Moving, Calling and a New Baby Girl, Hospital Adventure

     "It was about May 15, 1998 that we moved to the house 4249 Wilson Lane in the Clayton Valley First Ward. What an amazing ward! What great people. We’ve been here 15 years now – it’s been great! We were sad to leave Concord Third Ward we loved the people there, it’s a much smaller ward about 30 children in the Primary. We came into the Clayton Valley First Ward and there were 100 children in the Primary. We left that ward and there were maybe 15 – 20  families that did everything and we came to this ward and there were 50 families that were doing everything. We left that ward and we felt like there were 7 active Young Women and we came to this ward and the were probably 35 active young women. So it was just a bigger vibrant ward very active.  

     "And the thing that I loved too is there were probably 20 other ladies sisters in the ward that were all in the same life experience that I was. Raising kids that were in the Primary or just entering into Young Men’s Young Women’s or had small children. But they were similar ages to me, similar life experience to me and that we were stay at home moms but we didn’t stay home a lot because we were already on the go, always on the go taking care of our families and children. We felt like we were welcomed into the ward. 

     "I had started that first Sunday by going to Choir practice and I think that was my first calling in the ward was to be Choir director. It was great!  We went down the line and we’d have the Ernst family over for dinner, she helped me go down the ward list and identify a lot of people who were singers and personally invite them. I think there were actually issued a calling to be in the ward choir and - whereas I’d been choir director in the other ward a couple of different times in the Concord Third Ward and I’d be very happy if I could get 15 people out to practice on a really good time for Christmas I’d get 25 – over here we were getting  25 out to a practice and a really good time when we’d push it, we get 40 people or 50 singers for Christmas – I think 40 was closer to it.  A lot of musical talent, a lot of youth that were playing instruments and so it was just very fun. 

      "When fall came, I had decided that Amy and Kristy would be going to Mountain View Elementary School – I was going to try it out – I’d been homeschooling Amy since January and we’d also been in the process of selling the house – moving and selling the house it was just a very busy time for me, a very crazy time for me. So I ended up putting her in school to see how it was. Oh, my goodness! Fabulous teachers and Amy was in third grade and she had Maria Forrester and Kristy was in First grade and she had Sandy Codington – teachers to die for! Just wonderful and it was good for the kids to be in with really challenging class. It was kind of a different dynamic too. 

     "When I had been over at the other Elementary School – Holbrook Elementary School -  I would correct the homework for Amy’s class and there would be maybe half of the class that never did homework and then the other half of the class usually did their homework and there were maybe a handful – 5 or 6 kids that always did their homework. It was amazing to me that when we came over to this school and there were maybe 2 or 3 kids that never did their homework but most everybody else did their homework. That was amazing to me, very exciting to me to see that there were kids that were getting their homework done. I know it was a lot of parent support. I thought that was good to me and my kids were just doing extremely well in school and I was very happy with that. 

     "I’d started Eric at the pre-school at Baldwin Park, he was entering that fall and he was not quite ready for that experience we still didn’t have the potty training down 100%, so after a month I just took him out of there and that was the best decision I ever made. He was just not ready for that and he was happy to be my buddy and putter around and play, and play dates and he was doing great. It worked out just fine. 

     "The next year when he was four put him in the Baldwin Park pre-school and it worked just fine! He did really, really well. The kids seem to be thriving in school we did really well in the ward there were kids their ages. There were some transients but not as much as there were in the Concord Third Ward where we had military housing and they also had more starter homes. We had some families who were really established in the ward and their kids were all grown. Then we had families that were starter homes for them. That’s the way it was for us, it was a starter home for us, and then we move on.  We loved our home it just felt so huge with the 1900 square feet instead of the 1100 square feet. 

     "It was great we didn’t have a lot of furniture for it for a while. We put the couch in the living room and then we just – the only thing we had in the living room was the entertainment center, then we had also had the music stuff on it and we also had the piano in there. That was fine, the kids were able to run and play in the room and just really enjoyed that, it was a very good thing. 

     "We had been in the ward about, hummmm, a year and a half – the choir was putting on the Christmas Program, and it went really, really well. Oh my goodness – a lot of people singing – we put on the whole program – we had narrators and it was great!  Bishop Jeff Adams was the bishop at the time he lived just down the street from us, came up to me after Sacrament meeting and said, I need to come talk to you today. And I said, “Ooo” “Yes, can I come stop by your house?” I said, “Sure that would be fine.” So that afternoon he came over.     

    "The first bedroom, we had turned into a den. I had decorated that for Ralph’s birthday, it was a den in there with his desk, computer and I had a big comfy chair with an ottoman in there for reading – it was like a chair and a half, it was big.  So I remember going in there and sitting with the Bishop and he looked right at me and said, “The Lord has called you to be the new Relief Society President.” 

      "I started crying because I had been Relief Society President twice before and I knew what was involved, but I also knew that the Lord would help me. So of course I said yes. I hate to say goodbye to the choir but I had to grow again. He said go ahead and start working on getting your counselors – we had only been in the ward a year and a half and there were a lot of people I still didn’t know. I knew everybody who had little kids like I did; I knew most of the people that had children in Primary. Other people had only kids who were in Young Men Young Women’s, I didn’t know a lot of the people if they weren’t in the choir. 

     "But I knew the Lord would bless me and help me and so I started going down the ward list, and started going down the ward list, and before I was sustained in January and before I was sustained, I realized that Ralph and I were pregnant. I was 40 years old at the time. So it was – I was a little older. At the time I was thinking, Okay, Heavenly Father this is not funny. 

      "I also thought Heavenly Father has a funny sense of humor because here I was called as a Relief Society President and I found out I was pregnant. But I kind of figured, “You know Heavenly Father does not make mistakes. It’s supposed to be how it is supposed to be. I think Ralph was a little bit in denial at first about me being pregnant again, but we quickly got on board with it. Fortunately I had relatively easy pregnancies – if I would have had horrible pregnancies that might have made a difference to the calling, but that’s the way it is. 

     "So I was sustained in January – it was about the middle of January somewhere or the end of January. The outgoing President Earlene MacDonald was great to orient me to what was going on in the ward. Another huge difference when I was over in Concord Third Ward on average every other week I was doing maybe 12 to 14 food orders – over here I was doing maybe 3 or 4 food orders. Big difference, big difference and that was helpful for my time too.

        "I was sustained with  - LaRue Clark was my first counselor – she was a name that just popped off the ward list to me when I was going down the list, she was my Education Counselor she was an older lady, she could have been my mom. She was just a gracious kind lady who knew Relief Society was loved and respected by everybody in the ward. Her husband was a former Bishop of the ward -just a delightful charming gracious lady. 

     "Jan Chatterley was my counselor, wonderful, creative, hard-working, mom with small children just like I was, just incredibly talented, incredibly hard-working, had the spirit with her. I was just delighted with her and that was still at the point where we were having monthly homemaking meetings and she took on the burden for that. 

     "My secretary was Pam Hosking who was another young mom in the ward, she had four young children and she had been serving in the Primary. She was hard-working and dedicated and energetic and lots of fun. She was great. 

     "I also had a third counselor – I knew that I was going to be having a baby and the ward was large and I needed help and so Brenda Lopez -that I knew from Concord Third Ward days - was called as my Visiting Teaching counselor. Her primary role was to be a counselor to me but then also to help oversee all the Visiting Teaching,- that was going on in the ward and make those changes when they needed to happen - and keep track of all of that for me.

      "We were sustained the end of January things were going well, things were going fine then it was a couple of months later that I told the Bishopric I was pregnant and their reaction was, “Great, that’s awesome, “ And I was thinking “Aren’t you concerned at all? Ooo what am I going to do now?” They were very supportive, they were very great.  

     "I remember the Bishop was still Jeff Adams the counselors were Verne Ernst and Ken Carter and a great group of men there in the Bishopric. So I began serving as the Relief Society president and did so for three years. Great experience I learned a lot about delegating and doing what I could do and leaving the rest up to counselors or leaving it up to the Lord, or leaving it up to the sisters of the Ward to be able to be more independent. I didn’t have to hold their hands on things, that we all have lives to lead. 

     "I was due on Labor Day in September, I always go late and so I expected that. I t was a little disheartening when Labor Day arrived and nothing happened. A week later still nothing had happened, by this time Amy was in 5^thgrade, Kristy was in 3^rdgrade and Eric had just started Kindergarten. I  realized that day what my problem was, I’d been praying that I’d either go early or late because I wanted Eric to have a good start into Kindergarten, I wanted to make sure that he was settled in there. 

     "I should have been more specific and said I want to go early. But Instead my prayers were answered and I went late. My water broke nine days after my due date so it was on the thirteenth of September. Early in the morning my water broke – it followed very much the pattern that Eric’s did in that my water broke in the morning but no contractions so I had to go in and get Pitocin started. 

     "In this case I got up I’d been working on a jig-saw puzzle I hadn’t done that for awhile, I knew that nothing was going to be happening for awhile until we got the contractions started. I wanted to make sure the kids got off to school, so I was packing lunches for the kids and making sure we had everything ready. About 6 o’clock I started getting the kids up, I told Ralph that my water broke he wouldn’t be going into work today, so I let him sleep awhile longer – he’s good about being able to go to sleep that way – just sat for awhile before I got everyone up at 6 o’clock and about 7 o’clock I called Pam Hosking she was the person we were going to call in case I went into labor in the middle of the night, so could I bring the kids over – of course no problem she was a few blocks away and her kids went to Mountain View so she’d be able to drop mine off at school and so we got them dropped off and then we went on down to Kaiser. 

     "We got checked in there’s no rush we’re taking our time, we’d had breakfast, we got checked in, they did the ultrasound to find out how much fluid was gone – yes I lost my fluid I’d need to stay calm – we were kind of waiting to see if anything would happen with labor starting, I was walking, we were walking, walking, walking and nothing was happening. So they decided they would get some Pitocin started and at noon is when the labor started. 

     "Nine hours later a little girl was born. Now unlike our other children – we - the other three we did not do the ultrasound to find what gender the baby was if it was a boy or girl. But on this one we decided that we were going to - because of the fact that – we knew if it was going to be a little girl we needed to prepare Eric for the fact that he was going to have 3 sisters – he’s not a brother but a sister. 

     "Of course he was wanting a baby brother – but we thought if we could help prepare him for having a sister rather than a brother that would be helpful to him. We knew this was going to be definitely the last one because I was so old, actually I was 41 when Kylie was born. We found out about half way through the pregnancy that I was going to be having a girl – we told Eric that it was a girl and reminded him that Heavenly Father does not make mistakes and she is supposed to be part of our family and that’s just the way it is. 

     "He could be the best brother in the world to all three of his sisters. It took him a little while for him to get used to it, but I realize why him saying, I wish I had a little brother, but not a lot we could do to change that, that’s just how it is. 

     "So we started labor about noon on that day and it was kind of slow going, Eric was born in about 5 hours, it took about nine hours, Kylie was born at nine o’clock that night. They pulled her out and put her on my stomach, she opened her eyes and looked at me and I looked at her and I felt this connection from my spirit to her spirit that she was supposed to be ours…and uhmm….. All I can say is I felt this connection with her, I truly did. 

     "It was kind of late but we called over to the Hosking’s to let them know that we had - everything was here it was a little sister. The next morning – that night Ralph went home and the kids stayed over there and actually he picked them up the next morning and took them home so they could get clean clothes and get ready for school - anyways he brought them down to the hospital the next day when it was time to pick me up and bring me home and the kids came to say Hi to Kylie for the first time. Here we were our family was complete. It was a very sweet experience to have this new sweet little baby in our home. 

     "Amy was 10, Kristy was 8, Eric was 5 and they were great amazing helpers and it was wonderful to have so much help when a baby was around. I’d never, ever had anybody, either one of our parents come to stay with us when the baby was born. My parents were usually able to come for the blessing – I know they came for the blessing of Amy and Kristy and….possibly Eric, I don’t remember. But they weren’t able to travel at that point, my mom was – has been pretty much housebound for the last 10 to 15 years she had lots of back problems and back surgeries and knee replacements – a lot of health challenges so she is not able to come. 

     "I believe my dad was able to come when Eric was born – to help with the blessing for Eric, but my mom hasn’t been able to be there. Which is too bad, she would really enjoy that she would take down the blessings in shorthand and it was wonderful to have that record for my children – the blessings that were given to them when they were born.

     "So Kylie was blessed and things were going well.  About 3 weeks after she was born, this was around the first week in October, I had been sick with a fever for a couple of days and just hadn’t felt well and I was a little concerned because I was breastfeeding Kylie and I needed to feed her and hold her and so that meant she was by me and she ended up getting my fever and I was so concerned about that and so I take her one morning into the emergency room because I noticed that she was warm she had this fever.  

     "I took her in and the doctor was concerned because normally babies who are this young don’t get fevers. He said, “you know there’s nothing that I can do to – no medicine I can give her when she is this young for a fever. So we need to watch her closely and I want you to take her temperature every hour and see what it’s doing and I want you to schedule an appointment for your pediatrician this afternoon.” 

      "So I called Kaiser that afternoon and I scheduled an appointment with a pediatrician – my particular one either didn’t have an appointment or she wasn’t on call that day – Anyways, so that afternoon we went in and saw the pediatrician and she said you know she still had this fever and we don’t know why and you need to take her to the hospital. And me being just post-partum very hormonal I immediately burst into tears. 

     "She said, “I need you to come over here (this is before cell phones) I need you to come over here to this (at least before we had a cell phone) come over here you can use this phone to call your husband and then you need to take her to Walnut Creek to check her into the hospital.” 

     "So I called – this is early afternoon before school got out – the 3 kids were in school because Eric was a late friend so he was in school until later in the day when the kids got out – so I called Ralph on the phone and of course I was sobbing, “I..have…to…check…her…into…the….hospital.!” and he was, “Ok, I’m on my way honey.” And then I called Pam, “I..have…to…check…her…into…the…hospital.”  “Ok, I’ll get the kids from school not a problem.” 

     It is so wonderful that I have people that I can call in a crisis. I took Kylie down to the hospital and you know she was calm and peaceful and quiet, she just had this fever. So I took her down to the – up to the second floor there into Pediatrics – they were so kind and gracious (I think the second Tuesday) they said, “Oh we’ve been expecting you, come right in here.” They took us into the room where Kylie would be staying and Ralph arrived shortly thereafter and they told us, “what we need to do is – we need to do a spinal tap to know what is going on that is causing this fever.  It’s better if you are not here. She’s fed, she’s changed, she’s happy, she’s dry, so what we need you to do is – and we also need to get an IV started and those are sometimes difficult for moms to be around because we’ve got to poke their babies with needles but it is necessary. So what we’d like you two to do is go down and get some dinner and you may come back in an hour.” 

     "So we came back in an hour and they had done the spinal tap and they had put the IV in her hand and they had wrapped it all up in gauze so it looked like she had a cast on one arm but that was they way they had of keeping it – they had a little splint that they had around her arm and then they wrapped it up so she would not pull the IV out when she was moving around. The bed they had her in looked like a cage – it had – they have all sizes of small children that are there – of course Kylie wasn’t moving around, she wasn’t rolling she was only 3 weeks old but this is the bed they had for her so they didn’t want her moving around and falling out of bed. So they could slid the bars up on either side and access her and pull her in and out when they needed to and I was – I stayed with her and I would pull up the sides when she got fussy and I would sit there and feed her. By this point our nursing was going very, very well established and she was eating well which they said was a very good sign, never had any problems with her appetite dropping off. 

     "They were able to tell us by the next day that she Meningitis - Viral Meningitis – that it was serious but there are lots of different stages of it and (we were hoping and praying she would have a light case), that they had some medicine that they would be going to be giving her treating it but she would be in the hospital for a few days. So it was very quickly we found out our routine, that Ralph did not go to work for the rest of the week. 

     "So I would stay at night with Kylie in the hospital and he would be at home with the children, he would get them up and get them ready for school and drop them off at school and then he would come down to the hospital and he would take over and sit with Kylie an hour or two while I came home got a shower got cleaned up, maybe did a little puttering at home to have a little break and then 2 hours later I was back at the hospital and he would be with me through that day and then he would be with Kylie. 

     "He couldn’t nurse her and feed her but he could sit and hold her and so that’s what he did, she was still at the stage where she was sleeping a lot but when she was in her bed, he’d rub her hand but we tried to give her a lot of love and contact as much as we could while we were there in the hospital. A very sweet recollection that I have is  - when Ralph got a phone call from me saying that Kylie was going to be in the hospital – he came home and he – actually - well he did come home that night -  before he came to the hospital and he packed a bag for me because he figured if she was going to be in the hospital and I hadn’t been home yet I needed a bag of stuff for me. So he packed up everything he thought I might need: some pajamas, hairbrush, toothpaste, toothbrush, a change of clothes, I needed a book to read, crossword puzzles, something – you know things I might need while I was there in the hospital and then he came to the hospital. 

     "While he was home he also called our good home teachers Brother Jack Harper and Dell Bridenstein . That night I will never forget seeing them trotting down the hallway, cause they weren’t walking they were coming at a fast clip, coming to the hospital to help give our little girl a blessing. They gave her a beautiful blessing that she would be okay, she would recover from this without any ill effects. That blessing was realized. Kylie is fine, just fine. 

     Another recollection is when they weren’t quite sure what was going on – anybody that came to visit had to wear a mask. Bishop Adams came with a mask – it almost made me laugh! Hi coming to rob me? Hiway robbery? No it’s the bishop with a mask on! Very concerned, “how is she doing and how are you doing Lisa?” I said, “I’m fine!” Then I start crying. “I’m emotional so far. I’m fine. She’s fine, she’s getting good care here and we just have to go through this.”

      "So we quickly established a routine that I would go home in the mornings and Ralph would be there and then Ralph would leave about 2 o’clock in the afternoon to go pick up the kids from school. There were all three there at Mountain View which was a blessing that they were all there at the same school. He would pick them up bring them home they would get their snacks they would – if they wanted to change clothes into their play clothes – whatever and then they would pack up all of their homework and they would come down to the hospital. 

     "I would make sure I was finished feeding Kylie at this point then Ralph would hold Kylie while I went out into this little atrium courtyard area there on the second floor and we would go through our afternoon homework routine. And that was the best thing we could have done because we had a bit of normalcy into our daily routine. So I was able to help the kids with their homework because that was what I was used to doing, that’s what the kids were used to doing. Ralph and I have kind of different styles of how we help the kids with homework.  The kids were used to me helping there homework cause they would like to get it done before dad got home because then they could play. They were used to that routine and also I read a lot to my children and they brought the book I was reading to them and we would sit out there and read for another hour after I was done. 

    "We would bring them in to see Kylie a little bit and visit with her.  They had to wear masks when they came in. That’s what was done to keep that afternoon routine the same as far as helping with homework. It was also very interesting to me that the kids were very sad to leave me there at the hospital and go home. Amy, “I can’t do this without you!” “Amy you’re going to do fine, it’s just for a few days until Kylie gets better.” Amy was just very concerned about not having mom at home. I told her they could do this – we all could - we could read scriptures and say prayers together – that was our afternoon. We’d spend 2 and a half hours together then Ralph would take them home, get them some dinner and then get everybody to bed so we could do it again. 

     "Fortunately this was just a short hospital stay on Friday morning they – we had determined on the Wednesday that it was Meningitis and Kylie was responding well to the antibiotics –she never had a super intense case of Meningitis, she never stopped eating, her fever never went super high and it was a mild case for which we were very thankful.  But on Friday they said she was good to go. So I called Ralph and said, “I’m on my way home’.  I piled in the car with our little girl and I brought her home and turned her over to him and then I headed over to the school to catch the kids at recess time to let them know we were home.

       "Amy and Kristy and Eric were just overjoyed that mom was back home that Kylie was back home that everything was going to be just fine. A huge blessing from our Heavenly Father – Kylie’s fine, she’s healthy and strong, doing well no problem. 

So we continued on with life doing lots of things together as a family with four children."