Its the story of how this little one ended up here ^
To set the scene I have to tell you about the night before....it was about 8 and Husband was just getting home from work. He was leaving at 1am on a flight to Nicaragua for
People Water to build their first well. So, so, so exciting to say the least. So he was packing up and all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. He resets it and it goes off immidiately again. We look closer and see that the little light that says CO2 is illuminated on the detector.
Hmmm....thats weird. He turns it off once more and it goes right back on-Im out the door with both babies at this point. To make a long story short, the whole fire department comes to the house. They check our blood for carbon monoxide and both Zuri and I have a tiny trace in our blood. Freaking scary. They do a once over in the house and cant find any trace of CO2 so they give us a green light to go back in. But Zuri was so scared (and I was too) so we went to the in-laws to sleep.
Dramatic already? Just wait.
Its 11 and Brons has to leave...I hate it soooo much. I felt sick about him leaving for 8 days... this time was worse though, and think this was my intuition kicking in...I knew I was going to have a rough time without him.
Now its 3 and I wake up with stabbing pains in my back...excruciating, dare I say, contraction-like pains. I cant go back to sleep til 6. So I go to the doctors the second I wake up to find out I have a kidney infection. If youve never had one, well, they hurt.
I go to pick up my prescriptions then head back to the Christensen's house where both my babies are. I walk right in to find Zuri by the front door...she ran up to me asking if she could be that pretty lady singer who sings about wolfs (shakira, shewolf), I told her yes, then remembered I left my prescriptions in the car, so I run out to get them and kind of clean up the car a bit.
When I walk back into the house I hear Zuri screaming bloody murder and see Tanner (bronsons youngest brother) holding her. I immidiately pick her up and am trying to figure out what happened and hear Tanner saying "I think she fell", then all of a sudden she starts gagging and throwing up right on me. Im moving her hair off her face so she doesnt throw up in it, when I feel the most horrible baseball bump ever. I took one look at it and knew something was so wrong.
I took her to the bathroom so she could throw up in the toilet and she was acting sooooo weird. I knew probably at that moment I was taking her to the hospital, but I took a picture of her head and sent it to my mom to get her opinion and the second my mom saw it she replied that she would meet me at the AF hospital.
These are the pictures I sent my mom
Right at this point, I had a moment of denial. I wanted to make up excuses not to go. To make it not seem as bad as it really was. I remember saying "but Remi is asleep" "zuri, are you ok" anything to make this horrible situation not seem so horrible... But that quickly passed, adrenaline kicked in and before I knew I had both kids in their car seats and was speeding down 1600 N.
Here's where things got truly terrifying.
I look back at Zuri in the car and she was losing consciousness, with vomit and drool just dripping from her face. She wasn't her. I knew something was so so so wrong and for a split second I thought she could die from this...it was soo awful. That only made things worse so I remember pushing it out of my mind. I was screaming at her to stay awake and I would momentarily get her attention, only for her to almost immediately fall back to sleep.
I honestly did not know what to do. I wasn't crying. I wasn't hysterical. It was like my senses were so fine tuned they couldn't do anything that wouldn't help our current situation. So I was driving going over 100 mph with my hazards on flashing my lights, just praying Zuri would be fine...At some point I reached behind the seat and just kept squeezing her leg to keep her awake and I felt her hand touch mine...I looked back and yelled at her to wake up and this time it startled her awake...she stayed awake the rest of the ride.
I got to the hospital in what seemed like a split second. And most amazingly, I had picked up Zuri and gotten Remi our of the car like they weighed nothing at all. Its normally so awkward and hard holding the heavy car seat with a the baby in it plus a huge diaper bad anywhere I go, and I remember realizing that I was running holding both kids and the diaper bag and I made myself stop and put Zuri down so I didn't trip and hurt her more. It was crazy.
Finally we are in the ER and my mom and Haidyn are there too. They examine Zuri and decided she needs a CT scan right away. It made them very nervous that she had no memory of what happened and no one saw it happen....and the fact that she was wanting to sleep and throw up meant she of course had gotten a concussion. They wanted to check if there was any bleeding in the brain or brain trauma so I gave them OK to do the scan.
They let me go in the room and hold Zuri's hand while she got the scan. She was sooo scared of the machine but she was trying to be so brave. She was biting her lip and grinding her teeth so she wouldn't cry and it broke it my heart. You have to hold perfectly still while they do the scan so every time she moved slightly they would come on over an intercom and tell me to hold her still, and that would scare her even more. So I started singing her the song we sing before bed each night and she was finally still enough to complete the scan.
During the whole time in the hospital Zu was just out of it...I don't know another way to describe it. She was really mellow, never cried, and was so brave. She never even complained. I'm so so proud to be that babies mom.
After 20 minutes they come back and tell us the bad news that she definitely has a skull fracture, but the good news was there was no bleeding or serious damage done. Thank the Lord. Seriously.
The best way they described it is like this....Think of a cracked egg that still in intact. No goo is coming out because the protective membrane behind the shell in still intact holding all the insides in. That egg is, obviously, more likely to break open compared to an egg with no crack, right? Well Zuris skull is the shell and, luckily, nothing is bleeding through. But, because Zuri has a cracked skull we have to be extra extra careful with her so nothing starts to bleed through. No jostling movement, no running or playing, and she can't go in a car for another 5 days minimum. The next 6 weeks she has to be really careful while her head heals.
During this whole ordeal I could not believe Bronson wasn't there...not just not there....But in an entirely different country where I didn't have a way to pick up a phone to tell him what happened. It felt so lonely. I put myself in his shoes and if our baby got that badly injured while I was away I don't know what I would do. I would go nuts. But I know I would have wanted to know right away.
So I wrote him an Email in the hopes that he would have Internet connection somewhere and check it, and miraculously about 4 minutes after i hit SEND I get a call from a Nicaraguan number....He had heard through his bothers girlfriend via facebook that something happened and called right away. Modern technology=amazing.
He was understandably shaken up and felt awful for not being there. He wanted to come home but that would have done nothing for anyone. It was so nice to kind of take the whole load off my shoulders and know that even though he's 1000's of miles away were dealing with this together....him on a surf board on the most beautiful beach in the world dealing, and me sick in bed, restraining zuri dealing...jerk. Ha ha.
All in all, all is well. Ive just aged 10 years and if that's all I have to complain about...that's good.
