Broken December 18, 2007

Last week my nine year old daughter fell ice skating and broke her leg. It was an unfortunate event of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She and one of the dads on the rink (who we know) got tangled up and he landed on her leg. Resulting in a spiral fracture of the tibia starting right above where the skates ended. The doc says they saved her ankle. I guess that is a good thing. Apparently the bone heals stronger, but joints are another story.

This is our second visit to the emergency room. The first was with the same daughter 3 years ago for a broken are, right above the elbow. That one required a trip to OR in order to set it and then a night in the hospital to make sure she did ok coming out of anesthesia. For some reason I managed to be strong for her and didn’t have to fight off the waves of nausea usually brought about by hospitals. But this time I was stuck in the hall with my head between my knees trying not to become a patient myself.

I could go into many angles of this whole experience right now…like how stupid EMT’s nurses are compared to the intuition of a mother, or how irate I was that they left my 9 year old to endure the pain and scream for 45 minutes straight, or how my 5 month old is sick from spending the day at the hospital where it is supposedly CLEAN and everyone washes their hands! Can you tell I HATE hospitals! That is why I have a mid-wife and family physician and we eat right and exercise and utilize natural remedies as much as possible. Because I think our Western medicine SUCKS!

The point I REALLY want to make here though, is how strongly connected a mother and child are. As much as I wanted to be strong for my daughter, I really felt her pain and her disappointment. She is a VERY active child, with hopes of her team taking first in indoor soccer this season, ice skating and swimming lessons, skiing this winter, and maybe some more basketball at Grandpa’s. Now she is stationary (and in a lot less pain thankfully) on the couch. It being Christmas, I really want to try to keep her spirits up. That is my sole task for my broken daughter right now!

today December 4, 2007

Cranky, teething baby up at 6am = Cranky mama

Cranky, whining 6 year old = Crankier mama

Cranky, needy 9 year old = Crankiest mama

today…everything feels like too much!

When Babes Fall Ill November 17, 2007

The last few days have been full. Full of life. On Tuesday I decided to try to push our holiday travel plans up a few days. This meant laundry, finding a cat sitter, figure out work stuff, packing, shopping, etc. So on Thursday morning hubby and I pulled out of the driveway with only three and half hours sleep!

We drove to Seattle (about an hour and a half) to see “The BFG” by Roald Dahl put on by the Seattle Children’s Theater. Which was fabulous, as they usually are! My two school age daughters enjoyed it immensely and the baby slept. I had an inkling she wasn’t feeling well. No fever, but a low throaty, hoarse voice. After the show we had lunch at the Seattle Center and went on to spend the afternoon at the Pacific Science Center. It was perfect on a miserable, rainy, Thursday afternoon. We almost had the whole place to ourselves! (We home school by the way.) But by 4 o’clock hubby and I had headaches, were totally exhausted and we had a cranky baby.

We decided to stay the night in Seattle and make the 3 hour drive on to Vancouver, WA the next morning. I am so glad we did. Because now I have a truly sick baby. So much for our relaxing vacation, but more than that…I hate there is nothing I can do for her. We are running the humidifier, giving her tylenol, and trying to make sure she stays hydrated, but watching her cry this totally miserable cry makes me want to cry too! I know it will be gone soon, but right now it is consuming!