My husband and I got married on May 26, 2018. It’s been over two years and we have yet to go on our honeymoon. For the life of me, I have not been able to leave my kids for more than a day. I get the worst anxiety. Since everything with Ryker happened (read previous blog post) I have a hard time leaving them. Ryker has spent the night with my mother, one time in 4 years.
BUT, this is a year of change. We are searching for honeymoon destinations. Why now? Sometimes you have to put your marriage first. I have to look past my anxiety and live a little. Plus, we definitely need more time alone together. I value my marriage so much, and it’s something you HAVE to work at everyday. You have to make each other a priority. Do the little things for each other. Make life EASIER for each other.
Ryan will come home after a long day at work and take over the kids for a bit. Sometimes, he even makes dinner. If the girls don’t do their chores, he will automatically do the dishes for me. It doesn’t go overlooked. Babies and kids are exhausting and it’s nice to have a partner in life that makes life easier.
I’ve had to hire a babysitter just so we can go on date nights. My mom lives out of town but she comes when she can. Ryan’s mother is sick and not really available much right now. I have to say though, I’m excited to get more free time with my best friend and remember the relationship we had before kids came along. We are obsessed with our kids, but we are also obsessed with each other, and cherish our free time together.
We have been together 6 years now and are finding new ways to keep our relationship going strong. Oh yes, we fight. Rarely, these days, but we do. We are both very passionate about things and let our opinions be known. And that is okay. Everyone has disagreements. But you have to know when to pick your battles and when to let the stupid things go. He got lucky with a woman who forgives easily and I got lucky with him in the way that he will try to make me laugh 5 minutes after knowing he’s made me mad.
You have to cut toxic people out. Some people come along that will try to derail your marriage and will succeed if you let them. We’ve had our share of people trying to ruin our relationship from the day we met. And here we are, years later, with children, a home, and happier than ever.
I know this post is shorter than my other posts but I just wanted to make it simple.
Put your kids, God, and your marriage first, and you will continue to thrive. The struggles will no doubt come your way, but you can overcome them and see yourselves on the other side, even stronger than before.
I hate speaking about this. I’ve tried to suppress it because it takes me back to a place of trauma. But, if I speak about it, more people will learn about it and maybe then it will help others that may deal with the same thing and are searching for answers.
My 4 year old Ryker was born on September 22, 2015. I had the easiest pregnancy and delivery with him. After my pregnancy with my daughter, Harmony, I had no idea that pregnancies could be that easy. I think that was God being easy on me because of what was about to come. With Harmony, I was sick for 6 straight months. Vomiting daily. And I was living in Dallas, TX at the time. Away from all my family and friends. It was AWFUL. I was sick one time with Ryker, and that was after I had to chug that drink loaded with sugar for the diabetes test at the doctor. All mothers know what I’m talking about.
When he arrived, he had the most perfect little round head. The prettiest little pink, full lips. Is it weird to think your baby has a perfectly, round little head? Lol, I’m not sure, but he did and it’s one of the first things I noticed. The next few days after he was born was a blur of baby cuddles, colic, and late night feedings. On day 4 after he was born, my whole world completely came crashing down…
I was holding Ryker and he was starting to fall asleep. His head turned to the side and he starting seizing. It was so subtle that I questioned myself and wondered if I was imagining things. It lasted maybe 30 seconds and he let out the worst shriek of a cry that made my stomach turn in knots. I yelled for Ryan. “I think Ryker just had a seizure?!” He ran downstairs. “Maybe I’m wrong but it’s what it looked like for sure.” So we loaded him up and went to the Emergency room. The doctor saw him and then told me, ‘Babies do weird things, it’s just acid reflux.’ I knew that was wrong. I knew within my gut it wasn’t acid reflux. But, I wanted to believe it was nothing. I convinced myself that doctors knew more than me and we walked out.
The next day rolled around and I was snuggling and kissing on Ryker as he was just waking up from a nap. The next seizure came, and it was not subtle. It was a full body, violent seizure on a tiny baby. I will never be able to get these images out of my head. I immediately went in to panic mode and started screaming. We rushed to the hospital. They saw the fear in my eyes and on my face and immediately took Ryker by ambulance to the children’s hospital in Vanderbilt. They performed so many tests on my tiny little boy. Blood work, MRI, EEG, spinal tap. He had it all done. And every single thing came back normal.
Not a single neurologist/doctor could tell me why my son was having seizures. So they started to believe he wasn’t even having seizures that I was just imagining things. Insert big eye roll here. So they hooked him up to a monitor to try to catch a seizure on camera. 2 am rolled around and I had just fallen asleep. I woke up to the same spine chilling, painful shriek that Ryker let out when he had a seizure before. I knew he had another one. I called the doctor in and they watched the video recording. It was finally confirmed that he did in fact have a seizure. Imagine that. A mother knows what is going on with her child. Never let a doctor silence you if you know something is wrong.
But we still had zero answers..
We stayed in the hospital for a few days and they gave Ryker a medication that stopped the seizures in their tracks. They chalked it up to him just having epilepsy, but I was NOT convinced.
3 months seizure free. I never slept. I watched Ryker constantly. Worrying. Sick. Then the next seizure came. At 4 am. I was watching him and saw his body twitching. I turned him over and he was blue. I immediately screamed and cried. I screamed at God. “WHY are you letting this happen to my baby?! Take it from him and put it on me!” I was so angry and so sad. Just writing this has my tears flowing. We immediately loaded him up and decided to go to kosairs in Louisville this time. My son had seizure after seizure on the drive there. He ended up having a total of 13 seizures that day. The doctors and nurses rushed in working on my son, like he was dying in front of my eyes. The seizures could not be controlled. I could not BREATHE. I couldn’t eat. I was dying. I couldn’t take a shower. I would not leave his side. I slept in the little crib with him.
The doctors would come in and try to talk to me and I remember I couldn’t even form a complete sentence from the lack of sleep. I couldn’t form a thought in my mind. I was hallucinating from the complete and total exhaustion. It is so true that we, as mothers, feel our child’s pain, maybe even more than they do.
We spent our Christmas and New Year’s Eve in the hospital that year. We’ve never been out of town for NYE and always wanted to go somewhere, but this wasn’t what I had in mind at all. It was a nightmare. Ryan and I slept on little couches together. I cried to him. He held me, telling me it was all okay, but I know he was just as scared as I was. I thought, Is this going to be our life forever? Living in constant worry? Never sleeping. Never leaving his side?
This is when I started reading. Researching. Hours upon hours I never stopped trying to find an answer. And then one day, I found one. I immediately told the doctors what I had found. They ran a genetics blood test and we got our answer. KCNQ2 mutation, benign familial neonatal seizures. A genetic mutation in the brain that causes the neurological wiring to go haywire for the first few months of life. I was ecstatic to have an answer. And even more ecstatic to learn it’s BENIGN and that the seizures stop after a few months of age and the child develops normally.
I could finallybreathe. All my prayers were answered. My son was safe.
Ryker was on a seizure medication for two years and was finally weaned off of it. He is 4 now and hasn’t had a seizure since he was 3 months old. Thank you God.
In conclusion, this was by far the toughest time of my life. The silver lining was that it made me stronger than I ever knew I could be. It brought Ryan and I closer than we’d ever been before. He was and still is my rock. He held me up when I felt like I could not go on another day. But we made it through and learned to not take a single second in life for granted.
As I am sitting here, listening to my kids screech as they run through the house playing, I thought, ‘Being a stay at home mother is so rewarding, but it’s hard.’ So, so hard sometimes. I know you stay at home mamas get what I’m saying. I have zero adult interaction throughout my day. I needed something for me to voice my opinions, tell about my life, struggles, and the daily chaos that comes with being a step mom, stay at home mother, and wife. Sometimes we lose ourselves giving so much of ourselves to other people and it’s nice to feel ‘heard’ even if you aren’t actually ‘speaking.’ This gives me a platform of some sort to do so. It is kind of like a therapy to me. I’ve always loved writing and have been told I have a way with words. I don’t know about that, but I’ll give it a shot.
Too many times recently I have wanted to take to Facebook or some other social media to speak, ‘vent’ or just generally tell my opinions on things that probably no one cares about, but me. So this blog is really just my way to let loose, and not force anyone to read what I’m thinking. If you came here, you want to read it. So it makes it much easier to say what I want to say.
I was actually inspired to start a blog from dealing with the daily struggles that come along with being a stepmom. So why not write about them, and about being a mother and wife as well. I would like to tell some of our story, without giving too much unwanted details.
About me, I grew up with a semi normal childhood. Parents divorced at age 10 and it crushed me. I never saw it coming. My parents NEVER fought. Ever. I never even knew there was a problem. That’s how well they handled their issues and the divorce. There was never a court order. I grew up going where I wanted and visiting both parents whenever I wanted. I am so grateful for how they handled things. They never said a bad word about each other to me. They never made me feel like I had to choose. They were always friends even through the hurt feelings. Other than that I went to high school, graduated, went to college for a couple of years and realized it wasn’t my forte. Job wise, I’ve dabbled in a little bit of everything I feel like. However, nothing I’ve found beats being at home with my babies. I’m so thankful that I get to do so, but I feel like I need to start doing more for me, to just get out of the house for a little while.
I’m a mother to 3 of my own bio children. Ages 1, 4 and 13. And a stepmother to one child age 11. Gosh that’s a lot of kiddos. They bring the best chaos to my life. I love it. I wouldn’t know what to do without them. There is always something fun or chaotic happening in my house with 4 kids. I became a mother to my oldest daughter at 20 years young. Her and I have basically grown up together. She came into my life when I needed her the most. Her little hugs got me through some of the toughest moments of my life. My next baby boy is 4. The one whose given me a run for my money since he was born. He has the most passionate and fighter spirit, like me. The one who brought out a strength in me that I didn’t know existed. He was born having uncontrollable seizures at 4 days old. I’ll tell more about that later. And my last little baby has a smile and the sweetest spirit that will melt your heart. I can tell he is going to be the calmer boy, that rolls with the punches.
My husband and I met 7 years ago in 2013 at a practice our daughters attended. We didn’t speak again until 2014. Social media was our matchmaker. He started snap chatting me and we quickly became best friends that just ‘clicked.’ We’ve honestly been inseparable ever since. We used to go out together ‘on the town’ and literally dance all night. We were so in love. That ‘new, heart pounding, can’t keep your hands off each other’ kind of love. The ‘only exists in movies’ kind of love. When I had to leave him for any amount of time, we both hated it. I still remember how he would walk up and pick me up in the middle of the street and kiss me goodbye. I’ve never met a person that I could stay up talking to all night long, to where we would watch the sunrise together. We had everything to talk about, like we had known each other before this lifetime. Those days were so fun. We are still very much in love. Its a different kind of love. The love that matures over the years after so many hardships. The ‘comfort’ and ‘I can’t live without you’ kind of love. We are simply made for each other and I truly and whole heartedly believe that. Some souls are destined to be together. But man he can piss me off like no other human being on planet earth. 🤣
That’s basically it for now. (In a nutshell)
I will get into more later. This was just a short intro. My goal if anything, is just to be relatable to other moms/stepmoms out there trying to make it all work, all while raising beautiful little human beings. I may have a little more drama than most, not by choice, but hey that’s life. But off to bed I go. I have a one year old little boys birthday celebration tomorrow! Thanks for reading. If you want to contact me click the little three lines on the page and then the contact button from the menu!
A Day In the Life of a (step) Mom and Wife 