I'm so sorry! I have seen messages come in asking if I'm okay, when I'll update, etc. I really appreciate all the messages, and I'm truly sorry that I haven't updated in so very long. I have put it off for AGES because I knew it would take too long to update, and I've become less and less able to write a long update, so...
Lydia is 7 months old! I feel so sad that I have no way of really making up for lost time here - there's just a gap. I don't have any time or energy to post the catch-up photo posts that I originally planned to do, and now there's just NOTHING between her being 5 weeks old and now. :( Such a shame!
My health is not good. I have been to the doctor SO many times (every month) since January with this or that mystery symptom. Not little symptoms but big ones that have been a bit debilitating, or at best, extremely distracting to the things I need to do with my days (and nights). We have been trying to move house. We have travelled all over the place viewing houses with a van full of very uncooperative children, nearly every weekend for months. I think we've settled on where we are going - in fact we even made an offer on a house, but it wasn't accepted in the end. We have lost our buyer, and got another one - just today we found out that maybe she isn't as interested as she thought (?!) so we have 4 more people coming to view our house on Saturday. It's tiresome!
Samuel turned 3 in December! Nathan turned 6 in January (seems ages ago now), and last week, my tiny little 'Lijah turned two! He is weeny teeny - average height and weight of a 12-month-old, but ohhhhh the energy and the mischief! He certainly keeps me on my toes! He is talking in sentences, climbing and running, doing everything he should be. He is still breastfeeding as often as I will let him (which is any time during the DAY but not an hour or so before meals). Matthew turns 8 (!!!) the weekend after next, and then Benjamin will be 5 (!!!!!!!) a few weeks later. Everyone is doing fine.
I wish I had great things to say about all aspects of life, but I am not doing well. It's such a long, drawn-out, and frankly BORING story, that I won't dwell on it for ages. I've had gastrointestinal troubles that I've tried various meds for since January but none have really helped. Nausea has prevented me functioning for a couple of months, and the various "safe for breastfeeding" meds didn't work, but it eased off in the end, inexplicably. Dizziness and ringing ears took over (debilitating, ugh!) and meds didn't help that either. It eased off after many weeks. I have had soooo many blood tests done, even an abdominal ultrasound, and all have been normal except that my Vitamin D levels are very low (33 in UK measurement - 13 if you convert it to US measurement), and my progesterone was too low.
I had three periods like clockwork including the one I mentioned last entry, and then haven't had one since the end of January. I know many women would find that normal whilst breastfeeding, and mayyyybe it's to do with that, but I don't buy it for myself, personally. Especially since they'd started back up and I'd had several, and now nothing for 5 months. :/ I am taking high dose Vit D and natural progesterone.
I've been to see Heather's herbalist, and tried a truly revolting tincture, lol! That was supposed to help with the low progesterone and the digestive issues, but I'm not sure if it helped much. I did feel a bit better for the progesterone help, and so I switched to an oil that a sweet friend in the US bought for me and had it shipped over! :)
Two weeks ago I had been getting progressively worse. Every weekend I would be worse than the one before, in terms of energy and weakness, which were my most recent troublesome symptoms. My muscles are fatigued so quickly, and I'm exhausted to the BONE every single morning when I wake up. It has become very disheartening, and I have had terrible trouble with panic attacks and severe anxiety. I have always been an "anxious type" and have had issues with anxiety and phobias in the past since childhood, but this has been off the scale even for me, and sustained for not just days and weeks, but months! :/ It has been horrible. My thyroid is fine, I have checked off a ton of things that would leave antibodies in my blood, I am not anaemic. My white blood cell count was really low, two months running, and the doctor started to talk about referring me to a specialist because of that, but I had a retest two weeks ago and it had come right back up to normal! :) So I don't know what that was about...
Anyway. Two weekends ago, Lydia wasn't well - she had a temperature for 3 days and was really acting unwell in herself. I still have no idea why - nobody else got ill or anything! Anyway, so I had to stay home from church with her, but I remember thinking how I didn't actually feel up to going in any case. I felt like I would not have the energy to stand and hold Lydia, or to sing. Even having conversations at the end of the service felt like it would exhaust me, even if I was sitting down. I was really worried about it.
This past weekend I was worse. I was worse on the Friday than I had been the day before. Instead of feeling worse week by week, I was starting to feel worse day by day, and SO scared about it too. Saturday was worse than Friday. Sunday I was absolutely unable to go to church. My muscles were so exhausted. I have jaw pain constantly that is so bad I can't smile or talk sometimes. Other times it lifts somewhat, but it's always there. I have had TMJ (jaw joint) malfunction for yeeears, but it seems crazy bad now. Finally I got to the point where I had to begin accepting what I'd been afraid of, but which I couldn't bear to admit - that my symptoms were identical to the ones I had all those years ago when I became housebound with M.E. (CFS) for two years before we had children. :( So terrifying and heartbreaking, now that I have all these beautiful children to look after, and am completely incapable.
Monday this week, Neil went to work. I tried parenting from the sofa while I felt so awful and weak, but by 9.30am I had got myself breakfast (Neil did the boys' before he went to work), changed two nappies and wiped the bottoms of two little ones who had done poos (Samuel is potty training, very successfully! Yay!). And my body just felt in full "crash" mode. I couldn't sit upright, my torso was too weak. My tongue felt too weak to talk or swallow properly. The boys began acting up and fighting over things they were playing with, and the phone rang. I managed to get into the kitchen with the phone so that I could hear over the noise of the boys, and it was Heather calling to talk to me about various things to do with my illness. She heard their noise and asked if I ought to go and sort that out, and I said, "Um... uh.... I can't..." and burst into tears. I told her that I 'd wiped two bottoms and was done for, lol! I was just soooo struggling at that moment. She listened to me sobbing for about 10 seconds, and then said, "I'm coming. I'm coming now. I'll be there in a minute." She was here within 10 minutes and totally took over. I lay on the sofa (though she asked me if I wanted to be in bed instead - I didn't. I wanted to be involved with my littles as much as I could.) and she brought me drinks and lunch. She made lunch for the boys after giving them a talking-to about their behaviour and involving them in making lunch, laundry, doing the dishwasher, and generally tidying up. She wiped their faces and then cleared lunch away. While they ate lunch I heard her say to them, "After lunch I am going to read some stories, and then we'll go out." She's AMAAAAZING. I love her! I'm so very glad (thanks Michelle, if you're still here reading!) that I decided to get a doula all those years ago when I was expecting Benjamin!! I can't fathom what I'd have done without her since then, but God knew, and that's why! :)
Anyway, she read stories, and then walked all 6 boys to one of the local playgrounds (with the tandem pushchair), and they were out all afternoon while Lydia napped. She told me to phone Sozo Ministries, which is a Christian organisation that has a healing ministry particularly to people with M.E. I phoned them and they were SO encouraging and helpful! I have bought a set of CDs from them from a recent conference, which I'm now listening to. I am feeling way more confident to stand on God's truth for healing, and so I should be, since I was miraculously healed of M.E. twelve years ago! My faith should be high, but (ashamedly) it has been low - focused only on the horrible symptoms, what-ifs, and the thoughts of what will happen if I can't take care of my children! :( God is bigger, though!
Neil's work signed him off for the rest of the week so that we could figure out a plan of action while he cares for the children and the house. I hate this! But I feel more confident now than I did. Today and yesterday I have had a good part of the day and a bad part of the day. The bad part is very bleak and I have to lie on the sofa. The good part is more functional, in that I can walk about and hold Lydia for a few minutes. I can talk almost normally and read a story or two to the boys. I even did reading lessons with Matthew and Nathan yesterday! :)
Heather's herbalist now feels that I need adrenal support - so relieved to hear somebody say this! I've wondered about Adrenal Fatigue for a long time, but many doctors don't believe it exists. So he has sent me some adrenal support concoction, as well as more of the stuff I had before, of which I've taken the first dose today.
Heather and her husband are coming over tomorrow evening to help us plan and strategise for the weeks after this one, for a way for me to cope while Neil works.
That's about it really, in a large-ish nutshell. The rest of this post will be about my darling baby girl! I wish I could get back to normal in every way, but I want to get back to normal as best I can for the rest of this entry. I have forgotten so many little details of her last 6 months already - thank goodness I updated here about the first month of her life! That would be lost in the sands of time otherwise! My memory is very poor with my health being bad. :(
So! I must have left off at 5 weeks old. I will try to find my favourite photos from that point on and keep it to as few as possible, hopefully! ;)
In this first photo, Lydia was 7 weeks and 3 days old. I took it to show how she was suddenly lifting her head up properly and looking straight ahead of her to see things! :) She hasn't lost ANY hair, by the way! You'll see from the time line of photos that I post here that it is growing and growing! :)
I love this next photo! It was taken on Samuel's 3rd birthday, a few days before Christmas. I put Lydia in a Christmas sleepsuit that Samuel wore (and was photographed in - see him wearing it in this entry), because she fit it exactly! She weighed 9lbs 8oz a few days before the photo, and he was born weighing 9lbs 9oz! The difference was that Samuel was 3 days old when he wore it, and Lydia was 8 weeks, lol!
Nine weeks old in the next two photos - talking a LOT with brothers this week, and I loved noticing how different her voice is from the other babies I've had! She has always been so much more high-pitched and squeally than the boys. Some of my boys were squeally, but their actual "cooing" voices were never so high-pitched as Lydia's. :) Also, another one of her just looking yummy! I was LOVING the pink, the hearts, the frills, etc. It has been SO much fun! I am still not in the least bit tired of it! :)
Rolling over! This was on New Year's Eve - also 9 weeks old:
All seven of my babies! :) Lydia was 10 weeks old here. Matthew is growing his hair - it's getting pretty long now!
Around this time, I ordered some baby hair clips online, and oh my goodness!!! I have never been a fan of baby girls wearing hair clips, so I never thought I would be getting excited about accessorising my baby girl's outfits with hair clips, lol! But I DID!! And I am! And having so much fun! :) Here she is in various outfits and hair clips over a 1 week period (age 10-11 weeks) - for a little while I took a photo of the daily outfit/hair-clip! :P
Happy baby girly in late January - she had turned 3 months old the day before. She was SO animated and chatty most of the time by then, and I wanted to capture it in photos:
These next two photos were taken 5 days later. Lydia had a cold, and was sleepier than usual, but otherwise still my happy smiley treasure! This was my favourite outfit on her at the time - so girly and pretty! I liked the little pink flower hair clips with it! :)
In January and February, we had 6 straight weeks of tonsillitis, covering 5 children (the older 5 - so thankful that my tiny two were not poorly with it, as it was nasty!). Benjamin's fever was finally down and he was feeling better, and he asked me to take a photo of him with Lydia at bedtime, so I did! It's grainy, but I love it because LOOK how alike they are! Lydia has always looked the most like Benjamin out of all of them. She's 3 and a half months here:
This photo was taken to remember when Nathan chose her outfit entirely by himself one morning - he is always so proud of how she looks, and in particular, likes her outfits and whether her hair clips look "nice" with them, etc! So sweet! That morning, he chose her denim dress, and especially liked that vest under it, and pink tights. He chose a sparkly heart hair clip which can't be seen in this photo. I love the care he took over it all!
Lydia's first real piggy-tails! She was 3 months and 3 weeks old, and had JUST started wearing her 3-6 month clothing. This dress even looked a bit big on her! She has well outgrown it now, so it's funny to look back and see her tiny like this, even though it wasn't that long ago!
Lydie-baby on my birthday, two days before turning 4 months old, in February. She was getting quite mobile, rolling a lot to get places (over and over in both directions), and looking around. She was able to combine lying on her tummy and smiling at people, even if she had to dip her head a little bit for the muscle strength to smile, bless her! :) Her hair was starting to flop over with the increased length at last! Sweet darling girl!
This is Lydia the day she turned 4 months old. My baby dolly, as I sometimes call her. She's the perfect dress-up baby doll, except MUCH more squishy! I love her so!
That is where I finished, the last time I was able to add to this post. I soooo want to post more, about the three months (!!) that have followed this photo! Lydia is crawling well this week, and started pulling to kneel yesterday. She is eating - no purees. She ate cream cheese sandwiches, a piece of cheese, some carefully prepared grapes, and a pile of cheerios for lunch. And chicken and mushroom pie for dinner! :) She likes food, and also eats as much fluff and paper from the floor as she can possibly scrape up, bleurgh! She is babbling (da-da-da-da) and likes to screech and roar with a very loud forced raspy throat sound which HAS to hurt, lol! She shakes with the effort, but it's when she's really excited and wants to play with her brothers that she does it most. :) She loves her brothers, and they love her too. Her hair is in her eyes now and I am having to tie it up out of the way or clip it back, but it's sort of messy and uneven everywhere so it's not proper little girly hair yet, just growing out, and still thin and fine baby hair. She has delicious rolls everywhere - she's a chubbalub (my affectionate nickname for her when I kiss her rolly-ness!) like Benjamin and Arthur were as babies, and that makes perfect sense because she most resembles them in any case.
I am doing better in myself - quite a lot better actually, which is a relief and a surprise! :) Neil is working again and I am JUST about coping physically. I am still weak and don't feel well by about 4 or 5pm but doing so much better, and Heather is being wonderful and helping a lot.
I really want to continue the photos and stuff from 4-7 months, but I don't know when I will. I will try, but I don't have a great track record! I just wanted to get this done now while everyone is concerned and wondering why I haven't posted in SO long. Thanks for asking and thinking of me, and for hanging in there! :)