Why TJEd

Why Thomas Jefferson Education?

Thomas Jefferson Education Resources

Milky Way Pie

This is my mom's recipe. She has made it since I was little.
Milky Way Pie

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 squares cooled melted Baker's unsweetened chocolate
2 eggs
2 cups thawed cool whip
1 pie crust

Cream 1/2 cup butter with 3/4 cup sugar. Stir in 2 squares cooled melted Baker's unsweetened chocolate. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating each egg 5 minutes at high speed. Fold in 2 cups thawed cool whip. Pour into a cooled 9 inch pie shell. Chill until firm - about 2 hours (can be frozen). Disclaimer: these are raw eggs so be careful what eggs you use.

4 T's

Tears, Trials, Trust, Testimony. I have seen the power of this in my life. Thomas S. Monson said, "...faith forged in the furnace of trials and tears is marked by trust and testimony." Thomas S. Monson, “Tears, Trials, Trust, Testimony,” Ensign, May 1987, 42

Music site for kids

I found a music site for kids. http://www.sfskids.org/templates/home.asp?pageid=1

Beauty of Motherhood

NieNie's video on Motherhood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHDvxPjsm8E

Crying

Most days I am strong person. Most of the time I am problem solver. Tonight I cannot stop crying. Really I have been crying inside for few days now or maybe I could say off and on for years. Right now I feel at such a loss. Please forgive me as I try to sort my feelings of how hard it is to live with a husband who is constantly in pain. The level of intensity varies. It is so hard to see someone in so much pain they can barely walk at times or see them barely get any sleep or sometimes none at all. I just want to fall apart right now and run away from life. The hardest times always come when I am super busy. It is also hard when he contempt plates suicide. Why? Why? I cannot imagine my life without him yet I can understand why he would want to kill himself. The doctors do not know what to do for him. They can try more physical therapy and injections. We have been down that road before and now are going down it again. He is too young for surgery. He just wants to work. He trained in a profession he can no longer do. He has tried other things but continues to hit road blocks. He feels so lost. This is one problem I cannot solve. I love him. I am exhausted from seeing him in so much pain. Some days are good and days are beyond bad. I just want to cry and cry. Sorry for the pity party but life is pretty crappy sometimes. No one can make this all better. I just wanted to vent. Life is not always as lovely as I make it out to be. Overall my life is good and I love my life most of the time.

How am I?

After I delivered Adaline Lorraine. Many people asked me how I was doing. I am grateful for their concern. The only thing that brought tears to my eyes when talking to others was when I talked about Rebekah's reaction. For weeks we could not go any where near downtown without Bekah seeing the hospital or a building that reminded her of it without her begging me to get Adaline. She would say, "Go to the doctor's office and get baby Adaline. We will make her all white." Note Adaline's skin was a dark red. I just kept telling her that she is living with Heavenly Father and Jesus. She would say, "No, no, we need to go get her." The first night I was home Bekah said, "I wanted to teach her how to go potty and say yeah good job." That made me cry.

I have shed some tears at times not linked to Bekah's pleadings. Some days I wondered if people thought I would loose it more emotionally than I did. I grateful I had the support especially if I would have lost it more. It was comforting to know that I had others that I can turn to if I need them.

I think there are many reasons why I was able to handle the situation so well. One is I just knew from the beginning and second eternal families.

All three of my pregnancies were planned. When I was pregnant with Anna and Rebekah I was thrilled. I would tap my fingers together and say excitedly we are having a baby. With Adaline Lorraine I was very worried from the beginning. I knew something was wrong. I went to my first appointment and told my doctor I was concerned. Since I am 35 and concerned she automatically listed me as high risk. I was worried about down syndrome or other genetic problems (Neither Wes nor I have genetic history for such problems). I remember her verbally listing several risk factors because I was 35. Ironically, the only one I could remember from the list when I went home to tell Wes what she had said and the only one I could remember even up to the day I went into the hospital was still born. I think, no, I know the Spirit was preparing me for what was to come.

When the tech told me there was no heartbeat I felt a huge relief. Yes, I am sad I will not have a baby to hold at the end of the summer but the anxiety was so strong while I was pregnant that to loose it was a relief. Maybe to some that seems odd. I knew that loosing the baby was a trial that Heavenly Father wanted me to experience. My mother had three first trimester miscarriages between me and my sister so I always knew the chance of miscarriage since I was little.

My second reason has to do with eternal families. During the seven years I waited for Wes to become active again in the Church we had two beautiful girls and no miscarriages. I wanted so badly for Wes to get his act together. I was fearful of loosing him or one of the children and not being sealed. Deep down inside I knew everything would turn out okay. My patriarchal blessing said I would be sealed. Wes' patriarchal blessing said the same thing. There were times when Wes sank so low that I questioned if he was the one. When Wes' word of wisdom issues became beyond what I could handle I threatened divorce. Actually I did not threaten divorce I promised I would divorce him if he did not quit. He quit. The best year of our marriage and one of the best years of my life was after he quit and life continues to be good. We have our trials but we are stronger as a couple. One of his dear friends was right he is a spiritual giant. Even while he was not active and doing things against the word of wisdom he kept encouraging me to do what was right.

Last August after seven years of marriage I was sealed to Wesley, Anna and Rebekah for time and all eternity in the Nauvoo Temple. At the time that we were sealed I knew that in the future Heavenly Father would provide for me an experience(s) that would show me why I should grateful we were sealed.

If you read my previous post I will insert this story where I was done looking for something to watch on TV. I was sitting waiting for Wes to bring me my laptop because I was bored. I started thinking why am I here sitting in a hospital room when I am in no pain and feel just fine. I knew why was there but it seemed so surreal. As I was pondering this it came to me you were sealed. The tears came. Heavenly Father did not end any of my previous pregnancies. At this point it was still up in the air if the baby would be termed as a stillborn which would have included a birth certificate. I was grateful for the Lord's timing because if it was stillborn and we would not have been sealed yet the baby might have had to have a proxy. The Lord's timing is perfect. Another thing that helped me and the girls is we can see Adaline again when we go to Heaven.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers.

Adaline Lorraine

Our big ultrasound (morphology) where we were to find out the sex of the baby was Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. Wes and I took the girls with us. Anna is 6 and Rebekah is 3. They were very excited to go. We had talked about it for weeks. The girls wanted a sister. The mere mention of a brother and they were not happy. We had decided if it were a girl we wanted to name it Adaline Lorraine. Adaline was my great, great aunt’s name and Lorraine is a province in France and historically sometimes in Germany that is called Alsace Lorraine where Wes’ ancestors come from. For weeks Bekah called it “baby Adaline” and she was constantly asking about her. We would on varies occasions still ask her what if it was a brother and she would persistently say no. A few days before the ultrasound she would say “my baby sister Adaline is in mommy’s tummy and my baby brother is alive.” It was a strange phrase that I kept wondering about and now gives me chills.

After a few minutes of looking at the baby on the ultrasound screen the tech asked Wes to take the girls out in the hall so she could talk to me alone. I knew before she told me what she was going to say. It confirmed all of the thoughts and feelings I had since the pregnancy began. The tech said your baby has no heartbeat. The baby’s abdomen and skull/brain were full of fluid. I told her to bring Wes back in and the girls would fine to come back in. I told Wes three times that the baby had no heartbeat before it sunk in, mostly because I told him as the girls and him came in the room and the room was noisy from the girls coming in. Anna was devastated. Rebekah went to the other side of the room, sat down and pouted. It killed me emotionally to see her like that. I called my mom to come pick the girls. Dr. W arrived a little while later. She told me the options for how we were going to deliver the baby. She said with much concern that I must go right away to the hospital and be admitted to Labor and Delivery because I was at high risk for DIC (bleed to death internally or with one cut). She said I would have another ultrasound done to determine the size of the baby. The size would determine if I could have it naturally or c-section. I have had two previous c-sections so high levels of inducement drugs were out of the question because I could risk uterus rupture.

At the hospital we sat for over two hours before they took me to have another ultrasound. The baby measured at 16 weeks, 4 days. It was not possible that the baby died at that time because I had had a doctor appointment with us hearing the heartbeat at 17 weeks 2 days. At this point I was 20 weeks 3 days. So they were not exactly sure of the date of the death. I asked the tech if she has seen lots of babies lost in the second trimester and she said no but these are the ultrasounds you do not forget.

They let me have dinner then after the food settled they gave me the first dose of drugs. After they brought me dinner I sent Wes home to get some things including my laptop. I was so bored sitting there. It had been four hours since I was admitted. While Wes was gone I tried to find something on TV and was reminded why I rarely watch TV. Dr. T. (not my regular doc, but doc on call) came in while Wes was gone. He stated all that Dr. W (regular doc) had debriefed him on my situation and said that it appeared the baby might have developed an infection. The bloated stomach and fluid around the brain indicated the likelihood that it had died of an infection. To me this made since because one and half weeks earlier I had suddenly become very ill.

About two hours after I ate they gave me the inducement drugs. They gave me low doses and far apart because of previous c-sections. I could not sleep and I was in no pain for most of the night. Since I could not sleep I stayed up and worked on my laptop and talked to Wes. Early in the morning I started feeling the contractions. The nurse encouraged me to start morphine. I finally agreed. It helped me calm down enough to sleep or at least for an hour. An hour after starting the morphine I had a reaction to it. My stomach and back felt like someone had punched me really hard (not that I have been punched before but I could imagine) and it felt like my stomach or some organ near there was swelling and contracting. The pain it cause was worse than the contractions. I wanted off of it immediately. I would rather deal with the contractions without medicine. The contractions were nothing compared to the pain caused by the morphine. Dr. P, the next doctor on call, came in, introduced herself and explained that I was not progressing fast enough so she wanted to increase the frequency of the inducement drugs. She also said if I did not continue progress I would need a c-section. After she left I lost it emotionally. I could handle loosing the baby but a c-section on top of it. I was hysterically upset. The nurse reassured me that the c-section was the last option. It would be one thing to have a c-section and go through the recovery and have a baby to hold but to go through all of that with no baby would be awful. Fortunately, I progressed over the next couple of hours. The nurse encouraged me to get an epidural before the pain became too intense and especially with the risk of having to do a D&C. I agreed to the epidural. At 12:31 pm on Thursday, March 18, I delivered the baby with no doctors or nuses. The baby was still in the sac. I called for the nurse. The doctor came right away. My placenta, etc blood came out on its own and some with the doctors help and I did not have to have a D&C – yeah!!!

I called my mom and asked her to bring the girls to see the baby. The nurse cleaned the baby. The nurse wrapped her in a receiving blanket. We confirmed it was a girl. Her hands and feet were perfect. Her abdomen and head for swollen just like we had seen in the ultrasound. Her umbilical cord was very twisted – big at the top but super, super thin at the base of her body. Her skin was very thin so she was dark red color. She was the size of my hand.

Anna and Rebekah arrived with my mom. Wes took pictures. We let Anna hold the baby and Rebekah was able to hold the baby with the help of Wes. Rebekah kept asking about her skin. She wanted to know why she was not white. We kept explaining to her why. After a little while the girls and my mom left.

A specialist came in to look at the baby and determine the kinds of tests they could run. After the specialist was done the nurse took the baby to take pictures and do hand and foot prints. Later on the hospital gave us a still born packet with pictures of her laying on an afghan and a fake dress on top of her. Also in the packet were the afghan, dress, hand and foot prints. The packet is made of fabric. The packet is reminder to me of how valuable charity work is.

After the chaos of the delivery and post delivery I was able to get some sleep. I was released the next day.

St Patrick's day

I found this idea at http://familyfun.go.com/st-patricks-day/st-patricks-day-crafts/magic-treasure-box-710371/. On March 16 the girls decorated a box (a little bit).



The night of March 17 I was going to hide the box but since I went into the hospital on March 17. We postponed it until March 20. We told the girls that the Leprechauns knew that I was in the hospital and girls were at their grandparents so they waited to come. The girls left the empty box in their window. After they were asleep I created the trail from their room to the kitchen. The rest of the pictures are the clovers and rainbow left to lead them to the treasure box plus a picture of the treasure.