it is with great sadness....

That I bring the news that my grand daughter Sabrina Jean Marie Herrera earned her wings on March 14th 2013. I am currently writing a book about our life with her and how things changed. This blog has been inactive for quite some time because of the many other things going on in our life. Her care and treatment for her disabilities consumed our lives and took us on a journey of love and heartache. I will come back here and share that with you as I can. 

an update of sorts.

things have not slowed down since I graduated college this past December. But I wanted to update this for anyone that is interested.

Sabrina is doing things a little slower than most but she is learning and doing well. Beth is trying to get the hang of being a mother of a special needs baby, but it is hard. Part of her still wants to remain the teenager and do all the things that normal teens her age do.

I sometimes wish she could, unfortunately she has a child that will probably always need her.

we are almost positive that Sabrina is blind and we know that she has serious issues with cerebral palsy not to mention all the other things that she struggles with daily.

I would not miss a minute of it though.

ok now for something cute to lighten the mood.

Sabrina cannot see and she is crosseyed thanks to inheriting my families lazy eye. So we talk to her and and she tries very hard to focus. and she gets this look on her face like she is concentrating . we always laugh because it is so cute, but the other day she started laughing back, well sort of . she has not found her voice yet, so it was like she was mocking us. we laughed even harder which made her smile even bigger.

she is a sweet baby. Beth is lucky to have her.

now about the actual teenager. beth has a love on anime and all things anime and all things japanese. She is crazy about it and has been for several years now. last summer when she was still pregnant with Sabrina she went to a convention for anime. It was really difficult trying to find a costume for someone that was pregnant. she ended up posing as ( oh geez I never remember the names of the characters) anyway the character had to be pregnant because she was. the photographer grouped her between two of the other male characters with their hands on her belly. I got a kick out of it and thought it was really funny. Her reaction omg I look so fat. her sisters reaction, ( imagine hands on hips) "ok which one of them is the daddy???" it was meant to be a joke.


on a side note Sabrina's father is still pretending she does not exist. he has caused a lot of turmoil in our family and his. part of me does not want his crazy around my child and her baby, and the other part of me wants him to grow a pair and care for this baby who has done nothing but allow us to love her.

It has been a while

Things have been crazy, since I last posted. My daughters pregnancy had difficulties. The baby had several intra uterine strokes. It was a big scary mess. Needless to say we took her out of school and she began the journey of having a high risk pregnancy. As we got closer to her due date the doctors gave us their best and worst scenario's for the baby. Worst scenario was that the baby would be born and not survive birth and their best was she would survive for a short period of time but would not live long.

she delivered her on sept 8th and the baby is not nearly 3 months old. She has a lot of medical problems but she is doing well and we have a lot of hope she will be alright. She is going to be very special. She has been diagnosed with several profound cerebral infarctions, mthfr, lipoprotein a deficiency, cerebal palsy, and hydrocephalus. more things may develop as she grows.

right now she is recovering from a shunt that she had placed in her brain. but appears to be doing well. once she has recovered and the therapist starts seeing her we are hoping she will be able to reach those next milestones.

ok she takes after her father.

I am not a whiny person in general, and as a mom of 3 kids very close to the same age and a full time college student. I never had time with them and life in general to whine when I was sick.

My husband on the other hand, can handle pain very well, unfortunately he does not handle sickness very well at all.

Her sickness is all day long and has been since she was around 4 weeks along from what we can tell.

So you have heard of people saying really strange things when they are sleeping, my child seems to do this when she is sick.

Our conversations are not really all that crazy, but she calls me in every time she needs to pray to the porcelain god and of course I go in. She will then begin her ranting about how she hates this, how she would never of had sex if she knew this would happen, she wishes the fathers balls would shrivel up and fall off. yes like I said very lovely conversations with my 17 yr old child as she whines to the toilet.

I feel bad for her because nausia is awful and the actual act of getting sick is bad as well. she spends hours huddled in the bathroom, so much so that she now takes her blanket and pillow and a glass of water in with her. At least she can prepare for the long hours in there. When I was pregnant with her, I had a type of sickness for the whole nine months that gave me no nausia warning, I would be in the middle of a sentence or driving down the road and then have spontaneous projectile vomiting would happen.

being sick all the time makes her tired. so she is always sleepy, and with sleepy always comes grumpy, whiny and several of the other dwarves from snow white. She wants to be the queen though, bring me a herbal tea, or a sandwhich, I am cold find my sweater. I need this or I need that etc... yes my child thinks she is royalty.

we feel her belly on a daily basis though and I take pictures of the belly every week, so that we can watch her progress. I am excited more and more about this baby. I kind of wish her pregnancy was easier for her, but I think if pregnancy was easier, then being pregnant would be a lot cooler than it is already.

we all have a feeling that the bean as we call the baby, is a girl. my step mother going so far as buying two very cute onesies already, a cute purple one and a little green striped one. both are girl onesies. She has decided on a name for a girl. she is naming her after her friend that was murdered last year and also a family name that has been passed down through the generations. If this child is a boy though, it is going to be a fight. she only has a half a name that we all can agree on. I still say you should pick out several names and then when the baby is born look at them and decide which name fits the best. I wish I had done that.

anyway, that is all the story I am going to involve today, as we just returned from vacation and I have a source presentation to write and a double test to prepare for.

hope everyone is doing well and I will write all about our lovely vacation and the next doctors appointment she goes too soon.

hugs and well wishes.
a mom of a pregnant teenager.

the story of how we found out.

The day my daughter first came to us, with her then boyfriend fearing she was pregnant was intense and scary I imagine for her, but my way of handling things is to get the important stuff out of the way and then make fun of the whole thing .

So I awoke at roughly 6 am and went to make sure all my daughters were awake and preparing for school. only to find that my oldest was not in her bed, in fact she was not even in the apartment. ( ok so I won't lie a part of my heart panicked).

I am not one to sit idle so I paced for about 30 minutes, while my husband went and searched the complex. When he came in and said she was not in there I decided to go against one of my own rules and look through her notes and journals. I hated it when my parents invaded my privacy but this was one of the times when I felt justified to do so.

I stumbled across a note that said she thought she was pregnant and needed to go and buy a test. I shook I won't laugh that away. I tried telling myself that my baby would not do that to me. ( ahem notice the name of this blog now )

at 7 am she came into the house and told us that she walked to the corner store, in a small town I probably would have not had a problem with it, but we live in a big city and well this is a huge no no. but she was home and safe.

My husband and I decided while we were waiting on her that we would be having a nice long talk with her and her boyfriend this evening.

So after a long grueling day at college for myself and school for her we met in the privacy of our bedroom ( if you can call it privacy with a 15 and 12 yr olds standing outside the door attempting to hear every word).

the boy sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, beads of sweat forming on his brow, damn right he should sweat..... and our daughter sitting on the floor. ( I should have seen a problem already by simply seeing his seating arrangement but I digress)

we told them to spill the beans and my daughter sat tightlipped not responding and he looked at us and said that he and beth had been dating and that he may have unintentionally gotten her pregnant. Ok so being the big meany I am, I laugh and got blunt, did you have sex with my child I asked and he nodded, and I told him, "I do not know about anyone else but sticking your dick into someone is pretty intentional, I mean no one is a little pregnant."

My husband had gone to the store and picked up a few cheap pregnancy tests and she tested and they were all negative so we though wheew this scare is over...... ok so sometimes we are dumb or maybe it was just wishful thinking on our parts.

fast forward now to 3 weeks ago. I am at school, elbow deep in clay ( I am a ceramic artist)and i get a text from my oldest. it is nearing time for dinner so I am assuming it is the standard whats for dinner text and a picture pops up. a picture of a positive pregnancy test with the words I took this at school today. okkkkkkk so I clean up my station, wash my tools and clean up myself a little. Then I go outside and call my husband to find out if he knew what was going on. yep he knew and so I hightailed it home for yet another night of talking.

Now in between the negative testing and the positive testing days my daughter had broken up with her then boyfriend because of his rules.

I know this is short and not funny but this is the beginning so I think it needed to be included. I will do some sick days and some sibling rivalry posts in the next few days that should have everyone in fits of giggles to make up for it.

our first visit to the obgyn yay fun

Kids are funny creatures. At first I thought it was just my children who were goofy and that they would eventually grow out of it and into some awkward stage, but that has not happened so far.
I have 3 beautiful daughters. When they were younger I watched them grow and could tell you a hundred funny stories about their antics or views on things but a more recent one is one that I feel the need to share. For those with older teenager daughters this may help you discuss things with them that I somehow forgot.

My oldest is nearly 17 and pregnant. Let's just get that bit of information out of the way.
Now being that prior to the pregnancy my daughter was a virgin this adventure is all about her first visit to the obgyn. We discussed her body, sex, contraception and where babies came from. It was a not a one time discussion it was one that we had several times. So it was indeed a shock to me when I recieved the wonderful news of her pregnancy via text and picture message. ( yes really a freaking text) After a long discussion and allowed her to make some very important decisions. Then I did what all good mothers would do, I made an appointment with obgyn.

This is where a sense of humor over the situation should and did come in. She is whiny and sick and had already thrown up her breakfast on the morning, of her appointment so to say she is in a bad mood would be mild.

So we arrive at the doctors office and after some paperwork they call her to the dest and ask her to pee in a cup. she of course pouts and says," I don't need to pee, I am hungry and I want food now". The nurse tells her she can eat later and that she needs to pee in a cup and that there is water she can drink in the back. my lovely mild mannered daughter who is now crazy with pregnancy hormones flops ino the seat next to me and informs everyone in the waiting room that she does not need to pee, she is hungry and wants food now.

we gets called back for her to get weighed and checked in before going into the room to see the doctor. The nurse tells her again to pee in the cup and well you can guess what she says by this time. She asks the nurse does she need to take her shoes off to be weighed and the nurst tells her it does not matter. She then kicks off her shoes and gives out a snotty fine. I am rolling my eyes enough at this point that I fewar they will get stuck in my head this way. She finally pees in the cup and the nurse walks us back to the room and instructs my daughter to undress from the waist down. She looks at the nurse like she is from Mars and with an obvious nervous gulp asks in a shaky tone, "naked?" then asks if she is supposed to just sit on the table half naked. I laugh and tell her i am pretty sure that is what the sheet is for.

She undresses and sits and a moment or two later the doctor comes in. Now the next part has to go piece by piece so you laugh like I tried to hide doing, being that the naked and sheet thing that I already did earned me a pout and offended whine from my 16 yr old.

The doctor takes her seat between my daughter's legs and instructs her to scoot down on the table. My daughter moves a half an inch. The doctor tells her to move down a lot more. She shakily moves another half of an inch. After a coupld more times of this the doctor gently takes my daughters legs and pulls her to the end of the exam table.

So here my daughter sits wit behind hanging off the end of the table, feet in stirrups and knees practically fused together. After telling her that it is a little later for that now and the doctor has to stifle a giggle as she tries to pry her knees apart.
Once that is done, the doctor opens the drawer under my daughter and begins to get a speculum out. My normally sane child begins to writhe and moan ow ow ow like someone is killing her. the doctor informs her that she is not even touching her yet. she gives a little oh . Then the real uncomfortable part of the exam begins. The whining and ow-ing continues through the pelvic, rectal and vaginal ultrasound part of the exam.

When the exam is finally over, and the blood work is all done, we begin our way home. This is when my oldest imparts on me the knowledge and my obvious mistake in the sex and baby talk, " you know if you had told me that being pregnant was going to involve puking, being sick and not being able to control my emotions I would never have had sex." I wanted to smack myself in the head because I told her and her sisters, that having a baby is miracle and a wonderful when you are grown and ready for the responsibility of raising a child and that your life becomes about the baby, apparently I should also include that the many parts of the pregnancy, child birth, and raising them comes with bad parts too.

now the talk I had to have with her school, where they made me feel like a leper and treated her like a queen is a whole other story...