It's my FIRST EVER blog post and I am SO EXCITED for this new chapter!
What led me to this? That's a great question that has quite the explanation, but first let me, let you in on who I am, if you don't already know.
I am happily married to Oliver and a mother of two beautiful, smart, charismatic little girls.
Oliver and I are going on 7 years of marriage and I couldn't be happier. He is an amazing partner and father to our girls as well as quite the handyman to have around! I have grown into the woman, mother, friend, daughter, sister and grand-daughter that I am thanks to him. Amongst our favorite things to do together would have to be traveling, eating delicious food and enjoying family time.
Oliver and I each are the oldest of 5 with my family residing in Marion, IA and his in Napa Valley, CA. The reason this is relevant is because Meli has begged for a sibling for as long as we can remember and not really understood how we could each have such big families, but yet she just has us and a mini golden doodle as a sister (Mia). With that being said we have that as black mail when she wants to get rid of her sister later down the road.
Now on to our girls. Ameliah whom we call "Meli" is 6 going on 16...LITERALLY! She definitely keeps us on our toes with her ever so spunky, sassy yet so stinking smart personality. Meli has molded us into the people we are today without a doubt. From day 1 she stole our hearts and had us wrapped around her little fingers and toes (ALL 10)! She has grown into a very caring, kind and humble 1st grader and we cant wait to see her tackle her dreams in this big world. Alivia whom we call Little Livy is about to turn 7 months old and we couldn't be happier with her coming into our lives when she did. She is a full time roller, loves her food and adores her family...for now at least.
This leads me into sharing our story and how our lives have changed incredibly this past year.
On April 30th our sweet, chunky cheeked baby surprised us! It was a COMPLETE surprise as to what the gender was, but our guts told us we were having a boy as the entire pregnancy was different than our pregnancy with Ameliah. After 6 hours of labor, 10 minutes of pushing Oliver cut the cord and handed me our perfect baby GIRL!!! I couldn't believe it! I was instantly in tears of joy and happiness! The first thing I remember crying about was that Meli would have a forever best friend, a little sister that she could teach everything to..good and bad, a little sister that would look up to her and make her feel so special! I have little sisters that I cherish, treasure and am so so grateful for each and everyday, so that made me so so happy. Not that a boy wouldn't fill our hearts with so much love, joy and happiness but it would be a different situation that we too would love! But for now we get to enjoy these 2 sweet girls of ours.
A couple months later around 1 am, I was awakened by Livy to nurse per her usual routine. She was hot to the touch and I knew she had a fever! As she was barely 7 weeks old... I knew I had to take her into be seen ASAP. I was so scared and worried, but at the same time reassured as I knew the medical staff in the ER (previous employer of mine) and through messages with a physician was reassured we would get right back to a room and start the workup as the ER wasn't busy at all...THANK GOODNESS. Fast forward through the night/early morning, she was diagnosed with a UTI and admitted as she was so little they wanted to be sure she get antibiotics via an IV. We went through a lot that weekend to say the least. She had to have a lumbar puncture/spinal tap (attempted 4 times) as her labs showed the infection was in her bloodstream therefore the medical staff feared Meningitis. We had to wait for results of cultures to come back through the upcoming week. Results came back each day negative and the chance of her having meningitis decreased significantly...AGAIN THANK GOODNESS! Through all this the medical team decided to do more of a work up and figure out what may have been the underlying root cause of this UTI. With that being said an ultrasound showed us that Livy had a "duplicated collecting system" meaning she had an extra tube draining one of her kidneys which caused her body to be confused and send urine back to the kidneys, causing the infection. All very complicated and overwhelming, although there was a cure and medicine to help so we were able to relax as we asked a million questions to become educated in hopes to be the best advocates for our Little Livy. After a 2 week stay in the hospital we finally got to go home on prophylactic antibiotics with orders to be seen by a pediatric urologist at the University of Iowa to get a better plan in place, long term wise. After another couple weeks we had our appointment and all went well. They changed meds and we got a better plan in place to make sure we were on top of this to avoid any further issues with UTI's etc. We were told they wanted to see Alivia every 3 months for the next couple years. There was still a lot up in the air as she was so little, she could outgrow this and not have any issues or she could need surgery as early as our next appointment in October of 2018. Despite all of this we walked out of the hospital hand in hand ready to tackle what awaited us as all our questions were answered, we felt confident and educated on her condition and above all we had faith that everything was happening for a reason.
I had roughly 1 week left of maternity leave before I had to be back to work. That's when reality set in. Alivia wasn't up to date on vaccines due to her being admitted/getting things figured out. How in the world was I going to put her in germ central and expect her to be healthy after her little body just went through so much? I didn't. I was challenged to outweigh the pros and cons of maintaining a career and being a mother. This is when I realized being a mother is the most rewarding job known to man, SO WHY NOT? Would it be hard to become accustomed to ONE INCOME? OF COURSE! But would it be impossible? NO WAY! I haven't looked back and regretted it since. Its been hard, there have been days that I miss my co-workers and old routine but quite frankly I couldn't even remember what life was like without Little Livy!
We enjoyed the rest of our summer with family and friends. Meli started 1st grade AND LOVED the fact that Livy and I could take her to school and be apart of all her special moments. But most importantly she loved to show off her baby sister each and everyday to all her friends and school staff. We established a routine and were finally settling into this new life as a bigger family. Alivia was sleeping through the night and life was great! As September was ending I was starting to brainstorm Halloween costume ideas as Oliver and Meli shut each one down ...ha ha. I still had hope though as I had plenty of time to convince them and find the perfect fit!
Then deja vu hit me again as I was awoken at 1am to nurse Livy she was hot to the touch and I instantly started to cry my eyes out. How could she have another UTI if she's on daily meds to prevent those types of infections? Has she already built up a resistance? Is there something else going on? Either way it didn't matter, we needed to get her seen by the doctors that knew her history. In we went right away after dropping Meli off to school and after waiting all morning for the basic lab results to come back we were on our way home to rough it out as there wasnt anything concerning enough to admit her at that time.. Keeping a close eye on her, making her as comfortable as possible while trusting my mom intuition I still felt like something wasn't right. In we went again the following morning to check her out again, when her pediatrician decided to admit her as she wasn't looking good at all as well as her labs aligned accordingly. Little did we know that this would be much more extensive to our previous hospital stay and much more complex. Each day she was worsening clinically as well as lab wise, her labs showed infection and inflammation but they had no idea where much less why. After 3 days of IV meds and her not getting better we were advised they didn't know what to do and it would be best if we considered having Alivia transferred to the University of Iowa. Scared, sad and so worried off we went via ambulance as Oliver followed. Unfortunately, at this point Oliver and I hadn't slept much at all so its all blurred together. What I do know is within 6 hours of being at the U, they came in attempting to explain "HLH syndrome", why they thought this is what Livy had and telling us they could answer questions later, they needed to give her medicine as her labs were indicating she is very, very sick. We had no idea what to ask besides what the risks of giving her the meds and the possibility of the diagnosing being wrong. Luckily the med "kinaret/anakinnra" is a protein based med and has little to no risk, so we gave them the go ahead to give it to her. The next few days were a nightmare, they were needing to do multiple tests/procedures to rule out different immunology disorders, leukemia, lymphoma, and a number of other things. There were so many different specialists involved in hopes to get to the bottom of what was going on inside Livy's 15 pound body. One of the hardest days was when they had to put her under anaesthesia to do a bone marrow biopsy to determine which form of HLH syndrome she may have and if it was cancerous or not.
There is a primary and secondary form of HLH syndrome that we unfortunately are still waiting for results on. After multiple blood transfusions, plasma/platelet transfusions, IVIG (immune booster) and continuous IV meds we've been told she will not be able to receive vaccines for the next 11 months. In my mind that's a whole year, we have plans to travel for the holidays, will she be healthy by her 1st Christmas, Birthday etc? We've been told there is a chance it could come back negative which would be great, but that would mean we are back to the drawing board on her diagnosis. It also is possible that she came into contact with an infection/virus that wiped her out as she got her 4 month vaccines a week prior to this episode. There is so much up in the air, so many unknowns and so many questions unanswered as we wait. On Halloween her labs started to trend in the right direction without any change in meds, which was great, kinda spooky, but we were so happy. After 3 good days we were able to discuss discharge and going home on shots and oral meds. I practiced and became even more educated on the meds she's on as we wait for results. I take her in weekly for her blood to be drawn and we discuss results and make a plan accordingly. Recently they started to wean her from the meds thinking she was ready for it, then her labs worsened. With that being said we are even more anxious for the results to come back to be able to treat her accordingly.
Thankfully throughout 24 days of being admitted our amazing family and friends helped with Meli and our home to make it as easy as possible on all of us. Meli spent multiple days with her god parents Tara and Jairo and then our amazing family. Our neighbor friends (Havil Family) helped out throughout the school week! The Frame's helped with yard work so Oliver could focus on going to see us after work each day. We had multiple friends that brought us dinner too and we couldn't be more grateful! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone for all the thoughts, prayers and help through this tough time.
With all this our future has changed, we will forever be scared to miss a sign that Alivia needs medical attention, therefore I feel the need to align my goals professionally according to her needs at this time. I have went back and forth on the options as there are many for stay at home mothers. I am excited to announce that the next few months I will be learning all about photography and its endless possibilities. I love helping people, so doing something at home but still having human interaction and instant self gratitude of helping people is very important to me. I have always enjoyed taking recreational photos of our family, friends and as we travel, just never thought I'd have time to just focus on learning more about it. Little did I know, that NOW IS THE TIME! I am so so so excited! It's the perfect time of the year to take lots and lots of pictures and practice away!
Stay tuned for updates on Little Livy as well as the progress of CeeCee Photography.
xoxo,
CeeCee
(CC-Cassandra Colin)
What led me to this? That's a great question that has quite the explanation, but first let me, let you in on who I am, if you don't already know.
I am happily married to Oliver and a mother of two beautiful, smart, charismatic little girls.
Oliver and I are going on 7 years of marriage and I couldn't be happier. He is an amazing partner and father to our girls as well as quite the handyman to have around! I have grown into the woman, mother, friend, daughter, sister and grand-daughter that I am thanks to him. Amongst our favorite things to do together would have to be traveling, eating delicious food and enjoying family time.
Oliver and I each are the oldest of 5 with my family residing in Marion, IA and his in Napa Valley, CA. The reason this is relevant is because Meli has begged for a sibling for as long as we can remember and not really understood how we could each have such big families, but yet she just has us and a mini golden doodle as a sister (Mia). With that being said we have that as black mail when she wants to get rid of her sister later down the road.
Now on to our girls. Ameliah whom we call "Meli" is 6 going on 16...LITERALLY! She definitely keeps us on our toes with her ever so spunky, sassy yet so stinking smart personality. Meli has molded us into the people we are today without a doubt. From day 1 she stole our hearts and had us wrapped around her little fingers and toes (ALL 10)! She has grown into a very caring, kind and humble 1st grader and we cant wait to see her tackle her dreams in this big world. Alivia whom we call Little Livy is about to turn 7 months old and we couldn't be happier with her coming into our lives when she did. She is a full time roller, loves her food and adores her family...for now at least.
This leads me into sharing our story and how our lives have changed incredibly this past year.
On April 30th our sweet, chunky cheeked baby surprised us! It was a COMPLETE surprise as to what the gender was, but our guts told us we were having a boy as the entire pregnancy was different than our pregnancy with Ameliah. After 6 hours of labor, 10 minutes of pushing Oliver cut the cord and handed me our perfect baby GIRL!!! I couldn't believe it! I was instantly in tears of joy and happiness! The first thing I remember crying about was that Meli would have a forever best friend, a little sister that she could teach everything to..good and bad, a little sister that would look up to her and make her feel so special! I have little sisters that I cherish, treasure and am so so grateful for each and everyday, so that made me so so happy. Not that a boy wouldn't fill our hearts with so much love, joy and happiness but it would be a different situation that we too would love! But for now we get to enjoy these 2 sweet girls of ours.
A couple months later around 1 am, I was awakened by Livy to nurse per her usual routine. She was hot to the touch and I knew she had a fever! As she was barely 7 weeks old... I knew I had to take her into be seen ASAP. I was so scared and worried, but at the same time reassured as I knew the medical staff in the ER (previous employer of mine) and through messages with a physician was reassured we would get right back to a room and start the workup as the ER wasn't busy at all...THANK GOODNESS. Fast forward through the night/early morning, she was diagnosed with a UTI and admitted as she was so little they wanted to be sure she get antibiotics via an IV. We went through a lot that weekend to say the least. She had to have a lumbar puncture/spinal tap (attempted 4 times) as her labs showed the infection was in her bloodstream therefore the medical staff feared Meningitis. We had to wait for results of cultures to come back through the upcoming week. Results came back each day negative and the chance of her having meningitis decreased significantly...AGAIN THANK GOODNESS! Through all this the medical team decided to do more of a work up and figure out what may have been the underlying root cause of this UTI. With that being said an ultrasound showed us that Livy had a "duplicated collecting system" meaning she had an extra tube draining one of her kidneys which caused her body to be confused and send urine back to the kidneys, causing the infection. All very complicated and overwhelming, although there was a cure and medicine to help so we were able to relax as we asked a million questions to become educated in hopes to be the best advocates for our Little Livy. After a 2 week stay in the hospital we finally got to go home on prophylactic antibiotics with orders to be seen by a pediatric urologist at the University of Iowa to get a better plan in place, long term wise. After another couple weeks we had our appointment and all went well. They changed meds and we got a better plan in place to make sure we were on top of this to avoid any further issues with UTI's etc. We were told they wanted to see Alivia every 3 months for the next couple years. There was still a lot up in the air as she was so little, she could outgrow this and not have any issues or she could need surgery as early as our next appointment in October of 2018. Despite all of this we walked out of the hospital hand in hand ready to tackle what awaited us as all our questions were answered, we felt confident and educated on her condition and above all we had faith that everything was happening for a reason.
I had roughly 1 week left of maternity leave before I had to be back to work. That's when reality set in. Alivia wasn't up to date on vaccines due to her being admitted/getting things figured out. How in the world was I going to put her in germ central and expect her to be healthy after her little body just went through so much? I didn't. I was challenged to outweigh the pros and cons of maintaining a career and being a mother. This is when I realized being a mother is the most rewarding job known to man, SO WHY NOT? Would it be hard to become accustomed to ONE INCOME? OF COURSE! But would it be impossible? NO WAY! I haven't looked back and regretted it since. Its been hard, there have been days that I miss my co-workers and old routine but quite frankly I couldn't even remember what life was like without Little Livy!
We enjoyed the rest of our summer with family and friends. Meli started 1st grade AND LOVED the fact that Livy and I could take her to school and be apart of all her special moments. But most importantly she loved to show off her baby sister each and everyday to all her friends and school staff. We established a routine and were finally settling into this new life as a bigger family. Alivia was sleeping through the night and life was great! As September was ending I was starting to brainstorm Halloween costume ideas as Oliver and Meli shut each one down ...ha ha. I still had hope though as I had plenty of time to convince them and find the perfect fit!
Then deja vu hit me again as I was awoken at 1am to nurse Livy she was hot to the touch and I instantly started to cry my eyes out. How could she have another UTI if she's on daily meds to prevent those types of infections? Has she already built up a resistance? Is there something else going on? Either way it didn't matter, we needed to get her seen by the doctors that knew her history. In we went right away after dropping Meli off to school and after waiting all morning for the basic lab results to come back we were on our way home to rough it out as there wasnt anything concerning enough to admit her at that time.. Keeping a close eye on her, making her as comfortable as possible while trusting my mom intuition I still felt like something wasn't right. In we went again the following morning to check her out again, when her pediatrician decided to admit her as she wasn't looking good at all as well as her labs aligned accordingly. Little did we know that this would be much more extensive to our previous hospital stay and much more complex. Each day she was worsening clinically as well as lab wise, her labs showed infection and inflammation but they had no idea where much less why. After 3 days of IV meds and her not getting better we were advised they didn't know what to do and it would be best if we considered having Alivia transferred to the University of Iowa. Scared, sad and so worried off we went via ambulance as Oliver followed. Unfortunately, at this point Oliver and I hadn't slept much at all so its all blurred together. What I do know is within 6 hours of being at the U, they came in attempting to explain "HLH syndrome", why they thought this is what Livy had and telling us they could answer questions later, they needed to give her medicine as her labs were indicating she is very, very sick. We had no idea what to ask besides what the risks of giving her the meds and the possibility of the diagnosing being wrong. Luckily the med "kinaret/anakinnra" is a protein based med and has little to no risk, so we gave them the go ahead to give it to her. The next few days were a nightmare, they were needing to do multiple tests/procedures to rule out different immunology disorders, leukemia, lymphoma, and a number of other things. There were so many different specialists involved in hopes to get to the bottom of what was going on inside Livy's 15 pound body. One of the hardest days was when they had to put her under anaesthesia to do a bone marrow biopsy to determine which form of HLH syndrome she may have and if it was cancerous or not.
There is a primary and secondary form of HLH syndrome that we unfortunately are still waiting for results on. After multiple blood transfusions, plasma/platelet transfusions, IVIG (immune booster) and continuous IV meds we've been told she will not be able to receive vaccines for the next 11 months. In my mind that's a whole year, we have plans to travel for the holidays, will she be healthy by her 1st Christmas, Birthday etc? We've been told there is a chance it could come back negative which would be great, but that would mean we are back to the drawing board on her diagnosis. It also is possible that she came into contact with an infection/virus that wiped her out as she got her 4 month vaccines a week prior to this episode. There is so much up in the air, so many unknowns and so many questions unanswered as we wait. On Halloween her labs started to trend in the right direction without any change in meds, which was great, kinda spooky, but we were so happy. After 3 good days we were able to discuss discharge and going home on shots and oral meds. I practiced and became even more educated on the meds she's on as we wait for results. I take her in weekly for her blood to be drawn and we discuss results and make a plan accordingly. Recently they started to wean her from the meds thinking she was ready for it, then her labs worsened. With that being said we are even more anxious for the results to come back to be able to treat her accordingly.
Thankfully throughout 24 days of being admitted our amazing family and friends helped with Meli and our home to make it as easy as possible on all of us. Meli spent multiple days with her god parents Tara and Jairo and then our amazing family. Our neighbor friends (Havil Family) helped out throughout the school week! The Frame's helped with yard work so Oliver could focus on going to see us after work each day. We had multiple friends that brought us dinner too and we couldn't be more grateful! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone for all the thoughts, prayers and help through this tough time.
With all this our future has changed, we will forever be scared to miss a sign that Alivia needs medical attention, therefore I feel the need to align my goals professionally according to her needs at this time. I have went back and forth on the options as there are many for stay at home mothers. I am excited to announce that the next few months I will be learning all about photography and its endless possibilities. I love helping people, so doing something at home but still having human interaction and instant self gratitude of helping people is very important to me. I have always enjoyed taking recreational photos of our family, friends and as we travel, just never thought I'd have time to just focus on learning more about it. Little did I know, that NOW IS THE TIME! I am so so so excited! It's the perfect time of the year to take lots and lots of pictures and practice away!
Stay tuned for updates on Little Livy as well as the progress of CeeCee Photography.
xoxo,
CeeCee
(CC-Cassandra Colin)
Isn’t this cool, and such a good outlet for you!! As I continue to keep you and your family in my thoughts and prayers...I’m also so very proud of you as you start your new adventure!! You’ll be great—Congrats mama!!
ReplyDeleteP.s.I’m glad you decided to keep that as your photography name—love it, it’s perfect!!
Thank you so much Sara! It means a lot to me to have your support and have you as a friend! I absolutely LOVE the name too and am SO SO SO excited for all of this!
ReplyDelete