Some Summer Highlights

Brandi Fenton Park Splash Pad Before Cameron started school.

Trip to Reno and Tahoe

Trip to Pinetop for the 4th of July with all of the cousins.

Janae's baby shower in May. She had her baby the very next day. Perfect timing.

Callie's Ballet

Trip to California and Disney Land

I guess it is a little odd that I am posting all of these at once. I never even finished the April post(all pictures and no words.) We did do some very fun things this summer that need to be reported. I did not have an internet connection in Phoenix to keep my posts updated. So I will combine the fun we had in May, June, July and August into one post, or I may never catch up.

Mermaid Who Swims

Callie is obsessed with mermaids. She was a mermaid for Halloween last year, she loves Ariel, the "selfish mermaids" from Peter Pan and Tinkerbell books, and others she has seen along the way. Yet, even with the motivation for being like a mermaid, she had yet to learn how to swim. She has taken summer lessons for 2 years, and no teacher would push through her negotiating and cries of fear. I think she has a keen sense of danger and the possibilities of danger and this, along with her persuasive language, has limited her. She definitely has plenty of ability. Lets face it, I have never needed to carry band-aids with me because she has never had a skinned knee. Avery may be a different story. Well, Callie is now an official mermaid, but "not a selfish one." This summer, while living in Phoenix, I was able to get Callie enrolled in the last session of swimming with her cousins Gage and Bella. Their teacher Allison was excellent. Instead of trying to convince Callie it was a good idea to swim with her face in the water, she would say in a sweet voice, "We swim with our eyes in the water," and then gently grab her and make her do it the right way. The result was amazing. After eight 1 hour lessons, Callie is a swimmer. In fact, so much of a swimmer it is hard to get her out of a pool. She can dive, do the crawl, and breast stroke (which she calls "the mermaid"). She still is a little sketchy with her breath-taking, but I do feel confident she would make it to the side if she fell in. I am so proud of her and relieved. There is not anything better to do in the heat of Arizona than swim.

Hidden Blessings

This might be a lot of information, so you don't have to read it, and it could gross you out. The only reason I would post this to my blog is I figure the only people reading it are my good friends who already know most of the information I am going to share. If you are a good friend and I have not told you yet, don't feel bad, it is a crazy story and I don't like to repeat it. I will try to explain with the best spelling I can manage, in light of my limited understanding of the medical terms. We announced to our family on Father's Day that we were expecting a baby January 6th. That very week my Dr. decided I was measuring a little big and wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure we had the dates right. From there all the drama began. The ultrasound showed that the baby had these very large looking sacks of fluid behind the head and spine called Cystic Hygromas. Cystic Hygromas usually means that the baby has one of a number of abnormalities, like Down Syndrome, Turner Syndrome, etc.

So we decided to have a genetic test done to see what it was. We found out that the baby was male, but had an even worse diagnosis than we knew possible. Our baby had what is called Triploidy. He was made with one egg and two sperm. So he had three complete sets of chromosomes. What this ultimately meant was that he had a body that was not viable for life. Most babies with Triploidy do not survive the pregnancy, and the longest anyone has lived with Triploidy was 5 months. It is very, very rare, and not likely to happen again to us. The doctors said there was no risk to my health, so we just had to wait knowing the end was not a happy one. I had a lot of mixed feelings about knowing all this ahead of time, and not knowing what to expect. I was a little depressed and had a lot of anxiety. I worried that he was suffering and would suffer a long time in a crippled body. In hind sight, I realize now that knowing all this informaion early enabled me to do all of my mourning for the baby before it all happened, so it was a blessing. I was also very sick, even more than previous pregnancies. So much of my summer was spent on the sofa, while my kids watched TV and Cameron worked. Well, the pregnancy progressed to about 17 weeks. On the 23rd of July, I had a full scan of the baby. He was starting to show signs of more deformities and his heart was slowing down. That night, we went to the emergency room because I was having chest pain. The hospital did the normal tests on a pregnant woman and did an ultrasound, and the baby's heart was still beating. They determined that my blood levels were close to being abnormal and my blood pressure (which is normally extremely low) was extremely high. They did not worry about the odd blood levels because it was unheard of to have Preeclampsia before 20 weeks in pregnancy. The chest pain they thought might be an ulcer so they sent me home and said take some tums. So Friday the 24th I was still having chest pain and convinced Cameron that I needed to go back and stay until they figured out what the chest pain really was. This time my blood levels were very off. I had a preeclampic syndrome called HELLP, which is unheard of before 20 weeks in pregnancy. This syndrome causes your liver to shut down and then other organs follow suit. They also ordered another ultrasound, and we found out that the baby's heart was not beating, resulting in a huge relief in my mind since he would not be physically suffering anymore. Also, this was a huge blessing because my symptoms were so dangerous that the only way to make me better was to deliver the baby. I am so glad for the timing of this all. I was never faced with choosing my life over his. The ultrasound also showed that I had Placenta Previa, which is dangerous for mom and baby. Because my platelet count was low due to having HELLP, there was a danger that I would bleed a lot from the Placentia Previa when they delivered the baby. They preformed an emergency DNC on July 24th. The procedure was to only be about 30 minutes. After an hour and 15 minutes, Cameron was getting worried. Eventually, the doctor came out and told him that I was doing well but had lost a lot of blood. They were going to do two blood transfusions, and the doctor suggested Cameron should go home and come back tomorrow. Well, after two more transfusions, four total, I was almost 100% normal, but they still needed to figure out my chest pain. The chest pain was part of the blood levels being off, which caused these things called plural effusions on my lungs. They are like sacks of fluid on the tissue surrounding my lungs. The doctors resolved that problem with medication. Wednesday, the last day in the hospital, the doctor reported the pathology results. This is the weirdest of all the things that happened. The results indicated that I had a thing called a Partial Molar Pregnancy. It is caused from an egg that doesn't get fertilized correctly and a growth called a mole starts to form. It is like a cancer that can spread to other parts of your body. Anyway, they have to monitor me for 6 months to make sure it is all gone. I feel a little like I had an X-man in my womb. I wish it was better for him to have three sets of Genes to pick from so that he could choose the best of the 3, but that is not how it works. It really is a miracle to even have one healty "normal" child. All of these conditions were extremely rare. We have almost no chance of a repeat. Right now, I am so glad to be healthy, to have a wonderful husband, and two beautiful, healthy, and smart children. I can be content with that for now. I have been saying maybe a puppy would be nice. Cameron is not a fan of pets though. So we will see what is in our future. At least now we have to wait 6 months for either.

We did name the baby, unofficially. We call him Lliam Cameron LaDuke. We had a lot of love and support from our friends, family, and Tucson ward. A lot of people came to our aide especially the Berrys, Betina and Rob, and my mom, who stayed for a week to watch and care for the girls. We appreciate all the prayers and love we felt from family and friends. We know that those prayers were heard, and we were greatly blessed. Cameron's parents, along with some of their Indian friends, had been praying for a miracle, if that was possible, or God's will, hoping that the miracle would be that the baby would be normal and healthy. Later they decided the miracle was that I survived. I think there were a lot of miracles for our family through this experience. There were a lot of blessings that came from this experience that was the hardest trial in my short life. I have an increased love and appreciation for the children and husband I have. I am grateful to be home with my family and to be healthy and normal, to have energy, and not to feel sick anymore. I also have a better testimony of the atonement, the power of prayer, and the sealing power of the Temple. We are very grateful that this happened, and we look forward to meeting little Lliam. I feel lucky knowing he is a spirit who I will someday know and love in our family and that maybe he has some other important things to do now.

God be with you Lliam, till we meet again.

Sending Dorothy Home

If you are an actual reader of posts, not just a picture looker like me, you might remember that a year ago, in May, my Grandmother Dorothy Jean Goodman Henson passed away. She was 92 years old and had lived a very full and wonderful life. Well, this past May my Uncle Bob and Aunt Kitty arranged for us to do the temple work for Dorothy in the Mesa Temple. I had no idea that I would get to be the one who would get to go through all of the temple ordinances, from baptism to sealing, in one day for a woman I dearly loved and missed. It was an amazing experience. She was sealed to her parents and siblings, as well as my Grandfather Robert. I cannot describe the joy I felt all day knowing what blessings I was helping her to gain. I was also thinking a lot about my family and how these blessings will affect them directly. How grateful I am to have the temple and its sealing powers working in my family. I come from a lineage of amazing and good people, who have left me a heritage to be proud of. This is the day I will remember as a day when my heart was turned to them as I shared the temple blessings that have been discovered in my life.

Bowling a Strike

Those who know anything about my bowling ability could bet on the fact that the odds of me bowling over 50 are about 1:1 and the odds of me scoring over 100 are about 1:1000. Lets just say that the odds were suddenly in my favor the night Cohen Kennedy Dowd & Quigley hosted its annual party. The pressure was on, we were teamed up with Dan and Karen Dowd. I think I had the perfect ball, a nice 8 lbs. ball, smooth and florescent pink. The firm kept track of our scores on the first two sets to wage different events. My scores were surprising, with a 138 and then a 157. I really "Rocked the House." In a three way tie for the most strikes of the night I was center stage for the bowl off. First person to get a strike won the prize. No one wanted to go first, so I politely stepped up under the gaze of the entire office. With a lack of confidence, I sontered up to the ally and leered at the pins. I took my usual 2 1/2 steps and released the ball with power and ease. To my amazement, and with all eyes on me, the ball knocked every one of those pins down! Who could follow that? Well, my fellow competitors tried but did not meet the challenge. I was the the grand and happy winner of a $25 gift card to Starbucks.

The real credit to my success, I believe, was the little baby who was snug inside my belly, making my hormones just perfect for a bowling champ. Oddly, the other girl who was in the bowl off was also pregnant. Hmm, they should bottle that stuff.