Guardian Angel

So when I read "Sythe", I was not sure I was going to like the dystopian genre. But man I love it. The way that Shusterman kept the important parts of our current era but made them unimportant. For example, all of the big monuments we have now don't mean anything to the characters. I don't have much to say about the novel other than Shusterman is brilliant and I can't wait to get my hands on the next one because a whole new generation is about to be born.

2021 brought us many things, but not all of them were good. The best thing that came out of 2021 was Maddox Jeramie Hamilton. 2021 brought us heartache, stress, anxiety, financial stress, and many other things; but our family was complete. Dawson had 2 seizures, resulting in overnight ACH stays for both of them. We now have to carry around emergency diazepam in case he has another one. He had tubes put in June 1st. Maddox had a 9 day ACH stay with parainfluinza and thrush and then a three day stay with RSV and thrush. He has just now hit 15 pounds. We hit our family out of pocket max for insurance and paid almost $9000 in medical bills this year. Now every time one of them gets even remotely sick I freak out because our family has been through enough, but thats my PPA. Postpartum anxiety is so real and so scary. I get angry, overwhelmed, emotional. Not to mention I already suffer from sensory overload. You can imagine how it gets when I get anxious. I am on medication and in therapy, b...

So, I'm not a huge fam of dystopian novels, but when a student says, "Mrs.Hamilton read this," and hands me a book, I can't say no. Scythe by Neal Shusterman was nothing I had expected. It was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed the reference to our current time as the "Mortal Age." I am rooting for Citra and Rowan's forbidden love. One thing I did notice about Shusterman's style is that it was SLOW and then bam! The last probably 10 chapters were boom, boom, boom. I could hardly put it down! I have to say that I am now a fan of dystopian novels because my student gave me book 2 in the series to read!

So as many of you do know, Dawson has had 2 febrile seizures since Maddox has been born (5.5 months). His first was two days after Maddox was born, 3/28/21. That one was scary because we didn't know what was happening, but nothing compares to the one on 5/29/21. Maddox and I had just busted out of ACH after a 9 day stay. Troyce said Dawson had been whiny all day, but he was off his routine. I get home and we load up to go get dinner. As we are parked waiting on Troyce to bring out our food, I just casually look back at Dawson because he had been quiet. His eyes were rolled back in his head and he was unresponsive. I called Troyce and the next thing I know we are gojng 100mph down Military Road. He said, "cars are not moving." I straight up told him to drive down the turning lane. We got from Taco Bell to Saline Memorial in under a minute. Dawson seizued for almosf 45 minutes before he came out of it. The first temperature that they got to read was 104. They pumped him FUL...

Many of you do not know what has been going on with me since I've had my sweet babies. I have been very angry and very on edge. Well one day I snapped and knew I had to do something. Post Partum Rage and Anxiety is a major thing that does not get talked about. I'm sure the anxiety stems from my kids being so sick, but the rage? I have never felt this amount of rage and anger, and I've had 2 boys. A month ago I went to my PCP and we started a different medication on top of the anxiety medication I was already taking. That has helped some. Today we decided to up the dosage. What I know will really help is when I start therapy next Tuesday night. I have so many things to work through emotionally and spiritually. To start, we have to normalize talking about the fact that it is okay to NOT be okay after having a baby. If I had felt comfortable talking about it, then I wouldn't have waited so long to do something about it. I would have accepted that fact that I wasn't oka...

Now that Maddox is a month old I figured it was time tk share his birth story. So, my water broke at about 11:30 pm on March 25th. Troyce's aunt came over to sit with Dawson and Troyce and I went to the hospital. My mom came up from the lake. I was about 2cm dilated when we got there. A couple hours later I hadn't progressed much so they started pitocin. They gave me demerol for the pain. Well, that didn't help much so they gave me fentynal right before my epidural. I was so high I could barely keep my eyes open. They came in to do my epidural, and right off the bat I told them it wasn't right. I could feel my catheter and contractions. My blood pressure also plummeted and they had to give me medicine to get it back up, plus put me on oxygen. I am still so out of it that I have no idea what is going on. After I get stabalized back, I fell asleep some. After that they realized I wasn't lying about the epidural and they got someone to come redo it. They checked me whi...