Eating, Teething, and Appendicitis

I've been meaning to update the blog for a while. I even wrote down what to blog about, but a series of events has distracted me from updating, so here it goes.

Rebecca is now 6 1/2 months and counting! We love her so much. My dad took the above pictures when he and my mom came and visited over President's Day weekend. Within the last month, she has increased her babbling and, to Kyle's absolute delight, has included "Dada" in her repertoire. Of course, she doesn't associate the word with the person, but I loved the look on his face when he heard her say it for the first time. Becca has also had her first cold (which she kindly shared with me) and is now eating rice cereal and sitting in her highchair, rather than her swing. She's really pretty good at hanging out in her highchair and playing while I do whatever in the kitchen. She'd been getting frustrated with the swing, because even with the chair in the straightest position, she wasn't able to sit up as straight as she'd like. The highchair is the perfect solution because she can sit up straight and grab at whatever is on her tray. She's good at eating cereal and has recently starting smacking her lips, which leads me to TEETHING.

We think Becca smacks her lips because it feels good on her sore little gums. Our reasoning stems from the fact that she started doing it the day before we saw/felt her first tooth coming in. It followed a horrible night, sleep wise, as Becca woke up at 2am and didn't go back to sleep until 5am, which was both a blessing and not. The downside of her falling asleep at 5 was that it was then time for me to get ready for bed and so I didn't get any more sleep. The blessing was that at least I didn't have to wake Kyle up again to trade off. This was helpful, since he was able to get a bit more sleep, and she continued to be a bit difficult on his watch while I was at work. Anyway, while there is a slim possibility that what we see/feel are not teeth coming in (I read an article about how calcium deposits can be mistaken for teeth in both look and symptoms) I'm pretty sure my beautiful baby will have the cute two-tooth baby smile soon.

Another milestone for Becca was that she had her first sleepover sans mom and dad. On Feb 22, I woke early in the morning with a sharp pain in my lower right abdomen. My mind almost immediately jumped to appendicitis, but I thought it to be impossible, so I decided to wait and watch, thinking perhaps I'd twisted wrong in my sleep and pulled something. As the day wore on I came up with two possibilities: ovarian cyst or appendicitis. I'd had a cyst in high school, so I was leaning towards that, since I didn't have the other symptoms that typically accompany appendicitis, but when I saw a doctor about the cyst, he had made the point the since the cyst was on my left, we didn't need to do further tests, but if it had been on the right, we'd have to check for appendicitis. Anyway, with this memory up front in my mind, I asked Kyle if he knew more precisely where the appendix is located. He apparently hadn't thought about the possibility of appendicitis, so as soon as I asked the question, he told me to get my shoes on because we were going to the hospital. After calling my mom for a second opinion (I live in fear of going into the hospital only to be laughed at for coming in for nothing major), we headed to Urgent Care. The doctor at Urgent Care confirmed my suspicions that it was either a cyst or appendicitis. Due to the after hour visit, he didn't have access to the equipment needed to determine which it was, so he sent us to the ER. We got there just after 6:30. They took some blood samples and such and had me get a CT scan around 9:30. The CT scan was more to rule out appendicitis, because I really don't think the nurses or the doctor thought I had it. I was still very talkative and I laughed occasionally, neither of which is typically done by an appendicitis patient. A while later, the results came back, and to my surprise, it was confirmed that I did have appendicitis. It was still in the early stages, and not life-threatening by any means, but since appendicitis doesn't really go away, they operated shortly after midnight. This long story explains how Becca came to have her first sleepover. Once the results came back and we were told I'd be having surgery, we called my Aunt Teresa, in Salem and asked if she could watch Becca that night. Kyle drove her out there and put her to sleep, then came back in time for me to come out of anesthesia. Apparently, he got back to the hospital about 5 minutes or so after they took me in to surgery. I really wasn't prepared for how sore I would be. I'm not sure why it didn't sink in that surgeries of any kind are hard on the body, but I eventually figured out I'd need a whole week off of work to recuperate. I'm blessed that I received paid medical leave, so I didn't even have to use my regular time off.

Anyway, it has been an exciting couple of weeks at the Gardner household. Fortunately, Kyle has been able to avoid both colds and appendicitis, so he has been able to help both me and Becca. We love him. Kyle's update includes the start of a new class at school. He's been taking a math class in the evenings, and now he has Stair Design two mornings a week. It just started this week, so while we're not sure what to do with Becca in the long run, this week she's come to work with me for an hour or so. Kyle drops her off on his way to class and then picks her up on his way home. It's worked for two days. My favorite part of this whole situation with me and Kyle trading Becca is that I can now say my baby has been to college and to work. She started attending Kyle's ceramics class at 2 months, and she started putting time in at the office two days at week at 6 months. We'll see if this translates to a strong work ethic later on in life.