Rebecca – Page 6 – Andelin Adventures

Heartache

On Tuesday, I noticed just a little bit of pink on the toilet paper after going to the bathroom. Wednesday the pink was a darker shade and there was a bit more of it. This of course raised some concerns within me. I talked with Kyle about it and he told me not to worry about it. Of course I kept right on worrying. Thursday the pink was even darker and the quantity was still increasing. I decided to call my midwife and ask what she thought. But when she answered the phone and found out it was me, she said that she is not allowed to even talk to me. She had a bit of a law suit brought up against her recently and I guess that is the way the judge ruled. She can no longer practice as a midwife, and is not allowed to talk to her previous clients about pregnancy related stuff. At that point, I felt alone and scared. I was having issues and I needed to talk to somebody, an expert in the field, not just to Kyle. I called the gal that used to be her assistant and talked to her. The pink discharge the fact that I’m nearly 7 weeks and not feeling sick yet, led her to believe that I might be having a miscarriage. I hoped not, so I have tried to take it easy for the past couple of days. Kyle had taken the day off of work yesterday so we could move the boys bunk bed upstairs. He ended up doing most of it himself. I tried to move smaller stuff like the empty shoe boxes and small things like that that were in the way. I also held the bunk bed pieces in a standing position so Kyle could get them screwed together, but that was about it.

Last night we had movie night with the kids. We watched Turbo. As the movie went on, I was not feeling well. I was uncomfortable and starting to feel crampy. When the movie was over we prayed and the kids went upstairs to get to bed. I remained on the floor in the family room for a couple of minutes. When I stood up, I felt that gush that meant that I needed to get to the bathroom NOW. I tried to get to my bathroom as quickly as I could, but one of the kids was in there. I yelled that I needed my bathroom NOW. Kyle could tell that things were not right. Under normal circumstances I would have politely waited for the kid to finish and come out. I was most definitely suffering from a miscarriage.

When I came out of the bathroom, knowing that what I had been fearing had in fact taken place, Kyle tried to comfort me. He tried to get the kids to bed by himself because he could tell that I was not going to be able to do it, and then he just held me for a bit. He asked me if there was anything he could get for me. I knew that I would be bleeding a lot through the night and I did not want to lay down, so I asked him to clear my recliner off for me. He ended up putting a lot of that stuff on my treadmill, which I didn’t like, but I also realized that I wasn’t going to be using the treadmill anytime in the next couple of weeks anyway, so I just dealt with it. And so I sat in my recliner all night trying to get some rest.

Today, I am hiding in my room. I don’t want to move at all. And my heart is broken. I wonder why this happened. Why am I going through this? How will I get over this? What should I be doing to make sure that by body can heal from this? We were going to announce our pregnancy when we have most of the family here for Jeremy’s birthday and baptism next week. That won’t be happening any more. Instead I’ve got to try to recover a bit before all the family gets here. Our kids don’t even know that we were pregnant, and that I’ve miscarried. We don’t usually tell them about a pregnancy until we are ready for the word to get out, because once you tell little kids about it, it’s no longer a secret from anyone. They have no idea why I am hiding in my room today. When will we tell them? Will we tell them? I realized, that because I’ve miscarried, I can now take ibuprofen to ease the pain of the cramps, but that won’t help the pain that I feel in my heart.

Locks of Love

My group of Girl Scout Juniors are working on earning their bronze award, which is kind of a simpler version of the gold award which they can earn when they are older, and is the Girl Scout equivalent of the Eagle Scout award for boys. The bronze is a 20 hour service project that the girls do as a troop. In a couple of years they can earn their silver awards which is a 50 hour service project done in small groups of no more than 4. Finally they can earn their gold award which is a 100 hour (or two 50 hour) service project(s) that they do on their own.

We had each of the girls submit at least one project idea, along with a basic plan of what we would need to pull it off, and in the end we didn’t select any of the plans the girls turned in. One of them had suggested that we organize free hair cuts for poor people, but that isn’t a sustainable project, because you cut the hair once and eventually it will grow and need to be cut again. Somehow as we talked about that, other ideas came up and the idea of doing a Locks of Love drive was presented. This would be more sustainable, since girls would come and have their hair cut for free, and we would send the hair to Locks of Love to be made into wigs for girls who lose their hair due to medical issues. So that is what the girls decided they wanted to do.

Being the leader, and having long hair, I of course let them cut my hair to donate:

Tyra was at the event with me and the rest of our troop, and Kyle brought the rest of our kids by to check out the bake sale and craft sale that we were also having. The girls thought that would be a nice way to provide opportunities for people who don’t have hair long enough to donate, to help Locks of Love with the cost associated with making wigs.

One of Tyra’s friends from church came to donate her hair, and that started Tyra off, begging us to let her donate her hair as well. So Kyle took the kids home and washed their hair so that they could come back and donate it. Tyra, Dinah and Chloe all donated their hair.

Lydia’s hair isn’t long enough to donate, so she is the only girl in our family that didn’t get a hair cut. Tyra, Dinah and Chloe were all so very excited to get their hair cut though. Personally I am afraid of having their hair so short. I don’t own a curling iron and if it starts flipping every which way, I’m not going to know how to fix it. This also means no more braids or pony tails for awhile and Chloe is simply adorable with her hair in a set of french braids. As for myself, my hair was long enough to begin with that I was able to donate the required 10 inches (minimum) and still be able to have long hair. Here we are with our new dos:

Oh Baby! Here We Go Again!

I found out today that I am pregnant again! Yay! Baby #8 will be due sometime mid July 2014! I am excited to think of welcoming another little one to our family, and at the same time I am nervous about all the things that I have to do that never seem to get done. Like getting the house in order. It feels like I can never get ahead, or get closer to actually having the clutter gone, and the stuff we use in order. Also, I’m homeschooling the kids, which means I fear not being able to keep up with that, once morning sickness hits.

My Birthday

Kyle took the day off of work to spend the day with me for my birthday. I started the morning off by sending Kyle to go get some donuts for breakfast, and while he was gone I went downstairs and did my workout. When he came back we had birthday donuts for breakfast. 🙂

After breakfast we headed into town to get new tires for the van, and while the van was in the shop we walked across the parking lot to go to Costco. While at Costco we picked out a birthday cake, and we picked up a few other items that we were in need of. We went back to the shop and picked up the van and then we went to a Halloween store to see if we could find something for Tyra to wear this year. We got a princess costume for her, and then it was time to get back home for Girl Scouts.

My girl scouts came over and we had a good time working on their badge. Kyle left to go to Texas Roadhouse to pick up something for dinner. He got back after my meeting was over and we ate quickly because the bishopric had an appointment to come over this evening. I don’t know why they wanted to come over tonight, especially since they KNEW it was my birthday and even brought a gift (it was a stinky candle). They just kind of wanted to see how things were going and to chat for a bit, then they had to leave to get to another meeting.

We got everybody gathered back up in the kitchen and they sang to me and we had cake. There weren’t any presents so after cake it was bed time. It turned out to be a crazy day. I had hoped it wouldn’t just turn into an errand day, but that is kind of what happened. At least now the van has nice new tires, all ready for driving in the snow, when the snowy season hits. 🙂

Girl Scouts Cabin Trip #2

This weekend our troop had our second trip to the cabin to take up the other half of the troop. This trip was to be for all the brownies, and one of our juniors since her sister is a brownie and we didn’t want to make them come to the cabin twice. Amy said that she intended to take Eliza up again since it was their family’s cabin, and then I asked if Tyra and I could tag along as well considering I am the leader of the whole troop, and Amy is just to be over juniors next year and Michelle is to just be over the brownies. Well we hadn’t heard any sort of RSVP from a few of the girls and found out the week of that three of them weren’t going to be able to attend. Two because of other plans for the weekend, and one because she broke her elbow and that needed to be taken care of instead. So the trip to the cabin ended up being Amy, Michelle and I and our daughters. As fun as our big troop is, it was kind of nice and quiet being such a small group. Michelle’s brownie daughter had already earned the brownie badges that we were planning on doing at the cabin, as we had basically planned on doing them for the other girls but since none of them came, all of those activities got wiped off the plans. Amy had been planning on doing a couple of different junior badges with Michelle’s junior daughter than we did at the first cabin trip, and so we worked on those, and we helped her earn some of the things that we did at the first cabin trip. One of the badges that we worked on this time that we didn’t last time was the Independence badge. For this one the girls got to create a design with some buttons to sew onto a shirt.

A couple of the girls had issues, like sewing the front of the shirt to the back, but I guess that is why we do activities like this, right? So they can learn of the possibility of mistakes like that and figure out how to prevent them in the future. 🙂 A little later Amy took the girls out to show them some things under the hood of a car. They got to learn where the oil is and how to check it, and where the windshield wiper fluid is and other basic stuff like that.

Once we did what we could with the badges the rest of the time was spent with the girls playing around, and Amy and Michelle and I played a few games of Rummikub.

After dinner we talked about taking the girls on a night hike, since that was one of the things needed for a junior badge that we did last time, which Michelle’s older daughter missed. We told the girls to go get their water and their shoes and other supplies, as we were getting ready to go out, and they all proceeded to go up to the loft to get their stuff. Then we heard Tyra scream and say, “A BEAR!!!” Michelle flipped out and said that we weren’t going to be taking her girls outside, and Amy and I were just thinking “there is no way she saw a bear!” The girls had been quite noisy all day, and any animals which heard their noises would have steered clear of our location. After questioning Tyra about what this bear looked like, how big was it, where did you see it, and which way was it going, Amy and I went out to see if we could find any sign of any wild animal. We went to the back of the cabin and we didn’t see anything. No tracks, no trampled bushes, no sign that any animal had passed by. Tyra said that it was small so we are thinking that maybe it was a badger or something else like that, something that could have gone under the bushes. So we finished up the night, not by taking the girls out on a night hike, but by having our dessert, and sending the girls to the loft for bed. However the girls were having a really hard time falling asleep. They were really freaked out about the possibility of a bear. They kept talking about bears, and thinking that they saw a bear looking in through the window at them. NOBODY slept well that is for sure. In the morning we got up and had breakfast, and then we cleaned up and headed home. I’m sure everybody was thinking of getting home and taking a nap!

Update 1 Aug:Amy and I went to a service unit meeting tonight, and on our way there we were talking and Amy said that her uncle called her, and asked if we had heard anything about a bear while we were up at the cabin the last time. She told him the story of how Tyra thought she saw a bear and how freaked out the girls were over that. Then he told her that a bear was actually just caught, up in the same area as where their family cabin is. Now we are thinking that maybe Tyra did see a bear….but we aren’t going to tell the girls that!