Murphy's Law

I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.

It's 2;20, and I just put my finished bowl of breakfast cereal in the sink. At least I've finally eaten today and at least I'm not crying and at least 3 of my 4 kids are sleeping. Unfortunately all of the frustration and hardship is not over with yet. Let me rewind things for the moment and take you to the beginning.

On Monday Tom came home and asked if he could go on a school trip to Laredo from Thursday to Saturday. He'd get 200 points for doing it. In our lives, getting Tom through dental school is top priority. He asked knowing that my answer would be, "Yes. If that's what you need to do." I'll have to admit I wasn't thrilled about being home alone with a 6 year old, a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a 2 week old, but I'll endure what I need to for his sake. Then things fell through, and I was off the hook. On Wednesday when he got home he informed me that he was going to be able to go after all, so we got him ready, and Thursday morning we dropped him off at school, knowing he'd be gone until Saturday. In the back of my head I thought something was probably going to go wrong because 1. I was home alone for 3 days with 4 kids and 2. I had recently posted an entry on my blog about feeling blessed. I thought of it as a possibility, but I just never thought it'd really happen.

On Thursday we headed off to Target. This would be a first - shopping with 4 kids alone. It actually went well . . . really well . . . , but there was something that bothered me. Taylor. She asked to be put in the cart. I told her she'd have to stay there the entire time, and she was okay with that. In fact, she never asked to get down. If you know Taylor, then that is just UNUSUAL. She is my worst kid at the store. If she ever asks to be in the cart, then 2 seconds later she's asking to get out. Now for a few days she'd been talking about her poopoo not wanting to come out, and when we got to the car, she told me that she didn't want to walk because it hurt. That's when I started getting worried.

When we got home she refused to help because she said it hurt. After we unloaded and I got dinner going in the oven, I made her sit on the potty. I told her she'd have to sit there until she got her poopoo out. Well, she sat and she sat and the girls ate and she sat and Declan ate and she sat and she cried and the girls went to bed and she sat. I would go in to try to help her, but I was also having to take care of everyone else. Well, she sat down at about 7:00. By 10:00 she was still sitting and going nowhere. I had Tom talk to her to see if that would help. Nothing. I finally decided to give her a warm bath, hoping that would loosen things up a bit. Nothing. Taylor was super tired and just wasn't willing to push things along. I called our local Children's Hospital's Call-A-Nurse line (awesome resource!!!). The nurse told me to lay her down, bend her in half, and push on her perenium to help her get it out. I tried, but Taylor would not have any of that. She is very strong and very strong-willed, and those things together made her quite the little fighter. In fact, at one point while I was trying to bend her in half, she was fighting and pushing back and yelled at me, "Get off, you giant beast, get off," (which I would have found totally hilarious if it weren't for the fact that it was late at night and she was fighting me about helping get her poo out). Finally, I was just done. It was 10:30. She was tired. Declan had been awake for a few hours doing the whole ordeal and was tired and wanting some mommy time. I was tired. It was so frustrating because the problem poo was right there, visible, but I couldn't do anything to get it out. Taylor was fighting any of my help and not doing anything to help herself. At 10:45, she finally was in bed, but I was soooooo frustrated because I knew the whole problem was not over with. Tomorrow we'd have to wake up and deal with this all over again.

Unfortunately because Declan had been awake for awhile, he had a hard time settling down to sleep. By 11:30ish, he was finally settled and asleep. I laid him down and did what I normally do on stressful days like this . . . pigged out on some Oreos and milk. By midnight I finally was laying down on the couch trying to fall asleep, which of course was hard for me because Tom wasn't there. I hate going to bed when he's gone. It is the hardest thing in the world for me, so being on the couch watching TV is a bit easier for me to fall asleep then upstairs in my big empty bed all alone.

Anyways, morning came too quickly. With school starting next week, we've been trying to wake up as close to 7 as possible. Going to bed late and the few wake-ups with Declan made me a very tired momma by the time the alarm went off. I rolled out of bed and got the kids up. I'd told Taylor I'd be calling her doctor in the morning, so I napped on the couch while waiting for the doctor's office to open up. When I talked with them, the options weren't much different than what the nurse had told me last night. They did recommend giving her a laxative or a laxative suppository. I knew with just trying to bend her in half last night that the suppository was just not going to be possible by myself (although when I told Taylor the options, this was actually the option she preferred). Since I had castor oil from when my mom was in town, I tried to give her some of that. Well, in true Taylor fashion, she fought it and spit it out. There was oil in her hair, all over me . . . everywhere!!! I decided to put her on the potty again, but she just wouldn't try. She kept telling me she wanted to do nothing. I tried to get her to understand that nothing wasn't an option - that her body was going to start having major problems if she did nothing, but she just wouldn't listen. She was too set on not wanting to push it out because it hurt.

While she waited to get in the bath (I wouldn't let her bathe with Payden because of the whole poo-sticking-out-her-bumhole thing), I called the doctor's office again. By this time, they were going to close for the day (and the week) in about 15 minutes. I rushed to try to get us there in time, but by the time we got there, the doctor was gone. I was sooooooo frustrated. I cried. I was upset at Taylor for refusing everything. I was alone. I was feeling like there wasn't much I could do. I decided to head to the pharmacy on the way home, where I picked up a more child-friendly laxative and some suppositories. When we got home, Taylor again refused to take the laxative, spitting it out everywhere. She insisted that she just wanted to go to sleep, which worried me even more because she NEVER WANTS to go to bed. I let her go up there on her own and then after I'd put Payden down for her nap, I went upstairs to make Taylor take the laxative. Now I've had to fight getting medicine down Taylor before, but this was the worst fight I've ever had to do, and of course it was a TBSP of medicine combined with some milk to make it go down easier - so it was TONS of medicine to try to get her to drink. After a huge battle and me pinning her like I've never pinned her before, I got her to take the medicine. I was soooooo excited that I was finally able to do something, but unfortunately it would take 12-72 hours before anything would happen, so now we would have to wait. I got ready for the day while she fell asleep and then I came downstairs to finally eat for the day.

After naptime, we had to wait for the miniblind guy to come, then head out to Shelby's school for "Meet the Teacher" and then go on over to our friends' house for dinner. We went to Shelby's school, but, because nothing had happened with Taylor's problem, we had to push her around in a stroller, and she was really whiney. I didn't want to go over to our friends' house with her like that so we headed home. Despite my extreme frustration with Taylor, it was so heart-breaking to see her in so much pain and discomfort. It was frustrating to see her choose to do nothing instead of do something to help herself feel better. Finally after dinner (about 7:30), she told me she wanted to go to bed, and I noticed her body was starting to shake uncontrollably. I got really worried then because her body was obviously starting to react, and I wasn't sure what I needed to do next, other than the ER, if we couldn't get anything to happen.

I told Taylor that she could only go to bed after she sat on the potty for a bit. I had to force her on, but she sat down. Of course, she wasn't trying to get anything out, despite telling me otherwise. I'd had enough, so I decided to push on her perineum to see if I could help things along. She did NOT like that at all. In fact she started to scream and cry, but it had helped. She grabbed my hands and told me she was going to hold them forever so that I wouldn't do that again. It was cute that she thought she could stop me, but she couldn't, and at this point I wasn't going to let her stop me. I pushed again and noticed that enough had come out that I could work with. I put on the surgical glove that the pharmacy had given me today (thanks to them); bent Taylor in half, which she fought and screamed, but couldn't do much because she was sitting on the potty; and helped her get out the problem poo. I just can't believe that in a matter of a few months I've had to help get the poo out of 2 of my children. They'd better know how much I love them!!!

Anyways, it worked. My help and her bending over worked together and finally out came the problem. Of course, I knew she'd need to get a lot more out to clean out her backed-up system, but with a few stools out and the end to her shaking I figured we should be good for the night. I did make her take one more bath to see if it would help get anything else out, and then I put the girls to bed. It was such a relief that something had come out. Of course, I knew that tomorrow wouldn't be easy to get her to try again because she seemed to have decided to never ever go potty again, which really worried me. For now I was just happy that we'd made some progress and that the girls were in bed at their normal bedtime.

Now there's more to the story. This was not the only problem that I had to deal with today . . . of course. Declan had a major problem today as well. When he was circumsized, the doctor used what's called the plastibell method, which left Declan with a ring around the circumsized area that would eventually fall off. During the morning I was changing his diaper when I noticed that the ring looked like it was finally coming off (of course they said it would fall off in 7 to 10 days and this was day 14). I was excited, so I started to take the ring off. Well it wouldn't come off because for some reason it was still attached to about a millimeter of his skin. I tried to move it lightly to see how well attached the skin was, and it stayed attached. Plus the slight movement caused a reaction in Declan . . . an ow-that-hurts reaction. Now what was I supposed to do. This ring was dangling from a VERY sensitive area, and I had no clue what to do about it. I called the doctor's office, and they initially said for me to just remove it. It would hurt for a little, but that would be it. Okay. This is my 2 week old baby with a problem in a VERY sensitive area, and the thought of "just removing it" caused me pain. There was no way I was going to do that. The nurse then came up with another plan. She told me to put some Neosporin with Pain Relief on the attached skin, put his diaper back on, and just check later to see if it had come off on it's own. That was a plan I could live with. Of course being in the midst of the whole Taylor ordeal, I figured with my luck the ring would stay attached, and I'd have to manually remove it. This whole thing didn't help with my emotions either, and the tears came and the feeling of being overwhelmed hit like a ton of bricks. Fortunately, the nurse was inspired because the next time I changed Declan's diaper the ring had fallen off on it's own. I was so relieved at how nicely that resolved itself.

You'll be happy to know that I was able to get Taylor back on the potty (by force initially) and she was able to go #2 on her own Saturday morning. Of course, I played up the excitement on her doing it all by herself in the hopes that she won't have any more problems about going poo and that maybe she'll decide it's okay to go poo. In fact this morning, she seemed to think that the only way she would ever get any poo out again was if I manually removed it . . . uh . . . no! She'd better think again. Getting poo out of her body is her responsibility; not mine. Anyways, she's excited to be able to walk again and sit again and that she pooed all by herself and that she no longer has to wear a diaper (she had to through this whole ordeal).

Now, I just have to deal with the next problem that has started to arise . . . runny noses. All 4 kids have either a stuffed or runny nose. AHHHHHH!!!! I'm definitely counting down until Tom gets home. He has been missed, and I'm ready to have him back. Maybe then Murphy's Law will stop wreaking havoc on me!! I can hope, right? :)