Carol's Corner

A wonderful digiscrapper and designer, Jen U, made layouts journaling the story of her children's births and inspired me to scraplift her idea. I don't know if my boys will ever be interested in this information but at least it will be there if they are. There's lots of stuff I wish I had asked my mom before she died. By the time I realized I might actually want to know some of this family stuff, the Alzheimer's had made her memories unreliable.

You can see Jen's awesome layouts in her gallery at KBandFriends and get credits for my layout here.

Here's the journaling for my layout:

After two miscarriages and ten years of tests and surgical procedures, I finally got pregnant with Alex. The surgery I had to repair my uterus made a C-section necessary so the due date was planned nearly 8 months in advance. The date was planned for 2 weeks before the due date to avoid my going into labor. Despite previous problems, the pregnancy went well up until about 3 weeks before the planned C-section. I started getting pains so we called the doctor who told us to meet him at the hospital. At the hospital they verified that I was in labor and they set about trying to get it stopped. They gave me a shot of tributilin to stop the labor. The doctor also decided to do an amniocentesis to check for lung development so they could be prepared in case they couldn’t stop the labor. The amnio was an ordeal because Alex was in a bad position which meant the doctor and nurses had to manually move him and keep him in a better position so they could insert the needle. The amnio test came back indicating the Alex’s lungs were even less developed than they would have expected. Fortunately, the labor pains stopped and they put me on tributilin in pill form. I was able to go home after several days in the hospital but was ordered to be on bed rest. I had to take my pills every 4 hours which meant setting my alarm clock to get up in the middle of the night to take the pills. I figured it was good practice for having to get up for nightly feedings. The doctor revised Alex’s due date and changed the C-Section date to July 25^th after the amnio test results. I had gone into premature labor on June 22^nd and was on bed rest until the C-Section. The trib gave me the shakes and my hands shook so badly I couldn’t read or do cross stitch. So I watched a lot of tv for a while until my body got accustomed to the medication and I didn’t shake so badly and could read and do some cross stitching. The doctor told me to stop taking the medication the day before the scheduled C-section. That evening I started having contractions and ended up having to wake John up around midnight to take me to the hospital. At the hospital they gave me a shot of trib and stopped the contractions until noontime on July 25^th when Alex was finally delivered by C-section. After so many years of disappointment and heartache we finally had our precious baby boy.

Now I need to do one for Michael. Am I the only parent who has almost daily pictures of the first child and just occasional pictures of the second one? Good thing we didn't have a third...I'd probably not have any.

Here is today's blog prompt for Friday June 22, 2007

If you could go anywhere in the world, anywhere at all, where would you go? How long would you stay? What would you do while you were there?

There are tons of places I'd love to go but I think I would pick Tuscany and I would stay all summer and just immerse myself in the culture.

If this sounds familiar, you're right! LOL!! Yes, I loved Frances Mayes' book, Under The Tuscan Sun. I would love to experience another country and culture like that. I really want to go to Tuscany someday but I know it will probably be just for a few days or a week and we'll hit the tourist spots and only scratch the surface. And at this point, I'll be happy to have gone. Sounds like it will take forever just to get a passport so we won't be going any time soon. I never should have let mine expire.

That reminds me of a movie I once saw...now I can't remember anything except this woman who secretly had a passport. She had never used it but just having it made her feel like anything was possible. Hmm, does anyone remember that movie?