January

The end of January is upon us and we have a 2 1/2 year old who is keeping us busy. This past month has been lots of fun while spending time with friends and family. We celebrated Ella and Laurens birthdays and the girls had a blast as always playing together. We have also started swim lessons where Bel and I are in the water together in a small group as she learns to go under and do many other fun things in the water. DH has made it through another busy season and I am looking forward to another semester and finishing my masters in four months! Our sister in law Stacey is also finishing up this spring as well, we even graduate on the same day! Last but really fun is that we have many close friends that are joining us in the ranks of parenthood this coming summer and early fall. Words cannot express our joy for them and how excited we are to have more friends with little ones, there is even a picture of Bel with her Aunie Erin and I am pretty sure she is pointing to the baby in the picture :-)

What a year!

Today marks one year since Bel had her first "episode." For those of you that don't know or do not remember last year on MLK Jr. Day I was home with our princess for a day off when one of the most unforgettable days in my life happened. I can tell you every part of that day from beginning to end because it all happened in slow motion.The day was starting later than normal which I didn't think anything of because she had spent the weekend playing with her cousins. An 8am wake up was kind of nice, or so I thought. After I got her out of bed she didn't want to eat right away so I didn't think twice about snuggling on the couch to read a book. That should have been my first hint as our then 18 month old little girl was always on the move, but I had been in school all weekend and just took it all in. About ten pages into our book Bel fell asleep on me so I laid her back down in bed and showered. When I was done she wanted out of bed, perfect timing. I brought her in to be changed and to get her dressed and that's when the "episode" began or actually that I finally knew something was wrong. Her eyes rolled back and she wouldn't respond to me.
Panic had set in and I called DH at work and then 911. The first responders were amazing, one happened to be a dad of a student and swimmer of mine and it was by the grace of God that I had someone there with me that I knew. We were brought by ambulance to the hospital, and bringing your unresponsive child to the hospital is a horrible experience,one that I hope none of my friends or family ever have to go through. When there even the doctors were unable to tell us what was wrong because even they didn't know. Through all of the panic and pain of watching all of this happen in slow motion, God was ever present even though we were unaware, he was there. Her temp was dropping and her blood sugar was in the low 40s and dropping, thankfully she was awake enough at different periods of time to drink some juice. Flash forward many, many hours she was awake, not her self, but awake with lots of tests to come. Two days later we left to go home with still no answers, the doctors told us to basically cross our fingers that this would never happen again, that it was a fluke.
6 months later almost to the day it happened again... it felt like a joke on us as DH and I had been talking about it the night before while sitting outside. From then the move to what this "episode" was went quickly and we were finally given answers(Post from June), ones that were relatively easy to live with.

This post was not so much one to relive the day, but to be thankful for the ones we have had since with our healthy now 2 1/2 year old little girl.

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

- Mother Teresa