What we've been getting up to!!

The past few weeks have been very busy for us we have been wanting to build some bunkbeds in the children's bedroom for so long but just never seem to find the time to do anything so the other week we set to it and decided to knock a wall down to make one of the bedrooms bigger so that we could fit them in that room. So Noel went to buy all the wood to build them from scratch it took us the weekend to knock the wall down and put another wall up so once that was done we cracked on with building them. I say we but i didn't really do anything, it was Chloe that helped her dad build them and it took all week with some very late nights involved and the mess was unbelievable! I really hated the house being upside down but the finished product was more than worth it. Here they are


and they absolutely love them! and guess what... they actually all sleep in there own beds now! well, sometimes Max will go and get in with Josh.

Casper is now 7 weeks and he's just started giving out smiles and they're the biggest smiles ever! I love seeing his little dimples when he smiles with his chubby cheeks. The last few weeks have been quite hard with him because he's had a bit of colic and been very unsettled in the evening but he seems to be coming out of it and he has been a bit more settled the past few days, he's still waking up at least twice during the night but I love our cuddles during the night. Oscar has started waking up during the night because he's been teething bless him he got his two front teeth at the same time and he did suffer with them. I think he's going to start walking very soon because he's started using his push along to walk with so he's getting more confident, I can't wait to see him take his first steps. Also this week I have decided I better get on with the christmas shopping as i haven't bought one present yet! I'm very unorganized this year but the children were sat doing there lists for Santa the other night and Ellie had finished hers and she said to me "mummy, is this OK? or is it too much money?" So I said well it is a little bit too much so she said "well I tell you what mummy you can get me these and Santa can get me these." I just love her thinking then that way she gets to have all the things she would like, smart little cookie. I love this time of year and I can't wait to get all the decorations out and put the tree up. Max said to me "mummy, we need to clean the fire out for Santa because he has to come down the chimney"  I cant wait to see there little faces on Christmas morning. I love our big family, Christmas is so special and makes us realise just how lucky we are to have what we have.

a little pic of casper at 7 weeks

Never taking things for granted

This time of year has brought back some memories that to be honest I would rather forget...
on the 5th december 2011 we had just finished bathing the younger children and were sat on the bed watching in the night garden with Tillie when I looked at her and thought something's not right, she was just staring into space and I had seen that look before when she had had a febrile convulsion just 4 months before when we had been in Lanzarote and had ended up in hospital with her so I knew what was happening and said to Noel oh god she's having a convulsion so I said to him  do I ring for an ambulance and in a split second i thought maybe she would be ok till I realised that she was barely breathing so i ran downstairs and grabbed the phone and rang 999. I did panic and was shouting down the phone for them to just hurry up, Tillie was lying on the floor in the hall and wasn't breathing so she was talking me through doing CPR. I have never been so scared in my life when all of a sudden the ambulance crew turned up so they took over and managed to get her what we thought was stable.
We got in the ambulance and the paramedic said to the first response  man that had got there first will you follow us and if I need to pull over then you can help which I can remember thinking oh god do they not think she's going to be ok? so we set off and I could see that she was being sick so I said to him oh no she's been sick so he quickly got the suction out and then realised that she was deteriorating so started with the oxygen. By this time we had got to the hospital so as soon as the doors opened there was so many people waiting for her and we got taken into resuscitation and I suddenly felt safe and that she was was going to be fine but I soon realised that she was very poorly and they had to start bagging her. I can remember standing there praying to God that she would be ok and please God don't let us lose her, I have never been so scared in my life! By this point they asked us to leave and go to the relatives room. I can remember thinking God i'm so guilty for taking everything for granted and just getting on with life and just muddling through and praying to God that if she pulled through that I would never take things for granted again! Me and Noel sat in that room for what seemed like a life time until the consultant came in to say that she was stable and at no time had her little heart stopped and that she was still fighting. They took her for a ct scan which didn't show anything. A further 3 hours passed and they had to find her a specialist hospital that was able to take her, we did get news that they had found her a bed at Sheffield that was about 3 hours away so thought she was going to have to go there until she came back an hour later and said that alder hey could take her so when they turned up they had to transfer the life support which took forever' and when we finally did get to see her before she got taken away she didn't even look like Tillie she had so many tubes anandddd things coming out of her and her face was so swollen I honestly thought we were going to lose her, i've never been so scared I can remember coming home to get a her things and mine and just breakiong down in my mums arms it was just awful. So we finally got to alder hey at 3.25 am and were greeted by the staff in intensive care she said to us I don't want you to be alarmed be all the wires and alarms, she's doing really well and has been stable all the way and they haven't had to stop once on the way but she still didn't look like our little girl she just looked all swollen. We stayed with her all night and that afternoon they said they were going to try and take her off the support which they did, gradually. I remember when she did come round I had hold of her and Noel was sat on the chair and she suddenly woke up and started waving at him i've never cried tears of joy so much ever! I will never forget that moment so long as I live. The next day we got told that she had RSV and a chest infection so they treated her for that and then we were told that she could be transferred to a children's ward that day because she was doing really well. That  night we had gone out for something to eat and me and Noel got a phone call telling us to get back to hospital straight away because she had deteriorated. When we got there they were taking x-rays of her chest because she wasn't behaving like a typical RSV baby and those tests weren't conclusive so she had to have her leg drilled and a line put into it as they couldn't get any access to her veins and they weren't sure whether that got infected so they took an x-ray of her leg which showed that it was swollen but didn't think that the raise levels of infection had come from that so they took her to theatre for a lumber puncture for meningitis, that came back normal so they then changed her medication and she continued to improve. She spent 10 days in hospital until she was finally allowed out on the 14th December but on the 20th December she returned to hospital because she couldn't walk on the leg they had drilled into and turned out she had an infection in her bone, only slightly but after antibiotics they decided it was fine and that she would walk again in her own time. 4 months later she was walking again and was back to her normal self after a long recovery so everyday we thank our lucky stars that we have what we have and can't believe how close we came to losing our little girl in a matter of seconds. Just makes you realise what you have and to never take life or what you have for granted. I've wrote this blog for Tillie so she can read it in a few years and realise how precious, special and what a fighter she is.