Wow! I can't believe it's only 2 weeks until I am as Bryan has always called it, "half dead". LOL!
My last 30's diary entry ended in December 2003 and I was 8 months pregnant with Ally.
Our Ally Suzanne girl wasn't due until the 2nd week in January. At the start of December I began swelling some which neither I, nor my doctor, thought much of. I had usually swelled some around my ankles and even in other places towards the end of my pregnancy. About
mid-December we realized that it looked like I was going to swell more with Allys pregnancy than any of my others but even so, we were not really concerned about it. It was that week that I started feeling really sick off and on though. It really started as odd sensations towards the bottom of my legs and around my chest. As each day went on I continued to gain more fluid and swell and the sensations that started around my ankles, which bordered on pain and like someone was sticking needles in me constantly, started spreading up my legs. When we reached the week before Christmas I had gained
40 pounds of fluid in a 2 week time period and I was utterly miserable. It wasn't just my hands and ankles. My face and other places swelled up too. At my appointment that week my doctor showed some real concern for the first time and told me she wanted to test me and make sure that I wasn't toxemia. I was sent over to the hospital and all that I really remember at that point was being utterly miserable. They tested me and kept me for a day and all the test came back negative towards toxemia. Bottom line was, they didn't know why I was swelling so badly nor why I was having weird sensations in my chest, legs, arms, and other places at this point.
I somehow managed to survive Christmas, even fixing our big usual Christmas dinner all by myself for Bryan's dad and us. Looking back I think that was very unwise on my part because it meant being on my feet far more than I should have been at that point. By the time we reached the last week of December I was having a hard time walking around because of how swollen I was. I didn't have one pair of shoes in the closet that I could squeeze my feet into and mind you this was
winter time in TN which equaled cold. I didn't go out much because of it. I had gotten very little sleep in those past two weeks due to the prickly, stinging feeling in my legs and for the first time in 5 pregnancies I was more than ready for the pregnancy to be over with. I had always loved being pregnant and always felt sad when my pregnancies ended, but this time was turning out different for me. I felt very sick at this point though. I had my next doctors appointment on the 31st and I drove down to and walked into the office
completely barefoot even though it was 30 something degrees outside. I could have worn socks but anything on my feet at this point hurt because of just how swollen they were. The minute my doctor came into the room she got a look on her face that I knew meant she was gravely concerned. She immediately took my blood pressure which surprisingly was just fine. Then she asked me to step on the scale again because she was convinced that the nurse had written my weight down wrong. She was shocked to discover that I had indeed gained another 20 pounds in a two week time period which meant that during the month of December alone I had gained 60 pounds, all of which appeared to be fluid. She was concerned with how awful I felt and announced that she just couldn't let me sit another 2 weeks and risk me gaining even more fluid during that time. She was concerned as to how the fluid might start affecting my heart and other things. So she announced that she was sending me over to the hospital that day to be induced. Though I had never been real keen on the idea of inducing pregnancy, I didn't argue. Didn't even hesitate at her idea. I was ready to run to the hospital. I went home and quickly packed a bag while we called my friend Lisa to see if she could watch the other kids until Bryan's dad could drive up from Alabama. She was more than happy and available to do so. 1 hour later we dropped the kids at Lisa's and drove to the hospital. We were checked in and in a room by 3pm.
If you have been reading all of my diary posts up to this point then you know what experience we had with the hospital in Memphis for Natalie's birth. I had made the decision the minute we got pregnant with Ally that I would
not be giving birth there. I had switched OB doctors at this point too. This time we went to a smaller hospital in Germantown. We were checked in and I was put into a room and it was the room that I would stay in until we left the hospital. That was really nice. The rooms were set up in a circle around the nurses station and rather than a nurse being in the room with you at all times, they monitored you from that station and checked in in person frequently. When I was given the pitocen, my contractions kicked in really quickly. I should add that I had been having contractions off and on for 3 weeks at this point but they quickly became consistent and closer together with the pitocen. The afternoon sped along pretty quickly. I got my epidural around 5pm. My doctor checked me several times and I was progressing normally. A little before 9 pm that night I told Bryan that I almost felt like the baby was coming out but I wasn't pushing. Before I could get the sentence out, the nurse rushed in and asked what I was doing. I told her nothing. At that point though it was obvious to me that
Ally WAS indeed coming out on her own. I told the nurse that I could feel Ally coming and she told me to stop pushing. I told her I wasn't pushing and she gave me a look that screamed "yeah right". It just so happened that our doctor was heading upstairs to eat some dinner and she thought she would poke her head in the room before doing so. She walked in, came over to see what was going on, and Ally literally fell out of me. It all sounds crazy, I know. But honest to goodness- she just fell right out. Thankfully the doctor was standing their to catch her. The nurse was in a frenzy at this point and calling for backup. LOL! Nothing had been set up for her birth yet. Bryan had looked up at the clock just a few seconds after Ally was born and it was 9:02pm. Her birth certificate however reads 9:12 because that is when she was finally weighed and they recorded her time and information. We asked them to change it but the nurse wouldn't. We figured it didn't matter in the end because we knew what time she was actually born.
Ally weighed right at 5pounds which surprised us because she was only 2 weeks early and all of our other kids had been in the 7 pound range so far with Emmy being right below 8 pounds. She was completely healthy though, just so tiny compared to what we had been used too. She was almost a New Years Eve baby but not quite. To this day, she remains our most active child. She has a really hard time sitting still and is just incredibly active and has a hard time waiting for things. We joke that she flew into this world and hasn't slowed down since. I had always wondered, before giving birth to Ally, how women sometimes give birth in elevators or taxis. I don't question that anymore. LOL! I now know how quickly a baby can come out when they are ready- with no pushing on the moms part at all.
We were in the hospital for 3 days. Our experience there was a
good one. So much better than our experience in Memphis with Natalie. My recovery was incredibly difficult though and it was obvious that I wasn't going to jump right back like I had with all of my other pregnancies before. For starters I had to take medicine to get rid of all of fluid. My doctor started the med's right after Ally was born and it took a good 48 hours before I started to even begin to loose some of the fluid. It would end up being another 3 weeks before I felt like it was even close to all coming off. It was a great feeling of relief to have that fluid slowly coming out of me though. The more fluid that came off though the worst I began to feel with other issues. Within 24 hours after Ally was born, while we were still in the hospital, I started feeling like I couldn't breathe. It felt like I had a ton of pressure on my chest at all times. Every time I took a breathe in, I felt like it was difficult to do so. I kept complaining to the nurses but they kept checking me and telling me that my lungs were clear and that I was breathing just fine. I told Bryan more times than I can even remember during that 3 day hospital stay that something wasn't right with my body. I even remember telling him several times that I felt like I was dying. I tried to express to the doctors and nurses what I was physically feeling but of course their response was always the same, "you just had a baby- it's all normal
postpartum." I had given birth 4 times before though and I knew what I was feeling wasn't postpartum. Ally was such a sweet and easy baby and that really helped during this time.
Allys hospital picture
Our church family once again stepped up to the plate after Allys birth by bringing us meals and helping with the older kids.
After we were discharged from the hospital my
strange symptoms just continued to multiply and increase in intensity. Of course anytime I saw a doctor for anything in the weeks following Allys birth, it was all written off to postpartum. All my blood work kept coming back fine. X-rays and other tests showed nothing wrong but I knew deep down that something was
gravely wrong with my body. I went back to my OB and even to our regular doctor numerous times during those first weeks after Allys birth. Right after bringing her home from the hospital I struggled to sleep. This had never been an issue for me during postpartum with our other children. In fact, I usually slept pretty well during my postpartum weeks. With Ally I would lay down at night feeling exhausted and tired but as soon as my body would start to fall asleep, my body would jerk itself back awake. It felt like something inside my head would snap or jerk when it happened and it happened every single time I would start to fall asleep so it never allowed me to actually sleep. It's hard to describe but it was almost like my muscles were not allowing my body to fall asleep. Again, it was written off by the doctors as postpartum but we would come to learn about a year after this, that it was a part of my damaged nervous system with my
Fibromyalgia and related to a sleeping disorder issue that those with Fibro suffer from. After 3 days of literally no sleep at all, I knew I couldn't go on and called my OB yet again, this time beside myself. She heard my desperation through the phone and agreed that I needed something to help my body fall asleep and called in a prescription for some sleeping pills. She still thought it was all postpartum though. The pills did work and I was finally able to let my body rest some for the first time in days.
Ally was born on New Years Eve in 2003. We had agreed back in November to move to North Carolina for Bryan's job. A part of that agreement was that Bryan needed to fly to
Apple headquarters in Northern, CA the first week in January for training for his new position. Since Ally wasn't due to be born until the end of the second week in January we had not seen this as a problem being that all of our other children had come very close to their due dates (within 3 days). We never expected Ally to be around at this point so we were suddenly facing an obstacle. We knew in order for Bryan to have the new job in NC that he had to go to California as scheduled but we also knew that I was incapable of being home with and caring for the kids alone at this point. In fact, I had my first panic attack ever while thinking through the situation. I was barely functioning through each day at this point. Climbing the stairs in our home had become an issue- I was completely out of breathe after doing so and the doctors couldn't tell me why. My lungs tested out fine, my heart tested out fine, even x-rays on my sinuses revealed nothing wrong their. My eyesight was messing up as well yet the doctors couldn't figure that one out either. I had what seemed like a million other smaller symptoms on top of those that were suddenly happening every day. We decided to ask Bryan's dad to come up and stay at our place and care for the other kids while Bryan was in CA. He was able to take off of work and do so. I sent him a grocery list and he did a Sams Club run before showing up at our place for the week. Our small group stepped in and brought meals for dinner that week too and Patsy, our small group leaders wife, helped me out by taking me to doctors appointments and picking up prescriptions and anything else I needed personally while Bryan had to be in CA and her husband helped get Bryan to the airport and back home. In the end
we made it through that week.
By the time Bryan returned from California I felt like things had improved a little in that I had finally been able to get some good rest with the sleeping pills and had spent the entire week doing nothing but resting yet my body still had many strange symptoms that were happening and it seemed like each new day only added something new symptom wise. I at least felt like I had come back from the dead some and was able to function a little throughout the day though. We had 5 weeks at this point until
our big move to NC. Looking back I am really not sure how I managed to care for 5 children, one a newborn, and pack an entire house for a move out of state during that time given my health issues that I was facing then. I can only say that it was simply by the Grace of God and those He sent to us to help during those 5 weeks. My friends Lisa and Cynthia really stepped in and did so much during that time and some of the guys from the Apple store came over and helped move big boxes and furniture etc. as needed. We tried to get rid of a lot of stuff that we didn't want to take on the move.
At this point I was functioning enough to do what I needed to do each day but still feeling very sick as I went about each day. I had some very odd symptoms ever day that we still had not even come close to figuring out. My main symptoms at this point were feeling as though my breathing was heavy and hard and that it was difficult to breathe in deeply,
blurry eyesight off and on, being out breathe after I did anything simple such as climbing a flight of stairs (something that had never put me out of breathe before), feeling as though someone was sticking pins and needles into my arms and legs constantly, restless leg syndrome, my body fighting sleep, feeling as though my ankles, feet, and hand were swollen even though they were not, a high sensitivity to light and smells, and a few more things.
Being that Bryan was now the
Assistant Manager of the NC store he needed to be in Charlotte that last week in January to interview and thus help the manager decide who to hire for the store. The store was scheduled to open at the start of March. We had been looking online for houses during December and January and getting the best feel we could for the area overall.
A Five in a Row friend of mine that lived in Charlotte had helped us out a lot with this process too. We knew where the Apple store was going in at and we wanted to be as close as possible to it but Apple always puts their stores in high end malls, meaning the most expensive parts of town to live in. I mentioned previously that I felt like God had really blessed us in giving us our townhome in TN like he did being that it was just right down the street from the store there AND being that we had not sold our home in AL when we moved to TN. I had been praying earnestly over our upcoming new home in NC and anticipating greatly as to where God was going to lead us.
So......at the end of
January 04', Bryan and I drove down with all of the kids to Alabama and dropped Houston, Emmy, and Annie at Bryan's mom and Larry's where they would stay for the week and then he, Natalie, Ally, and I drove on to Charlotte, NC for a week. Since Bryan needed to be in Charlotte that week to do the hiring process we thought it was a good time for us to house hunt in person and find a place to live. I have to admit, the entire thing was very exciting and as crazy as it might sound, it really helped my spirits given that first difficult month after Ally was born. The more we had researched
Charlotte, NC, the more we discovered what a beautiful place it seemed like it was and that got us very excited about moving their. Seeing it all in person that week got me very excited! We had loved our time in TN and it was very hard to say goodbye to those that we had so quickly gotten close too and grown to love so deeply but when we moved to TN we had known in our hearts that it probably wouldn't be permanent for us so our hearts were already prepared to move again.
We were both really excited to be driving to NC that last week in January and to finally get to see the area in person that we were moving too. Bryan's job at the store in TN had officially ended and his work for the
NC store had officially begun even though the store wouldn't not physically open until March. Apple put us up in a really fancy hotel that week with all expenses paid which made the trip all the more fun. In many ways it felt like a vacation even though Bryan was working some and we had lots to do that week in our search for a home. Bryan had meetings each day at certain times but the rest of the time we were able to explore around Charlotte. We set up times to see a list of houses in person that we were interested in. When Bryan was in meetings I would sometimes drive around the city with
Natalie and Ally in tow, just getting to know it. I really loved that. I loved exploring the new area. I quickly discovered how incredibly beautiful the city of Charlotte is. It didn't take long for me to fully fall in love with it. We had dinner out on several nights with Bryan's boss and other Apple employees and we took full advantage of the nice suite that Apple had put us up in by enjoying it and ordering room service on several occasions. Ally being the amazing baby that she was, was such a good sport through the entire trip and Natalie (who was a year and half at the time) did great too. We took her playpen and set it up in the hotel room and she just kind of went with the flow that week with everything we did. A memory from that week regarding my health that really stands out to me, is that I had my first experience with
vertigo that week. Our hotel suite was on a really high floor and the elevator up to it was completely glass. On that first trip on the elevator I quickly started to feel dizzy and had to close my eyes. Right after we entered the hotel room I went over to the window to open the curtains and check out the view. Huge mistake on my part. It triggered the Vertigo and it took what seemed like forever for the room to stop spinning and for me to stop feeling like I was going to throw up. Needless to say, those curtains remained closed for the rest of the week and I kept my eyes shut every time I rode that elevator.
At this point we no longer had our house in Alabama but we decided that we would find a house to rent in Charlotte for the first year or so and then once we had gotten to know the area even better, found a church, and had a better feel for things there overall, we would buy again. The first house we looked at in person would have been a fun house but we didn't like the neighborhood. It was an older neighborhood and it just didn't appeal to us.
The 2nd house on our list looked incredible in the pictures for the price they were asking monthly. In my mind I was thinking it was probably too good to be true. Their had to be something wrong with the house, neighborhood, or something. I even wondered if they had put the wrong pictures with the ad. LOL!
On our
2nd day in Charlotte I drove out to just drive by it while Bryan was in a meeting that morning. We figured their was no point in seeing the inside if we didn't like the outside. I had written down directions off of google. The neighborhood was mapped out to be only 10 minutes from where the Apple store would be when it opened. As I drove into the neighborhood I was positive that I must have written something down wrong. It was just too beautiful! I was shocked to discover that my direction were right on. I pulled up into the driveway and just sat their blown away by the house. It was love at first site. I got out and walked around with Natalie and Ally and then drove through other parts of the neighborhood. It was a beautiful neighborhood that sat right in the middle of the city but felt like it was miles away from everything once you were in it. The house sat on the edge of a culdesac. The back yard was fenced, had a beautiful
brick fish pond, and the yard was completely edged with trees which made it really private. Right down the street from the house was the neighborhood clubhouse, pool, tennis courts, and all of that sat next to a
big beautiful pond that had walking trails and bridges all the way around it and a million trees. I called Bryan and told him
I had found our house! *Grin* It was perfect. The really amazing part, it was a house and neighborhood that we normally would not have been able to afford at all. The owner had the monthly rent listed around 600$ less than what it should have been which put it right into our budget. We went the next day to the leasing office and put in our application and we were quickly accepted. The owner was thrilled to get a family into the house that had young children. It was what she was hoping for. That amazed me as some of the places we had called about didn't want 5 young children in the house. It was so amazing to me to see how God guided us to that home and opened doors like He did. It was such a huge blessing. To this day, that home remains at the top of my list as one of my
all time favorites that we have lived in! Everything fell right into place and we left Charlotte that week with our new home secured and even more excitement about our new and upcoming adventure.
The rest of our time back in TN (which was 2 weeks) was spent packing and preparing for the move and of course spending as much time as possible with friends and visiting all of our favorite stopping grounds one more time. We rented the largest moving van possible for the move and the day before we left all of the guys from
Apple as well as a few church friends came over and loaded it up for us. Bryan's mom and Larry drove up that day and spent the night. They would help us with the drive from Memphis to Charlotte which was a
10 hour drive not including stops.
The evening before we left Memphis we gathered with some of our closest friends for a
farewell dinner out at Backyard Burger. That next morning we set out early. Bryan drove the big moving van and Houston and Emmy rode with him. I drove our van with Annie, Natalie, and Ally in it. Bryan's mom drove their car, and Larry drove our Saturn car for us so that we didn't have to tow it behind the moving van. The drive was really fun. At this point we had not gone past
Nashville which was 4 hours from Memphis. It was fun to drive through and see new areas stopping along the way. Back in California my mom had just had surgery and during one of the long stretches on the highway I was able to talk to my dad for about an hour on the cell phone and get caught up on what was going on out there with them.
We drove from
Memphis to Knoxville, TN on our first day and spent the night at a hotel in Knoxville. I remember the kids loving that. I would say the best part of the overall drive to NC for me was driving through the
Smoky Mountains that 2nd day. I had always longed to visit the Smokies and seeing them for the first time was amazing. As we entered the Smoky Mountains we had to go through some tunnels and the kids all thought that was really fun! We made a stop at one of the visitors centers in the Smokies and spent some time their. I took a ton of pictures but sadly we lost all of our pictures from Allys birth, our move, and most of our first year in NC in a hard drive crash. We still have that hard drive and one of these days we hope to pay the money to try to successfully retrieve those pictures but for now, it's all memories without them.
We arrived that evening around 5pm at our new home in Charlotte. Shortly after arriving, people from the
Apple store in NC started showing up to help us unload the moving van. Our only hiccup was that we arrived to discover that though we had set up for the power to be turned on in the home, the electric company had failed to do so. We made a phone call and explained the situation and they quickly sent someone out to get it on for us but it took him over an hour to get out to us. For that first hour everyone pretty much began unloading the van in the dark with flashlights. This was the 2nd week in February and it was cold but as night pressed on the temps began dropping drastically. Word had it that a
snow storm was coming in that was supposed to drop snow. That sounded exciting to me but having lived previously in so many places where it never snowed when they said it was going too, I didn't hold out any hope. Boy was I in for a surprise! The moving van got unloaded that night and we slept on mattresses and the couches that first night. Bryans mom and Larry had planned to stay with us for those first couple of days to help us start to get settled in. We awoke that next morning, our first day at our new home in Charlotte,
to snow falling from the sky. A thick snow. It was beautiful and the most perfect greeting to NC that God could have given us. It would end up being the
biggest snow storm the area had seen in a decade. The kids were soooo excited. By noon that day it was obvious that this wasn't going to be just a little snow. It had dropped several inches and was still coming down heavy. Slowly we watched as our back patio and new yards and trees were completely covered with the fluffy white stuff. Bryans mom made a trip to the closest grocery store that morning before it got too bad and grabbed us several days worth of food. In between playing out in the snow, we began unpacking boxes. When we woke up our
2nd day in Charlotte, we awoke to 12 inches of snow!! While Bryan and I had both lived in places when we were kids that dropped that much snow, it was the most snow our kids had ever seen! It would be 5 days before it even started to melt. It was truly incredible. Bryans mom and Larry ended up staying a few more days than planned with us because of the snow storm. It was hard to get much unpacked those first few days because all that we wanted to do was play in the snow or watch it fall. LOL! I have some pictures from that snow despite loosing all of ours because they are ones I had printed out before our hard drive crash.
When we first woke up that first morning in Charlotte this is what we saw out of our front door.
What we woke up to that first morning in our backyard. One of the things I loved about our yard at this house was the variety of trees in it.
Back patio
Houston, Emmy, and Annie
Bryan and Emmy building a snowman on the patio table
Emmy
Houston
Front porch
Back patio by that first afternoon
Natalie wasn't sure about going out in it but she sure loved watching the snow fall from the windows.
End of our first day at our new home and it was still coming down!
Back patio at end of 1st day
Backyard looking towards house
More backyard
Emmy
Annie
Looking out front door 2nd morning
Our house 2nd morning from bottom of driveway
I will end this post here. Next up for next week- our first year in North Carolina and the rest of the story with my health issues.
UNSELL LAND LINKS:
30's Diary post #1
30's Diary post #2
30's Diary post #3
30's Diary post #4
