Caleb - Not a Broken Arm

 So here's the story: The kids were playing downstairs with their Haderlie cousins when I head Caleb start crying. I am usually pretty good at telling the "I fell down but will be fine" cry from the "I fell and I am REALLY hurt" cry. It was definitely leaning toward the latter, he was really hurt.  (He had been climbing on the chaise lounge in the basement and he fell off right onto his hand/wrist.) 

Of course, it was right at 5:00 on a Friday when this happened. I think I looked at the clock and it read 5:04 or something. I didn't want to rush him to the ER if it wasn't broken so I just snuggled him on the couch and decided to keep an eye on him. For the rest of the day he was really tender with his arm and mostly laid on the couch or a blanket making sure not to put any pressure on it. 

The next day though he was back to using it fairly normally. Occasionally he'd mention that it still hurt, so I was watching him closely. 

Saturday, he took another BIG fall. He fell and hit his lip, giving him the biggest fat lip I've ever seen.

I watched for signs of a concussion, gave him some ice and watched it. (Poor guy, he was having a rough weekend.) 

Sunday night when I was helping him get into his jammies, I grabbed his arm to help guide it through the sleeve and he started sobbing. He basically cried himself to sleep because I had hurt his arm so badly. I felt horribly even though I hadn't been rough with his arm - just a normal pull-through of a sleeve.

Monday morning he woke up with a fever and I felt like that was the final straw. Three strikes and all that 1-hurt arm, 2-fat lip, 3-fever. I called our pediatrician as soon as they opened and scheduled an appointment to take Caleb in to see them. Because of Covid, and because Caleb had a fever, we couldn't go to our normal office we had to go to one of the offices they have converted to care for sick kids who have fevers or other Covid symptoms. Also, of course, we had to wear masks the whole time we were there. (It doesn't look weird now, we've gotten so used to it - but I thought I would mention some of the weird things that Covid has normalized. I'm hopeful that someday we will look back at these pictures and think that it's strange to be wearing a mask again. 

The doctor looked at his arm, twisted it several times and agreed that he thought it was probably broken (or at least fractured). He scrounged up some arm splint supplies (they are used to treating colds and flus, etc.. rather than being fully stocked with physical care items due to the Covid separation of their clinics.  Caleb thought it was pretty cool. Then he sent us down to the X-ray center of the Mountain Point Hospital to get an X-ray. 

Caleb did a great job and was happy and cheerful with everyone that he met.   We were chatting with the technician who was preparing our paperwork for the x-ray and ended up talking about baby names with her. Caleb was telling her all about his sibling's names and she had mentioned her daughter's names. Caleb was talking about Lucy and without guile, he said "Lucy is the name of a mom in the Book of Mormon, do you know the Book of Mormon?" (We've recently been reading the Doctrine and Covenants and talking about how Joseph Smith's mom is also named Lucy.) I wish I had taken his lead and said something about how much we love the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and been able to pull an extra copy from my bag to give to her because she seemed like she wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about. I didn't, I just smoothed over the conversation - but I was so proud of Caleb and his love for the Book of Mormon and willingness to share. It makes me want to be better at sharing with that same guileless manner. 

And now for the end result: The X-rays. We got the exrays and went home and a few hours later they called and told us that his arm was NOT broken. Just tender. I can't regret going in, because it could have easily been broken - but I am very grateful that we didn't have to return for a full cast! 

Caleb is a champ. He is also daring and energetic. I'm sure that we have broken bones in his future, but until then, we will keep his bones all in one piece, thank you very much. 

Visitors for Lucy

Because Lucy was born in the morning instead of the night, it was a little different of a hospital experience - timeline wise. Because we didn't have all night, we had visitors much earlier. But also because we weren't up all night with nurses waking us up and checking on us, we were ready for visitors much earlier! She was born at 6:25, after moving to our new room we slept most of the morning, and then just after noon Wendy brought the kids by to meet baby Lucy.  After that, we had a fairly consistent stream of people who just love this little girl and were SO happy to meet her.

I was excited for the kids to come to the hospital to meet Baby Lucy. We'd been prepping for this for weeks now. We had gone to the store and let the kids pick out a small gift to give Lucy and printed out pictures of what it was like when each of them was in the hospital (Lydia holding Austin at the hospital, Austin holding Caleb, etc...). The kids were excited and I just wanted my whole family together, even if it would be brief. As soon as they got there, Caleb burst through the door - jumping into a semi-crouch looking around the room and asking "Baby Lucy?" Lydia and Austin came to my hospital bed to give me a hug, but Caleb only had eyes for the baby. He scanned the room, looking past me, past David, until he landed on Lucy in her bassinet tucked next to a chair.  His eyes lit up and he ran over saying "Baby Lucy!!" He couldn't quite reach her to see, so he proceeded to request to hold her. "I'm hold my baby sees-ter?" Oh, my heart! I didn't even know that he could/would be able to process that request. Especially so immediately. I'm glad for the prep work we did in advance because he absolutely knew what to expect and was so happy to hold her. Caleb took his turn first, by demand, then Lydia and Austin both took turns holding her.

Our family of SIX!!!

We visited for a minute and asked the kids what they had been up to and told them bits and pieces of Lucy being born. Austin took the phone and requested to be able to take some pictures of her, including a few darling videos of him saying "I wuv you baby Woo-cee" and "I will miss you baby Woo-cee."  He has such a sweet heart and is such a great big brother. He loves her already. The kids all took turns looking at her tummy, her toes, her fingers, etc... It was just so wonderful to have us all together!





(So grateful for Wendy and Sam for taking care of our children, and for bringing them to visit us in the hospital.)


The next couple of days were the perfect balance of visitors and resting time. We are so grateful for how many people we have in our support system and who show us so much love and support. We truly are blessed.

Visitors included:

Aunt Wendy & Aubrey Rencher

Grandma Lori Walker

Grandma Sue Peaden & Uncle Bruce Peaden

Aunt Amy Peaden

Aunt Melissa & Uncle Blake Larson

Grandma Lori & Grandpa Scott Walker

Uncle Jacob Walker

We are grateful for all the love and support!

Lucy at the Hospital

We have said it many times before, but the couple of days that we get to spend in the hospital after the birth of a baby are some of the sweetest and most special days of all. David and I love to take the time to bond together with our sweet new baby and with each other as new parents. Spending our time snuggling our sweet Lucy Holland, eating delicious food, taking the time to record Lucy's birth story, and bonding together made this hospital stay peaceful and just so wonderful. 

It also helped that our room was tucked at the very end of a hallway away from all the hubbub of the nurses' station with a beautiful view of the Timpanogos Mountains and was inherently quiet and tranquil. Within the first couple of hours of moving to the Mother&Baby unit our nurse asked us what the goal for our stay was and after hearing our response about just wanting to spend time together with our new baby she wrote "Bonding Time :)" in big letters on our hospital board. Several times the nurses commented that our room was just so peaceful. After a few comments like that, I finally asked her what made our room different - because I felt like we weren't doing anything special. She mentioned other people having the TV on all the time, or listening to music on their phones, or having large groups of loud visitors. I thought that was so interesting, and I'm just grateful that we have been able to cultivate a beautiful experience with all of our hospital stays - one of bonding and love and quiet and laughter. The start of a new stage of our life- stepping back to just David and I, taking a pause, reflecting on our blessings and the goodness of God, loving our baby, and being prepared to move forward with happiness and love. We really do treasure this bonding time with Lucy and with each other. 

And, let's just talk about the hospital food, okay? My favorite thing (other than the above-mentioned bonding) is being able to order a mass of delicious food and have it delivered to my room breakfast-lunch-and-dinner. The hospital also gives David one complementary celebratory meal, and it's just my favorite. Also, their chocolate mousse cake? So good. I ordered it with every meal and feel great about it. (Okay, not breakfast - but I certainly thought about it!) 

Lucy's First Bath - She did not like this, not even a little. She did calm a bit when they wrapped her up and washed her hair but other than that, she wasn't a fan. But oh, as soon as she was done getting clean I pulled her into my hospital gown for some skin-to-skin and she stopped crying immediately and warmed right up. It was so sweet. She didn't get her bath until about 8 o'clock at night, because I wasn't ready when they asked earlier in the day. After getting her hair washed you could really see her blonde-blonde hair! She smelled so sweet and clean - it was heavenly. 

Little known fact: (Actually, probably a well-known fact, but also a random fact.) I crave lunchmeat all pregnancy long but there is this thing about Listeria and they discourage you from eating cold lunchmeat (Note from David- At least 3 times a pregnancy I will suggest to Shantel that she heats up the lunchmeat and then she could still have it. This is sure to get a cold glare (you might call it a deathstare) from Shantel who says that totally ruins it). When you deliver in the middle of the night, the nurses give you a big ham/turkey sandwich. Unfortunately, when you deliver at 6:25 a.m. those sandwiches are all gone and they just have you order breakfast. I was disappointed, but I did order a turkey sandwich for lunch and then David found these little ham/cheese/cracker kits in the snack room and all my lunchmeat dreams were satisfied. 

 

The next 100 pictures are of our wonderful hospital stay, I couldn't narrow them down - so you just get all of them. Not true, I watched Shantel delete a whole bunch of pictures from the post, but Lucy is so cute, how do you get rid of any others?

(We love these little name tags that they make at the hospital - we still have all of them.)

Some pictures of the three of us:

Our Lucy-Girl:

(That bright green band was a tracker that would go off if it came too close to an exit door or too close to another mother. I had a big white band on my wrist that connected to hers. A high-tech way of keeping my baby safe.)

On her pink blanket: 

In her coming home outfit:

 

 More Pictures:

Coming Home! 

Lucy did NOT love her car seat. She didn't stop crying until David started swinging her back and forth. He's got quite the talent for baby-carseat-swinging. Then just like that, they discharged us and let us take our tiny baby home with us in our car. It's still just amazing that we went into the hospital with just the two of us and then we leave just a few days later with a tiny tiny baby that we have sole responsibility for - and they just let us take her! 

At home! We came home late Tuesday night but the kids didn't get home until the next morning. It was peaceful to just have the three of us for a couple more hours until the morning - even though we were very excited to have the kids come home and join us.