuate their home and that the house was on fire when they left -- the DeGuzmans have moved since I lived in San Diego, so I don't know how far they live from my parents now. My mom didn't want to worry me, and there's really not much that I can do to help from here, but she said that she wanted to call and let us know about the evacuation just so that we didn't hear about it and try to call and not get through (because the cell phone coverage isn't good down there right now), and be worried about their safety. At least the good thing about wildfires is that even though they are really scary, the people usually have enough warning to get out in time. And my parents have fire insurance, so if something did happen, it would be devastating to have to replace their home but they could get through it. At least I know that since they evacuated earlier, my parents and brothers should be safe. And now I just have to hope that their home is safe too.

Kolby's Birthday Party

Little Cutie-Pie

A Long Week of Doctor's Visits

This was a pretty long week for our family. Kolby wasn’t feeling well last weekend and had fevers for a few days, so I took him in to the doctor on Monday and they called us back on Tuesday to tell us that Kolby had strep throat. I was glad that we found that out early on in the week, because with strep throat you need to take antibiotics for 24 hours before you are no longer contagious, and we had a little birthday party planned for Kolby for Friday night. I really didn’t want to have to cancel the party, because not only would Kolby be disappointed, but I really thought it would be easier to have a party before the baby comes. So, I was glad that we got the medicine for Kolby so that he was no longer contagious, and that his brothers were not showing signs of being sick, so maybe there was a chance that just Kolby would get it and no one else in the family. But I was wrong. Camden woke up in the night with a low fever and I took him in to the doctor on Wednesday. Because Kolby had strep, they didn’t wait to get the culture back before starting Camden on the antibiotics, so he got the medicine so that he wouldn’t be contagious (although they never called back about the culture, which means that it was negative and he didn’t actually have strep throat). When we were in the office on Wednesday, I had the doctor look at Eli just to check him, even though he hadn’t shown any signs of being sick, and Dr. Papp said that his throat wasn’t even red at all. So then on Thursday morning Michael had a really bad sore throat and went to his doctor. They said that he wouldn’t hear back until Monday to see if his strep test was positive or not, but they started him on the medicine anyway. So he stayed home from work Thursday and Friday – so it was nice to have him around, except it would have been nicer if he had been feeling well. On Thursday (the day after the doctor said that his throat looked fine) Eli started having fevers too, and I took him into the doctor’s office that evening. His rapid strep culture came back positive immediately, showing that he did have strep. Luckily he got the antibiotics early enough that he was no longer contagious by the time of the birthday party the next night, so we didn’t have to cancel it. So, we had 4 sick boys at our house this week, and four different doctor’s visits – maybe next time one of my kids gets a contagious sickness like this I’ll insist that they write me prescriptions for each of the children so that we don’t have to go back all week long when each one catches it. At least I am doing pretty well – I have had a cough for the last few weeks that I just can’t seem to get over, but luckily I have no signs of catching what the boys have had. Kolby has acted fine all week, and the other boys haven’t been acting like they felt too bad, so that’s nice. Michael is finally starting to feel better today, the last few days were pretty rough for him.

Since Kolby had roseola when Eli was born and Kolby and Eli had strep throat when Camden was born, I kept wondering if we would stick to our pattern of the older children have a contagious illness whenever I have a new baby, but Isaac seems to be holding out to arrive after everyone at the house is healthy. I have had a few times this week when I felt contractions, once when I wondered if it might lead to labor, but even though they were strong and pretty close together, it didn’t last for too long. Michael’s sister, Mel, had her baby boy, Kyler, on Friday (her due date was supposed to be 3 days before mine), and I thought maybe Isaac would come that day too, but was kind of disappointed when the contractions stopped. But it won’t be too much longer – from today, there are 9 more days until my due date (11 days until I will be induced, if it goes that long). I can handle that – I feel like I’ve been very patient with this pregnancy, unlike my pregnancies so far when I have gotten to the last month and just couldn’t wait to have the baby right away. But I am still crossing my fingers that it will somehow work out for me to have the baby early or late enough so that I can participate in the Halloween celebrations with the kids. I was telling Michael this morning that Halloween is a big holiday. As far as rating holidays on how important/fun they are for me to experience them with our children (and not taking into account how significant I think the reasons for the holidays are or how much I enjoy spending time with Michael or other family on those holidays), I think that Halloween would be tied with the 4th of July, right after Christmas. [I don’t know if that made much sense – Michael asked me about Thanksgiving when I told him that, and I said that Thanksgiving is important and the kids enjoy certain traditions we have like decorating cookies to look like turkeys, but it is a holiday that we have always spent our married life with friends, and Halloween is all about our kids and nothing else. So, not to make any other holidays seem less important, but I really love watching our kids dress up in their costumes, carve pumpkins, and trick-or-treat, so I hope I don’t have to miss that].

Well, let’s see, what else did we do this week? On Monday, after we did a family home evening lesson with the boys, we went to the Hymas’ house for Chelsey’s birthday party. We got her a wand, tiara, and feather boa so that she could be her favorite princess – I have fun buying girly gifts for our friends’ kids, since I don’t get to pick out cute pink things that often. On Wednesday night Kolby had his swimming lessons.

After Kolby’s lesson we dropped the boys off at the Hedgecock’s house and had a fun, inexpensive date night. We went over to the Hymas’ house, and they had already put their girls down to bed, and we played Nintendo Wii games. Michael’s parents told us that they would give us some money if there was anything specific we wanted for a Christmas gift for our family, and Michael has been talking about a Wii video game system, which I was not so sure about. I thought it sounded like more fun than normal video games, because you use the remotes like sports equipment to play the games – so you are standing and swinging your arms like you are playing tennis, bowling, golfing, etc. I think that games like that are better than ones that you just sit in front of, and I would prefer sports games to any kind of violent video games, but I am still not a big fan of most video games because of the time that can be spent on them, and the cost. So the Hymases invited us to come try it out, and it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the tennis game the most, although I wasn’t the greatest at any of the games (and my arm was quite sore from swinging that remote for 3 days afterwards – I guess that shows how out of shape I am). But after playing that night, Michael said that he thought maybe we should choose something else for Christmas, because he thought a Wii might take up too much time, especially once he has a busier schedule when he starts his residency next year, and he hasn’t mentioned it since then. It was a really fun date night, though. I really don’t mind video games (the ones that aren’t violent), but I do prefer them at someone else’s house, so we can go and enjoy them, and then come home and not have the temptation of spending too much time playing them.

On Thursday afternoon I left the kids with Michael, since he was home sick, and went to my doctor’s appointment. [Hey if any of our friends here in Milwaukee are pregnant and looking for a good doctor, I would highly recommend Luverda Martin – she is a midwife at Froedtert Hospital. She has been great – I have had a different doctor or midwife with each pregnancy, and I will stick with Luverda from now on as long as we live here. When I first considered seeing a midwife, I wondered if it would be weird, but I thought I’d try it out and then just switch doctor’s if I didn’t like it. But my midwife is not weird at all – she has given me “normal” care like any doctor I’ve had – I’m not into herbal stuff or home remedies or things like water births, which I thought a midwife might suggest, and I was definitely not interested in someone who didn’t fully support my decision to have an epidural – and she has never suggested anything to me that seemed different than a normal doctor. She is very personable and she has always made herself easy to contact if I have any questions, and she has a couple young children of her own, so it doesn’t faze her at all when I bring all of my kids into the appointment with me. Anyway, I just think she’s great, so if anyone is looking for a good doctor, you have my recommendation.] Back to the point – I went in for my appointment on Thursday and all is well with the baby. I was measuring normal and she said that the baby’s heart rate is starting to go down a little, just like they would expect since the baby is preparing to be born. And I had her strip the membranes – which is supposed to help the baby come, if your body is ready for labor – I don’t know if I really think it helps or not. With Kolby they did it, and then he was induced a week later, so it didn’t seem to do anything. I don’t remember them doing it with Eli. And with Camden they did it and then he was born 2 days later (2 days before his due date). So, I figured it couldn’t hurt, but I haven’t gone into labor yet, so I guess it didn’t do much this time around. Oh well.

On Thursday night my friends threw me a little baby shower at Sandra Simon’s house. We had desserts and everyone just had fun socializing. I told them that I felt like we didn’t really need anything for the baby this time, so I didn’t need any gifts, but they decided to throw a “pamper Stephanie” party, and most people brought things like nice lotions and body washes and stuff like that, which was fun. It was really nice to get together with friends and have a fun night out, just talking, sharing stories about being a mother and wife, and laughing together.

On Friday Kolby got to go to school again after missing it all week because of his strep throat – he was really excited to go again. And that night we had the little birthday party for Kolby. Michael and I spent the whole day cleaning the house and preparing for the party – and I was pretty worn out by the end of the day (even though I know he felt pretty lousy with being sick, I’m glad Michael still found the energy to help me clean up, because it was a lot of work to get everything done that I wanted to, and it felt really nice after we had finished). Kolby was excited about his Tigger Halloween costume, and so when I asked him what he wanted for his party theme, he said Tigger. We took orange ribbons and curled them and hung them from the ceiling like bouncy Tigger tails, blew up balloons for the kids to play with, and played pin-the-tail-on-Tigger. I used half a container of yellow food coloring and half a container of red to turn the frosting for the cake a bright orange color like Kolby asked. And I got a little set of plastic Winnie the Pooh characters that I used to decorate the cake, and then the boys got to have them as toys afterwards. Kolby was so excited about his friends coming over and the gifts that he got. The one thing we forgot was to hand out the little goodie bags that the boys helped me make at the end of the party – so we still have a big bowl of goodie bags sitting out in our living room, I guess we will have to give the candy from the bags out to any trick-or-treaters that visit.

On Saturday morning I went to the church for our Super Saturday enrichment activity, and among other things I did a project where we etched our name on the bottom of our glass dishes. I think they turned out well, although I signed up to do 4 dishes when most other people just did 1, so it took me a lot longer than I had planned.

It was fun to go and see people there and do the fun projects. The rest of the day we spent at home. Michael was supposed to be in charge of a project at the church that morning to spread mulch in the landscaping areas, but he ended up having to ask some friends to take over for him on that because he was sick. And we were also planning on going to the temple with the Hedgecocks, but had to reschedule that too – we are now planning on going next Saturday, if I haven’t had the baby by then. When I got home, Michael checked the mail and found an invitation for his first dermatology interview at Texas A&M. He is waiting until tomorrow to hear back from them, and hoping for an interview date in the end of November. It was exciting to get a derm invitation already, because we had heard that they usually don’t start arriving until November, and today at church one of our friends who is a derm resident said that he only got 3 interviews before Thanksgiving, so it will probably be a while before he gets most of his invitations. But it was really exciting to get that first one for dermatology! And then we rented the movie Transformers and watched it after the boys went to bed last night. Michael liked it, and I liked it pretty well, except we thought there were some parts that they really didn’t need in the movie.

Church went pretty well. The boys did a good job. Camden has trouble because he gets so tired while we are at church – if we were at home he would just lay down in his crib and cry to sleep for a few minutes, but there is no place for that at church, so he kind of has a rough time. But what we heard of our lessons was good and Kolby’s and Eli’s teachers said that they both did well in their classes. Camden spit up a couple times at the end of church after he had his cup of milk – I am wondering if he has some kind of lactose intolerance. I mentioned to the doctor on Monday that he had started spitting up again for about a week, (which is strange because Camden spit up a lot with the formula, and then stopped entirely when we switched him to whole milk about 3 months ago). The doctor thought it might have something to do with him having a little cold or being sick this week (because milk can cause you to have more mucous when you have a cold), and suggested not giving him any milk for a few days to see if it stopped. I got a bottle of soy milk and he didn’t spit up once with that. But I figured that now since he is over his cold, he should be fine on whole milk again. I don’t know – I guess we’ll have to talk to the doctor about it and see what we need to do to find out if it is any kind of allergy or if it might be something else.

Well, there is a roast cooking for dinner and Michael is off home teaching right now. I can hear the boys in their rooms waking up from their naps. Tonight we are having a new family in the ward, the Gittins, over for dinner. They have a little boy and a little girl, so it should be fun for the kids to get together and for us to get to know them better. Hope you are all having a nice Sunday!

First Dermatology Interview

Michael just got his first invitation for a dermatology interview at Texas A&M in Temple, Texas. He is waiting to hear back from them, and hoping for an interview date in the end of November. It is really exciting to get a derm interview, especially since we've heard that most derm programs don't send invitations until November. I wanted to keep track of his interview locations and dates, so I made a map of them and posted it down at the bottom of this page -- you can scroll all the way down to the bottom to take a look. Please keep our family in your prayers over the next few months as Michael gets more invitations and as he goes for his interviews that we will end up going to a residency program that is good for Michael and good for our entire family. Thank you!

Contagious

So, Kolby has strep throat. I was pretty surprised to get the call from the doctor this morning saying that his culture came back positive for strep.

Last year both Kolby and Eli had strep throat. We had never dealt with that before, and Kolby had been complaining for a few days that his teeth and his mouth hurt and he had trouble eating because of that. I was pregnant with Camden at the time and thought about waiting another day or so to take Kolby to the doctor – because he was complaining about his teeth hurting, we thought that it might be a cavity – and I remember feeling pretty tired, but deciding to take him in for an appointment anyway just to have it checked out. We took the boys in, and it turned out that Kolby’s throat was sore, not his teeth. The doctor did a rapid strep swab on each boy and both came back positive immediately. It turned out that it was a good thing that we took them in that day, because I ended up going into labor and having Camden that night. And with strep throat they need to take the antibiotics for 24 hours before they are no longer contagious, so it was a good thing that they had gotten started on that before we went into the hospital.

So, for the last few days Kolby has been acting sick, but I didn’t even consider the possibility that it might be strep throat, because it has been nothing like when he and Eli got it a year ago. Since Friday Kolby has been getting fevers off and on – he would seem fine for most of the day and then spike a fever and lay around and act tired and fussy. Then the next day he would feel warm, but wouldn’t have a high fever, but he would act normal much of the day and then act sick again later on. He did that for several days, and then on Sunday we thought he had gotten over it. We went to church that morning, and then after the first hour of church Michael took his temperature and it was 102.7 degrees and his face looked all red. Michael took him home and he got some rest, but Kolby hasn’t had a fever since then. That night Kolby woke up drying several times in the night, so I decided to take him to the doctor’s office instead of his preschool classes on Monday morning, but on Monday and today he has not had a fever or acted sick at all. I took him in yesterday, and we noticed that the red rash on his face was also on his stomach. The doctor did a swab and it came back negative, and since Kolby had been acting normal all day, we figured it was something viral that he was already starting to get over. So last night we took him to a birthday party. I felt pretty bad this morning when the doctor called and said that the culture came back positive for strep today. I had to call the moms at the birthday party and the preschool at the YMCA to let them know that their kids may have been exposed to strep – so, if any of your kids have been around Kolby over the last few days, I’m sorry and I hope they don’t get sick.

Anyway, I have had a cough the last couple of weeks and we had no specific plans for today, so I was planning on staying home in my pajamas all day today. When I got the call from the doctor, I knew that we would have to go to the pharmacy to pick up Kolby’s medicine, and I really didn’t want to get all the kids all packed into the car just for that. Michael is so thoughtful – I called to tell him that Kolby has strep, and he came home from work during his lunch break to get Kolby’s insurance card and went to get the prescription and bring it back home, and then he had to go right back to work. Isn’t that nice? He knew that it was something I could do, and I just really didn’t feel like it, so he volunteered to do that for me. How kind!

So, Kolby started his antibiotics this afternoon. Once he has taken the medicine for 24 hours, he will no longer be contagious. I was glad to find out that he will not be contagious anymore by tomorrow afternoon, because we are having a little birthday party for Kolby on Friday and he would have been so disappointed if we had to cancel it. Plus, if we had to cancel the party on Friday, I don’t know when we would have rescheduled it, because this baby will be here before too long.

It’s interesting that Kolby has strep throat now, with this baby due so soon. When Eli was born Kolby had roseola, and when Camden was born Kolby and Eli both had strep throat. So I have been jokingly wondering what contagious sickness my boys would have when baby Isaac is born. Hopefully our family is all healthy when the new baby comes. We’re getting close – only 14 days to go until the due date!

Halloween Portraits

We went last week to have the boys' Halloween portraits taken, and we just got them today. I always enjoy taking the boys for Halloween photos, because it is one of the few occasions when we have individual photos taken of each boy -- usually we are trying to get a group shot of all the boys or of our entire family, which is often difficult in the end to choose the one shot that most everyone is smiling in and looking at the camera. But when we take the individual shots of the boys, there are often quite a few cute ones to choose from and they love to dress up in their Halloween costumes too. This year for Halloween Kolby is going to be Tigger, Eli is a dinosaur, and Camden is going to wear the adorable lion costume that my mom made when Kolby was 1 year old. And I am still crossing my fingers that this baby will either come a week or so early or wait until November 1st to arrive, so that I can enjoy celebrating Halloween with the boys too. But at least there are going to be a few Halloween parties for church and the medical school before October 31st, so hopefully I'll get to join them for at least part of the Halloween events, even if I happen to be in the hospital on that day. We'll see. Enjoy the photos.

Rainy October Sunday

So today has been a wet Sunday. We got up early to get everyone ready for church and then hurried over to set up chairs and practice our choir song before performing today. I think the song turned out really well – it was “Guide Us O Thou Great Jehovah!” to a beautiful organ accompaniment that was arranged by our choir director. I ended up coming home early with Kolby and Camden because Kolby had a temp of 102 degrees F and he wasn’t too happy. With some Ibuprofen and rest hopefully he will be feeling better. He first got a fever Friday and had it Saturday morning, but then he was ok the rest of Saturday and today until we got to church. I hope he feels better soon.

Last Sunday night after watching General Conference, I drove down to Chicago to stay the night in a hotel for a test on Monday. I went down Sunday because I had to be at the place at 8am Monday morning. This was for my Step 2 clinical skills test, which is a required pass/fail test to graduate from medical school and is given at only 5 locations around the country – thank goodness for us that one of those places is Chicago. For the test you see 12 standardized patients. With each one, you read a sign outside the door with some general info of why that person is here, then you have 15 minutes to get a history and do a focused physical exam pertaining to their complaint, as well as explain to them what you think is going on and your next steps. Then you exit the room and sit down at a computer (or you can write on paper if you want), where you have 10 minutes to write a note of your encounter, with a section on what the patient told you, one on what you found on exam, one on your up to 5 top thoughts of what is going on, and one for up to 5 things that you would do next (x-ray, blood test, ultrasound, other exams, etc.). There were a couple breaks throughout the day, so the test ended up taking until 4pm and then I had the drive home. I feel really good about the test, so hopefully it turned out well.

When I got home we went out to dinner at Pedro’s to celebrate since we had a 2 for 1 coupon. Kolby told us that he could eat the chips and the tortillas, but not the salsa, because that would make his fishies sick. We asked where his fishies were, and he said in his tummy. When we asked him how they got there, he said they were there since before he was born. And since then he has been telling us that he needs water for his fishies every time he is thirsty. He is so silly – I don’t know where he came up with that idea, but it is pretty cute.

This month I am doing a rotation called Promoting Health in an Urban Underserved Community through the department of family medicine and the center for healthy communities. I work with another medical student, Lindsay Haus, and we are in charge of putting together several different health presentations for some underserved housing communities. This week we have been working on one for Pain Management and another on Arthritis since we are presenting these topics this next week. We also have to prepare one on Healthy Aging and another on Bipolar disease. Throughout the rotation we also attend some of the meetings with these communities to hear about the different projects that are going on to help improve the health of the community members.

Tuesday night we took the boys to JC Penney for Halloween pictures. Kolby dressed up as Tigger, Eli as a dinosaur, and Camden as a lion. We took photos of each of them separately and they turned out so cute – we can’t wait to show you all when we get them.

Friday night I went to an elders quorum activity – it was a Nintendo Wii golf tournament over at the school. I was so excited because I hadn’t yet played a Wii but had heard they are really fun. One of the guys who is a manager for Chipotle provided the food. About 30 people showed up. Three people brought their Wiis and 3 projectors as well to have different games going on at once. We played 4 at a time, and the top 2 in each group moved on in the tournament. Out of the 16 that played, I ended up in 3rd place – pretty good for never having played before. The Wii is so much fun and such an ingenious idea – you have to swing the controller to hit the golf ball. There are other games that we played that night as well – bowling, tennis, and boxing, and they were so much fun.

Saturday I volunteered at the Saturday Clinic for the Uninsured. I hadn’t been back since my 2nd year of school, so it was interesting to be the senior student there. Basically, a 1st year student gets the patient and finds out why they are at the clinic and get their vitals (temperature, blood pressure, height, weight). Then they meet up with a 2nd year who goes back in with them and gets a more detailed history of what is going on. Then they get a 3rd or 4th year (me) and we go back in to do the physical exam. And finally we get the doctor who listens to what we have done, adds any other insight, and then teaches. The ideas behind the clinic are to help the underserved and to teach and learn. It was so much fun to be the senior student and spend time teaching my first and second year students. It was also neat to see how much I’ve learned since I have started medical school.

While I was at the clinic Steph took the boys to a farmers market to get some pumpkins for us and for some ladies at the Meta House. The girls in the ward a doing an activity with the women of the Meta House, a place for women who are recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, where they will be carving pumpkins. Several of the women there have never carved a pumpkin before - how sad. Anyways, Steph got 3 pumpkins for us and 3 to donate to that activity. Kolby and Eli were so excited to show me the pumpkins they had picked when I got home.

Last night we had a dinner and choir practice over at the church to get ready for today’s performance. We did a potato bar that was really good and then had a fun time practicing together. Then we had the Kearls and Wells over for games last night. We played an old game that Steph got from her grandma called National Geographic. The point is to identify different pictures from around the world to fill your portfolio with the required items. Steph just thinks it is so funny that we are playing this game from her childhood, especially since it was made in 1990 so the map is totally different from how things look today. But we still had a lot of fun.

Well, I am going to try and take a break and relax now before we have to start getting things ready for dinner. We are going to have the Wells over so that should be fun.

A New Look For Eli

I always pictured all of my boys eventually having the same cute haircut that Kolby has. My little brothers had that haircut when they were young, and Michael did too. Michael and I both liked it, and Kolby has always had that haircut since the first time I cut his hair when he was about 8 or 9 months old.

When Eli came along he didn’t have much hair. Kolby had pretty long hair for a newborn, and Eli’s fuzzy near-baldness was a big contrast. Eli was quite a bit older when I gave him his first haircut than Kolby was, and his hair was long enough in the back for that haircut, but not in the front yet. For quite a while Eli’s hair wasn’t long enough to cut across the front so that he could have the same haircut as Kolby, but I was determined, so I just waited and trimmed it a little here and there. Once Eli’s hair finally got long enough, I cut it to match Kolby’s, but it didn’t lay the same way. Kolby’s has always been pretty straight and thick, and it lays very nicely with that haircut. Eli has a little diagonal cowlick on the front right side of his forehead, which makes it part in that spot and I have often thought that he looked kind of like he was developing male-pattern baldness on that one side. And his hair has always been a little more wavy than Kolby’s – but not enough to look curly, just enough to look kind of messy most of the time. But I was still determined – my boys were all going to have the same, cute, matching haircut. So Eli’s hair would just have to grow in, and once it got thicker I hoped that it would lay straight over the cowlick.

Lately we have started to part Eli’s hair, get it all wet, and comb it over to one side, which keeps it from looking very messy. Once his combed hair dries, it usually lays pretty straight, but it always stays over to one side.

So, since Camden’s hair is proving to be really curly (even though when I cut it he lost many of his curls, they are gradually coming back as his hair gets longer – so I guess maybe he actually has really curly hair, and not just baby curls during the humidity of the summer).

So, since Kolby’s haircut would look pretty ridiculous on Camden’s head of curls, for the first time I have started to consider the idea that my boys may not all have matching haircuts. They might actually each need their own style, since they each have quite different hair-types. Since thinking about that, I have been wondering how Eli’s hair would look best. Today I was looking at a parenting magazine and noticed this picture of a little boy with a haircut that I think would look pretty cute on Eli.

What do you think? Actually, since I recently cut Camden’s hair and regretted it so much, I have been thinking about possibly growing all of the boys’ hair out at least a little longer than it is now. We’ll see. But I think for now I am going to go for it with Eli, at least, and see if we can eventually get to a haircut that resembles the one from the magazine.

Re-Connecting

So, a couple weeks ago I was catching up on the lives of some of my friends by looking at their blogs. One girl, Audrey, who I met on an archeology trip and knew for a short time at Ricks College, sometimes writes about her family and posts to her husband’s family’s blog. So, I was just checking quickly to see if Audrey had posted anything recently to that blog. I didn’t notice anything from her, and was about to close the internet page, but saw a photo of a girl that I thought I recognized. When I looked closer, I confirmed that it was a photo of my old friend, Becca Floyd (who has since gotten married and is now Becca Doolittle), who I was good friends with during high school back home in San Diego.

After searching around that blog and the blog that I found for Becca and her husband, Jason, I concluded that Audrey’s and Becca’s husbands were brothers. I couldn’t believe that I was able to reconnect with a close friend from California who I had lost touch with through a girl who I didn’t know for very long at college in Idaho. I was excited to e-mail Becca and tell her how I had ‘found’ her on the internet. I looked at her blog a little and soon realized another huge coincidence: Becca and her husband moved to Milwaukee earlier this summer for his veterinary medicine internship. So, I e-mailed her, and today Becca was able to come to our home and visit with me, and meet my family. It was really fun to talk with her, and to catch up on everything that has happened to each of us in the last 5 or 10 years. Although her husband has a difficult schedule with his internship right now, we are hoping to get together for dinner sometime soon.

Although I feel like it’s worth it to keep up on our blog because I print out everything that I write here and keep it as a sort of family journal, I sometimes feel like it’s silly to write so much and post it on the internet because I don’t know how many of our family members and friends really read it. Also, although it is a very convenient way for me to keep in touch with friends and keep family updated on what is going on with us, I sometimes wonder if it is less personal that sending a letter in the mail or calling people. But it’s kind of cool to think that using these blogs can not only help me keep in touch with and ‘find’ old friends, but can sometimes lead to being able to get together with them in person (and what could be more personal than that?)

Something New

So, I decided to start wearing make-up. I know that’s probably not a big deal for most of you, but whenever I’ve worn make-up in the past it has only been eye shadow and mascara, and lately I haven’t worn much of anything most days. The other night, though, I got invited to a Mary Kay party at my friend, Marcela’s, house, and the girl who came let us try samples and showed us how to use the make-up. Although I thought they had good products, I definitely couldn’t afford any of the Mary Kay stuff, so I went to Wal Mart the next day and got make-up in similar colors that was a lot less expensive. I got up this morning and Michael got the boys up while I got ready. Almost an hour after getting up, I had gotten dressed and put on all the make-up – I’m sure it will take me much less time to put it on after I’ve done it a few times. I really liked how it turned out, and Michael said that he liked it too. Now, I’m not committing to doing it every day, but I thought I could at least start with Sundays and other days when we have activities going on. I went to a baby shower this morning, and one of my friends said that my eyes looked very glamorous – which was pretty fun to hear. It’s kind of nice to be able to get a little more dressed-up when I feel like it.

I had Michael take my picture this morning because I felt cute – you can’t really see the make-up that much in the photo, but kind of.

Bad Luck at the Grocery Store

This morning I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of getting everything done. I spent about half an hour preparing our two-week dinner menu and then making a grocery list with all the ingredients we would need for the next two week’s worth of meals. I got all the boys ready and dropped Kolby off at his class and we went to the grocery store. I had only been in a store a few minutes, and I went to the meat section to get a roast and some hamburger. Since I am getting to that point in my pregnancy when many of my maternity shirts aren’t even quite long enough for me anymore, I set my grocery list down on the wrapped pieces of meat for a second so I could pull my shirt down and make sure it was covering my belly all the way. Before I could react, the vent in front of the meat sucked my grocery list away. Now this wasn’t just a little slip of scrap paper with a couple things written on it, it was a full 8.5 x 11-inch paper with a grocery list the whole length of the page. The vent in front of the meat where the cool air comes out apparently sucks air inward too, and I could see no way to get the list – I could hear it being sucked all the way down below the meat to the floor behind the counter. At that point I didn’t know what to do. I never go grocery shopping without a list, and this time I had planned several meals that we haven’t had for a while, so the ingredients weren’t familiar to me.

I briefly considered packing the boys back in the car, driving home, packing the kids into the house, consulting my dinner menu and recipe books, making a new list, packing the kids back into the car, driving back to the grocery store, packing the kids back into the store, and starting the whole grocery trip all over again – but I don’t think I could have handled all that. So I pulled a new piece of paper out of my purse and stood there in front of the meat trying to remember all of the ingredients and the correct measurements that I had written on my original list. And I don’t know why, but Camden was having an especially difficult morning. He kept bursting out in tears and crying uncontrollably (and very loudly), for no apparent reason – and we had only been in the store about 10 or 15 minutes before he started doing this. I wrote everything down that I could remember on the list, and went on to get all of the groceries, Camden crying like he had been hurt for the majority of the trip – he had red eyes and nose and little old ladies kept coming up and trying to talk to him to make him happy, but they didn’t really help. At least I didn’t have to haul the boys home and back again to make another grocery list, which I’m sure would have been worse. When I got home, I was pleased to look at my dinner menu and find that I’m pretty sure I remembered everything I needed to get – I just need to double-check the measurements on one of the recipes to make sure.

After I unloaded all the groceries at home, we made a quick run to Wal Mart and got Camden some new shoes that match the ones that Kolby and Eli have. We got him size 4 wide shoes when he first started taking steps, and those were a little snug, so lately he has been wearing some old hand-me-down size 5 shoes I found in our storage bins of kid’s clothes, and those have been really hard to get on and off of his feet lately. So, I went to get him some that fit, and they didn’t have size 6, just size 7. I tried them on, and he can walk fine in them and they haven’t fallen off his feet yet, so that’s what he got. He’d better not grow out of size 7 shoes before winter is over.

Random Unrelated Topics

So, I’m wondering if I started to feel Braxton Hicks contractions yesterday. You would think that by the fourth kid I would know for sure, but each one is different. It felt like the pain of contractions, and they were spaced out like Braxton Hicks, but instead of being a pain down low like with cramps, it was painful all over my belly. And they happened every once in a while all day yesterday. So, we’ll see. It’s interesting that I haven’t felt anything up until now – except with my first pregnancy, I felt the Braxton Hicks contractions much earlier on in the other pregnancies.

On a different subject, I think there is something seriously wrong with our VCR. We have a nice VCR-DVD player combination machine that we got when we were married, and we have really liked having the ability to play both types of movies. The DVD part of the machine is working fine, but the VCR has started having problems the last couple of days. A couple days ago I taped a show from tv and when I went back to watch it, every time I tried to fast forward through a commercial, the tape paused and wouldn’t let me hit play. If I stopped the tape it would let me rewind or fast forward, but even if I only hit the button for a couple of seconds it would quickly jump through most of the tape all at once. I figured that the tape was done for – we must have just taped shows on it over and over so many times that we needed to use a fresh tape. We tried that last night, but found that the machine had the same problem with a different tape. After messing around with it for a while, we finally found that the tape would only play correctly if Michael sat on the floor a foot in front of the VCR – if he would get up or even shift his weight a little, the tape paused. So, he sat on the hard wood floor last night for an hour while we watched our show that we had taped. It was actually rather comical to watch, although I’m sure it was less than comfortable for him. We have never heard of a problem like this before – any suggestions?

And on an entirely different topic, I had to mention something that happened to me yesterday. The other day I wrote a lengthy post about always getting negative comments from strangers about having all boys. So, I was getting all the boys out of the van yesterday morning to take Kolby into his preschool class at the YMCA, and a middle-aged man walked by and very jovially announced, “Three boys – you are so lucky! And probably another boy on the way. That is great!” I smiled and he just kept on walking by, and I felt like that nice comment from a stranger maybe (in some small way) redeemed all the other strangers who have said such thoughtless things when they saw how many boys we have.

Oh, and I just wanted to mention a cute thing Eli said last night. We went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night to celebrate Michael finishing one of his Step 2 Board exams, (Pedros is quickly becoming one of our ‘favorite’ restaurants. Not so much because of the amazing cuisine – we like the food fine – but more because they keep sending us buy-one-get-one-free dinner coupons. They serve tortillas and chips and salsa and we usually take sandwiches and some snacks for the boys, and then Michael and I each order a meal and one of them is free with the coupon, so it ends up being a pretty cheep dinner for our family. No, we have no shame, we are not to proud to take sandwiches to a restaurant for our kids – but kids can be picky sometimes and not eat the restaurant food anyway, so why waste the money? We are just wondering how old our kids will get before they start demanding ‘real food,’ I guess when it gets to that point, we will just have to stop eating out altogether). :)

Well, I was going to tell about the funny thing that Eli said. We were at the restaurant and at one point in the meal the boys noticed a painting of a rooster hanging on the wall behind them. I said something about the rooster, and Eli said, “No, it’s not a rooster.” (I just assumed that he thought it was a chicken, and that maybe he wasn’t familiar with the word ‘rooster.’) Kolby told him that it was a rooster, and he said, “No, a moose.” I smiled and Kolby corrected him and told him it was a rooster again, and Eli said, “No, a mooster.” I thought that was pretty cute.

Ok, last thing. While I was writing this, Michael just called and said that he got another interview for a transition year program here in Milwaukee. It is at St. Luke’s Hospital, which is supposed to have a nice transition year. He set it up for November 16th. It has been nice to get a few invitations already. We’re just waiting until next month to start hearing back about dermatology residency interviews. Hey, here’s a question for any of our fellow medical students, residents, or fellows that may happen to be reading this: As you may know, most of the interview invitations are done by e-mail, and with many of the programs it seems that if you don’t respond to the e-mail invitation immediately, all the interview dates may already be full by the time you call. We heard of another student setting it up so that she receives a message on her pager when she gets a new e-mail (so she doesn’t have to worry about checking her e-mail every 20 minutes each day). Does anyone know how to do this? Is this something you do through your e-mail settings, or something extra that you have to pay for through your pager service (or both?) If anyone knows about how to set that up, that would be great, thanks!

Living With The Boys

On Having All Boys

So, whenever I go anywhere, I get the same questions and comments. The most common comment I get is, "Wow, you have your hands full, don't you?" (I get this one even when Kolby is at preschool and I only have Eli and Camden with me). Although I’m a little tired of that one, it’s ok – I figure most people are either sympathizing with how busy I am or they are little old ladies remembering their own days as young mothers with several little ones. But if I had a dollar for every time I heard the “you’ve got your hands full” comment, we could probably have paid off Michael’s medical school loans by now.

The comments that do bug me a little are the ones about me having all boys. Since I am obviously pregnant and usually have three boys age 3 and under in tow, I am constantly getting variations of the question, “So, what are you having?” When I answer that it is another boy, I get a variety of responses. Every once in a while someone will say something like, “Oh, that’s great,” or “All boys, how fun!” But I’ve actually only gotten those comments a few times. Most people follow quickly with, “Do you want a girl?” My standard answer has become, “We would be happy either way – we wouldn’t mind having all boys.”

I really would be happy with 5 boys (5 is the number of kids that we want). I wouldn’t mind having a girl either, but I’m not waiting and hoping for a girl. And we are definitely not going to continue having children until we ‘get a girl.’ Really, I think it would be a lot of fun to dress a little girl. Whenever you go into a store, there are always way cuter clothes for girls – all you have to do is add a little pink ruffle to any plain t-shirt and it is cute – and most stores have a much larger selection of girl’s clothes than boy’s clothes. But beyond dressing her up, I don’t really feel any big void in my life right now without a girl. If we end up having a girl, that would be great, but a pack of rowdy boys is a fun adventure, and that’s what I’m expecting at this point.

Michael and I both like to know what to expect, and we have always been anxious to find out the genders of our babies as soon as possible. Before I had the ultrasound with Kolby, I had a feeling that it was a girl. Don’t know why. And then before the ultrasound with Eli, I didn’t really have a specific feeling either way, but I just assumed that it was a girl – we had a boy, so a girl was what would come next, right? Wrong. And during my pregnancies with both Kolby and Eli I was morning-sick in a similar way, but with my third pregnancy I was sick at different times, and I was sick on and off, instead of it just getting worse until it went away. Anyway, I remembered my mom (who had three girls and then two boys) telling me that she was sick in one way with all the girls, and her sickness was very different with her boys. So, before we had the ultrasound with Camden, I thought it was a girl because of that. Nope.

This time around, before the ultrasound, I wasn’t going to make a guess – I didn’t have any strong feelings either way, and I knew I would be happy with a boy or girl. And then we were told that there was a possibility of twins because of dates and measurements, so that was a lot to think of before we had the ultrasound. [If we had twins, I was thinking of naming them Isaac and Aurora “Rori” if it was a boy and girl, or Aurora “Rori” and Avagial – after my great grandmother – “Avy” if it was two girls, but I hadn’t come up with a second name yet if it was two boys.] Anyway, it wasn’t twins. (For two out of my four pregnancies they told us there was a chance of twins, and then we had to wait several days before an ultrasound, going crazy not knowing – I think from now on I’ll tell them not to tell me before the ultrasound if they think there might be twins, because if it is twins we will find out at the ultrasound anyway and won’t have to go crazy wondering. But this pregnancy was just one, and he was a boy, and now we are expecting Isaac in about 3 weeks – that sure is coming up soon!

With this pregnancy, we decided to wait a while to tell anyone (other than our parents). Since I had an early miscarriage with my first pregnancy (before Kolby), we have always waited until we had the first doctor’s appointment and heard the heartbeat before making any announcements, but this time I wanted to wait even longer. I wanted to wait until we had an ultrasound to know if it was a boy or girl first. I guess it is kind of a good thing that they thought it might be twins because they did an early ultrasound to check on that when I was 13 weeks along. That’s when we found out that it was probably a boy, and we started telling people we were pregnant after that. That was probably a good thing, because if we had waited until I had my regular ultrasound scheduled later on, it wouldn’t have mattered if we were telling anyone because I was starting to show by then. I guess that’s the thing with having all these kids close together – with each one I show sooner and my stomach expands more – just like a balloon that has been inflated once and never returns to its original shape again. But I can’t get down about how I look if I’m choosing to have kids so close together, there’s just no time in between to get ‘back to normal.’ My goal is to reach ‘normal’ again by the time kid # 5 is 2-years-old. But that is another topic entirely.

Anyway, one reason I wanted to wait so long this time was because I didn’t want to get a million questions about if I wanted a girl. I just wanted to know what it was and to be able to answer confidently, “It’s a boy, yes we’re happy for a boy, no we weren’t wishing for a girl,” or “It’s a girl, yes we’re happy for a girl, Yes, I’m sure she’s going to be tough with all those big brothers.” So, it was nice to know beforehand.

One thing that took me a while to get used to, though is the comments I got from random people anytime I went to any public place. Little old men at the grocery store, young couples in the doctor’s office waiting room, women at bus stops (I don’t even ride the bus, I just get comments from people as I walk by on the sidewalk), students at the medical school, moms at the library, teenage store clerks, etc. are all curious to know what this one is going to be. And I don’t mind that – I have asked many other pregnant moms what they are having before. But after they find out that it is a boy, some people make the rudest comments. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” or “Are you going to keep trying until you get your girl?” or “That’s too bad,” or most recently, from a girl who worked at Wal Mart, “Oh, that sucks!” I mean, what are people thinking? I’ve decided that most people just aren’t thinking, because you wouldn’t say something like that if you were. Either way – if someone is very happy that they are having their fourth boy, they don’t want to hear all the negative comments from everyone who thinks they need a girl; or if someone really wanted a girl more than anything else in the world, how would that make her feel to have people make comments about her inability to do so thus far?

So, lately I have really gotten over being annoyed by these comments most of the time – I just smile, nod, and say something quick like, “Yeah, we like boys at our house,” or “We’re really good at boys,” before walking away. But I have had this conversation so many times, I figured I’d just write it all down. I’m sure that if we do end up having another boy after this one, I will get so many more of these comments, but oh well. (If that does happen, though, I will need some suggestions for more boy names -- I am running out of ones that both Michael and I like). People can think what they want, we really do love having our little pack of boys!

First Week of October

Well, this first week of October has been much more relaxed than the schedule we were on for Michael’s rotation last month. He is now doing one of his elective rotations called “Promoting Health in Urban Underserved Communities,” and he has basically had a 9-5 schedule with a lot more flexibility to get time off if he needs to, which is nice because he is taking one of his Step 2 Board exams and we are expecting the baby to come this month.

So, this week was pretty uneventful. Kolby had preschool, which he always loves. It is interesting because his classroom teacher is blind, although I don’t think that the kids really realize this. On Monday Kolby wanted to take a cut-out of a footprint that he made in his church class to show his school teacher. He was showing it to her at the beginning of class, and she was asking if she could hold it, asking what color it was, and telling him that he must have big feet if it was traced from his foot. And he loves his gym class too. Often we go about 15 minutes before the end of class and if they are wrapping up a game that is not very structured, I will let Eli join in with Kolby and the other kids. They have played freeze tag a couple times and the boys really like it. Kolby seems to be one of the only kids that really comprehends the idea – many of the others just kept running after they were tagged without waiting to be unfrozen. And on Wednesday when I went to pick him up, Kolby and another little boy named Simon were running around holding hands and they came up and Kolby told me Simon was his best friend. I let Eli run around with them, and they were holding his hands and playing great with him too. I think Eli will really enjoy going to the classes in a few months – he will be able to start in the winter session once we get back from our trips, since he will be 3 years old by then.

Well, on Wednesday I hit 36 weeks with this pregnancy. So now I have just over 3 weeks to go. I am glad we waited a while in the beginning of the pregnancy to announce to people that we were pregnant this time – I know that it’s all in my head, but it really seemed to make the remainder of the pregnancy go by much quicker than with earlier pregnancies when we announced it soon after we found out. So, on Wednesday night Michael had an AOA meeting, so I took Kolby to his swimming lesson. He is doing great. They have these little float belts that they put around the kids’ waists to give them confidence, and the kids all swam the length of the pool with those on several times in this week’s lesson, then at the end they swam a few feet from the edge of the pool to their teacher with no float belts, so that was pretty cool. It is fun to see Kolby’s confidence increase as he is now really learning how to swim.

On Thursday morning we went to the Twelmyer’s house for the family history group, and I was able to help Sister Twelmyer to learn how to search for some ancestors on the IGI online so that she can prepare the names to take to the temple. Later that afternoon I had my doctor’s appointment – I am down to the last month now, so I am having an appointment every week – and Michael was able to join us for the appointment this time. Everything is going well with the baby, and I am dilated to a 2. (I don’t really care if I’m dilated much yet or not, except that my midwife had mentioned that they would induce me a day or two after my due date, if it goes that long, but that if you get that far and are not dilated at all, they might not do it as early. So anyway, I got her to commit to inducing me on November 1st if I haven’t had the baby by the due date, which is nice to have a final date set). And Thursday night Michael took Eli to swim lessons, and said that they had a lot of fun.

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Eli decorating cookies . __ . __ . __ . __ . __ . __ . Eli licking his frosting

On Friday morning, after I dropped Kolby off at preschool, we went to Jill Hunter’s apartment for some fall activities for the kids from the apartment complex. All of the kids went outside and collected fall leaves, and then we went back in and they decorated cookies that were shaped like leaves. Eli had fun doing that. Then on Friday night we went to the Townsend’s house for our ward dessert groups, and the Sanders family came too. We had banana splits and had fun talking with the adults while all the kids played.

And this weekend has been spent watching General Conference on the internet. The boys kind of had a rough time sitting through the first session yesterday, but it seems like they are getting used to the idea of sitting quietly and watching the 2-hour sessions at a time, and they have done pretty well today (as well as you could expect for a 2- and 3-year-old, and Camden napped through most of this morning’s session). After the last session that will be starting up here in a few minutes, we will eat the roast that Michael has prepared for dinner and then he is going to head down to Chicago. He got a pretty good deal on a motel room, so he can drive down tonight and not have to get up super early in the morning and he can avoid any bad traffic tomorrow. In the morning he will take one of his two Step 2 Board exams. It is the one where they have different standardized patients and they are graded on how they give exams and take the patients’ histories. So, hopefully he will have a safe drive down there and back, and his test will go well. Then I think we are planning to go out to dinner as a family when he gets home Monday evening to celebrate him finishing his test.

Eli, Mommy, and Kolby watching Conference

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that Michael got another interview invitation this week. He got an e-mail saying that he is on the early invite list for the transitional year program in Salt Lake, and that they will let him know the dates for that interview shortly. So things are all going pretty well. I’d better run get the computer set up now so we can catch the last session of Conference. Hope you all had a great week!