Faith's Mom's Blog

Have you every felt this way?  I know I need to lift my eyes up But I'm too weak Life just won't let up And I know that You can give me rest So I cry out with all that I have left My prayers are wearing thin And I'm worn  Even before the day begins I'm worn I've lost my will to fight I bet there are a lot of special needs parents or parents with very young children who can relate to these words. I know I can. Whenever I hear the song, Worn which contains the above lyrics, I am transported back in time when Faith was a little baby. I was working full time during the day and trying to look after her at night. She did not sleep well, which meant neither Rob nor I sleep well either. To make things even harder, Rob worked overnights on the weekends. I was in a major state of sleep deprivation. I started drinking caffeine and eating sugar everyday at work to help me stay awake. It didn't help that my thyroid was out of whack. Eventually I

Earlier this week I had my annual appointment with my pacemaker doctor who comes to Bismarck from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It is a huge blessing that I don't have to travel to Rochester, which is about 600 miles from Bismarck. I really truly thought I would be in and out - a quick ekg, a quick pacemaker check, a quick chat with the doctor and I would be done. I scheduled the appointment at 8:00 a.m. thinking I would make it to work just in time for my 9:00 shift. Boy was I wrong! I got up to the pediatric floor at about 7:50 a.m. Yes, the pediatric floor because the doctors who come from Mayo specialize in pediatric cardiology so they are mainly there to see the kids. But since more and more kids have been surviving heart defects and growing into adults, some of these pediatric cardiologists specialize in adults with congenital heart conditions.  Anyway, so there I was on the same floor with all the kids - the same floor I take Faith to when we see her pediatr

It seems we've been celebrating Valentines Day all week as we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday making our homemade Valentines boxes and cards. Faith's class had a party today and we had our own "old school" Valentines Day party at work. Faith normally doesn't stay at school on Thursday afternoons so we decided to give her the choice of whether or not she wanted to stay for the class party. I was a little disappointed when she said she didn't want to stay for it because I don't like her to miss out on doing fun things with her classmates. I do think though that the parties can get a little chaotic (especially with all that sugar intake) and I know it's hard for her to relax in that kind of atmosphere because her startle is constantly kicking in. Still, after dropping her off at school I couldn't help but feel a little sad that she was going to miss out on the party. We did have fun making the boxes and cards and looking at all our Valentines

I have recently connected with another blogger who is the mom of a sweet boy with special needs named Silas. You can check out her blog at A Boy Named Silas . She is truly an amazing mom and I just ordered her book which is an account of the time they spent in the NICU with Silas. She just nominated me for The Liebster Award - Special Needs Edition . Thanks, Alana Terry ! I was very surprised, humbled and honored all at the same time. The Liebster award comes with certain rules, one of which is sharing 11 facts about myself: 1. I took piano lessons for eight years 2. I would love to have two Doberman Pinschers someday 3. I work for a health insurance company 4. I have only colored my hair once in my life 5. I’ve never had a massage (by a professional) 6. My all-time favorite movie is still Footloose 7. I’ve had a pacemaker since the age of 25 8. Along with my journalism degree, I also have minors in speech communications and animal and range sciences 9. I can

We are currently on day four with no working elevator in our apartment building, one that it is supposed to be handicapped-accessible. It has been a little frustrating to say the least. It was supposed to be fixed on Wednesday afternoon but we are still waiting. No working elevator in this apartment building It has been going out off and on recently but just once was it a major inconvenience when we were getting Faith ready to go to school and realized the elevator was not working. Needless to say, she was late for school that day. This time we discovered the elevator was out on Monday after we called the Healing Rooms and realized they were open. We gleefully got bundled up in our winter attire - even the below-zero temperature was not going to stop us. We ran into a major disappointment though when we got to the elevator and realized it wasn't working. We went back to our apartment and figured out what to do next. We thought about having the Healing Rooms come to us beca

I thought it would be interesting to see what blog posts in 2012 had the most views. I was a little surprised by the post that was visited the most. I was also very proud that the guest post written by my father-in-law made the top 12, in fact it almost made number one! I had a big surge of views during the month of December. In fact, four of the posts I put up that month ended up getting more page views than the posts I had written at the beginning and middle of 2012. I wrote 42 posts during 2012 and here are Faith's Mom's Blog top 12 of 2012: Number 12 - Good News About Faith's Hips publish date: 2-25-12 It's Saturday morning and after a busy, somewhat stressful work week, I can finally take a moment to enjoy a nice cup of coffee while doing some writing. Sitting here, I am reflecting on the wonderful news we received on Wednesday. Faith's left hip has not pulled out any further from its socket! Read More Number 11 - Conscious Sedation - A New Exper

This year in review is a little belated - I had wanted to do it before the New Year actually began but both Faith and I fell ill with the flu and I had zero energy. It's hard to be creative with no energy! While I became sick shortly after Christmas, Faith got sick on New Year's Eve. On Friday, she finally felt well enough to go to school. Thank goodness for the miracle drug, tamiflu, which helped decrease our symptoms and the flu did not last as long as it might have without it. I am also thankful that although Rob had mild symptoms for a few days, he is already back to being well. So while we did not end 2012 very well, the New Year started off great as on January 5th the NDSU Bison won their 2nd straight football championship! Here is how 2012 went for us: JANUARY - Although last winter was pretty mild for us here in North Dakota, January still got pretty cold which kept us indoors a lot. One of Faith's favorite things to do is SKYPE with our friend Kimberly in