hanging in there

My last post was a wretched way to leave my blog for so long.  Sorry about that!  I'm not lying dead in a ditch. I am just so freaking exhausted!  I'm not talking, oh gee I'm starting to feel tired kind of exhausted.  It is not gradual exhaustion but rather "Oh my goodness, I cannot keep my eyes open one more second!" kind of exhaustion.  I've been in bed before 9 nearly every night.  By the time my kids go to bed I'm dragging myself to my bed.  Hence the lack of blogging.

So let me tell you about my last 24 hours.  Last night my eldest man child told me he had a headache.  I didn't think much of it, gave him dinner and thought that would help.  It didn't.  We went to Target as a family and by the time we left my son was nearly in tears because of this headache.  Being the unsympathetic mom that I am, I assumed his headache was from being tired and sent him to bed.  At 12:30 he woke up SCREAMING that his head hurt so badly it woke him up and it hurt to move his head in any capacity, including walking.

Ok, no more unsympathetic mom.  I was actually pretty worried about him.  He's not a headache kid.  He's not one to cry when he doesn't feel good.  Oh yeah, and when he woke up at 12:30 he had a 102.6 fever.  My mamma instincts said it was time to call the doctor.  We ruled out meningitis over the phone, gave him the last of the children's tylenol and set out to make it through a miserable night.

Oh, but my emotions were even higher strung.  Let me tell you about what had happened unbeknownst to the kids.  While at Target I bought pregnancy tests.  On top of the pure exhaustion I have had some other not normal for me things and I am late with no signs at all of starting.  I took test #1.  The line appeared.  But wait, then it disappeared.  Then it reappeared, very faint.  When baby #3 was on the way the line was so faint that it was merely the shadow of where the line might have been so I believe any line even when it looks like a shadow.  While dealing with a sick kiddo, I was wrapping my mind around the possibility of baby #4.

So sick kiddo asks for daddy, and being the wonderful daddy that he is, Hubby stayed up most of the night with the sick kid while I went to bed.  My son didn't fall asleep until nearing 6am.  My husband is AMAZING!  This morning Hubby carried my son into our bed so the brothers wouldn't wake him up.  I laid in my bed next to my son and couldn't fall back asleep because I kept thinking about that positive pregnancy test.  We are not trying for more kids.  Here's how I explain it, if God can create immaculate conception, then He can override my birth control if His plans are different than ours.  I'm open to His plans being different from mine, but I want it to be without a doubt HIS plans for us!

I finally couldn't stay in bed thinking about it for one more second so I got up and took the other pregnancy test.  It was very plainly negative.  No shadows.  No hints of any lines.  No baby.  I breathed a sigh of relief only to realize there was also a sigh of disappointment in there.  Not looking to start over with the baby years and yet the very legitimate possibility of it brought up feelings that you only understand when you have become a mom.

I made my coffee and called the pediatrician.  I took my son in and thankfully it is not meningitis nor is it strep.  But on the downside, it is a virus so there is nothing to do but have him rest, stay well hydrated and take children's ibuprofen.

We are bummed that he is sick.  We have tickets for the family to go ride Thomas the Tank Engine tonight which he and daddy will have to miss.  And tomorrow we are planning to take him to Elitch's with a friend to celebrate his birthday.  The doc said if the fever crosses over 101 again or if the head is still hurting then we would have to reschedule our celebration.  We are praying that the rest will help him enough to be able to go still.

I woke up tired and overwhelmed this morning.  I'm doing much better now but it was a long 24 hours!