I'm Here, I'm Here

I know you all have been waiting for pictures so I apologize for the delay. Scroll down to the bottom to see pictures if you'd rather not read all the banter.

Things did not go as I would have liked with Blake's delivery and I just haven't been able to get on here as soon as I would have liked. I'm not quite up to reliving every detail of what we went through last week but I promise I will. So many of you were so faithful in praying for us....many of you I have never even met and you deserve to know the story and see how God worked. Let me tell you that so many things went right, and so many things could have been infinitely worse. We have so very much to be thankful for, most of all, that Blake is here and healthy.

Sadly, though, I did get sick like last time. It wasn't as bad because my body didn't experience the full blown HELLP Syndrome but I got very, very close to falling off that cliff again. After the chaos of Blake's delivery I really thought we were home free. I had a couple of days of difficulty due to pain management but by Thursday was really feeling good. I finally understood how people have babies and then actually go out and do things fairly soon afterward. I was so excited to have people come visit and have a "normal" recovery. By no means did I think it would be easy, I mean I knew I had to recover from major surgery, care for a newborn, and help a 3 year old adjust to the new normal but let me tell you, dealing with all that and being healthy is a breeze compared to dealing with all that and trying to recover from severe preeclampsia or HELLP Syndrome.

That hope and excitement died Friday afternoon when I crashed. Full on code-blue y'all. Scared the you-know-what out of me, my parents, and poor Jason. It was terrible. BUT, we survived and I will get better.

Unfortunately, the doctor says it will be anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months before I feel good again. I feel so disappointed and discouraged about that but I know I have grown from 3 years ago because instead of feeling sorry for myself, I mostly feel so incredibly grateful. Grateful to be here, grateful Blake is healthy without even a brief second in the NICU (unbelievable for a little white boy born at 36 weeks), and grateful that I was able to get the care I needed in such a timely fashion. God has been good to us even if it wasn't the picture I would have painted.

Ok, enough of this, on to the pictures. These kind of chronicle our week with a few days left out after the trauma. ;) And thank you for praying for the severe swelling in my face. It did go down within a couple of days but I know it must have been bad because they paged the doctor in the middle of the night while I was on that magnesium drip to come look at me. Yikes! Probably best I never saw a mirror or took a picture of that. I mean there is just so much a girl can take, right?!

I may not post much in the coming weeks but will try to put up some more pictures sometime soon. I am trying not to feel any pressure to do anything besides take care of my boys and get well. If you could, please pray that I am feeling well in 6 weeks rather than 6 months. With Grant it took 5 months to recover so I'm really hoping this will be something much shorter since I didn't have the full blown HELLP syndrome. Thanks so much for caring for us.

**A big thanks to Emily for serving as our guest blogger for so many days! Don't know what we would have done without you, Em. Love you!