Saturday, December 6, 2008

[= tagged! =]

IF YOU ARE READING THIS CONSIDER YOURSELF TAGGED.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
wrapping paper

2. Real tree or artificial?
artificial

3. When do you put up the tree?
well, i still haven't yet.. i was kinda hoping to get another tree, but that's going to have to wait. normally, i put it up between thanksgiving and the first week of december


4. When do you take down the tree?
as soon as possible


5. Do you like eggnog?
it's ok, i can take it in small doses. my sister, lisa, however loves the stuff



6. Favorite gift received as a child?
bike or gameboy



7. Hardest person to buy for?
Daniel!!!! i have NO idea what to get for him!




8. Easiest person to buy for?
my mom.. i could give her a rock with a ribbon around it and she would love it. heck, i could leave off the ribbon and the rock could be dirty and she would still love it





9. Do you have a nativity scene?
no



10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
mail

11. Worst Christmas gift you have received?
none come to mind. no, really.


12. Favorite Christmas movie?
how the grinch stole christmas



13. When do you start shopping?
the paycheck i get before christmas, this year it'll be about a week before



14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
i don't think so, if i did, it wasn't intentional


15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
rolls and gravy



16. Favorite Christmas song?
O Holy Night



17. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
normally go to my mom's or lisa's, but this year, daniel and i are taking little danny to illinois


18. Open presents Christmas Eve or morning?
i LOVED the tradition we had growing up.. on christmas eve, we would go out, look at lights, come home and drink eggnog.
we would get gifts from friends and family before christmas, and they would always go under the tree.. then on christmas eve, lisa and i were allowed to open ONE gift. then we would open the rest on christmas morning, when we would get up SUPER early. my mom said we were allowed to have our stockings, and we couldn't wake her up until 7am.


19. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
the 'hussle and bussle' bull crap. crowds. attitudes. packed stores. slow people. drivers. oh, i feel like i could go on.


20. Favorite ornament theme or color?
dont really have one.. i just love the look and smell



21. What do you want for Christmas this year?
i'm not sure even yet. my mom asked me yesterday, and i just can't even think of anything i want. i'm always like that though

Thursday, December 4, 2008

question...

WHERE did danny's hair go? he had a head full when he was born and it's all fallen out or he's rubbed it all off... i know he'll grow it back, but dag on!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

who said preemie??
















the top picture is most recent, it was a few days before Thanksgiving, and the other was when he was about 2 weeks old... i'll post more later, maybe i'll get the hang of posting pictures... hopefully! =]

work work work =]




these pictures are old, but i just love my little man so much and these were taken when he was 7 weeks old =]


wow, i feel like all i get done doing is working! but that's ok because we need the money and the overtime is certainly helpful, especially with christmas coming up and the move...

i was talking to daniel the other night and he wanted to know if i wanted to spend christmas here and new year in illinois or the other way around. i told him i'd really rather spend christmas here but as far as the work schedule is concerned, it looks like we're going to spend christmas in illinois and new year here in west virginia. my mom is going to be upset, and so will my sister and her kids. especially breanne (the oldest) because she asks me ALL through the year 'emma are you going to spend the night on christmas?' for the past few years, i've went over there and spent the night on christmas eve. =[ i just hope she's not too upset because i am going to spend the new year and do the presents that day.

daniel also told me he wanted to move and wanted to know if i wanted december to be the last month i'm in the apartment. NO, i want to stay at least a few more months, but i know he is dying to go back home to illinois. and i love him so much and only want to see him happy, so i'm willing to negotiate with him.
i'm also going to find a church to go to there. that's really important to me, and i'm not sure that daniel fully understands my stance on this. i would love NOTHING more than if he shared my love and conviction for God. i'm hoping he'll realize just how important this really is and i'm NOT going through a phase. he's not sure how to take it, and i don't know that anything will sway him from the way he feels. i've been praying about it like crazy.

so, we'll see what's going on with that.
i've been spending a LOT of time reading this blog. it's a couple who have a preemie baby and it has been a day by day journey thru her life. it really makes me realize just how lucky i am. these people are struggling so much with their beautiful preemie baby, kayleigh.
see, my baby danny was a preemie. no where near preemie like kayleigh, he was only almost 5 weeks early, and i was SOOOO lucky because he was absolutely PERFECT. and is growing like a weed! they say that preemies grow, say if they're 2 months early, they'll be two months behind a "normal" baby that was born full term. but danny is, i think, normal for his size.

so i think that's all for today.. i'll try to post more tomorrow. the awesome thing is that i can post at work YAY









Wednesday, November 26, 2008

thank you, Lord

on my way to work this morning, i was driving on the interstate and up ahead, i see this car slide sideways across the interstate through traffic! it scared me really bad... but that's the type of person i am, if i see something like that, it really upsets me. i almost started crying... the girl was fine, thank goodness. her car was smashed in, but she was ok.

it reminded me of what i did in daniel's car about a month ago. i was driving to get little danny and i think i fell asleep because the next thing i know, i'm over on the side of the road, in the passing lane and i overcorrected twice.. then i spun out of control and ended up going backwards a ways, and i had went in between the wire cables in the median. luckily, i wasn't hurt. just scratched up some from the glass on the passenger side being broken out on me.

i said a little prayer to thank God for how good He is.

Monday, November 24, 2008

A New Beginning

after I had my baby boy, i was so tired. it was overwhelming, and all i wanted to do was hold him and see him. it seemed to take forever for them to bring him into the room with us. when they did, i just held him and loved him. he was so tiny!

as i laid there holding him, i tried so hard not to fall asleep, and daniel had already gone to sleep, it had been such a LONG day, and we didn't get much sleep the night before. the medicine they were giving me made my whole body burning hot, and while i was holding my small newborn, i felt his body and he was cold. i laid him against me, trying to warm him up, but i kept falling asleep. i felt so bad.

the nurse came in and i told her how cold he was. she took him into the nursery and put him in that box to warm him up. he ended up having to stay there for 2 days. he also had to have a little bit of oxygen right after he was born. i spent a lot of time in the hospital without him, due to him having to get his body temperature regulated, which is common in preemies. he also had a little bit of jaundice, but it went away on it's on within a week. i have been so lucky with this baby.

i got to see him and hold him every once in a while. i hated not having him with me, but i knew he needed to get warm.

(if anyone is reading...) you might be wondering why i'm not calling him by his name. well, we didn't name him until the day before we left the hospital. daniel had been wanting to call him GianCarlo, and i didn't want that to be his first name. i wanted to name him daniel. i had made the remark that maybe once he saw him, he would change his mind, and he was dead set on that name.
after a couple days of seeing the baby and holding him, daniel changed his mind. we set there for a while, trying to figure out what we were going to name this precious being.

one of the reasons, daniel told me, that he didn't want to name him daniel is because if we have more kids, he wanted to name the youngest boy after him. that's when i told him that we could have 10 more kids and not one of them could be a boy. you just never know.

so we decided to name him:

Daniel GianCarlo

i'm really happy with that name, it fits him. and i wanted to name him after daniel because he is such a good man.

while i was in the hospital, daniel never left my side other than to get me something to eat, or get himself something to eat. he was so great! and nothing has changed. he is the best father and partner i could ever hope for. actually, he's so much more than i could have ever hoped for.

so life has been hectic but wonderful these past 3 and 1/2 months. at first i was so overwhelmed, i didn't know how i would ever do it. but it's become so much easier, and it just came to me. i heard that it would, and it does.

Precious Baby Boy

being a new mom, i just HAVE to talk about my baby!
(btw, daniel is my boyfriend)

back in january, i found out i was pregnant.
going a few years back from that time, in may 2005, i found out i was pregnant then, too. i was about 4 weeks and ended up having a miscarriage, and it was really hard, even though i wasn't very far along. so this time, in january, i was worried because i had the miscarriage before, and part of me thought that is what was going to happen.

see, what happened was i was at work one day, thinking that something was different about my body. it just didn't seem right. i talked to one of my friends at work and she had asked me if i was pregnant, but i didn't think that was even an option because i'd been taking birth control. so i called my sister and had her get a pregnancy test from the dollar store and put it in the mailbox, in the bag it came in.

when i got home that day from work, i made sure i was at the mailbox first, before daniel got there, and hurried upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom.
it only took a minute before both lines showed up on that little stick, and i had no idea how much my life would change from that moment on.


i was scared, and i didn't want to tell daniel because i didn't know how he would react. but, i sucked it up and told him.
i think it took a few days to tell daniel, and at first, he was shocked, but then finally he got used to the idea.

i called a doctor in the same town i worked in, thinking it would make it easier and more convenient. i really wanted to go to another place, but it was so far away from where i worked. and where i live is right in the middle of the two places.

i continued going to work, working through the throwing up, thinking 'this morning sickness is KILLING ME!' it got so bad that some days i would have to call off work, and i would be out of work for 4 and 5 days at a time. i only worked 8 days in january, and about 1 1/2 weeks in february because i was so sick.
i ended up going to the ER before my doctor's appointment because i had been off work for about the whole week. it was on a friday morning and the night before, i had been up almost all night up and down, throwing up. i felt HORRIBLE the next day, but i had to go to work. i got there and before i went inside, i saw my boss. i told him what had been going on and he said to go ahead and leave and get it taken care of.

so i went to the closest ER and they hooked me up to an IV, to give me fluids. i felt so bad, and as soon as some of the fluids they hooked me up to got into my system, i threw up again. i couldn't believe how sick i was. i don't know that i had ever felt that bad before. then, the IV came out of my arm (i don't have good veins to stick anyway) so they had to come in and switch arms.
after it was all said and done that day, i felt better than i did, but i still felt sick.
i found out before i left to go home that that particular hospital didn't have an OB unit because the other hospital was so close, but they did a good job of patching me up that day.

on the release papers, they had written that i have Hyperemesis Gravidarum. i looked at that and thought 'what in the world??'. when i got home, in the next few days when i was feeling up to it, i got online and looked up what it was. basically it says excessive vomiting in pregnant women, and it went on to say it's a severe form of morning sickness and also:

When HG is severe and/or inadequately treated, it may result in:
loss of 5% or more of pre-pregnancy body weight
nutritional deficiencies
dehydration and ketosis
metabolic imbalances
difficulty with daily activities
altered sense of taste
sensitivity of the brain to motion
food leaving the stomach more slowly
rapidly changing hormone levels during pregnancy
stomach contents moving back up from the stomach
physical and emotional stress of pregnancy on the body

i had lost a total overall of 22 pounds...

finally, in march, i was released to go back to work on the 9th or somewhere close to that day. i had a doctor's appointment that day, and i still didn't feel good. the doctor ended up writing me off work until further notice. my first thought was 'oh no! i don't want to get in trouble at work' but at the same time, i was relieved because i felt soooo sick all the time and even though i have a job where i just sit all the time, i was even too sick to do that because i couldn't stay in my seat due to throwing up so much.

in the months that i was pregnant, it didn't get much better. i remember days where i would just lay in bed and every hour or two, i would be up throwing up. i'd feel a little better but not enough to do anything but go lay back down. this was my routine for a LONG time.
then it got to where i could actually go out and do things for a day or so, and the next day, i'd be sick again and end up having to go back to the ER to get fluids because i'd be dehydrated again.

i didn't want to find out what the baby's sex was, but it seemed EVERYONE else did. and yes, i know it was my decision. but i compromised. which was stupid, because what i did was have the ultrasound tech write down the sex and put it in an envelope and i gave it to daniel. i also let lisa, my sister, see it but i made them all promise not to even let it slip to me what the baby was going to be.
i did pretty good until i was over 7 months pregnant. then i decided to go ahead and find out because 1) everyone else already knew, 2) you can't buy hardly ANYTHING these days that's for boys and girls, 3) and it was getting harder and harder for people to keep it from me and i thought it was going to slip out.

i got to a point where i was so uncomfortable with my doctor, i dreaded going to my appointments. when i was 32 weeks along, i switched doctors. i don't know why it took me so long. i guess where i was off work and getting disability, i didn't think i could switch. but i called them and they assured me i could.

i was nervous for my first appointment with the new doctor. i had been swelling a few days before, and being nervous was probably why my blood pressure was up. but he let me know i had preeclampsia. YAY. was he serious??
he ended up putting me in the hospital for that night to monitor me. and i had asked him if it was because i didn't tell my other doctor about the swelling and he said that he should have known because that was the first time he'd ever seen me and he could tell i was swollen. by that point, i was so glad i changed doctors.
he also gave me a shot of steroids that night and one the next morning. he said that just in case we would have to deliver the baby early, it would help develop his lungs because males mature slower than females.

he was a lifesaver, literally! he had admitted me to the hospital a few times before i gave birth, and i had to go to the ER, not because of dehydration, but because of a migraine. and i started getting them when i was about 7. but this one was worse than any i had EVER had. they ended up putting me in a room in the OB ward for a few hours.

finally, i had a doctor's appointment on august 7. after i had switched doctors, he had me come see him every monday and thursday. this was on a thursday, and he wanted me to stay overnight in the hospital, but i asked him if i could go home. he told me to promise that if i had any trouble at all, to come back, but he wanted to see me the next day. i went back and my blood pressure was still high (and he had given me medicine for it, and by that time, i was upped from 100 to 400 (i think) mg a day.. not to mention reglan, and a couple other things), so i was put overnight in the hospital. that night, the nurses were so nice, and i was waiting for daniel to get off work to come stay with me. one of the nurses had made the comment that i would have my baby the next day, and i thought she was crazy! my due date was sept 10, and this was more than a month early!

so the next morning, about 6 or 7, they started my labor. i was scared because i thought it was too early for me to have him, and with all the complications i had (which weren't a whole lot, but enough to scare me), i didn't know what would happen.
i got SOOO uncomfortable because i was having stomach and back pain, and i could NOT get comfortable. i tried every position i could get into, and i couldn't get comfortable. the doctor came in to check me and i started crying because even though it did hurt, i was also having all those emotions going thru me too. the nurse came in and asked if i had decided if i wanted the epidural because i had told them at first i wasn't sure if i wanted it or not. but i decided to take it. after that, it was smooth sailin'! it just took forever for anything to happen.

so about 8 that night, they came in and told me the doctor had decided to do a c-section and this flood of relief came over me. i was just scared to be in control and have to push... this way, the doctor was in control and it would happen at his pace, not mine.

they took me in to do the c-section, and it went by pretty quickly. i was laying there and then i heard it. i heard him cry, and i was overcome with joy! then i got to see him and he was the most beautiful person i had ever seen in my life!

he was born on August 9, 2008 at 9:01 p.m. 5 pounds and 19 inches long


the recovery didn't take long either. they took me back to my room and a little bit later, they took me to the nursery to see my little feller. i got to hold him and it was so nice to finally have him in my arms (and for him to not make me sick anymore haha).

Friday, November 21, 2008

just a little background...

MI VIDA MARAVILLOSA = MY WONDERFUL LIFE

let me start off my giving a little background about myself.

i'm 27 years old, i currently live in west virginia, where i grew up. i plan on moving to illinois soon, but that's a whole other story that i'll save for another post. i'm also starting to realize how important God is and has been in my life, and i'm trying to make the right changes so that i can be a better servant for him. i'm nowhere near perfect and i'll never try to claim to be. i just want to be the best i can be for my Lord and Savior.

i like it here in west virginia, but that's all i know. i've never lived anywhere else BUT here. and i was never one of those kids in school that wanted to get away as fast as i could. i really never understood the wanting of that, either. i understood why, kind of, because there's really NOTHING to do here. but anyway...

i try my hardest everyday, especially lately, to be a better person than yesterday. i don't like using capital letters when i type or text.

i love: GOD
to eat.
sweets.
the fall.
how it looks and feels just before it rains.
to make those closest to me happy.
God.
my family.
giraffes! (i have a crazy almost obsession with them)
dollar stores.
gas station food.
english toffee cappuccino.
doing well at my job.



i can't stand:
slow drivers.
driving, period.
most people.
being sick.
embarrassment.
harsh truth.
when people act like they're better than other people.
the hours i work at my job.
hurting people.
music being too loud.
being hot.
being uncomfortable in any way.

in my life there are things that i'm very proud of, and things i'm not proud of. i've had different boyfriends, some i've lived with and once had a miscarriage, which really had an effect on me.
i am a sister and a daughter and i am very close to my family. my sister, lisa, is a little older than me, and she has 3 beautiful, wonderful children who i absolutely adore! there's breanne, who just turned 6, alexis, who's 4, and nathaniel, who's 3.

right now, i am the VERY proud mother of a gorgeous 3 month old baby boy who is the light of my life, along with his daddy. i am more in love with him every day.



i don't know how often i'll be able to update, but i'm going to try to update often, because i think it's good therapy. i really doubt anyone will read what i have to say, much less be interested, but i'm basically doing this for me. so if you ARE one of the few that might read this, thank you and i hope i don't bore you too much.