The past three months or so have been an absolute whirlwind, and blogging became a low priority for me. For the sake of getting this blog up-to-date, I will do the cliff notes version.
For the last year Chris has been meeting with surgeons and doctors to discover what was causing him so much back pain. It was discovered that one of his lower discs had deteriorated and needed to be removed. After much praying and fasting, we decided it was the right decision for our family and Chris went in to have that disc removed and have his vertebra fused on October 4th. My mom came out for two weeks to help me with Chris's recovery and the kids. I KNOW that I wouldn't have survived if she hadn't have come. Chris stayed in our extra room in a hospital bed, and Lily was moved into my room. Lily and I are both light sleepers, and kept waking each other up every night. I didn't sleep more than 2 hours at a time. A month after Chris's surgery, he moved back into my bed and Lily went back to sleeping in her own room (yay!!). Almost instantly, Lily started sleeping a solid 8 hours without waking up once, which meant this happy Mom started getting decent sleep as well! I hadn't had a decent night's sleep since I was 7 months pregnant. I can't even tell you good I felt after a few good nights of sleep.
Chris has been recovering well, and his X-rays are looking as they should. He is still having significant sciatic nerve pain down his leg which is limiting his mobility, but everyday he is getting a little better. It'll still be a full year until he is completely back to normal.
In other news, on the same day I dropped Chris off for surgery, we were hanging out at home when James started screaming. One of our candle jars apparently had a crack and had sliced James's thumb. It was obvious he needed stitches, so my Mom and I threw the kids in the car and went to the ER (the same building Chris was currently in having his back surgery!). Most traumatic experience ever. I couldn't believe how slow the ER moved, even with having a screaming toddler and a blood-soaked rag. It took a half hour just for a nurse to LOOK at his thumb. We decided to put him under for the stitches (it was either that or putting him in restraints and have him feel/remember everything). Little did I know that simply putting the IV in would be the most traumatic event of the night. I had to literally lay on top of him just to keep him still, and the STUPID nurse was a novice and kept messing up the IV. They had to redo it three times. Meanwhile, James is hysterical and blood is getting all over our clothes. Finally they got the IV in, but then it took another half hour of me laying on top of him and my mom distracting him with her phone before the respiratory nurse came with the anesthesia. Finally the doctor was able to stitch up his thumb, and my mom could leave to change Lily (who thought it appropriate timing for a blowout). It took James an hour before he woke up from anesthesia, and then we were finally able to leave. Surprisingly, James was really careful with his wrapping until his stitches were removed a week later. Since this experience, James has become obsessed with band-aids and still talks about his "owie."
About two weeks before Chris's surgery, I went to my doctor to get a physical and some blood work done. I had been losing more and more weight, without trying to, and my hair was falling out by the handfuls. I mean, REALLY falling out. In addition, I kept feeling my heart race. The day before Chris's surgery I got a call from my doctor that I had hyperthyroidism. After meeting with an endocrinologist, and getting my blood drawn more times than I'd like, it was confirmed that I have postpartum thyroiditis. Since leaning this, my body has left hyperthyroidism and gone into hypothyroidism (which was expected). Before I started taking a thyroid supplement, I was having some serious fatigue and lots of nausea. There were some days it was all I could do to keep my kids fed, clothed, and relatively happy. Even though I felt too sick to eat anything, I was gaining weight back because my body wasn't making enough thyroid. I have since been taking a thyroid medicine and am feeling mostly back to normal. My doctor thinks that I should start balancing out in the next few months, and my thyroid should return to normal. I'll just have to be careful with my next pregnancy, as there is a 80% chance that this problem will return.
This thyroid problem actually explained a lot of issues we had been having with Lily. At 6 months of age, she still had to eat every 2-3 hours, and if I made her wait longer she never increased the amount of food to make up for it. This carried into the night, and she was still up wanting to eat every 2 hours at night. When I'd nurse her, she never ate more than 5-7 minutes all together. Highly frustrating. It turns out that my breast milk quality was affected by my thyroid, which explains why she had to eat a little, very frequently. I made the decision to quit nursing at 6 months, especially since I couldn't take my thyroid meds and nurse at the same time. I thought she would take to formula right away. WRONG. It was an absolutely nightmare. We tried different formulas, bottles, temperatures, positions, yet nothing worked. For weeks she wouldn't eat more than 10 oz a day, and was starting to lose weight. We have tried different pediatricians, therapies, and a pediatric gastroenterologist. Nothing and no one helped. We have since gotten into a routine and she has gotten used to the taste of formula and a bottle. She still doesn't take more than 20-24 oz a day, but she has started gaining a little weight back and is still very healthy. She still has some bad eating days, but overall she is slowly doing better, so I can't complain. I'm done with trying to figure this situation out, and I'm going to just let it be what it is. She's still a very happy girl and full of constant smiles!
More has been happening, but this is the big stuff. Turns out I'm not very good at putting things into a cliff notes version, because this was much longer than I meant it to be. :)
