Carol Moncado

We got two pieces of good news today!

Last year, Matt started a new job.  Because of it’s location, he qualified for the National Health Service Corp student loan repayment program.  Today, we received the funds to pay off his student loan!  We won’t actually make the payment until after he gets back from his trip next week – just in case something happens – but the amount of the student loan is safely in savings.  There was even a bit left over since the balance they used was from about December and we’ve paid off some since then.  This is so exciting!  It’s 21.7% of our remaining debt.  My student loan is 8.7% and the rest is the house.  On to the next debt!  After we rebuild the emergency fund that is.

The other bit of good news is that our now 3 year old son is having his tonsils and adenoids removed in a couple weeks!  This really is good news.  He is a very loud sleeper and a mouth breather [probably from the adenoids].  I’ve done a full 12 count in between breaths while he sleeps.  That’s not long enough to be sleep apnea but long enough to worry mom!

I’ve also got some plotting done for the seven book series Jan put me onto ;).  Yeah, yeah, yeah – a bit ahead of myself, but I’m working on it.  I still need to come up with titles.  Married by Monday is the first one.  The other two I’ve come up with so far are Wed on Wednesday [yeah, I know, it’s a bit obvious] and Family on Friday.  All three have basic plots and I have an idea for another one but not quite sure what to call it yet.  Having trouble coming up with alliterations for Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.  I think, in this case, the titles could help drive the plot ideas rather than the other way around at the moment, anyway.  Any suggestions, anyone?

First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers are with the Birdsong family.  Ben was a member of our church.  Last week, he went Home.  Today was the service.  I didn’t know Ben well, but he and Matt talked fairly often – about tennis and KWND and men’s group and a few other things.  His son had worked with us at Chick-fil-A but I haven’t seen Frankie in several years.  Ben was an important part of our church and our community.  He will be missed.

And now…  Christopher, Part 2:

Sunday, July 22, 2007 I told Penny that if the baby [he had no name even though we knew he was a boy] was born by Wednesday, I’d be home in time for his baby shower the next Saturday.  We’d planned it a full 4 weeks before he was due to make sure his clothes showed up before he did.

He had other ideas.

That Tuesday, Matt was in Jeff City for the day.  We prayed that I wouldn’t go into labor while he was hours away.  I didn’t tell him till he was nearly home that I’d been having contractions off and on all afternoon.  Never more than 2-3 per hour and stopped by dinner time, but they were definitely contractions.

I woke up at the usual time the next morning – about 6, maybe a bit earlier.  Took a shower.  I wasn’t timing them but three contractions while in the shower seemed like a bit much.  It was still a full 30 days early though, so it couldn’t be real right?  Besides, I had one final to review for and another to give that day.  Abbie, age 3, woke up on her own while I was eating breakfast.  We talked for a few minutes and then I sent her to get Dad.  Tell him to come now.

I still wasn’t really timing the contractions but they were definitely real and definitely getting a bit worse.  My bag had been packed for a few days so we got everything in the car [including 3 girls with their hair not combed] and headed to Felicia’s.  By the time we got there, the contractions were about three minutes apart.  By 8 we were at the hospital where I was promptly admitted and given – thank God – some Stadol to hold me over until the epidural was put in a bit later.  The epidural went in about 9:30.

My sister was reviewing for a final for me.  She’d gone to the class with my notes and stuff and was basically supposed to sit there while they went over their quizzes or whatever in a big group study session.  She called three or four times with questions from students.  I was like, um, I’m in labor.  Leave me alone.  Study your quizzes.

Dr. McCall had stopped by and reassured me that often babies born at 35.5 weeks are just fine, but also reminded me that it was possible he’d end up with a brief NICU stay.  She had surgery scheduled for 11:30 but was sure that he’d be born before then.  I was sure he would be, too.

Epidurals are nice.  I know there are people who have had issues with them, but for me it was heaven.  Except the right leg didn’t numb quite right so the doc gave me an extra dose.  That was nice too.  I reached 8cm and Dr. McCall broke my water.  She waited a few minutes to see if anything happened – she was sure that would just do it, but nothing did so she went back to her office to try to fit a couple of patients in [her office is maybe a 3-4 minute walk away].

Suddenly… everyone was gone except for Matt and his mom.  And then… something felt weird.  Really weird.  I paged the nurse and the next thing I know, a ton of people are in there and Dr. McCall is running back from her office.  She tells me that she hopes I’ll get to hold him for a minute but can’t promise because he is, after all, a preemie.  She sends them to get the vacuum because she doesn’t want him going through prolonged pushing and putting that kind of stress on him but by the time they got it to the room a few minutes later he was born.

We still didn’t name him.  We hadn’t decided.  It was mid-afternoon by the time we got upstairs to a private room.  He was taken to the nursery to do nursery stuff.  My sister had a doctor’s appointment so Penny gave my final.  He was little, but he was healthy.  He was actually bigger than Emily had been at birth.  Two full ounces bigger at 6lbs 6oz [and 2 oz smaller than I’d been at birth].  He seemed to understand how to nurse, but he wasn’t strong enough to nurse effectively.  We supplemented with gentle preemie formula and I pumped as much as I could.  I was an old hand at this – I’d nursed all three girls and we’d had just about every problem you could have [including a four day hospital stay for Abbie when she was just six days old and not nursing right].

He was spitting up a lot, but Maggie had, too.  She’d grown slowly but she’d grown steadily.  Surely this little guy would be the same way.  I sent out an email to all of our family and friends to let them know that he was here.  One of the first emails I got back was from our pastor.  Gary had a name recommendation – a nice strong Biblical name.  Multisyllabic and everything.

Mephibosheth.

Um… Yeah.  Of course, to this day, Gary has a hard time remembering his real name.

Eventually, we decided on Christopher Joseph.  Not Chris.  Christopher.  We took him home on Friday.  His baby shower was Saturday and he was in attendance.  We were richly blessed – both by Penny as hostess [at our house] and by our friends and family with a table full of little boy clothes [including plenty of St. Louis Cardinals stuff].

Oh – and Penny did all this even after Christopher had messed up her marriage proposal!  In part, because of Christopher’s birth, a party for a friend of ours had been postponed.  Her boyfriend was going to propose at the party, but that was out.  He proposed anyway.  She said yes ;).

Little did we know the saga that was just beginning.

I have a three year old!  I am both happy and sad about this.  I’m working on a longer post [part 2 in the Christopher series] for later but for now…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LITTLE MAN!

He loves his train table!  Pics will be posted later :).

Here is one from last night.  After he went to sleep, the girls helped me set up his new train table.  They had each picked a few things of their own to give him – CARS books, puppy that he loves, etc.  Emily and I made him a Build-A-Bear puppy last weekend [we had a free coupon!].

Time to get us all ready for church!  Watch this space – more to come ;).

Usually I love computers, technology and everything associated with them.  Usually.  Most stuff.  Some stuff I don’t understand but I’m better than the average bear when it comes to techno stuff.

We have 3 Acer laptops.  Mine, Matt’s and my old one [that still worked great until it, um, got some, uh, milk spilled on it courtesy of a 2yo and a questionable sippy cup lid – this in the middle of Nano, no less…]  The power cords, particularly with my current one and Matt’s, seem to be interchangeable, which is nice – and the other one has all the same numbers and stuff one it but looks a bit different though it fits the plug in on the back of the computers.

My last one had this shutting off problem for a while and after my [computer guru] neighbor and I had exhausted the possibilities, I’d sent it off for repair.  They repaired it [and replaced the keyboard which had about 20 missing or partially missing letters].  It worked fine until the milk incident [though the letters on the new keyboard were rubbing off too – must have been a bad batch for that model or something…].

Now my new laptop [bought in November] is doing the shutting down thing [different version of Windows and everything] and I’m not pleased… :p  Then the power cord – I think it’s the one that came with the new laptop and not Matt’s that got mixed up – stopped working.  Completely.  So we have 3 working laptops [the milk one still mostly works but the keyboard sticks too much for me to use regularly  so it’s currently hooked up to the flat screen and playing a bunch of stuff through iTunes – like old eps of shows that have been downloaded, etc] and two power cords.

That’s annoying.  Are power cords covered under the warranty?  I need to talk to my neighbor and see if he can figure out why mine is shutting off [he’s an authorized agent or whatever].  I’m afraid I may need to send it off again and that’s going to be irritating.  Last time it took 3 weeks…

So I love technology and I’m glad the power cords are interchangeable so we’re not just without one [that’s happened before /glares at the old Dell/], but I hate it when it doesn’t work.  Anyone else have a story to share?

I’m playing around with new blog backgrounds and such so if it changes every time you click on something, that’s why ;).

Hopefully, I’ll figure out what I really like soon =D.

Okay – it’s not got anything on it just yet, but Ang, my awesome friend got it started :).

http://carolmoncado.com/

I love the pic!  Reminds me of where the cabin is in Unbreak Her Heart.  I’m very much looking forward to seeing the rest of the site!

I wrote this a couple months ago.  Christopher’s birthday is coming up and I’ve been sort of reminiscing a bit.  I plan on including much of our journey in a book someday but since that day isn’t here yet…

Part 1

It would be wrong to say the whole thing started the day Christopher was born.  It started much earlier than that.  There was the spotting and fears of losing him.  Those fears likely wouldn’t have been so strong if it hadn’t been for the spotting and actually being told we’d lost Emily nearly 2.5 years earlier.  Fortunately, she showed how stubborn she would become as early as a week after conception and managed to stick around.  Unfortunately, we think we did lose her fraternal twin.

So fears of losing him were running around in our heads as I retreated to my room to do as little as I possibly could while maintaining sanity and some kind of feeding schedule for three girls – Maggie was 5, Abbie 3 and Emily 20 months.

Then came the morning sickness.  Except it was at night.  Every night.  Even New Year’s Eve when Debbie and Jamie were over.  Couldn’t eat Mexican Chicken until months after Christopher was born.  And the exhaustion.  I’d been exhausted with Maggie but not sick.  This time I was both.

I have to admit that I am ashamed to admit that there were many days when I measured success based on the number of children who were alive at bedtime and if they’d eaten.  Three meals of Fruit Loops?  That worked for me.  Diaper changed within two hours of stinking it up?  Better than not changing it.  All Disney channel, all day?  Saved my sanity.

[For the record, there were no days of all Fruit Loop meals and dirty diapers were changed as soon as they were noticed for fear that continual smells would make Mom puke more.  Disney Channel?  Well, rotated with Noggin, Nick Jr., PBS and a wide variety of movies… but essentially, yeah.]

After that was the great ice storm of 07.  We had no power for three days and ended up at Matt’s brother’s house in Branson [where they had a light dusting of ice] for two days until the power came back on.  The betta fish died.  Apparently, an inside temp of 45* and a tropical fish don’t go well together.

Then came Emily’s bout with some virus whose name I can’t remember but whose smell continues to haunt me.  Rotavirus.  That’s it.  Horrible, horrible diapers.  Diapers so bad that I threw up while trying to clean up the high chair after one particular incident.  Said high chair was left on the deck for an extended period of time after that.

There was the ultrasound were we asked the tech 18 times if she was really, really sure that there was a thing and I was really having a boy because that just didn’t happen for us.  Every time, she assured us that yes, this really was a boy.

Summer brought seated classes [as opposed to online ones].  Had to have all three girls out the door by 715 four mornings a week.  Felicia, bless her heart, fed them.  Thank God.  Classes were good.  Students were good.  The rest of the day was spent on virtual bed rest.   To be fair, Dr. McCall [who is FAB-U-LOUS!] didn’t mandate it or even recommend it but that still, small voice told me bed rest was best for me at that point.

I’ve learned to listen to that voice.  It’s the voice that me the results every time I took a pregnancy test with Emily.  Whether positive or negative, I knew.  Way deep down in places I didn’t want to go, I knew.  If that little voice was saying ‘this one will be positive, she’s still there’, I didn’t want to listen, to let myself hope – just in case it was wrong.  The voice that said ‘this one will be negative, but remember, doctors don’t have all the answers.  God knit you in your mother’s womb just as He’s knitting this baby’.  The voice that told me in January, before a mid-May due date, that the baby was going to be at least two weeks early.  The voice that told me, twenty-one days before her due date, to pack my bags – today was the day.  [Matt saw me taking the camera and make-up, etc to the van and asked, joking, if I was leaving him.  I responded with a flippant ‘there’s already a suitcase in the car’.  Three hours later we were on our way to the hospital with what my doctor later called ‘the most obvious rupture of membranes’ she’d ever seen.]

That was the voice that reminded me each baby had been earlier and earlier and there was no way I was going to make it to the August 24 due date.  In fact, I wasn’t going to make it out of July.

So I spent most of June and July resting.  This was a good thing.  I wish I could have bottled up the rest I was getting.

Did I mention the borderline Gestational Diabetes?

At 34.5 weeks pregnant, something happened that, looking back, is amusing in that smirky sort of way.

Maggie, age 5, was admitted to the hospital.  Now, it’s not as bad as it sounds but hear me out.

I got to sleep in some on Saturday morning.  Didn’t get up until nearly ten.  Man, that was nice, especially given what was coming.  By midnight, I was sitting in the ER with a little, shirtless, girl praying that they’d see us soon.

I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember giving her multiple breathing treatments over the course of several hours and she still struggled to breathe.  The triage nurse on the phone finally sent us to the ER.  It was after 11:30 when I pulled off the freeway headed to Cox South, when I heard it.

Puke.

Maggie threw up, less than 3 blocks from the hospital, all over Daddy’s favorite shirt.  Wearing Daddy’s shirt always makes her feel better, but now she had nothing to wear.  Me and my big belly carried her into the ER, filled out paperwork, convinced someone to give me a blanket to cover the upper half of my daughter’s body; she was wearing shorts, but there were some pretty creepy looking guys in there watching us.

We went into the little triage room and her O2 levels are in the upper/mid-80s.  The nurse said she’d let the charge[?] nurse know and get her back and on oxygen as soon as possible.  It was over an hour [and three more throwups] later before we get back.  Very nice nurse man got a wheelchair for Maggie so I didn’t have to carry her.  More breathing treatments, Xrays [I dozed while they took her back there – I couldn’t go because of the baby], another breathing treatment.  O2 barely stayed in the mid-90s while on oxygen.  Borderline pneumonia.  Admitting to the hospital to keep an eye on her.

I slept by pulling the very uncomfortable plastic chair up to the bed, adjusting the bed to the right height and leaning my head on it.  It was nearly 6am by the time they got us to a room on the peds unit.  It wasn’t my first hospital stay with a child, but the first one was with a 6 day old who needed help nursing and I was still post partum – and a different hospital with different docs.  This was different.

By the time we were discharged at 8 that night, I’d dozed off and on for a total of about two hours.  We went through the drive through at the 24h Walgreens.  Maggie was asleep long before we get there.  We got home, Matt carried her to bed, I struggled through a shower and collapsed about 9pm – only to get up and get all the girls to Felicia’s by 730 the next morning.

I was… uncomfortable at the hospital, afraid of what they’d think of me for sleeping in my daughter’s bed while she colored and watched movies.  I slept for less than 15 minutes at a time – but I fell asleep while the respiratory tech left the first time and asleep again when she came back – even though I’d been awake for most of the middle.  I was afraid of what they’d think of me.

Then Christopher was born.  Little did I know the roller coaster ride we were about to go on.