dallin July 27th, 2009

I’m going to tell you the story of our last week. We didn’t tell many people about it as it was going on, because we didn’t want people to worry (there was never anything to worry about). So don’t feel like we don’t like you just because you didn’t know that all of this stuff was going on – not many people knew at all! To tell the story properly though, I’m going to have to go back nearly three weeks, when it really started.

On Saturday July 4th Kathryn’s heart woke her up at about 6:00am. It was beating very strongly, very quickly and had a very erratic beating pattern. It was pretty odd. But she felt fine (just a bit freaked out) and we’d both heard that funny heart beats and other heart oddities are quite common in pregnancy. So we weren’t overly worried about it. And I was tired, so I went back to sleep. Kathryn stayed up for a bit, and looked up some information on the internet.

By the time I had to leave at about 8:00, her heart was still going about the same. I gave her a blessing before I left, and she tried to go back to sleep. By the time she got up for work (it was her last day!) at about 9:00, she felt fine, and as far as she could tell, her heart was beating normally. We planned to page Amy, our midwife, sometime during the week to let her know and check that everything was ok, but we both forgot about it.

Fast forward to this last Monday morning. At about 4:00, Kathryn woke up hungry. I think she got some food, and came back to bed just before 5:00, and went back to sleep. Then at 6:00 her heart woke her up again. At first it was beating very hard and fast, and then after a few minutes it switched to the irregular beat, similar to the last time. Again, we weren’t especially worried, but we decided to call the hospital, just in case. They were also not worried, but recommended we come in and get it checked out, just in case. Both of us fully expecting to be home within 2 or 3 hours, we didn’t shower or have breakfast, we just went straight in to the Women’s and Children’s. It was 6:30 when we parked the car.

4:50 AM

They did an ECG and kept her heart rate and the baby’s heart rate and movements monitored. The baby was very happy, and Kathryn felt fine, she just had a very odd heart beat. She was beating faster than the baby, which is very odd indeed (Baby’s heart rate is about 150bpm. Kathryn was about 180 when we first got there). The doctor came and took some blood, and we just sat in the room, with the instruments beeping. Every so often we had to reset the alarm that would go off, because her heart-rate was too fast. They wanted to keep her monitored until the heart rate returned to normal.

This is going to be a bit long, so click the continue link to get the rest!

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dallin July 5th, 2009

I have always enjoyed taking photos, but I have never done very much of it. For a long time, the biggest problem was probably the waste of film and money associated with developing it. Because so few photos could betaken on a roll of film, and developing a roll of film was so expensive, I was always very reluctant to take a photo.

Thankfully I live in the era of the digital revoultion, and it’s fantastic! Since I got my first digital camera (about 2001), I have had more freedom to take photos, and attract less criticism from my older, female sibling. For Christmas 18 months ago, mum got me a new digital camera, an Olympus u830. I’ve been really impressed with it – it’s not a proffessional unit, but for a point and shoot it does a great job.

Recently, Kathryn has begun a ‘Photo-a-day’ project – taking a photo of something every day, and recording some brief journalling about the event. This has led to taking photos of some more random and odd events. It has also led to taking more photos in general. A lot more. So with all of that disclaimer and introduction, I want to share a few photos that I have taken over the last few months. I won’t commit to posting photos regularly (clearly I’m not good at updating our blog), but I’m going to try!

A ladybug on the front wall at home

The RAA came to look at Kathryn’s car on this day, and while I was out the front, I noticed a whole heap of lady bugs on the front wall. I took a few pictures of them, but I think this was my favourite one. These lady bugs were all quite orange, rather than the more traditional red. It was pretty cool though. And then that afternoon, we heard the school kids out there finding and looking for them.

The Adelaide Temple

This is a picture of the Temple on the day that Tracey and Jonathan were married (May16th). It rained a bit through the day, but there was some blue sky in the morning, allowing for some lovely Temple shots like this one. I love the Temple, and I love photos of the Temple, and this is one of my new favourites.

If anyone is interested in full-sized copies of any of these or other photos, I’d be glad to e-mail them to you.

*Edit* – I’ve just added a simple way for me to add new photos to the random banner up the top, so you should hopefully see some new pictures in there if you refresh a few times, too!

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