Back to Baby Bliss

Well, as things turned out, Christmas was a little extra 'Merry' this year. As most of you have already read, we had our beautiful little girl, Madeline America Olmstead, on December 13th at 8:10pm and we were home together soon after. She is adorable, eats well, sleeps well, cries well, all the things babies do best! Right? Well, not so fast Olmsteads... don't get too comfortable just yet. As it turned out there was a bit of a curve ball coming our direction.

About six days after Madeline's birth I came down with some new symptoms. I began having very severe abdominal pains that didn't go away and then the fever began. By the time I arrived at St. Mary's A & E (Accident and Emergency for you Americans) I was quite sick. Sadly I couldn't take Madeline with me to the hospital because there were so many cases of swine flu around so she had to stay home with my father and Chris and the kids, and my Mom went to the hospital with me. It was a VERY long first night, but eventually I was admitted and began what turned out to be a much longer stay than I initially anticipated.

After 48 hours of multiple IV antibiotics I was still spiking fevers of over 102 and beginning to become more and more worried. This is when the blood tests finally revealed that I had a somewhat rare but VERY serious bacterial infection caused by Group A Strep. Once they narrowed the cause of the infection and added penicillin to my drug 'cocktail' things began to improve much faster. After five nights in the hospital I was finally allowed to come home on December 24th.

And so here I am again, back to baby bliss. Although I am still on IV antibiotics, with a nurse visting me each day, there is no more pumping and sending milk home, and no more worrying about the chaos and mayhem running amuck at my house. Now I'm right back in the center of it where I belong. I will say that at the beginning of my illness I was feeling really down and sorry for myself. Very sad about begin separated from the kids, especially the baby during such special early bonding time. But after the head of Labor and Delivery came to see me and explained how serious the infection was I started to think... hmmm, maybe I should stop feeling sorry for myself and start being thankful that I'm alive and relatively well. And that is where I still am. Thankful and alive and well! :)

And it might sound rather cliche, particularly coming from me, but I really think this experience has taught me something more valuable than I could have ever imagined. I have never felt so lucky and blessed to have all that I do... my wonderful family and parents who loved me enough to help take care of all the kids while I was away. A husband who is simply super dad in every way, in-laws who bought last minute tickets to come stay so that I could have a bit more time to recover. Friends here who helped with play dates for Josephine. And best of all, I was able to come home on Christmas Eve and spend the holiday with the kids. Back to baby bliss, and let's face it, toddler hell! But in all honesty, there is truly no other place in the world I would rather be, and this experience is helping me see that much more clearly.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year XOXO,

Mere