Season of Sickness

This winter has truly been the Season of Sickness here at the Glenn house. I would always hear about other families who had what seemed like an entire month of illness but until I had a child it had never been me. It’s been seriously ridiculous. So far, since Christmas we’ve had:

Nicholas: 3 ear infections, 17 days worth of the stomach flu, 14 days worth of a NASTY cold, 2 ER visits, 2 days of hospital stays and 1 surgery

Lauren: 4 days worth of strep throat, 3 days worth of stomach flu, 5 days worth of colds

Donnie: 3 days worth of stomach flu, 7 days worth of cold/flu

Apparently our house is one big cesspool of germs. But on the bright side I feel like I can now say I’ve handled it—that we came out unscathed and that I never want to be puked on again (at least not until next winter please!) If only we had had the foresight to buy stock in Lysol….

The really unfortunate part of all this sickness is how rough it’s been on Nicholas. For an RSS kiddo, illness is a BIG deal. While Nicholas didn’t lose a ton of weight (only a few ounces) it’s a BIG deal for him. At his 9 month well visit Nicholas was 12lbs even, now at almost 12 months Nicholas is still only 12.1lbs….not so good for 3 months of growth. While yes he had the stomach flu, the times he wasn’t pukey he was being fed HIGH calorie food (I’m talking toast with butter on BOTH sides per our nutritionist, entire bowls of ice cream in the evening…any and everything we could do to get as many calories in him as possible!) Unfortunately they think his lack of weight gain is also attributed to his growth curve slowing down and perhaps plateauing which is common for RSS kids. He had been doing really well, chugging along on his own little curve, that paralleled the “normal” growth curve, just well below it. Now that curve is taking a nose dive and its not so good.

For us that means in the next couple months that if we cant get his weight back up, growth increased than we will be back to the pediatric gastroenterologist to discuss G-tubes and those options. At this point, the thought of a G-tube (feeding tube that goes directly into the stomach) is far less anxiety-provoking than it used to be. If it means there is less stress on our family to get Nick to grow than I am all for it!

We also recently had a very important appointment with Nicholas’ new endocrinologist who is going to be his primary doc (along with our awesome pediatrician). At this appointment we decided it was time to start Nicholas on growth hormone therapy! This is big exciting news for us because hopefully once he starts GHT he will obviously grow better, gain weight easier (hopefully), get sick less, have more stable blood sugar along with other positives. The biggest hurdle we have with starting this will be getting insurance approval. Often times insurance companies don’t approve this therapy since it will be something we will need for quite a few years. GHT involves giving Nicholas nightly injections of the synthetic growth hormone. For most RSS kids the GHT lasts well into adolescence which from an insurance perspective that is them paying for this expensive therapy from age 1 to possible age 15+. We could really use prayer about this, that starting this therapy will be an easy transition and that Nicholas will handle the injections with ease. Also we could use prayer that we will get insurance approval very quickly! Some friends of ours that have a daughter with RSS were very blessed and got insurance coverage within 2 weeks! That is basically unheard of, many families have to fight with the insurance company for 6+ months—hopefully that wont be us!

So while this has been a season of sickness for us its been a huge season of growth also. For me its been growing in my confidence in my parenting, growing in my abilities to turn these things over to the Lord. Without realizing it I’ve been holding on so hard to Nicholas’ medical situation. I felt like I was giving these things over to the Lord but I was still clenching them with white knuckles out of fear that if I loosened my grip things would fall apart. In doing this I was missing out on the relief that comes with trusting in the Lord wholeheartedly, I’ve also missed out on experiencing the overwhelming grace that the Lord could be pouring out on me if I only let Him. He has given me grace upon grace to deal with the circumstances that He has perfectly portioned out for me.

“For in his fullness, we have all received, and grace upon grace” John 1:16

I am so thankful for the experiences and struggles I’ve had in the last year (Nicholas’ medical stuff, my difficult pregnancy, my struggles with not being able to nurse my baby, then the struggles with getting my baby to eat in general, the struggles of having surgeries and illness and many other things). I have really learned what it means to go with the flow, to give it all to the Lord and just to put my faith in Him that the season I was experiencing is just that, a season of my life. So in this season of sickness I give thanks to God that he has portioned and appointed all the seasons of my life and that while things may be hard I know there is another season just around the corner.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. –Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Feb?? I though it was January!

**Sidenote-- I finally got around to writing a new blog post (wrote it Jan 3rd) but I really wanted to update with pictures so I just saved the written entry to post once I got my pictures uploaded...long story short: I cant find my camera cord so no pictures are going to be in this post...and its really outdated already...clearly blogging is falling pretty low on priority list but nonetheless, enjoy!**

I am writing this more for memories sake—I seriously cant remember anything these days and I know I will look back in sadness that I didn’t write these things down so unfortunately for you, you are going to get to read all the 1^st things and exciting moments in the last few months.

Nicholas had his first Halloween which was great fun (wow this is really long overdue). He went as a giraffe AND a penguin since his mom cant decide on anything. We went to the annual Glenn Harvest party which was good times had by all and I am sure next year Nick will be big time nommin on some 15 bean soup (family tradition). He helped “pass out candy” at his Aunt Katie’s house and loved the excitement once all the cousins came back dressed in their costumes. He was 7 months old for this stuff. At 7 months he also got his first teeth (bottom 2) and started army crawling around.

I’ll do my best to condense and add fun pictures. Since I last blogged lots have gone one. Nicholas had his first Thanksgiving! We traveled up to Cleveland to spend time w/ my mom’s side of the family. We stayed at my Gramma’s house and my sister and her family was there too! It was great fun to watch Nicholas really interacting with his cousins for the first time. He is finally army crawling so he is all over the place and really enjoys playing now. He also became much more vocal during this trip, talking up a storm. He enjoyed meat for the first time and loved that I finally got around to getting him a food mill. His Thanksgiving meal consisted of Ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, stuffing and a little whipped cream off mom’s pie. He also had his first surgery and hospital stay in November at 8 months which I wrote about in my last post.

Moving right along—Nicholas had his first Christmas…more like 1^st Christmas week which involved our small group Christmas party where he really enjoyed this creepy squishy chicken thing that pushed out an egg…bad description but it was awful and was one of the white elephant gifts we did. We had Christmas eve at Donnie’s parents house which is always fun. We went over for breakfast at 10 and Nicholas enjoyed a hearty breakfast of ham, eggs (1^st time!), breakfast potatoes, fruit and probably other stuff I didn’t see him get. We opened presents which is mayhem if you can imagine 21 people (including 9 children ages 5,4,3,2,2,2,9 months, 6 months, 3 months) and Nicholas got so spoiled and it was wonderful! We then had the traditional dinner of beef stroganoff and then headed up to my parents to spend the night. We were all surprised when we found out that my brother had booked a surprise flight into Cincinnati to surprise my parents! It was great since my brother has only gotten to see Nicholas one other time (this past July). We had a calm Christmas morning and Nicholas got spoiled again! My sister and her family got into town that afternoon and my Aunt came over as well for Christmas Dinner. Nicholas ate about ¼ of my piece of red velvet cake and ice cream and was whining for more. Now I am sure with all this food talk you are wondering how his feeding therapy is going…well its good. We have transitioned to focusing more on speech but the problem we are having now is that he LOVES table food so much that he doesn’t want a bottle anymore but he still needs the bottle for the calories. Its quite the conundrum but we are working on it. I don’t blame him, who would want a boring old bottle when you could have ham or pie haha

Nicholas also had his first trip to the shooting range this past December haha a couple days after Christmas we went to the range with Dave, Megan and George and Andrew & Stephanie and it was really fun! We got a few looks for bringing babies to a shooting range and no mom, they weren’t down by the shooting guns, it wasn’t loud or dirty haha This is when Nicholas officially said his first word- Bear. He got some books about bears for Christmas and we had been reading them and it must have stuck. Since then he has also said Puffs and Up (when playing with blocks). Then when we were in Indiana for New Years Day celebrating with Donnie’s extended family he waved and said bye bye for the first time! Its probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!

Lets see Nicholas also met one of my best friends, Jessi, this December (she was my maid of honor). I love introducing Nick to important people in my life. Donnie and I spent New Years Eve in Indianapolis with my best friend Dani and her husband Dan. It was quite a momentus occasion. We were playing a board game (exciting, right?!) and Donnie got laughing so hard that he was crying. Why is this important you ask? Well lets see, I’ve been with Donnie almost 7 years (since 2004) and I have NEVER seen a tear come out of his eye. I have barely even seen him tear up let alone have an actual tear come to fruition. I was so excited and I am glad to know that my husband does indeed have tear ducts haha. Nicholas also enjoyed dinner at Maggiano’s that night as you can see from the picture.((womp womp...no pic sorry guys!-- its a cute one if I ever get to posting it!)

I think that is all the big stuff that’s been happening in the past couple of weeks. We aren’t too exciting but I love our life. Things are good. Nicholas is good. Life is just good :-)