Where have we been?

Well, I can answer that by saying that the majority of the last six to seven weeks, I have spent in the bathroom with morning sickness. Wait did I just say morning sickness? I mean all day long sickness. What lucky woman named it that? Every time I begin to think I'm getting past it, I catch a stomach virus. I have had two stomach viruses and a very bad upper respitory infection in the past six weeks. But somehow in the middle of all of that, we did manage to take a trip to Winterfest with the youth group. It was a good trip. Everyone did just as they were supposed to and everything went smoothly except for the near death experience we had in the Civic Center. Six thousand people in one room and a fire alarm starts going off. The worship team just keeps singing and we are all looking around trying to figure out if we should take this thing seriously or not. Adam and I decided that since we were in charge of other people's children, we were not going to take any chances. So we exited the building. Come to find out, there was a small fire in the kitchen of the civic center. One of our kids started a blog ring called, "Watershed tried to kill me" (watershed is the worship team) LOL. My parents met us in Gatlinburg to keep Emma during the youth rally and then Emma and I went back to Birmingham with them. We had a very nice trip even though we were sick the first week of it. The second week, we drove to Enterprise to see Adam's parents. We even made it to Panama City one day for a nice little day at the beach with my friend Pam and her boys. We left Enterprise the morning that the tornadoes came through to go shopping in Montgomery for dresses for Jan's wedding. To make a long story short, we made it back to my parents safely and we thank God for that. But, there were some people that weren't that lucky. Adam's parents are down there dealing with the aftermath from the tornado. A girl in their youth group was killed. Please pray for everyone there. On Saturday, my mom and my sister drove Emma and I to Nashville to meet Adam and our friend Matt after their week long class at Lipscomb. On the long drive home, I got pretty sick but we finally made it. I had a doctors appointment on the Monday after we got home and Emma and Adam went with me to hear the heartbeat. Everything looked good and somehow I had managed to gain back the few pounds I had lost being sick. Nothing a week or two of mom's home cooking couldn't take care of. So anyway, I had almost gotten things back together from our trip just in time to get hit with the rotavirus. To read about that, see the next post down.

15 weeks pregnant and counting!
Love from Above,
Dana

Our little visit to St. Joesph's hospital

It's been a long week. Well, we spent this week in the hospital. On Tuesday morning about 2:00 a.m. we woke up to Emma crying. I went in her bedroom to find that she had vomited all over her bed. Knowing that she was having a little sinus drainage, I determined that it was from that. Adam stripped the bed while I cleaned her up and then we put her in our bed with us. Fifteen minutes later, Adam was running back to the bathroom with her. Ok, I have to admit that my first thought was, "I cannot get another stomach virus being pregnant". Yep that's right, I said another. I had a stomach virus three weeks earlier but back to the more current stomach virus... So, Adam made out the couch bed and got in it with her. After hearing them up every fifteen minutes for a couple of hours, I decided that Adam was the one that had to work the next day and that if she was that sick, I couldn't let her feel like I didn't want to touch her when she needed me the most. So, Adam and I switched places and on it went. Now, I realize that this is not the most pleasant of posts but hello? Did you read the title of my blog? "Thoughts on Life and Dirty Diapers" and I'll warn you, the dirty diapers are coming too so if you have a weak stomach, this may not be the post for you. Here are the facts of life. The job of mothering is not always a clean one. Back to the story... So on it went every fifteen minutes all night long. I eventually got a garbage can and brought it into bed with us because both of us were getting too tired to make it to the bathroom. A couple of times during this, her eyes rolled back in her head and I was really scared. Really, really scared. So as soon as the doctors office opened, I called in. At this point I didn't feel like we were in any danger of dehydration since it had only been a few hours but apparently the doctors office had a different idea. They told me to bring her in so, I loaded up some changes of clothes for her and a few plastic bags. Without going into too much detail, we needed it! So we see the doctor and she tells me that she is dehydrated and that she is going to admit us to the hospital for IV fluids. I can't even describe to you the state that my normally bubbly, energetic, fun loving little girl was in. It was as if she was barely conscience. I called Adam while we were waiting to be admitted and was so glad to find him waiting on us when we got to the room. I did not want to be by myself while she got the IV. First, a nurse came in to take blood. We talked to Emma and explained that it was going to hurt a little but we needed her to be brave because they needed to test her blood to find out what was making her sick. She didn't even flinch. Then, on to get the IV. Again, we told her we needed her to be brave because she had to do this to get better. Her veins were almost flat so they didn't get the IV in on the first try. At this point, I had a flashback to a time when I was in the hospital when I was a little girl to have my appendix removed. I was dehydrated and they had to stick me twelve times before they got the IV in. I started praying , "God please don't make her go through this". Thankfully, the second try was successful. Her eyes teared up but she never moved or said a word. I, of course cried and when the nurses asked me if I was ok, I told them I was pregnant and hormonal. Pregnancy is a good excuse but those of you that know me know that I would have cried anyway. Someone once told me that to have a child was to have your heart walk around on the outside of you. Isn't that the truth. So anyway, we were in the hospital for two days. She began to have diarrhea so badly that we had to put her in diapers. I can't tell you how many diapers I changed in that two day period but I can tell you it was A LOT. She was so sweet the whole time. The first night, she couldn't have anything to drink at all and she kept begging me for water. I felt like I had her out on a desert island and I was forbidding her drink. So, at about 2:00 am, her fever went up to 102. The nurse told her that she was going to give her some motrin and then she could have a couple of sips of a drink after. Emma asked for sprite and I asked the nurse to bring me a water. She brought our drinks but told Emma not to drink hers until she got back with the medicine. Emma looked up at me and said, "I can't drink mine yet, but you can drink yours". I said, "Oh no, I'm not drinking this drink until you can have yours. It wouldn't be very nice of me to drink in front of you when you can't have anything" Her reply, "but the baby likes water". Now how sweet is that? She is going to be the best big sister ever. She got several teddy bears that people sent her and I asked her what I was going to do with all of those teddy bears. She says, "well, when the baby gets here, I can give some of them to it". So anyway, she got lots of fluids and at about 4 o'clock on Thursday morning, she woke up obviously feeling better, and I, much worse. Yep, that's right, I had caught the rotavirus (not nearly as badly as she had, glory be to God!) so Adam and I switched places, I came home, threw up a few times and crashed. Emma was discharged after lunch and has been stir crazy every since. I slept a good portion of the day on Thursday and pretty late on Friday and that my friend is why I am up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning not sleeping. After washing every piece of linen in the house and dis-infecting everything that I could have dreamed of us possibly touching, we are back and at it. At least for now.

God's design for The Church: a community of believers that know that they are by nature sinful and are deeply in need of God's grace, a body of people that would love and nurture each other in selflessness, and a group of people that will make it their passion to impact the world around them by displaying the love and grace of Jesus every where they go and in everything they do.