About last night... thank you.

First of all, I want to be totally honest about something. While I thought all of the suggestions I got sounded great in theory, I didn't think there was any way anything was going to work for Zofia and me. I honestly thought this was something that I just had to deal with until she grew out of it. With that said...

Around 9 o' clock I was nursing Zofia in her room, she was dozing, and I was praying to dear God above that we weren't going to have a repeat of the night before. As she started to drift off further and released her latch, I gently put her down in her bed.

SCREAM. FLAIL. ROLL.

Oh no... and I fell right back into it. I picked her up and started nursing again. Why? Because it was soooo successful the night before? Sigh.

She drifted back off again and I gently put her down.

SCREAM. FLAIL. ROLL.

And here's where my brain intervened. It said, "You know what? You got a lot of advice that YOU ASKED FOR yesterday. Aren't you even going to try?"

So I did. I didn't pick her up and nurse. I just gently rubbed her back and let her know I was still there. After about 2 minutes I started to cry a little too because I thought that there was no way I wasn't going to be doing this all night. There was no way just rubbing her back was going to work and I was never going to sleep again. Then after minute 3 SHE.FELL.ASLEEP. I did it and it worked.

Now this isn't to say that the night was perfect. I had to do this a couple more times and I slept for a little while on the floor next to her bed where she could see me, but I did it. It would seem so minor to some, but I got over a HUGE hurdle for myself. I am so grateful for the advice and support I received yesterday, I just can't even put it into words. It made me think of my poor mother when I was born. When she had me, she lived north of Detroit with my biological dad and no friends or family around. After she brought me home, my dad decided it was too much to deal with and took off for Florida, leaving her utterly and completely alone. I was a screamer, colicky to the max, and got croup twice when I was an infant. I was the first baby she had ever been around and she was terrified. I wish so much I could go back in time and beat Al Gore to inventing the internets for her so she could have mommies like you guys to talk to and make things all better for her. How people go it alone, I'll never know.

It takes a village, right?

The tumor has left my head.

I believe I'm just going to use the email I sent to Ky over at TwoPretzels to update everyone. It's quite informative, no?

I went to the doctor and had the freaky lump on my forehead checked out and the surgeon determined it was a lipoma.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A lipoma is a benign tumor composed of fatty tissue. It is the most common form of soft tissue tumor.[1] Lipomas are soft to the touch, usually movable, and are generally painless. Many lipomas are small (under one centimeter diameter) but can enlarge to sizes greater than six centimeters. Lipomas are commonly found in adults from 40 to 60 years of age, but can also be found in children. Some sources claim that malignant transformation can occur,[2] while others say that this has yet to be convincingly documented.[3]

She scheduled me for surgery. I had myself completely convinced that once they got me open, they were going to find something much worse. Cue unbearable anxiety.

After a stupidass 13 hour fast I went in for surgery at the UT Medical Center, so this means there were students watching. I'd also like to add that I had this surgery with no anesthesia, only a shot of Lidocaine. I'm a freakin' badass. Anywho, it went like this:

Surgeon digging around in my forehead: "Huh, I keep waiting for the lipoma to pop up, but I'm not seeing it.

In my head: you can't find a lipoma because I clearly have a cancerous tumor looming in there and THAT'S what you're going to find.

Surgeon: "Oh, huh. This is unusual."

Shit.

She beckons the students to look. "Well these are rare. It's a Hemangeoma."

SHIT! Anything ending in "oma" is never good. I knew it.

"Yes. Yes. It's very rare to find a vascular tumor like this."

ZOMG! It's a tumor. It's a tumor. It's a vascular tumor. I have a tumor in my head veins.

"I'm so sorry. This is going to be a lot more involved and longer than I was anticipating."

I'm going to vomit. I'm going to have to have chemo and I'm going to vomit.

Me finally able to speak: "I'm going to throw up. I'm going to throw up now."

Surgeon: "Oh gosh we'll have to turn you. You'll be OK."

Me: "I'm gonna throw up. Oh my gosh. How serious is this???"

Surgeon: "Oh gosh! You're fine! This is no big deal! It's benign. We'll get it all taken out right now. The only thing is it'll just be a few minutes longer."

DAMN! Say that shit to begin with, lady!!
THANK YOU JESUS AND GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So after it was taken out, she showed the big ol' weird thing to me and sent me off to recovery. Since I didn't have any sedation I could stroll right out. I left with my mom, went and checked out a sweet van that I want, and went home. My mother in law brought my ladies home to me and surprised me with the Christmas tree I wanted.

The freaking end! Holla!

OH MY GOSH

Alex Day (above) heard Robert Lemire's cries of distress and arrived in time to help him catch toddler Caliah Clark.

(Globe Staff Photo / Jonathan Wiggs)

Catch of a lifetime

"Neither might have seen the heart-stopping sight of a girl in a diaper and T-shirt dangling from an apartment window three stories above the ground, and they might not have been waiting to catch her when she finally fell.
Eighteen-month-old Caliah Clark survived a 30-foot plummet Sunday night and probably owes her life to the two men who ran to the spot below the window and caught her, one by the legs, another above the waist, and brought her, unhurt, back to her father in the apartment upstairs."

Now THIS is good news!!!!!

I know it was too hard for some of you to read this before, but guess what????

SHE'S GOING HOME SOON!!!!!!

Her surgeries went awesome, her tubes are coming out of her nose, she's gained a ton of weight, and she just turned 8 months old. She wasn't supposed to make it past the 20th week of pregnancy!!!!

She was even on my girl Robin Meade's show the other morning! They are getting so much press, and thank God, because they need it. She has to have around the clock care and their house is in foreclosure. People all over are doing fundraisers for them, so I totally have faith that they will be OK. I mean, who cares?? SHE'S GOING HOME!!!!!! Praise GOD!!!!

Words Cannot Express How Happy I Am!

I have nothing more important to say than what Two Pretzels has to say:


"I've been waiting to write this post for more than two years."

Good News of the Day!

So I finally went and had my CAT scan done and I was TERRIFIED to say the least. I've had this bump on my head that I've tried to ignore. It got fairly large while I was pregnant, but I still tried to ignore it. Then other people started noticing it and I had to accept the fact that it was there and it was growing. The 2 days of waiting for the results were excruciating and then when I called the surgeon's office his nurse didn't have it because he likes to take things with him and he was in the middle of surgery. I screamed into the phone "WELL I'D LIKE TO KNOW IF I HAVE A HUGE CANCEROUS TUMOR ON MY FOREHEAD, OK????" She must have felt bad for me because she managed to catch him for 20 seconds in the hallway and called me back about 15 minutes later with the FABULOUS new!!! Neither the radiologist or he feel that it is cancerous and he's going to remove it ASAP. While I'm not totally jazzed about the idea of head surgery, I'm jazzed that it's not cancer.

Phew.