Luke's Health Journey - The Tip of the Iceberg

February 2022

Luke was born in February of 2022. He came out fast and fierce at 9 lbs. Thankfully, he gave us the least amount of grief in the hospital in that he wasn't jaundiced at all like his siblings before him. He did give us a little hiccup in that he wasn't able to be circumcised at the hospital due to a webbed penis. Not a problem, he just needed to see a pediatric urologist - that led to him being circumcised at 7 months because he was put under general anesthesia for it.

May 2022

At a couple months old, I noticed that, unlike other babies his age, he wasn't looking at things or tracking anything when he should have been at that point. He was still a chipper baby and easy to care for, but I made sure to bring it up to his pediatrician at his next appointment. Well, I did and they said that the office would send a referral to a pediatric ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, referrals from our doctor's office tend to take a long time to go through. I decided to take things into my own hands and find one on our own instead of waiting around. I started off with a Facetime call with my mom's cousin, Dave, who is a pediatric ophthalmologist. The call went great and as we suspected, he recommended that we take Luke in and have him seen. Just to be sure. There was a possibility that his eyes were just delayed in their development, but prevention is better than treatment. So began the search.

I looked up SO many ophthalmologists. I tried to find one that took our insurance so that we wouldn't have to pay for it, but sadly, next to no one takes Medicaid, and if they did, the time until the next appointment was further than we were comfortable with. I was trying to make the appointment in June and many offices weren’t available until September. So off the books we went. We went rogue haha. We ended up finding an office that could get him in at the end of June, so I made an appointment with her. 

When I made the appointment with her, they mentioned that Luke needed to either have already had an appointment with Neurology or have one on the books based on what I had told them about my concerns. They were worried that it could be a neurological issue because they were suspicious he may have strabismus (we later found out this was not what he has). 

End of June 2022

The appointment came and I was nervous. How in the world do you do an eye exam on a wiggly 6 month old? Anyways, we got to the appointment and in the initial room, they established that he did have some vision and his pupils did react to light, so that was a good sign. He didn't have total vision loss. They put the drops in his eyes to dilate them and we went and waited for them to dilate. It was quite funny seeing a baby with huge pupils, and he still looked as cute as ever. Finally, after about half hour, we were ready to meet with the doctor. She was lovely. She totally understood our concerns and was glad that we brought him in. 

Side note, if you didn't know, it is possible to check the vision of a baby - or anyone who is nonverbal for that matter. Instead of sitting in a chair with lenses and spouting off letters, the doctor simply holds up the lenses and shines a light to the back of the eye. The way that they know what their prescription is based on the way that the light reflects off of the retina (or something like that) I'm not a doctor, so don't quote me on that. I do know that it is similar to how flashes turn the pupil red on cameras. 

In the end, she established that his prescription was a +8.00. She established that his literal eyeballs are small and short - explaining his extreme farsightedness. She gave us some recommendations of opticians to see to order his glasses and what brand to get. The brand is the Tomato's brand. 

We ended up going and putting in the order for his glasses that day, which was a blessing, as the location was un
der renovation and in process of switching medical networks and had really weird hours and days they were open. About a week later, we picked up his glasses and oh goody, he is such a cutie in his glasses. Unfortunately he doesn't wear them very long, which we're slowly working on. 

Fast forward 3 months or so, and we went back to the eye doctor for his checkup and because of the multiplicity of his eye issues, she decided to to some genetic testing on him. Thankfully, this testing was free and it wasn't a burden at all. 

After a couple of weeks, we got the results back and they were a little surprising especially since we assumed that it would come back with nothing to report. Well, we were wrong. I will be writing a more in depth post about the testing and what the the results of that were.

Hospital Visit at Almost 36 Weeks Pregnant

Today was a bit of a whirlwind. I went to work, and the entire time I was at work, the little bean growing inside of me wasn't moving at all. Even when I was sitting down. Now, for some people, this isn't a big deal - but she had been moving SO much the last week or so. Like, I was constantly like "oh, there she goes again". So the fact that she wasn't moving at all was weird for the pattern of movement that we had been experiencing.

So fast forward to after dinner, about 6. I decided that since I hadn't felt her move all day, that it was pertinent to go to the hospital. So off we went to the Labor & Delivery Unit at Utah Valley Hospital (where I will be delivering). They got me all checked in and into a room. I go hooked up to 2 monitors. One was tracking the baby's heartbeat, and that was found quickly, which was a good relief and the other tracked any contractions that I was having. They also checked my blood pressure - that was just swell for me (it was a little high a couple weeks ago).

The monitor showed that the heartbeat was just where they wanted it to be. The one that showed contractions was so interesting to us. Turns out, I was having contractions fairly frequently. But I couldn't even feel them. There were a couple that I figured out I was having one and then I would feel something and my belly would tighten, but nothing that was really painful.

After being in the room for about half hour, the nurse had called the doctor and decided to check me to see if I was dilated at all. She checked and I was dilated to a 2 at 70% effacement. So, for being nearly 36 weeks, that was pretty average. But oh Jonathan's reaction was good. He was all "2! what does that mean? Are we having a baby today?" The nurse reassured him that unless something changed, that ladies can sit between a 2 and a 4 for weeks before going into labor. So I'm just fine.

Since I was contracting though - but PSA, the monitor I was hooked up to doesn't show intensity of contractions, and since these weren't painful, it wasn't a big issue - the doctor had them keep me there for another hour and check again to see if anything had changed. In that hour Jonathan decided that we needed to play hangman on the little whiteboard that was in the room. He picked cute phrases that I was able to figure out quite quickly haha but he got me with  "Crumpets and cheese", where he came up with that, I have no idea.

The nurse came back in and checked me again and said nothing had changed, so we were free to go home. That was a relief. So I put my own clothes on again and we headed out (we stopped at McDonald's on the way home, oops).

I'm so grateful for  my husband. He is the absolute sweetest and I don't know how I would have gotten through this pregnancy without him. I am also grateful for health insurance, and knowing that because I felt off, that I could go to the hospital just in case. I'm grateful for the nurses and their willingness to be reassuring and to answer the slew of questions that we had, because, heck, I've never had a baby before haha.

So hopefully this little #babyEL keeps cookin' for a couple more weeks at least because although we are so excited to meet her, we still have stuff to do to get ready for her arrival! But we are so blessed that we get to be her parents. It's becoming more real now that she could in theory come anytime between now and a month from now.

So there ya go.

Who are the Lindsay's?

As far as stories go, mine (Jasmine) and my husband's (Jonathan) is quite the story to tell. 

But first, some background. I'm from Utah. I've lived in 6 different states throughout my life, but we keep coming back to Utah, so that's where I hail from. Jonathan, on the other hand, is from North Carolina. He was born and raised there. 

So how did we meet? Well, the answer is both simple and complicated - Tinder. 

Now if you aren't sure that that is, it's a dating app that supplies those who see your profile with some information from Facebook and also a bio that you put in yourself. A picture pops up with their first name and age and upon first glance you have the option to either "swipe right" if you like them (based on their picture) or "swipe left" if you'd rather not have the chance of communicating with them. The good thing about it is that you'll never know if someone has seen you and reacted to you unless you both "swipe right" for yes. This is referred to as a "MATCH". When this match happens, then you can go into a messenger aspect and chat. If one of you says no, then no one is the wiser and you move on to other people. 

So back to our story - Jonathan was in Utah at the beginning of 2016 doing a work training. He, for the last 3 summers, went up to Ketchikan, Alaska and drove a tour bus in the summers, and at this time he as in Utah doing a work training. Now, he had lived in Utah and served a 2 year church mission in Ogden, and his brother lived here and he had gone to UVU for a semester. But really, he was taking some time off and so he really didn't have any reason to be in Utah. In any case, he decided to try Tinder out again since he wasn't really doing much outside of the training. At that same time,  I had been on Tinder again (albeit cautiously) and was going on a fair amount of dates and matching with quite a few people. We matched in February 7, 2016. Now, this may seem all good and swell, but what happened was that he messaged me, and our conversation started. He was sending my gifs of weird stuff (not creepy, just odd) and it made me laugh. Our conversation started out just chatty and was talked about all the basic stuff: "so hows's your day", "what do you like to do", "where are you from", easy stuff. (At the time, Tinder had a location thing and told you how far away people were from you, and by the time we started talking and I maybe wanted to go on a date with him he was 2000 miles away. We hadn't gotten to anything that might indicate that he wasn't living here. This confused me because I had a 20 mile radius on my account, so only people within 20 miles am I able to see). So once we achieved that he was nowhere near where I lived, that didn't stop us from chatting.

Through that whole week (the 7th was a Sunday), we chatted in every spare moment that I had. Now, I wasn't the best at checking Tinder, so sometimes there would be messages that I just straight up didn't see till later. But I liked talking to him, and the conversations were pleasant. We were talking about everything and nothing and I started to realize that we were pretty similar and vastly different at the same time, which is a good thing. By the end of the week I was quite sick (I had the flu) and the doctor ordered me to stay home so no one would get sick because of me. So essentially I had the whole weekend to chat to my hearts content. There was only one hiccup. He had a life too! So while I was laying in bed coughing my lungs out, he was out going to the gym and the day before Valentine's Day going to a Young Single Adults dance. But the conversation was ongoing and we had exchanged Snapchat info sometime that week (I remember getting some snaps from him, but I'm not sure when they started).

Cue Sunday, February 14, 2016. Personally, I wasn't a fan of chatting on Tinder forever and neither was he. So he gave me his phone number so I could just text him. And it took a few hours for me to get up the courage to actually text him (I was nervous, okay?). So we texted and I asked for his address so that I could send him a little Valentine's gift (I had made a ton, so it really wasn't that special).  After a few days of texting, he wanted to talk on the phone (I guess he kinda liked me or something haha). I was SUPER hesitant though. I'm not a fan of talking on the phone, and I especially am afraid of potentially long conversations that I may not be that into. So I held off (and looking back, it was kinda dumb but I had heard the horror stories, so I was being cautious). But alas, I cracked. On February [insert date here], we Face Timed. For three hours. We talked about everything. There weren't any pauses in the conversation, which surprised me a ton. 

Starting that day, every day that we could possibly manage we talked on the phone or got o Face Time. I loved talking to him so much, it's all I really wanted to do. So time passed. . .  sounds lame but that's how it was. Eventually Jonathan would need to go up to Alaska, so I knew that he might be coming around Utah in some form or another. When he mentioned that he decided to drive out to Utah and stay for a couple days and then head up to Alaska, my mom said: "Hey, what if you flew out somewhere and met him and drove back to Utah with him." She swears that she never said that, but I stand firm that she did.

Fast Forward to March 23, 2016. the day I was going to meet Jonathan Lindsay in the Denver Airport and drive the 8 or so hours with him to Utah. Well, it didn't go as planned. A giant snow storm decided to hit Denver that morning and my flight got cancelled.  Thankfully I was able to rebook for the next day. So here comes March 24. I got to the airport in perfect time. The flight got boarded and things were ready to go. Then we sit on the tarmac for an hour and a half going nowhere. The discovered that something with the pressure wasn't right so they were going to fill up with more gas so we could fly at a lower altitude - then the AC was broken so we got off the plane. We went between gates for probably half hour and then FINALLY they found us a plane. We finally too off and made our way to Denver.

Switch to Jonathan in Denver. He let his uncle's house with plenty of time to spare. But the road weren't that nice and there was traffic. He got to the airport and decided to park in a cell phone lot and wait for my text for him to come to the terminal. Well smarty pants that he is locked his keys in his car. With it running.  (He didn't tell me this until later though). So he went into the little building and asked if they had a wire hanger and thankfully they did. We assume that he wasn't the first person to lock their keys in the car.

So I waited by the baggage claim for Jonathan to show up and we would head out. I was so nervous. I was also so excited. So where he walks around the corner. We hugged and went out to the car. And for the record. yes he did kiss me. 

The rest is history. So stick around and you'll find out just what all that history was and is.
Feel free to follow along with our life :)

Lots of love,
JKL