Early To Rise Challenge: Day 5

Good Morning!

This is Day 5 of the Money Saving Mom Early to Rise Challenge!

This morning's passage talked about challenges. I know we all have challenges in our every day lives, but sometimes for me it's hard to pinpoint the challenges I face. Of course, there are big things like high school and college, and challenges you overcome as a couple in your marriage. But for me it seems every time I set out to challenge myself on something, I forget about it 2 days in or fail miserably.

This is one of the first times I've ever stuck with a challenge I've imposed on myself for so long, and felt successful about it, so far! That's a big thing for me!

So, what time did I get up??

The kitchen clock says 5:17 am....but really....it was 4:30 am. D-baby was at it again with Fredrika. They're in a race to see who could wake up mama first again and D-baby won. I was up for half an hour rocking him back to sleep when the Hubs came in and took over. Instead of going back to sleep I had to get up anyway and get this done.

It was a worthwhile project for my Renew group at Lenexa Baptist Church. These early mornings are sometimes helpful, but I was not planning on getting up at 4:30!

Until tomorrow
Liz

Early Morning Challenge: Day 4

Good Morning!

We're at Day 4 of the Money Saving Mom Early to Rise Challenge.

This morning's passage was about focusing on things you can control and not dwelling on things you can't control. This is sometimes a struggle for me and has been for awhile. The author talks about not focusing on who else gets up in the morning, interrupting your quiet time. I'll admit it, that is something that irritates me the most. I have to learn to be interrupt-able.

Yesterday's action tip was to buy slippers and tweet a picture of them. Unfortunately, I don't tweet, so I thought I'd let you guys see them.

Pretty cute and very comfy!

I'm still working on the "going to bed early" part of this challenge. It's still a struggle for me, but seems to be getting easier already. I think with my Graves and the subsequent bad habits that followed, I trained a decent bed time out of my lifestyle. Now it's time to do the work to train it back in. Last night I went to bed around 11:30. Pretty late still, but it's no 12 midnight, or 1 am. I'm working on making this time earlier and earlier until I can get it up to 10-10:30. The Hubs will be ecstatic!

I also need to incorporate the "listen to/ read something incouraging" and the "have something planned" parts into my bed time routine. I think that would make it a bit easier to get into the bed and hopefully fall asleep quickly there after.

This morning I woke up at.....

 Yay! Another successful day!

And Praise the Lord,  D-baby stayed asleep the WHOLE NIGHT! He tried to get up twice, but the Hubs was able to get him back to sleep fairly easily. WOOT!

Thanks so much for staying with me this far!
Liz

Early To Rise Challenge, Day 3 : Baby vs. Clock

Good Morning!

This is Day 3 of the Money Saving Mom Early to Rise Challenge!

Today's passage covered "Being Selfish at 5 am". I have to say I'm starting to change my perspective on how my day was laid out and am starting to see how this is essential to the success of this challenge.

 Before beginning this challenge, I believed that I was a night person. To some extent I do seem to be. After the kids went to bed I would declare it "Mama time" and would spend the rest of the night "unwinding" from the day. I would tell Hubs that there was so much work to get done and I wanted to stay awake to finish it. Problem is I would end up stay up "unwinding" WAY too late (1-2 am! YIKES!) or I wouldn't get done what I declared MUST be done before I went to bed.

I've been observing myself the past few weeks and found that when Hubs comes home from work, very little gets done around the house. I used to think I could pick back up on the day's chores after the kids went to bed, but always ended up wanting to spend that time with the Hubs. And then it would come time for us to go to bed and I'd always want to spend that time "unwiding" a little longer. That is where my downfall was.

So the new plan is this:
1. Hubs comes home/ dinner/ family time
2. Kiddos in bed
3. Spend time with hubby/ go to bed!

No more thinking I'm going to be motivated to go back to chores, no more trying to just get "one more thing done". I'm declaring my time for "Being Selfish" to no longer be at 11,12, 1 or 2 am! My time for Mama time will be 5:30 am!

What time did I wake up today....

This is actually false. D-baby decided he would beat Fredrika to the punch and woke mama up at 5:15am. Knowing I had only 15 minutes before my alarm went off I tried to put him back to sleep, but to no avail. He knew what was up and REFUSED. 5:15 is too early for him to start thinking it's ok to be awake (and it's MAMA's time, right?!) so I decided to lay down with him til he was calm, and then let the Hubs take over so I could start my day. This is when I was able to crawl out of bed without waking D-baby. Hubs didn't mind. He got to cuddle in a warm bed with a little love!

In every plan includes a wrench, I guess. Going with the flow is still something I'm learning to be ok with. Le sigh. There's always tomorrow! I'm still declaring this morning a success.

Until tomorrow,
Liz

Early To Rise Challenge, Day 2

Aaand, we're back.

Good Morning!

This morning is Day 2 of the challenge, and so far, it's going pretty well.

My Sunday night was a little wonky going to bed and staying asleep. D-Baby was awake twice before 2 am and then woke again just now as I'm typing this. It's 5:56 am. I've got a feeling he'll be a factor in how easily it is for me to wake up. We're trying to get him to stay asleep in his own bed instead of needing mama or daddy to lay down with him.

This morning I woke up at, drum roll please....

Yay! I'm pretty stoked!

I really appreciated the day's writing. I've never thought to name my alarm clock, and suspect Hubs to think I'm crazy when I tell it "Good Morning" tomorrow. That's ok.

I do expect this to get harder as it goes. I expect myself to fail a few mornings. But I'm doing what I need to to avoid setting myself up for failure. I'm also still trying to figure out how my mornings should look. Bible study and devotions, exercise and blogging are at the top of my list. Any suggestions on how I should approach this? I think that's something I'll be tackling this morning.
Until tomorrow,
~Liz

Early To Rise Challenge, Day 1

Happy New Year....

It's March, I get it.

By now you should know I blog pretty inconsistently around here, something I'd like to change.

It seems I'm always trying to change something...organizationally, consistency. Well, this time it's what time I wake up. I've joined Money Saving Mom's Early To Rise Challenge for March. Yay!

I must say, we've been working hard around here as a family to get some things changed, including bedtime/wake up time. It's been hard, but nothing worth doing is easy. Consistency is our biggest monster to tackle.

Nights are when I traditionally unwind and have some me time. Unfortunately, I end up going to bed really late and can barely wake up when the kids do the next morning. A while ago, I tried to implement a bed time strategy, focusing on consistency, but eventually it got to be too much for me to handle alone. Wrangling three kids into bed is no easy task. You see, Hubs has one of those jobs with an inconsistent time where he leaves work, and there were nights he just wasn't able to make it before the bedtime routine was started. So I thought, what could I do personally that would change the way I handle things in the morning?

MSM, you've answered my prayers! Which brings us back to the challenge...

Part of the challenge is accountability, something I need desperately in my life. We are to post a picture of our alarm clock weekday every morning to show the world what time we woke up. Here's mine:

Now, please note, this is my daughter's alarm clock. She ended up sleeping for a little while in our bed after a bad dream. I didn't think it was a good idea to wake her with random camera flashes. :( But it does say 5:33 am! My goal was 5:30 am. And I'm pretty proud of myself! Why?

Because I woke up at 5:15 with no alarm clock! Yay! And, I thought for sure I was going to fail this morning, because I'm also sick. :( Last night I came down with the chills, body aches, all the wonderful benefits of the flu. My fourth round this winter. Amazing, because I NEVER get the flu. This morning, it woke me up with a fever again. So in all honesty, I'll probably be going back to sleep here soon. At least I made it this far. Baby steps, right?
~Liz

Speaks to my Soul!

New Life Worship's Great I Am

 Natalie Grant's Alive

These two songs have been speaking to my heart lately. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! New Life Worship's song especially has been one that brings me to tears. I'll be having surgery next Monday, so please pray for me this next week!

Where I've been....

So much for being around more often...

Things, as they are for most people, have been busy.

I don't know where to start. Adjusting to 3 kids has been a bit of a chore. I don't parent Duncan the way I did for Isabel and Shawn. Some of that is stripping away the mistakes, and that's a good, wonderful thing. Some of that is out of necessity to keep my sanity with 3 children at home. Some if it is in bad habit to cope with life lately.

Honestly, I've been struggling until recently.

It started around a day or so after I came home from the hospital. As I was laying on the couch, I had the baby next to me and we fell asleep. Next thing I know the baby has rolled off the couch and on to the floor. He was not hurt at all, just startled. Of course I was terrified and furious at myself for making such a stupid mistake! I've raised 2 older children and would have never made such a mistake! How could I forget how to be safe with a baby? That was the first day I was scared I would hurt my baby again.

I began having irrational thoughts, wondering what would happen in a given situation, what would happen if I died, what would happen if he was hurt or died with me. I had some other physical symptoms too and was sure I had postpartum depression. But I kept it hidden for a long time and things started getting worse and worse. I was not myself anymore.

I finally told my husband what I was feeling and debated for a long time whether or not to go into my doctor. A friend confided in me her struggle too with similar feelings and symptoms and urged me to go get checked. Hearing her struggle helped me feel like I wasn't crazy. With her urging, I decided to go see my doctor.

Certain I knew what she was going to say, I told her what was going on and that I was willing to persue any treatment that was safe for both me and my baby. Along with her recommendations, she ran a full blood panel in search of vitamin deficiencies, which could contribute to my "depressed" feelings. I got the results a few days later. My symptoms were confirmed on the blood work, but there were no vitamin deficiencies. She told me I had hyperthyroidisim.

I scheduled an appointment with an endocrinologist and had additional bloodwork done. At first my endocrine thought what I had was postpartum thyroiditis. Thank God, I thought, that this will be over soon! My symptoms were a battle daily as I had yet to be prescribed any medication, which is the typical course of action with postpartum thyroiditis. It's thought to go away on it's own eventually. After the bloodwork came back my endo called me again with the news that my hyperthyroid was in fact permanent. I have Grave's Disease.

And so began the battle of medications to prescribe me. I am still a nursing mom and plan to nurse as long as I can. So of course I would want to make sure that the medication I'm taking will be both safe for the baby and myself. The first medication I was given my doctor had to check on it's safety to use while nursing. She confirmed it was indeed safe to use. I called my son's pediatrician about it and got a conflicting report. They said it was absolutely not safe to use while nursing. A higher percentage of the medication leaches into the milk, and though it's not shown to cause any harm to nursing babies, doctors warn against using it in pregnant women due to birth defects. That does not sound safe enough to me.

My son's pediatrician gave me the name of a different drug to use that is compatible with nursing. When calling my doctor on it, she said she declines to prescribe this second drug because it's been shown to cause liver complications. But thankfully, she was willing to prescribe it to me with the caveat that I would watch for symptoms of liver complications. A small price to pay to have a medication that was safe for my baby and will allow me to nurse! Praise the Lord, we're finally on to something!

I was able to take my nursing compatible medication for two weeks, and started having symptoms of liver complications. It really wasn't anything scary or painful...just some random symptom, but since my doc wanted me to pay strict attention to it, I knew I would have to notify her about it. As soon as I had notified her about it, she took me off my med completely and ordered more blood work. For four days I was off my medications as I waited for the results to come back. While I was waiting, God was gracious and merciful and I didn't have a single symptom until the last few hours before I was able to start taking my meds again. The results did come back clean and my symptom was chalked up to something I ate...LOL!

Suffice it to say it's been a bit of a roller coaster around here. Having to deal with the depression and anxiety symptoms, in addition to some other physical symptoms is quite exhausting. Dealing with this on top of everyday life with three children and a husband makes it even more exhausting. So. . .I've been trying to stay on top of everything and in most cases, failing miserably. Blogging has just not been part of what I'm staying on top of.

People have been asking about our adoption...We are still adopting, but it's being put on hold right now. It was on hold for a while to give us time to focus on Duncan. Now we're on hold to give me time to get to my new normal. I am able to say now that I can see some improvement since being on my medicine. And I feel very blessed to be able to get back to myself. I still have some improvements to make, mostly in my personal life. While I was coping with symptoms, I created some bad habits that I'm now trying to break. I am still learning to deal with emotions, which is getting easier to bear and I am thankful for that.

Going forward from here I am hopeful for many things. This has brought me closer to God and I am excited about growing in my relationship with Him even more. I'm also looking forward to having more energy throughout the day, and to get on with life, including the adoption.

I do so hope to come back here and have the time to blog more often. There is so much more besides the adoption that I want to cover. The day to day stuff is important to me and I want to get it on here. Please bear with me, and thank you for being patient with me as I figure this out again.