Sleepless in Milwaukee

So, last week Isaac woke up right as we were going to bed at night and wanted a bottle, and then he got up about an hour earlier in the morning than he normally does. That was unusual, since he has been sleeping through the night for quite a while now. (And a little inconvenient because Michael has started into his surgery sub-I this month, so he has been getting up around 4am to get ready to go to the hospital each day and then being ready for bed by around 10pm, and I have been trying to get up with the boys if needed so Michael can get some more rest). Well, the next night Isaac slept just fine, but Camden woke up in at 4am and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Michael had already gotten up and given him a drink of water before I even woke up. I got up and changed him and tried to get him to go back to sleep in his crib, but after he cried a while I finally brought him into bed with us (around the time that Michael had to get up to get ready for work), and luckily he actually slept in bed with me for a couple more hours before Kolby and Eli woke us up. Camden hasn’t had a problem with waking up for a really long time. The next night Isaac woke up around 1am and wanted a bottle. He was starting to get a little stuffy, and since his problems with his nasal airway when he was born he can breath well, but if he gets a little cold he sounds so stuffed up and he just wakes himself up a lot at night. I fed him, but he didn’t fall asleep quickly like he normally would have – he was content to stay awake for another half hour after eating before I finally just put him in his swing and went back to bed – he must have fallen to sleep on his own. The next night I was so tired, and luckily Isaac did better. Around 2:30am, though, Michael rolled over and told me that one of the boys was crying. I asked who it was, and he said it was Eli and then rolled back over and went back to sleep. I went in and was glad that all Eli wanted was for me to pick up the stuffed animals he had dropped on the floor, and then he quickly went back to sleep. (I gave Michael a hard time the next morning for waking me up on a weekend after I had stayed up with the boys earlier in the week, but he had no memory at all of waking me up or any of the kids crying the night before, and it was ok since I wasn’t up for long). Then last night Isaac had such a stuffy nose and he couldn’t even keep his pacifier in his mouth. He had woken up crying four times in the last half hour before we went to bed, and after I had to get up two more times to help him, I brought him into bed with us [that was the second time this week I had brought one of the kids into bed with us, and I have a pretty strict rule about not bringing them into our bed -- but sleep deprivation makes such "rules" not seem to matter very much]. He was snoring so loudly, and after half an hour of that I put him back in the swing and was very glad when he slept through the rest of the night (he even slept in until about 9:30am, which is much better than the 6 or 6:30am waking time he had been averaging last week). Unfortunately, one of the kids at church yesterday must have had a little bug or something, because around 2:30am this morning Michael woke me up and told me that Kolby had thrown up in bed. I found him in the bathroom, his clothes were just covered, and Michael stripped the bedding from his bunk bed while I took off his clothes, bathed him, and got him dressed again. We set him up a little ‘bed’ of blankets on our floor next to our bed and tried to get back to sleep. Fortunately, Kolby seems to be feeling better today and I am crossing my fingers that he is over it. Isaac has been sleeping pretty peacefully so far in his swing this evening, and we are just waiting for the last load of laundry to finish drying before we go to bed too. It sure makes a big difference when you are used to your kids sleeping through the night and they all decide to become nocturnal all of a sudden. Maybe tonight we will actually be able to sleep until morning.

We survived!!!

Well, I did it, or I should say, we did it – we survived my medicine sub-internship. This has been a grueling month, and I think all of us are tired – me from the time I spent at the hospital, and Steph from being pregnant and taking care of our 3 boys. It was a lot of work and I learned a lot, but I’m looking forward to this next month when I will have my weekends back and can spend more time with the family.

Looking back over the week, it’s hard to remember what happened when – it all seems a blur. I remember being on call overnight twice this week, Sunday & Thursday. Oh yeah, Tuesday night Steph & I got to go to a Brewers baseball game – I had gotten free tickets when I went to donate blood a while back. Amy Hymas babysat for us so that we could enjoy an evening together. It was a great game – and they won, 9 to 1.

Wednesday night was the Medical Student & Spouses Association opening social. They had food and it was a nice time to see some people we hadn’t seen this month because I have been so busy.

Steph reached 35 weeks into her pregnancy, which means she has less than 35 days to go – we are pretty excited. And Camden had his 1-year-old appointment. He is a big kid – he was 25 lbs 5 oz (Kolby and Eli were each around 20-21 lbs at the same age) & 32 inches (Kolby & Eli were 30-31 inches at that age); so I guess we are feeding him good. He continues to take more and more steps, though he still likes to crawl more than walk. He also got a haircut this week by Steph, and we are sad that his curls are mostly gone right now, but hopefully they’ll grow back soon.

Friday night was Jordan Hedgecock’s 4-year-old birthday party. We went to their house for pizza and then went bowling. This was the first time bowling for our boys, and I think they had a lot of fun. We had a blast – I hadn’t bowled for a long time, and I ended up with one of my better games with a score of 144. Maybe we’ll have to invest in some used bowling shoes so we can go more often, since the place we went only costs $0.99 per game.

Steph got to go to the Relief Society broadcast last night, and she said it was really good. She was telling me that she felt several of the things that were focused on seemed to be meant specifically for her to hear – about how to improve on our parenting techniques, how to improve personal spirituality, etc. One thing she mentioned was that the General Relief Society president was talking about strengthening families, and Steph was feeling kind of bad because she felt like she should have more patience with the boys, and then one of the next speakers made a comment that seemed to be directed right at how she was feeling -- the speaker said that young children are quick to forgive and forget, so if we have done something that we need to improve on with them, don't sit around feeling guilty, appologize and tell them you love them, and then work on fixing the problem. I was home with the boys last night, and we had fun playing duck-duck-goose and other games outside with the neighbors.

I had to be in the hospital yesterday morning and this morning, but I was able to make it to the last hour of church and to help Steph with the kids. They were a little crankier today than normal, so Steph was happy to see me. She is really looking forward to all the time I have off this next month to help with the kids and around the house.

I’m sure there are things I forgot to mention, but that about sums up this whirlwind of a week.

One More Week

Well, we’ve got one more week to go before we get through Michael’s Sub-I this month. Michael and I are both counting down the days. He added up the other day, and he will have worked just over 90 hours this week (even though they are not supposed to make you work over 80 hours in a week or over 30 consecutive hours – but Michael has done both several times this month). Michael and I are both pretty worn out after the long hours he has had this month, and really looking forward to a lighter schedule next month! Earlier this week Michael got home after being on call at the hospital for over 30 hours and only getting one hour of sleep in that time, and when he arrived home all the boys were down for their naps, so Michael fell asleep on the couch. Kolby woke up from his nap a little while later, and was so excited to see that Daddy was home, but I told him that Daddy really needed his sleep and not to wake him up. Kolby got a sad look on his face and just laid down on his blanket on the floor next to the couch where Michael was sleeping. Later on I looked over and saw that Kolby was rubbing Michael’s arm – trying to wake him up, I’m sure. It is pretty cute to see how much our boys love their Daddy. I guess we will all be relieved in October when we have more time to spend together as a whole family.

Well, this week went well. Kolby started his preschool classes again at the YMCA, and he is loving both of his classes. He goes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 2½ hours each day. Also this week the boys started their swim lessons up again. Kolby has his on Wednesday nights and Eli on Thursday nights. They love swimming, and Kolby was excited that his friend from church, Isaac Anderson, is in his class. I went swimming with Eli (even though he really is ready for swim lessons by himself, they keep the kids in parent-child lessons until age 3 at the YMCA). He is amazing in the water – he loves to dunk his head under the water over and over and jump in to me from the edge, and the other night he kept trying to jump away from me and swim on his own. His teacher is the same teacher he had last session, and she commented that he will definitely be ready to take the swim lessons on his own when he is old enough.

Thursday was Camden’s 1st birthday. We had a little party for him the week before, so we didn’t do any big celebrations this week, but several family members called to tell him Happy Birthday, and he got to open a few gifts. That morning I also had my new visiting teachers come for the first time, which was fun. And then in the afternoon I had a doctor’s appointment for some pain I’ve been having in my foot. The doctor sent me upstairs and had an X-ray taken just to see if there might be anything in my foot, and she told me to soak it in warm water each night for a couple weeks and see if that helps. Hopefully that little problem will resolve itself quickly. And then on Friday night we watched Jordan and Carter so that Peter and Cynthia could go on a date, and when they came back they watched our boys while we went and got custard and rented a couple videos. When we came back, our boys were in bed and theirs fell asleep on their laps, and it was nice because they stayed for a bit and we got a chance to just sit and talk for a while.

And yesterday morning we went to the church and I dropped Kolby off for his primary program practice. Eli and Camden and I went and picked up a few things from the grocery store and came back. Kolby has been doing so well lately – he memorized a scripture and had a little line to say in the program, “In primary we learned that faith means trust.” He has been working on memorizing his part for about a month now, and at the program in church this morning he said it, and then gave a huge grin – everyone could tell that he was so proud of himself! Saturday evening we went to a birthday party for Ian Nielsen, who was born around the same time as Camden. At the party, Christina Nielsen, who is a photographer, also took cute pictures of all the kids Ian and Camden’s age and took a photo of all the moms holding their kids that age – we took one about a year ago when all of us were pregnant. She was talking about putting some of the photos she took in the medical school yearbook – too bad for me that all the other moms in the pictures looked nice and thin after a year of recovering from their pregnancies, and I looked huge pregnant still – oh well. We had fun at the Nielsen’s, and then we headed over to the Hymas’ house for a little birthday party for their daughter, Emily, who is turning 2. I gave Emily some of the bows I made for a gift, and she was wearing some at church today, so that was fun.

And church went well today. Michael was actually lucky enough to discharge his last patient of the day yesterday, so he asked his resident for permission to leave the hospital for one hour today to come to church for Kolby’s primary program, even though he is on overnight call again starting today, and his resident said yes. So even though he was in the hospital this morning, so I had to get all the kids ready for church by myself, he got there and was able to stay for Sacrament meeting, which was great for Kolby to have Michael there for his program, and it was also nice because Eli and especially Camden were a little wild and noisy in that meeting, so it was helpful to have him there to help me with them. He had to rush off to the hospital as soon as that meeting was over, and I haven’t heard from him yet today, so hopefully the day is going well for him.

The rest of church went well for me. With the help of a couple little bags of Cheerios and Honeycomb cereal, Camden actually stayed in the classroom with me for all of Sunday School and Relief Society (except for a few minutes when we had to go out because he was crying after he fell and hit his head on a chair leg). But it was nice to be able to stay in the classroom for the entire lesson, since he is starting to get to that age when kids are too old to just sit still for 3 hours of church, but not old enough yet to go into the 18-month-old nursery class, so many parents end up spending a lot of time out in the halls at church for those months. After church I went to choir practice, and the boys enjoyed playing at the choir nursery. And when we came home we took dinner over to the Hansens because they had a baby a few weeks ago, and I put the boys down for naps. Camden just got up, and the other two are still sleeping. Thank goodness for naptime. I think that even when Kolby outgrows naps, I will still insist on a minimum of a 2-hour “quite time” in his room while the younger boys nap. On days that I am frustrated with the kids or just days that seem especially long and I am tired, their naptime is very important for me to have a couple hours all to myself. Well, I hope you have all had a good week!

Sub-Internship Makes My Life Seem Like A Blur

This week has seemed a blur as I have started into my medicine sub-internship. I say that because I am realizing just how busy it is going to be when I am an intern full time next year. I had to ask Steph to look at the calendar to remind me what actually happened this week outside the hospital.

I was on call Monday and Friday this week. Being on-call entails being at the hospital from 6:00 am one morning until 1:00pm the next day – about 30 hours total. During an on-call day, our team can get up to 10 new admissions, usually starting in the afternoon. There is a senior resident, three interns (including me) and two junior medical students, so we take turns going to meet the new patients, usually in the emergency room. On Monday I got two new patients – an older gentleman that had fallen in his home and been stuck on the floor for two days before being found by his neighbor, and a lady with multiple sclerosis (MS) with a bladder infection. As an “intern” I am in charge of meeting the patient, conducting a full history and physical, writing all the admission orders, and then taking care of the patient while they are in the hospital. I still have the senior resident who looks over all my orders before they go out to make sure they are ok, but it is a new experience to be in charge of making so many decisions. I am at a new location that uses a computer system that I am not familiar with, so it has been an uphill learning experience on that end as well.

That first call night I got about six hours of sleep, which was great – I didn’t have to go home and sleep the next day. But I did miss the Labor Day ward BBQ that Steph went to with the boys. She said some of our friends helped her with the three boys and that the boys loved playing on the playground.

My other call night, Friday, I got about 3 hours of sleep. I got two admissions again, this time a man with a cellulitis (skin infection) in his left leg, and a really complicated patient that has a 3rd clot in his left leg and shingles all over his body because he had a lung transplant a few years ago and is on medicine to suppress his immune system. Things were a little busier overall for our team, so I was up more of the night and pretty tired the next day. It is nice to have that post call afternoon to recuperate before having to go back in the next day.

Then, on top of normal call coming every 4th night, we have “short call” that occurs the day after our post call day (so call day, post-call day, short-call day, and pre-call day). On short call we start taking admissions in the morning and can get up to 4 as a team. Most mornings we are already busy with seeing how the patients did overnight, writing progress notes, filling orders, calling consults, and rounding as a team to talk about our patients, so to add admissions on top of that makes those days pretty busy as well. I guess I never realized how much paperwork goes on in the background behind patient care.

Wednesday night I had my first Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) meeting. AOA is the medical school honor society – only 32 of the 200 people in our class were invited to join. Dr. Kolesari shared with us how he ended up as a family practice doctor and the director of the anatomy program at the medical school. Then we were introduced to the different programs that AOA members typically take part in, including helping to prepare the 2nd years for the Step 1 test; helping with testing the 2nd years for their physical exam test; helping with the Make a Wish foundation; serving at free clinics; and more. It looks like one of the goals of AOA is to find ways to serve the medical college community and our community at large.

I had Thursday off, which was such a nice break after the busy week. I helped Steph to take the boys to their last art class. They made tropical trees, “grass” (plastic) skirts, and other decorations for a luau that we had Saturday night at the Nielsen’s house. The luau was really fun, except for the mosquitoes that bit all of us in about 20 places each. Camden looks the worst with pink spots all over his face. There was a fishing pond and a treasure hunt for the kids, and dinner and desserts. Then we came back to our place for games last night.

Thursday afternoon and Friday all day Steph participated in getting several ultrasounds of Isaac, to help with training residents and some nurses on how to conduct ultrasounds. She got to keep several of the ultrasound pictures, got food, and even will get paid $100 for participating. I also made about $70 this week from selling old text books. Oh, speaking of money, we got our residency interviewing and relocation loan this week, so we now will have money to help pay for applications, interviews, and then moving next summer.

On Tuesday I looked over my application for residency programs one last time and then hit the submit button. I ended up applying to 100 dermatology programs and 6 transitional year programs. The ball is now out of our court and we will wait to hear for interview invitations. Keep us in your prayers so that we can get in somewhere. :)

Today I had to go into the hospital to round on my patients, so I finally got over to the church about 1:00pm for the last 20 minutes of choir practice. Mainly I went to help Steph with getting the boys back home. The Kearls invited us for dinner tonight, so that should be pretty fun. And I have tomorrow off, so that will be very relaxing. I am looking forward to when this month is over so that I can have my weekends back and more time to spend with the family.

Starting the Sub-I

In August Michael had an outpatient medicine rotation that had a very nice schedule. He got off early several afternoons a week and didn’t have to go in too early in the mornings. This means that it has been a really nice week for me – most mornings I get to ‘sleep in’ until around 7:30am and when I get up, Michael has already changed and fed the boys. Michael’s medicine sub-I started yesterday, and he is going to have a much tougher schedule for the month of September. This is one of Michael’s two sub-internship months this school year, which means that he takes on the responsibility of a 1st-year resident, which is a lot more than the normal responsibilities of a 4th-year medical student. Anyways, this month Michael will be working on weekends and be at the hospital overnight every 4th night. I think we may both be pretty tired by the time this month is over – at least the rotations he has scheduled for October and November are both supposed to have a much lighter schedule.

This last week was nice. On Monday I met Amy Schneider de Cortez (a friend from Michael’s school) and her kids at the Children’s Museum downtown. We had a lot of fun playing there, and it was good to see Amy again since we haven’t gotten together in a while. Then on Tuesday morning we got to go over to Jandee Anderson’s house and let the boys play with her son, Isaac. We found out that Isaac is going to be in Kolby’s swim class at the YMCA starting in a couple weeks, so that will be really nice. Later on that afternoon, Marcela Maas got out their baby pool and the boys went and swam with Sofia and with Mikey and Landon Kam. Then I went to the annual get-to-know-you RS BBQ, which was a lot of fun, even though it was very warm and humid out that night. I got to talk to some old friends and met several new sisters in the ward too.

On Wednesday I took the boys to the playgroup at Hoyt Park. The boys had a lot of fun and Camden enjoyed crawling all around the playground – trying to eat as much sand as he could before I stopped him, and climbing up on the playground equipment and playing on the slide. He is getting so old, playing with the big kids. On Wednesday night Kolby had his last swimming lesson of the summer session. On the last lesson of each session they always learn about water safety and bring a canoe into the pool and let the kids paddle it around, which is really fun for the kids. Kolby has improved so much with his swimming over the last few months. Michael took him to his lesson, and then afterwards he surprised him and took him to McDonalds. They each ordered something from the dollar menu, and Michael said that Kolby came and sat in the front seat of the car while they shared their food and talked about how things were going lately. Michael said that it was a really fun experience to have some one-on-one time with Kolby and to just talk to him about stuff. And Kolby talked about it for the entire day afterwards. That was pretty cute. So, the next night after Michael took Eli to his last swimming lesson, he took Eli and did the same activity. Michael said that he didn’t think Eli really caught on that it was a special thing that they got to do an activity just by themselves, but he said that Eli enjoyed getting the food from McDonalds, at least.

We went on Thursday morning for the toddler art class, and it was my turn to teach the lesson. I took these pictures of dinosaur skeletons, and the kids glued different shapes of pasta noodles on to make their own dinosaur skeletons. The other kids in the group ended up with pictures that somewhat resembled dinosaurs, and Kolby and Eli each finished with a piece of paper covered in a 3-inch thick pile of glue and noodles. It was pretty cute, though. That afternoon I also had a doctor’s appointment. I now have two more appointments scheduled in September, and then an appointment scheduled every week in October until the baby is due. Luverda Martin, my midwife, said that everything looks like it’s right on track with the baby. On Friday Michael went to school in the morning to work on his research, and then in the afternoon we took the boys to Nash Park, where someone had told me that they had a playground that was good for smaller kids because the guardrails went all the way down on all the sides of the equipment. Camden loved it – it wasn’t a very large playground, but once he found out that he could climb up the steps and go down the slide all by himself, he did that over and over again. Then we came home and had a bunch of friends over for a game night. We invited several new families in the ward that we hadn’t met before, and several old friends, and had a really fun time getting to know everyone.

On Saturday Michael started his sub-I. He said that it was pretty difficult because they don’t have orientation until tomorrow, so he didn’t know a lot of things that he was supposed to be doing, but that will get better after the first little while. I went to a baby shower for Jill Austin while Michael was at the hospital, and it was kind of a battle to take all the boys with me – they gave me a rough time, but I survived. Then, after the boys got up from their naps, we went over and cleaned the church building as a family. Afterwards we took the kids to Dennys – we love their “kids eat free” deal on Saturdays! We rented a movie for a date after we put the boys down to bed. We got one that Michael’s mom recommended to us called The Ultimate Gift. I stayed up and watched the whole thing last night, and Michael fell asleep on the couch about half way through the movie, as has become his habit lately (he is now catching up on the end of the movie while I am writing this and the boys are all napping). Anyways, it was a good movie – nice to find ones that are rated PG and you don’t have to worry about them having bad language or content. Well, today has been a good day too. It was one of Michael’s four days that he gets off this month (his only Sunday off). Church went well. We had a lesson about finances and making sacrifices for the right causes for Sunday school and the lesson in Relief Society was about the law of chastity and how to teach our children about modesty and how to avoid things that are inappropriate. And tonight we were invited to the Lundgren’s house for an early dinner, so that should be a lot of fun too.

Oh, and I just wanted to thank all of you who helped give suggestions for Michael’s personal statement and resume for his residency applications. He was going to submit his final application yesterday, but is still waiting to hear back from his advisor who had some suggestions for him – but he has decided to submit his application on Tuesday whether he has heard back from the advisor or not. I think it is a really hard thing to write about yourself, but Michael did a really good job of it, and with all the suggestions and corrections that he got from family and friends, I think that he ended up with a really good personal statement. So, once everything is submitted, we will just be waiting to get invitations for interviews, which will mostly be in December and January, so keep us in your prayers (because the more interviews he gets, the better chance he has of getting matched with a residency program). Thanks!