I Can Finally Breathe Again
Have you ever had a moment where you realize you've been holding your breath for a long time?
A moment where you finally take a deep breath and realize things are ok? This is exactly how I felt this month, let me tell you why.My family and I are coming out of a rough season. Our youngest has been dealing with febrile seizures and it's caused us to put a lot of things on hold. It was something we needed to do.If he got sick, we would cancel all of our plans and simply stay home.If he got sick, my husband and I knew we were in for a long night of waking up every 3 hours to give him Motrin.If he got sick, we had to check his temperature every 30 minutes to make sure he wasn't spiking a fever.It became our routine. We knew what we needed to do and the moment he got sick, we'd go on autopilot. It went on like this for the last year. I didn't even realize how exhausted I was until earlier this month.We went into my son's neurologist and she said she wanted to get more tests done. She wanted to see if he was indeed dealing with febrile seizures or if it was something more. Waiting for those results were the longest few days in my life. The morning finally came and we went in to hear the results.She walked into the room and told us everything came back normal and it was indeed febrile seizures. This was the answer we were hoping and praying for because it means he'll grow out of them!
In that moment, I let out a deep breath.
What I didn't realize was that I'd been holding my breath for months. I was so scared to actually let myself breath. I didn't know when the next seizure would come... I didn't know when I would finally hit my breaking point...This year has been hard on our family, but we didn't let it ruin our year. When Luke was sick, we'd stay have to stay home all day, and we'd turn it into an adventure. We'd turn our living room upside down and we'd build the biggest fort we could.When Luke would have to stay at the hospital, family and friends would come and make sure the other kids had a little mini vacation.
Life happens.
Things don't always go as planned and that's ok. This year was incredibly stressful. No one wants to see their baby go through something they can't stop. No one wants to see that look on their baby's face post-seizure and know how scared they are.The reality is we could have taken everything that we experienced this year and let it ruin us or we could take it and grow as a family. We chose to grow. We chose to teach our kids how to respond to life when it gets hard.We learned how to depend on each other as a family. We learned how to make the best of an awful situation. We learned how to laugh even when all you want to do is cry.Now, we've learned to celebrate as a family.