The mom sigh

Sometimes you just have to cut yourself a little slack. Tonight we went to put Jillian to bed and realized her acid reflux meds were still at grandma and grandpa's from earlier today. They have to be kept refrigerated and are still sitting cold, exactly in the place they were left.
Today was kinda a crazy day in southern Wisconsin. A tornado watch was put into affect early in the day. By 10:00 the sirens were going off. As we watched the news in my parent's basement in our church clothes, we imagined what it was looking like at our house. We watched the Milwaukee news zoom in on the middle of nowhere Bloomfield and show the radar of the road we live on and say that we were going to be hit the hardest in the area. All we could do was sit, a half hour away and wait. We waited until the storm let up this afternoon and headed home, not sure what we were going to. We got home to nothing wrong. No damage, no power outage, nothing. Our home is perfectly fine.
However, when we left we were not sure of this so our minds were a little bit elsewhere, and we made a mistake and forgot her meds. Mistakes happen. At first in my head I wanted to blame everyone else, however I am just as much to blame, if not more for forgetting them and not double checking and blaming someone else just makes me mad at them and what does that help?
I'm not so mad about forgetting the meds, it is the affect of forgetting the meds. There is the inconvenience of  driving into town tomorrow after work. But more then that is the fact that it will hurt Jilli. We have seen what the lack of meds does to her. We know when we forget a dose that she hurts. I feel awful that my thoughtlessness would cause her pain.  Ouch, that stings, but there is nothing I can do now. I could sit up and worry all night, however that would just make it hard to get anything done tomorrow. I could drive into Kenosha now but it is almost 10:30 now and I would probably crash from driving while tired and we just put new tires on Brent's car today after his car accident this week. I could... I could... I could... I will try to let this go. Give it an opportunity to show us how the meds work for her and pray there is not too much pain in missing just two doses of a med. We will change a few things about tomorrow to give her the best chance at a good day and the least amount of pain. We will make this work. We have to, because what else are we going to do?

Frankly, I am proud of myself today for handling this situation so well. Jillian started coughing badly again Friday night. Her cough sounded awful! It sounded like when she was hospitalized back in March. I have heard it said before that having a child with ongoing health issues can be a little bit like having PTSD. I never fully got that until Saturday morning. The sound of that cough brought me back to the hospital and all the wires and everything we were having to do to help her breathe. Honestly, when Brent and I heard that cough we mentally started figuring out our week around being in the hospital. It scared us.
Today her cough has changed. It is still unproductive but not as scary sounding. We have given her a few nebs because she has been having a little trouble breathing, but today has been better. When the sirens went off this morning we were debating if we were going to take her to church and had just decided I would stay at mom and dad's with her to give her time to fight this. She had been rather crabby at times the past two days but the next moment she is giggling and smiling, because she is such a happy person that it just has to flow out of her.

The past week or so I have been really struggling with the thought of "are we doing all the right things for her?" We always want to do what is best for her and I ask myself frequently if what we are doing at any given time is the best thing with the information we have right now. Most of the time I am pretty secure in that, other times I find myself needing proof. Jillian and God always give us the proof... and typically then we are wishing we were not looking for it. She shows us her tummy can't handle food by puking her tiny bottle. She will throw her head back in pain hours after she will eat, even on meds. She will burp at you randomly when she had had nothing to eat in almost a day. She really does need all of this, sometimes I think I just see other kids and think that she can't be that different, and then she shows me her stuff, and I am reminded that God has shown us exactly what we need to be doing to help her.
 I think part of this right now it that we see GI again soon and we have heard for months that the game changes once she turns one. How it changes, I am not sure. What I know though is that we still need to do what is best. I would go crazy if I spent all my time thinking about the possibilities of things that we could do for her. Most days I need to just trust that God has brought us to the correct decisions and given us the answers we need to know. So we see what the future holds. He is still granting me that amazing peace that I don't need to beg Him to take it all away or feel sorry in all of this. He is still my calm in the storm, even when I doubt myself about choices in the this journey. (See I told you in that last post that I am not great at giving Him everything I need too...)