Strength of an Egg

Tomorrow morning is the day that we find out what the next steps are with Benjamin.  I was helping him get dressed this morning because for some reason "it was just too hard to get dressed by myself, mom can you help me!"  That guy is just too smart, he knows how to pull on mommy's heart strings, so of course I walked over to him in the living room and started helping him get dressed, all the while he had this cheesy little smirk on his face, he knew he had won me over!  Yup, the award for push-over of the year goes to mom!  Anyways while I was getting his shirt on he looked up and I noticed that the lump has gotten bigger since I felt it a couple days ago, he looked at me and goes "my bump is still there mommy, I can still feel it" it broke my heart but it made me just keep pushing for tomorrow more and more.

I had a friend send me something the other day and I thought it fit perfectly so I wanted to share it with you all:

Parents of children with a potentially serious condition, are often referred to or viewed as having strength "like a rock." Albeit flattering, it isn't quite true. It is more like the strength of an egg.  An egg, you ask? Yes, an egg.  If you think about an egg, you will see the point I make.

An egg has a polished smooth outer appearance with no cracks or weak spots visible. It seems almost inconceivable that the inside might not be as smooth and solid as the outside. Most children, at some point in their lifetime, are shown the famous egg trick. An egg set at just the right angle can withstand an enormous amounts of pressure and cannot be cracked or broken. Yet the same egg, tapped gently at an even slightly different angle will break. The contents, once so neatly concealed inside, will come spilling out, and the no longer perfect shell will be crushed. Then the shell looks so fragile that it seems inconceivable that it ever held any strength.

That is where parents of children with potentially serious conditions are more like eggs than rocks. A rock is solid all the way through. If you tried to break a rock, it would be almost impossible. If successful, one would find that there is nothing inside but more rock. It takes a lot more than pure hardness to hold the hand of hope. These parents are not solid all the way through. They hurt, they fear, they cry, they hope. It takes a very careful balancing act to keep the shell from being shattered.

Balancing an egg while running a household, going for doctor visits, keeping the family together and holding onto the constantly unraveling ties of your sanity can be very tricky indeed. Occasionally, the angle will be off and the shell will break, shattering hope and the neatly secured appearances of a truly fragile existence. Unlike Humpty Dumpty though, parents of kids with potentially serious conditions will pick themselves up and put themselves back together again.

I thought that fit perfectly because I have had so many people tell me that I am such a strong mom and that I am holding up so perfectly and that they can't believe how well I am doing.  Well the truth is, I do break down.  Just ask my husband and ask my parents.  Those three are AMAZING and sometimes they just let me cry and let it out.  They are always there though to say something encouraging and my dad is great at getting me to laugh.  I made sure to put on the saying I just posted potentially serious conditions because we are not sure what is going on yet but they have the potential to be serious.  Either way, knowing that something is going on with your child that is just not right has to be one of the hardest things to face as a parent.  Wondering the what ifs, the hows, and the whys, that no one can answer for me right now are the most daunting questions I have ever been faced with.  So yes, right now my strength is that of an egg and today it feels like it could be shattered but tomorrow morning at 10am when I am holding my precious 3 1/2 year old son's hand as we walk into the clinic it will still be the strength of an egg but it will be the strength that will not allow it to shatter so my little monkey will see how brave mommy is and that will help him be brave too.

Thanks for listening :)

Gotta Have Faith

This is going to be a random post that has nothing to do with working out but I needed to share this and I would rather share it on here than on Facebook since I know the hype of my blog has worn down so there will be less people reading this now than there were when I first started writing this.

Have you ever wondered why things in your life happen the way that they do?  Why you were dealt the hand that you have in this game of life? When is enough really going to be enough?  What is going to come of the future?

I have been thinking those questions a lot lately and I am trying to tell myself that I just need to have faith.  I need to trust that everything is going to work out just fine and that everything will soon fall into place.  Now you all are wondering, "seriously, what the heck is going on!"

Well in January, my monkey man Benjamin, had a lump on his neck.  At first Tim and I thought that it was just a swollen lymph node and thought nothing of it but it wasn't going down.  We brought him into his doctor and he ran some blood tests since he thought that maybe he had mono since he had an enlarged spleen, well they all came back normal so we were told that he possibly had "Cat Scratch Fever"  We thought nothing of it since when we looked it up there was nothing that would cause any serious problems.  The lump never fully went away, it did however get smaller but you could definitely still feel it if you touched his neck.  Well in March it came back again and this time it was larger than it was before.  I again brought him back to the pediatrician because now we were worried.  His doctor thought that it would be a good thing to bring him to the dentist to make sure that there wasn't an infection in his tooth since blood tests showed nothing.  Off to the dentist the next morning and NOTHING.  We were then referred to the ENT and they had us do an ultrasound before we went and saw him.  We went there and it came back that he had swelling and fluid in his sub mandibular gland (ones located right along your jaw line) we went to the ENT and he felt them and said that he was concerned since Benjamin is only 3 (4 next month, wow time flies!) and that rarely children have issues with their sub mandibular gland and that it could signify something serious.  He wanted to do a strong and long course of antibiotics for 20 days and have him come back.  That way he could just see if there happened to be an infection that was harboring in his gland that was not wanting to show up on blood work.  Well we finished the antibiotics and lo behold there is STILL the lump...again it isn't as large but it didn't go away.  We go back on Thursday to hear what the next steps are.  The ENT had stated that if he feels even the slightest bit of a lump than the whole gland needs to be removed and biopsied.  So I am a nervous wreck with that.

Now onto my other stress...this one falls under the whole "When is enough really going to be enough?"  We all know that Tim and I have a beautiful baby girl Adalyn that was born in December. Well she is still our perfect and beautiful little princess but there are some little things that are going on.  When I was 8 months pregnant my stomach would shudder and vibrate.  It was nothing that I had ever felt with Hannah and Benjamin.  I would tell my parents, my OB and Tim that it felt like she was having a seizure.  Well, no one knew what to say or do (not that there would have been much they could have done) but it would have been nice for someone to acknowledge it.  When she was born in the hospital she was always twitching and moving her left side of the body, I brought it up to a nurse and she thought nothing of it.  When she was 5 weeks old and was put in the ICU for her RSV she had an episode of becoming stiff as a board and arching her back while making weird high pitched sounds and turning her head to the right.  I started crying because I thought she was having a seizure.  The doctor looked at her and stated it was reflux. Well Adalyn has never gotten better since then.  She still arches her back, she gets stiff, she cries uncontrollably and she is very jerky.  She flails her arms and legs uncontrollably and puts her limbs in weird positions.  I finally got fed up with hearing it was just reflux and I called Gillette Children's and got in touch with a Neurologist.  2 weeks ago she had a 4 hour Video EEG completed and it showed that she may have abnormal brain waves but so far no seizures so praise the Lord on that.  She didn't pass the Neurological Exam so there is for sure something neurologically wrong.  She has increased tone in her upper and lower extremities which may be Cerebral Palsy and she does have abnormal movements.  They are thinking she may in fact had seizures in-utero and had a stroke in-utero.  She goes for a sedated MRI on her brain on 4/24.  We will then see if she does have brain damage and figure out what the next plans are.

I just want to break down and scream.  I have had numerous people tell me that there is a reason why God gave Tim and I the children that we have and I fully believe that, no doubt in my mind about that.  Whatever Hannah, Benjamin and Adalyn need they will get from Tim and I.  We have shown that with Benjamin with his Autism Spectrum Disorder that he has, we got him to therapy every week that he needed it.  Whatever therapies that Adalyn needs we will make sure she gets there.  It is still hard though.  It still makes me ask those questions I posted earlier.  I cannot help but feel like I failed as a mother, that somehow these are my fault.  If you all could just say a prayer for my family that would be great.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I will wear what I pin on Pinterest!

For those who follow me on Pinterest you may have seen outfits that I have been posting that are freaking adorable!  That is my motivation, I will wear what I pin on Pinterest!!!  If it is the last thing that I do :)  haha

Many people have asked how things are going because I haven't posted in awhile, I apologize about that.  Things are going pretty well, haven't been working out as much as I would have hoped I would but still making sure I watch what I am eating and will get back to the grind of working out again.  Things have been VERY STRESSFUL in my life with the kiddos and such but I am trying my best to funnel my stress into useful things that I can use to my advantage, such as working out :)

I haven't weighed myself in awhile because it usually just ends up making me pissed off or I keep stepping on and off of it at least 10 times just to see if the number will miraculously go down :)  Kinda like when you take a pregnancy test and you see that it is indeed positive but you know that you had to buy the box of 3 just in case so you take all 3 of the tests just to see if you had a defective one!  That is how I am with the scale, so I decided that I will weigh myself once a month (maybe 2 times) otherwise I am going to just go with how my clothes are fitting.  Clothes are starting to feel looser so that must be a good sign, right?!

I am also going to start measuring myself, that will help me with visualizing how I am indeed losing weight. It is hard for me to notice because I am with myself everyday!

That picture pretty much sums it all up, along with "do it so you are around for your children!"  Well hope you all have a fantastic day!