Change Can Be Good

Relief is one thing I didnt imagine feeling after my son was born. I mean sure, relief for my knees and heels and back but Im talking more emotional relief. I was almost positive Id have more stress because Id be trying to take care of my son and feel guilty for not taking care of Catie and Annie as much as I was. I thought this because a while back when one of the Batten kids became an angel I had a panic attack and I remember saying "my life will end with Caties life" over and over. My husband calmed me down and reminded me of the baby growing in my belly and assured me that he will become my priority and the one I care for most and that I will continue to care for him when Caties gone. I didnt believe him but now I know I should have. This little guy has become my life. I even feel like hes giving me a new life or at least helping me live the one Ive already been given. I dont dwell on losing Catie anymore.. and its not to say I dont feel bad for not helping with the girls but I dont let it take over me for missing one of their baths or showers.

I guess Im trying to say it feels so amazing to take care of a person that doesnt have an expected departure date.. To know Joeys going to grow with each feeding rather than wonder how much longer Caties mobility will allow her to eat before her tube is in full use. Little things like that. I guess thanks to Joeys life I finally understand my moms obsession with the word HOPE because I finally understand the meaning.

A Labor of Love

I have found a greater respect for my mom. For all moms. For the moms that are never there for their kids and the ones that are over bearing. For the moms that have been mothers for years upon years and moms who's motherhood stopped in the delivery room. For moms that embrace their children and those that embrace safe baby havens. If you've been through labor you have my full respect. It truly is a labor of love to bring someone into this world no matter what follows after that little baby is welcomed into the world.
I'm a mom now and this is my Labor of Love Story.

Sunday Nov. 22 Kyle was off for the day and his alarm failed. We missed church because we overslept but decided to make the best of it. We chilled in bed talking to my belly trying to convince Joey to come out so we could meet him. We told him to come out that night so daddy wouldn't have to work at 4am monday morning. Then we decided we'd do all we could to push him along. After all, people are convinced that certain things will put you in labor, I personally still believe the only thing that puts you in labor is a baby thats ready to come out but still, it was fun trying!
We "got to know each other" since everyone including the labor and delivery nurses said that it would induce labor..
then we went to pietros and got an all meat pizza.. 7 meats.. not my style but they say the meats really get things moving..
after lunch we took a nice long walk around downtown since gravity is said to move things along also..
After our relaxing date we headed over to my family's house and then his and we spent the afternoon catching up with our favorite people.
That evening I started having contractions but they weren't too painful and they were very far apart so I didn't think about it..we went home and went to bed and I was up all night with horrible contractions but for some reason didn't think about it at all.. I just kept sleeping inbetween them.

Monday Nov. 23 Kyle went to work at 4am. While he was there he was offered a job at the local radio station. good thing joey didn't come the night before!
I stayed home all day cleaning up.. My sister in law shook her head at me while I vacuumed and said to chill out since I was about to pop.. little did she know. Later that night I ended up giving Tony and Kyle haircuts and thats when the contractions really kicked in! Then it was off to the mall to get some much needed clothes for my hubby since I knew he'd have to go without for a long time if we didn't go that night.. little did I know.
Thinking back I can't believe myself for doing all that I did that day. I should have been at home relaxing not cleaning, cutting and shopping!

We got back from the mall and went for a walk which made my contractions jump from every 5 min to every 2 minutes.. I went home and took a hot bath to see if that calmed them down and sure enough it didn't.. we were on our way to the hospital and arrived there at exactly 1opm.
They hooked me up to the monitors and checked me but I was only 1 cm dilated.. they won't admit you until you're 3. Thankfully since we had come from vacaville they said we could stay in the hospital and walk for 2 hours and they'd check me again.. desperate to have our baby and not have to go home we walked. For 2 hours straight up and down the empty hospital halls.. SOOO crappy!!! I thought my back was going to snap in half! After 2 hours we went back and got hooked up and checked again.. I was still only 2 cm but my contractions were insane so the doc said he'd let me stay while he did a c section and if I could get to 3 by the time he was done in the OR he'd admit me otherwise we were on our way. In the next hour my contractions took off and I was in full on labor.. I don't know how to explain the pain but man. I still can't believe how bad it hurts.. Finally I was checked again and at 3 cm so I was admitted and thankfully given my DRUGS!!!! then it was chill.. I couldn't feel anything from my belly down and if I could get epidurals in pill form I'd go numb every weekend.. coolest feeling ever.. anyway.. I ended up getting stuck at 3 cm for 5 hours before they finally gave me pitocin to speed things up.. 5 hours later my water broke, 1 hour later I was at 8 cm and 2 1/2 hours later of pushing my son was born! oh and you can still feel the pushing part with an ep so i don't have a clue as to how ppl do it natural.. ya'll are nuts!

Tue Nov 24th Joseph Alan Wieder arrived.
He was 8lbs 10oz and was 20 inches long. He was born at 9:56 pm 4 minutes short of 24 hours from the time we got there the night before. Longest 24 hours of my life! and my poor husband had been up since 4am the day before..

Looking back I can't believe how providential everything was. We were able to have an awesome date on sunday together and catch up with our family's before parenting began. Kyle had to go to work monday and was offered a job. We should have been sent home from the hospital that night but the nurses were awesome so we got to stay long enough to go into active labor. Our dads were off of work. My brother was home from tour and Catie and Annie were chill.

I'll never forget this experience. The way Joseph looked when they held him up and placed him on my chest. Gray and wrinkled. He was calm and quiet as soon as he heard his mommy and daddy talking to him and just lay there with his big blue eyes scanning back and forth listening closely. The look on Kyles face when he saw his son and the kiss he gave me when he told me "good job, i love you." The proud look on my moms face as she took pictures and bawled her eyes out. We had become parents and I have never been happier in my entire life! One of Joeys great uncles recently came over to meet him and made the comment that he was having a spiritual moment while holding him and he couldn't be more right on. Thats exactly how it is. I just stare at him and I'm in awe that this little baby was at one point microscopic and he is now a gorgeous healthy newborn that is half me and half of my best friend. I can't believe that we wanted to wait 5 years for this..

So yeah.. my labor of love in a nutshell.. I could give the details but who likes details.. Joey came out with road rash on the back of his head and a bruise on the front.. I think you could imagine the details now? very unnecessary. besides, the most important part of the story is the fact that I have been blessed with a husband I don't deserve and a beautiful son I can't take credit for creating. Life is good!

Bring the Heat

mmm.. the smell of the heater. Strange that I think the heater even has a smell but it does. Its toasty and warm smelling.. obviously, its a heater! Its dark in the apartment, not a single light is on, I'm cuddled up under my soft flannel sheets and then I hear it. The click of the heater turns on, I wait a few seconds and then I can feel that warm air float across my cold face and I smell it. mm! When its dark like this and theres nothing around but the sound of early morning traffic driving down the road it makes dreaming so easy. I just close my eyes and with that single smell the heater gives off I'm suddenly back in the downstairs family room on rockurst court in fairfield. Its Christmas eve and the thought of Santa coming in the morning is too exciting to handle! Little did I know that when I grew up I'd be able to experience the same tingly feeling of being tired and wired at the same time run through my whole body just by drinking too much coffee or a red bull. Catie and I are wearing our matching nightgowns.. plaid Christmas colors with a white collar of course and we are dressing our barbies and applying new lip smackers in our cardboard SEE's playhouse. Tonys running around the outside of the playhouse in his camo pj's being the "robber" thats trying to break in and steal our toys.. walking through the door of the playhouse was never as fun to him as shoving a toy gun through the window of it and threatening his little sisters I guess. Kerri is just a toddler in footie pajamas with curly dark hair and a gap in her teeth.. she's crawling outside the playhouse where the robber is jumping around her but we don't let her in.. besides, our playhouse is made out of cardboard. She'd drool a hole in it or worse.. rip off the shelf on the inside that had pictures of SEE's truffles on it. God forbid. Not the truffles! Dad and Mom are in the living room upstairs with Nonni and Al. Not sure what they are up to as a kid, as an adult tho I'd assume mom was stressing about dinner and santa the next day while dad dozed off next to the green garbage bag full of wrapping paper. Suddenly the phone rings and Dad answers.. we all stop and sit quietly for about 2 seconds until we hear dad say it.. "well hi there Santa Clause!" Then its on.. the race to the kitchen.. somehow the "robber" always manages to shove in a push while Catie and I are tripping over our night gowns anyway and we all run around Kerri leaving her downstairs while we fight in the kitchen to get to talk to Santa on the phone.
Funny how that single smell triggers so much and I'm so easily back to that day like it was yesterday. Then suddenly my stomach feels like I have a sumo wrestler squeezing it with all his might sending shooting pain up my back into my shoulders. My hips feel like there is literally a large ball stuck in between them pushing them apart and my abdomen cramps like none other. I'm having a contraction. Suddenly I'm not in a playhouse, I'm in my apartment. My beautiful husband is off to work already and anxiously waiting for the call to come home and take his wife to the hospital so we can meet our son. Its 4:30 in the morning and I just ate a piece of pietros all meat pizza. Probably the cause of the contraction that just distracted me from my trip down memory lane.
Tony isn't a "robber" anymore and he's not shoving guns through my window. Instead he's my best friend and he walks through my front door to hang out with me and my husband. He doesn't wear GI Joe camo pjs.. at least that we know of and he's become more of a person that strives for peace and equality in the world than shoving little girls out of his way while trying to get what he wants.
Catie still wears night gowns, every day. She is still playing with barbies and her latest lip smackers is root beer flavor. We don't play in playhouses anymore since she is a 20 year old adult and even if she could fit in one we couldn't get her to the floor or inside it. I believe she's the reason I find myself day dreaming of old times more than enjoying current times. When I catch a smell from the heater Catie and I are best friends again rather than a caregiver and recipient relationship like I feel the majority of our life has been. Its not that I don't like our life, I just miss what it was and like to dream about what it could have been.
Kerri is far from a crawling toddler.. She still has her curly dark hair and has beautiful teeth now. She is still trying to get in on the activities of her older siblings and she doesn't let a cardboard door hold her back. She's not crawling on the family room floor anymore but instead traveling to Rwanda to help people in need. Talk about leaving those SEE's candy house snobs in the dust!
I even have 2 more siblings since that Christmas Eve.. My mini me and Anne marie.. never saw that coming!
I truly love my life and the people in it. I love how much these contractions hurt because they mean in a couple of years I will have an excuse to buy another SEE's Candy playhouse. I love how that reheated pizza hit the spot and most of all I love the smell of the heater because it triggers so much of the good stuff I've experienced in my life. It sends me back to my little girl days where my biggest fear and worry was whether or not I'd be able to talk to Santa before my siblings did.

Mission Accomplished

Our family day in Disney Land couldn't have gone better.. Catie was alert and excited the whole day.. She was so alert she got mad at dad for not letting her ride dumbo and space mountain.. Nothing a churro couldn't cheer up.
Annie was calm and happy too.. no fits or tantrums! They were both able to see tons of characters including Mickey Mouse and Caties favorite, Snow White.
The park was only open from 9-5 that day which I think is the shortest day our family has ever spent in the park but for some reason that day felt like it just kept going and going, but in a good way.
We ended the visit with a traditional stop by carnations for ice cream sundaes and you could see tears in everyones eye at one point or another. It was the most bittersweet ice cream sundae I've ever tasted. :)

Funny how that one day seemed so huge, scary, exciting, sad, fun and a million other things all at once and already it has become yet another family memory to look back on. Thankfully I have the thought of Joey's first trip to Disney Land to look forward to rather than always having to look back at Catie's last.

Happiest Place on Earth

Those of you that know Catie know that these days she doesn't get many words out.. mostly just "mom/dad" and "mm hmm" or a strong "yes" or "no" depending on what you are asking her.. With that you could see why it was such a shock when she managed to get this out a few weeks ago, "da-dad. dizland dad, o-kay?" She has wanted to go back for so long now and I guess she was fed up with being told "some day cate.." and she was gonna make sure she got there so she spit out that sentence in the middle of dinner and thats all it took for dad to figure out how to get us on our way. We are even going as a whole family! Of course all of us kids wanted to be a part of her last trip to her favorite place on earth and my parents were given some gifts by some sweet people to help out and thats made it possible for us to go. We'll just be in the park for one day, tuesday. All she needs or really can handle. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I don't think any of us are. Dad of course crys when he thinks about stopping for gas half way there let alone thinking about the whole trip. I do to though. I cry when I think about leaving that day. Knowing we'll be back before we know it with baby Joey but Auntie Catie won't be able to come along. The only thing at this point that stops the tears and puts a smile on my face is the thought that its Nonnies last trip to disneyland too. I tell it like it is and thats just the plain truth. Aaaanyway, I'm not sure what to expect other then some crying parents and a happy Catie? I don't know if it will be awesome or horrible. I don't know if she'll even be awake that day.. she could have seizures and pass out all day and not even know we are there.. on the other hand, she could have one of the clearest days of her recent life.. We'll have to wait and see...

Heres to hoping she has the best day of her life..

oh and that I don't get mistaken for a float in the parade with my swollen feet..


..to be continued...

A Big Day

October 20th 2009. A day I never imagined being the way it is. I used to think that October 20th 2009 would most likely be a sad one. Catie would be turning 20 but Juvenile Batten kids rarely turn 20 so I figured she wouldn't be here and it would be a dark sad day. Instead its here and its awesome.

Tomorrow Catie will be 20 years old, alive and happy. She will have overcome the "late teens" half of the juvenile batten disease life expectancy and be entering the "early twenties" half. What a gift! She has experienced many declines and is now a mumbler and hardly able to get out of bed or her chair but is still further ahead then what I could have ever imagined her being at this point. She is still the same happy kid full of smiles, hugs and laughs. Its hard to celebrate her 20th birthday because it only seems realistic to assume its her last, just like I assumed her 19th was her last and her 18th before that. I guess I have to always soak in the big moments and treat them as if they are the last even if I've been doing that for the last 8 years. My goal for tomorrow is to enjoy it so that if it is the last birthday she celebrates with us I can make sure I remember it as the best birthday she celebrated with us. Its bittersweet. Its reality. Its here, her 20th Birthday!! Happy Birthday Caca Butt!!!

Another thing that is going on tomorrow that I never saw coming for October 20th 2009 is the CD release of This Time Next Years Road Maps and Heart Attacks. My brothers band recorded their first full length this February and it will be hitting the shelves tomorrow. It blows my mind! My big brother has been playing music since he was a little kid and in some kind of band since he was a young teenager.. Now he's on tour with his closest friends, meeting new friends, seeing the US and soon Japan all while playing music. Doing what he loves, living the dream! I can't tell you how often I think about him being gone and ask myself what my dream is? Rarely do people know their dream let alone be able to live it and that is what he is able to do. Tomorrow, I will be able to go to Best Buy and purchase a cd with my brothers name and picture on it that has some of his lyrics in it and obviously alot of his musical talent and ideas. Trust me, the cashier will definitely know whats up as I hand him my money.. He may not care who my brother is, but he will know by the time I leave. :)

So much for a sad dark day huh?? more like wow, Catie is still here, Tony is a rock star and I get to watch it all happen... Its gonna be a good day folks, a very good day.

The Dirt on Pregnancy

actually, maybe this blog should be titled the 'dirt on anemia' instead?

wanna know something NUTS? this picture of dirt makes my mouth water. Crazy right? buuut I found out that its extremely common for pregnant women to crave dirt, especially when they are anemic like I just found out I am. Talk about a bum out. The one thing you crave like a maniac and its not edible. go figure...

In other news, we got a cat. I think he's satans brother. oh and Tonys leaving for tour again.. I'm not feeling so great about it this time. Call it the hormones but I have been priittty emotional over it lately..

I think thats it.

ciao