Jabulani Jonny

I can feel the water hitting about my Adam’s apple right now.  I haven’t really felt overwhelmed yet, but it’s starting to get there.  If you’ve been checking this blog you might know that we’re expecting a child the first week of August.  You might also know that this child has been diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, which means the lower left ventricle did not form and there’s basically only one lower heart chamber; which also means that the aorta didn’t correctly form and can’t support bloodflow to the lungs.  So the baby is going to require 3 open heart surgeries to correct the problem.  Well, not really correct as in make the heart right, but correct as in make it function.  The surgeries occur at 4 days old, 4-6 months and close to 2 years old.  So we’re already trying to prepare ourselves and our lives to accept this little one into the world and give it the best chance it’s got.

That’s part of what we’ve got going on.

I’m also trying to get our house on the market, get it sold and move to Columbus before the baby gets here.  I’ve got to finish up a bonus room before we can put it on the market, basically put up sheetrock, paint, tile and the like.  I’ll be doing everything after the sheetrock is up, not the carpeting though.  I really need to finish it up in the next 3 weeks and get this thing on the market.  That will give us about 2 months to get it sold and move.  Wow, kinda pushing it close.

That’s something else that we’ve got going on.

With a baby like this you pretty much can’t put them into daycare, that’s out of the question.  They have to stay at home, which means Sunette will not be returning to work once her maternity leave runs out.  That was really the plan all along, but it’s not a choice at this point.  That means we have her paycheck until February.  Our drop dead date for moving is by February. 

Another thing that’s going on is we are partners with 2 other couples in a local real estate investment.  I’ve pretty much taken on the role of managing the weekly goings on for this project until it’s completion.  Things are going fine on it so far, but there is an element of risk in that we won’t get this property sold and it will be one more thing we have to carry financially.  Being a banker I’ve looked at it 100 ways to Sunday to make sure we can do it and everything looks good at this point, but it is certainly something that plays on my mind with everything else going on.

So where does that bring us………

Oh yeah, this weekend.  That was just a long intro if you didn’t know. 

Saturday I had a guided fly-fishing trip over at Callaway Gardens.  I was scheduled to be there all day.  Sunette was planning to take Barley for a walk with one of our good friends.  Well apparently they met at the trailhead and were saying there hello’s when Barley took off and literally jerked Sunette off of her feet onto the pavement.  Barley’s about 110 pounds and a pregnant Sunette is about 120.  She landed hard on her left side and got bruised and scraped up pretty bad.  Needless to say she was worried about the baby.  So she and Elizabeth called the doctor and spent the next 2 hours at the hospital monitoring the baby. 

Turns out the baby was fine and Sunette’s fine, but they did notice that she was having contractions.  What?  She’s 27 weeks along, she can’t have contractions, we can not have this baby early, they won’t be able to do surgery on a preemie.  Well the contractions subsided a bit and she came home.  Of course I didn’t find all of this out until I got back from my trip. 

Fast forward to last night about 12:30am.  Of course I’m completely comatose in the bed by this point.  Sunette wakes me to see if I can get her a Tylenol, sure.  Then she asks for my watch, sure.  Ummm, what for?  Well she’s having contractions again, pretty regularly right now.  Her contractions were 4 minutes apart.  That’s not good for a 27 week old pregnancy with a baby that needs heart surgery 4 days after birth.  So off to the hospital we go at 1am.

We were there for 3 1/2 hours while they monitored the baby and monitored the contractions.  Luckily after that time the contractions subsided.  They would have had to give her some medicine to stop them if they didn’t stop on their own. 

With all that said, and it was a lot, we got home about 6am this morning. 

What the heck is going on?  I mean, why do I feel that we’re just being picked on at this point?  It literally is just one thing after another to worry about.  If it’s not about the baby, it’s about the house, or finances when Sunette comes home.  I’m just not sure how much deeper it can get.