Rackham 2017 Christmas Letter

December 7, 2017

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy Holidays! We have loved catching up with so many of you through your Christmas cards as well as your social media updates and posts. We decided 2017 would be the year we would finally start writing an official Christmas letter because I guess the guilt finally got to be too much after 6 Christmases together receiving cards from so many of you and never sending one out? And also it's been an absolutely jam-packed crazy year for us and we wanted to make sure we stayed in touch with those we love. So here's our update--thanks for reading and we can't wait to hear from you as well!

Dave--2017 kicked off just 3 weeks after Bennett was born with Dave starting a new job as a product manager at Pluralsight here in Utah. It's really an amazing company and Dave has thoroughly enjoyed working with such competent coworkers and bosses. He continues to learn and grow every day, and they have been so flexible and understanding with his chaotic schedule throughout all of the craziness this year when he had to simultaneously be full-time student, full-time professional, and full-time dad and husband because I was so out of commission. We have been so grateful for Pluralsight this year!

Around March we started looking for a house in Lehi, UT (we were currently living in our Provo house) and began the process of getting ours ready to sell. After looking at what must have been every single neighborhood in Lehi, we finally found a fixer-upper in Spring Creek Ranch that felt right for us in April (even though we SWORE we would not buy a fixer upper...). We put our house up on the market and after just one open house on the weekend and multiple offers, it had sold in less than a week! At this time, my wrists were unusable because I was recovering from bilateral carpal tunnel surgery so Dave (literally) had to do all the heavy lifting to move us to the finish line on both selling and buying the houses.

Once the Provo house had officially sold, we started serious renovations on the Lehi fixer-upper. We gutted the entire downstairs and ripped up all of the floors and trim upstairs. Dave and some of our brother-in-laws spent the summer painting all the walls and ceilings, inside, as well as the garage floor outside to try to brighten up the interior. By the time we had moved in in June, they had all the painting done (minus the bathrooms, which we still have yet to paint...), but no kitchen cabinets, countertops, appliances, or sink. We only had concrete floors downstairs and wood floors upstairs left over from removing the carpet. And we were living out of the upstairs bathroom sinks (with a 6 month old!) for a few weeks until we were able to get the kitchen somewhat put together and functional about a month later. We had help from a contractor on some of the electrical wiring, knocking down walls, installing cabinets, countertops, a banister and such, but Dave did a TON of the work on the house on his own and it turned out amazingly well! I'm pretty sure it'll never feel "finished", and we definitely still have some major work to do before it feels even close to "done", but we love it so far and are enjoying living in a house we got to design in our own style! (This also wouldn't be complete without giving my parents and Dave's parents a HUGE shoutout for all the help they have given us as well in terms of helping us finish up things like doors, the floors, the trim, paint touchups, etc.)

Staircase before

Staircase after

Upstairs before

Upstairs after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Kitchen after

Dave decided to take the semester off of school this Fall because I was just barely pregnant (again) and incredibly sick and our son Bennett developed epilepsy when he was 7 months old in July. So Dave spent the majority of his Fall balancing working shorter days at the office so he could come home early to help with Bennett (again, SO grateful for Pluralsight's flexibility!), making up for that time by working from home as much as possible while being a full-time nurse, dad, and husband while I was stuck in bed 24/7.

At the ER with Bennett's first seizure.

Since finally finding a neurologist we were happy with up here for Bennett, and since I've been able to get on some strong medication to help with the nausea and vomiting, things have stabilized somewhat for Dave--but he still takes the majority of nights with Bennett who refuses to sleep through the night still, so I can sleep as much as possible to combat any residual sickness. In short, he's pretty much been a superhero all around this year to this little family of ours (not exaggerating at all), and I'm pretty sure we would never have survived this year without his MANY MANY sacrifices.

Erin--I went back to school in January just 3 weeks after Bennett was born and did a full-time load of classes while Bennett accompanied me to class every day. It was a very intense semester academically (read: lots of statistics...), but it was my last one of classes for my PhD program (Marriage and Family Therapy), so that kept me going when it was tough. And I took time off of seeing clients, which helped make it much more manageable. Right as the semester ended, I had bilateral carpal tunnel surgery (the week before Dave traveled to Amsterdam for work!), and my mom was able to come up to help with Bennett since I couldn't lift or even really use my hands for 2 weeks post-surgery. My sisters and their husbands who were still here attending BYU also stepped in for the week that Dave was gone. I was so grateful for my family!! And the carpal tunnel symptoms did resolve post-surgery, so that was a success!

When Bennett was just 3 months old, I started feeling very strongly like we were supposed to bring his sister into the family, which was...terrifying...to say the least. Bennett's pregnancy had not been easy on me, and I knew I was still a couple papers, a dissertation, and many clinical hours away from graduating, on top of trying to move at the same time. As much as I tried (believe me, I tried, haha), I couldn't shake the feeling and it just became clearer and stronger that Bennett needed his sister to be here with him now. So a few months later we found out we were pregnant with our second, due March 8, 2018!

Unfortunately, this pregnancy has been significantly more difficult than my first. I have Hyperemesis Gravidarium, which essentially means that starting around 4 weeks I couldn't keep anything down for months, and I threw up anywhere from 3-10 times a day regularly--regardless of if there was anything in my stomach or not. I was able to go home to California to get help from my mom and sisters for a little over a week in the very beginning of the pregnancy, and then when I was back in Utah, my sister Corinne and her husband David spent countless days up at our house taking Bennett for me when I was vomiting too much to take care of him or when I needed to go to the hospital for IV fluids to stay hydrated. Both Dave's and my mom also came to stay with us a few different times during the summer to take Bennett for me. And once we finally realized how long this situation could last and how incredibly dysfunctional I was, our new ward in the Spring Creek neighborhood stepped in and organized people to take Bennett for me every day while Dave was at work so I could rest--before they even knew us at all. It seriously felt like angels carried us through the second half of this year, and we look back and have no idea how anything worked out as well as it did.

IV fluids saved me in the beginning of this pregnancy!

Thankfully, I was able to have a feeding tube placed eventually and was put on a medication they use to combat nausea in chemo patients (Granisetron), which on top of the regular anti-emetics I was already taking and in combination with the feeding tube finally helped me feel functional enough to stop vomiting all day and gain enough strength back to take care of Bennett full time. This was already well into Fall semester, which I had taken a medical leave from, so I have been on a break from all things research and therapy, which has been sad in some ways, but much needed in others.


I am now 28 weeks pregnant--just starting into my third trimester and baby girl is looking and doing great according to all ultrasounds. We are looking forward to her arrival and now (months after my initial impression) we have a better idea of why Bennett's sister needed to be here exactly when she did.

Bennett-The first half of Bennett's year was pretty uneventful--he was a dream-baby who slept and ate like a champ! I felt like I was blessed to be able to have a baby I could take to class with me so easily. He hardly ever fussed, and was just so darling, Dave and I loved those newborn days so much. He did have to have his tongue and lip-ties cut when he was just a few months old because they were causing him problems taking in too much air and contributing to reflux issues when he ate. Those were not fun weeks, but even then, he was a champ!

He loves to be swaddled--always has--LOVES the Hamilton soundtrack (really, an unbelievable amount), loves to be in water best of all, and hates teething more than anything in the world. He has never slept through the night, he just turned 1 on Dec. 11th and still wakes up at least once or twice for a bottle and has difficulties settling back down. But nothing (other than the swaddle) can calm him down like being in his car seat--whether it's in the stroller or the car. He has always loved moving in his carseat and that has been a godsend these past few months for us all.

In July (just a week after finding out I was pregnant--vomiting already present), Bennett had a 5 minute-long seizure where he stopped breathing, convulsed, lost consciousness, and eventually lost muscle tone until he returned to us. We had no idea this would be the beginning of an epilepsy diagnosis for him because the ER doctor told us that this was probably just a fluke and hopefully would never happen again.

He has gone on to have over 40 seizures since that first one in July, and we have been on and off different medications trying to find control and working to avoid serious side effects. For a few months (the worst of the Hyperemesis for me) he was actually on a medication which was toxic to him and probably made his seizures worse, and until we took him off of it he was unable to smile, laugh, respond to his name, crawl, sleep even close to through the night, and was overall just a very zoned-out baby. Since weaning that medication he has come back to us in huge ways and we have enjoyed watching him develop as he's learned to crawl on his knees, loves cruising the furniture, is dying to walk on his own, has started babbling a lot more again, and is more socially and emotionally engaged than he was over the summer. We are going on 6 weeks seizure free right now, and we are in the middle of changing meds to be sure we aren't on any that will continue to inhibit his development.

His seizures and the medicines affect him in ways that make his and our life difficult, and mostly we are just scared that they could escalate and get more dangerous to him, but we have found comfort in knowing that he has a very specific genetic mutation which is likely the cause of the seizures and that there is at least a little research out there about the best course of action for these kids as far as treatment planning goes. We have a whole blog just devoted to documenting the details of Bennett's SCN8A Epilepsy journey, so feel free to check that out if you're interested--but the long and short of it is that over the last month we have come to accept that he will likely never grow out of his seizures, it would be rare for him to find seizure control with traditional medicines long-term, he is much more likely than not to have developmental delays of some sort, it is probable that he will have intense seizures and experience developmental regressions from time to time, and his risk for passing away early is much higher than even most kids with epilepsy.

This has obviously been difficult for Dave and I, but through it all we have felt guided continually by Heavenly Father, and the many prayers that have been offered on our behalf have made a palpable difference in the level of anxiety in our home about everything. We get extremely excited when Bennett masters a new skill and we are so happy to see his personality again when it was gone for so many months. He's a cheerful baby most of the time, and we are hopeful that since he has had relatively good seizure control early on that he may be one of the lucky kids who ends up on the mild side of the spectrum and is able to function at a higher level than most.

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All-in-all, the Rackham 2017 feels like it has been somewhat comparable to America's 2017. It's been a most challenging year for all of us but we are walking away from it completely floored by the love and support that has been shown to our family through everything when we have not been in a place to reciprocate much to anyone in a very long time. Our families have stepped up in an incredible way--sacrificing so much of their time and personal priorities, our friends near and far have continued to check in with us and remind us that we are in their thoughts, and this new ward and neighborhood of people who don't even know us have taken us under their wing completely and loved and served us like we've never experienced before. And of course we have felt the support of Heavenly Father, and even though we feel like next time we should maybe be a little more proactive about bargaining and clarifying conditions before we blindly accept the charge to become pregnant again in the middle of a move with a son who is about to develop epilepsy, we know He has been carrying us through this difficult time and we don't know how we would have survived without feeling this so strongly from time to time. So thank you, friends, for all of your kind words and gestures--they have made all the difference for us this year!