If you don't want to read the rest of the story, no worries. The quick update: had my regular monthly OB appointment yesterday afternoon. My blood pressure was good (which, given the rest of my day, as you'll read, is a small miracle). Owlet was squiggling up a storm in my belly, and heartbeat was 144. Belly is measuring 22cm, which is spot-on for being nearly 22 weeks. A small and very appropriate weight gain over the last month. We talked over the ultrasound report, and everything looks good. The only thing to keep watch on is my placenta, and not for any of the reasons that I had suspected. Apparently, anterior placenta after a c-section could potentially signal that the placenta has nestled in and gotten itself stuck in my c-section scar, which wouldn't be the best. But Dr. Locke communicated that the risk is pretty low, and that there's nothing to do or worry about right now, and that we'll do a repeat ultrasound sometime before 30 weeks. Otherwise, all is well with baby and with me!
Ok. The rest of the story.
Tuesday night, when I was giving Sam his bath, it started thundering and flashing lightning outside. The forecast had mentioned the chance of rain overnight, but nothing about storms. Ah well, it's August, and it's hot, and these things pop up. Sam, meanwhile, is fascinated by thunder and also scared of it. Which means that after a full week of being a very tantrum-prone toddler, he was instead so grateful for a mama to keep him safe that he got out of the bath without argument, and wanted to snuggle as he dried off, and was a perfect angel getting into his pajamas, reading bedtime books, and laying down in his crib. He settled himself on his belly with his hands over his ears, and fell asleep almost immediately.
So I went downstairs, and it was a normal evening, except that the rain was DOWNPOURING, and the storm was being all stormy, so I turned on the TV to catch the weather report. The radar suggested that there was a bit storm over us, but that it would likely move on, and all would be well, and that a second storm might also come through and hit us. When we went to bed around 11, it was still downpouring, but we didn't think anything of it.
I woke with a start at 3:45 a.m., realizing that it was STILL downpouring. We have gotten water in our basement just a handful of times, and I had a nagging feeling that it would be wise to go down and check. So I did. And was greeted with about three inches of water at the bottom of the basement steps. I ran upstairs, woke Matt up (poor guy!), and then went with my rain boots into the basement to move some boxes off of the floor and up on some shelves. For both of us, we have experienced water in the basement as a reality when it rains. Both of our parents' houses sometimes get water during storms. And in our experience, rain gets in the basement, and then the rain stops, and then the water goes down. We have a drain in our basement floor, so we weren't terribly concerned. Some of our boxes got moved up high, some to shelves about 3.5 feet off the ground, and some to shelves just a few inches off the ground, but well above the water that was there.
Back to bed we went. Matt fell asleep. The rain stopped. My phone kept buzzing with flash flood warnings and flood watches, and I started to investigate (the best I could on social media and weather websites) what the rain had done in Decorah. It became apparent, very quickly, that the rainfall had been spectacular and that the river was rising at a truly worrisome rate. Needless to say, I did not succeed in falling back asleep. I kept checking news on my phone, and kept wishing that I could see out to the dike through our window in the dark, and about 5:45 a.m., I gave up and went downstairs and turned on the TV news.
At that point, the news was giving all sorts of flood warnings and talking about roads that were flooded (with lots of encouragements to STAY PUT and NOT DRIVE), and two nearby towns that were all the way under water. I was worried about the river (which is less than half a block from our house, over the dike), and feeling helpless, so I went again to check on the basement. I was pleased that the water there had not risen.
Around 7:00 a.m., Sam and Matt and I started our normal morning routines. We showered and got dressed. Looking out our second floor windows, we could see the river flowing angrily near the top edge of the dike. Fascinating. A little scary. But hey, the rain had stopped hours ago, so it should be fine, right?
I was trying to get out the door early because I had an 8:30 a.m. meeting. Matt was trying to get out early, too. And so we checked the basement again as we were getting closer to leaving. The water looked a little bit higher, maybe? But nothing immediately concerning, and we still at this point honestly hoped that since the rain was long gone, the water would start to flow back down into the drain.
Meanwhile, though, I had expressed on FB my anxiety about the river, and flooding, and the basement, and despite the fact that we had just a few inches of water, people kept offering help. Two different friends dropped off shop-vacs, and more friends were offering assistance. This made Matt and me begin to think that maybe we needed to do a little bit of work instead of just waiting for the water to drop. Our shop vac efforts were slow and painful and not helpful. And as we worked, we noticed that the water level had risen from four inches to six or seven.
At this point, we started to feel a little worried and helpless. I decided to ignore the travel warnings and drive Sam to daycare. The roads I needed to take were all high and dry, and he was happy to get to school. Thank goodness.
When I got home, a good friend of ours just randomly stopped by to check on us (thank goodness!!!!), and we decided that we needed to track down a pump, which would be more efficient. Meanwhile, the sky grayed over and thundered, and the river, which I had gone up the dike to look at earlier in the morning, had rapidly risen another foot.
It was at that point that we first started thinking that things were actually pretty serious.
The rest of the morning...and afternoon...was spent tracking down not one, but three pumps, as the water in our basement kept rising to about 2.5 feet. I kept feeling worried and anxious about different things. First, worried about the things that were being damaged/destroyed in our basement (thankfully, most stuff in plastic tubs, and nearly all of it old baby clothes and Christmas decorations which, while sentimental, are ultimately replaceable). Then, worried about the height of the river and worried that we might be evacuated. Then, worried about how, despite our efforts, the water in our basement kept rising and rising, and would it actually rise enough to defeat our basement? At one point, I realized that I was so helpless (while waiting for more pumps to arrive), that I went for a coffee/breakfast run for all of us.
So the rest of the day was a flurry of friends stopping in and out, checking on us, and a flurry of emails and texts and offers of help on Facebook, and pumps, and hoses, and tracking down longer and better hoses to route the water to the street. Of course, while we were working, little spouts of water kept appearing through the side walls of our basement steps, and even with pumps in place, the water kept rising, albeit slower and slower. We also started wondering if we should be worrying about the water and our house electricity, and whether we were at risk for any structural damage.
We commiserated with our neighbors, and kept watching the river, hoping that it would crest and start to fall.
In the afternoon, I had no reason not to go to my doctor's appointment, so I left while the guys kept tabs on the situation, and am thankful for a very nice, very uneventful appointment.
We had to give one of our three pumps back to its owner late in the afternoon, and so we were back to negligible progress, until another friend from church spontaneously showed up to see what we needed, and just happened to have a pump in his car. So. Back to three. At that point, we took a break, went to grab Sam from daycare, went shopping for dinner provisions, and went back home to eat, using paper plates because the county was asking folks to limit water use because of sewers running at capacity. After dinner, we hung out and played with Sam, and Matt and I were so very tired from bad sleeping and lots of work and anxiety, and the stress of having missed an entire day of work (and both of us are soooo busy in late August). As Sam ate some banana ice cream on the couch, Matt and I wearily talked gameplan for the night, which involved trying to get some work done, and then heading to bed and taking turns getting up every hour or so to check the pumps and the water level, and to reassemble one of the pumps which kept detaching from the hose.
I was BEAT. I mentioned, offhand, that so many people had offered us help, and we didn't have anything for anyone to do. I said that what I wish we could ask for was a)someone to put Sam to bed because I had no energy to do so; and b)somebody who wanted to take the night shift and babysit our pumps while we got at least a little sleep.
Seriously, not more than ten minutes later, two cars pulled up in front of our house. It was one of the guys who had been by earlier, and his dad. They came bearing a FOURTH pump, plus some extra and better hoses. They started working to get things set up, and had to run back home to grab a couple things, and no sooner had they pulled away than another car pulled up, with another friend from earlier in the day, who had come by with more hoses and with hose clips that would solve our detachment problem.
So by 8:30 p.m., we had four pumps running, which a better-engineered set of hoses and tubes running across our yard and into the street, and for the first time, I started to relax. The river had started to recede in a visible way, and we were finally feeling on top of things.
We still got up twice overnight to check on the pumps. Both times, the water level in our basement had dropped four or five inches, and both times we checked, the incoming dribbles of water had stopped.
As far as today goes, we have decreased from 2.5 feet to about half that and are holding steady. Water has started coming in again, but our pumps are keeping up with it. We aren't dropping a lot right now, but we aren't rising. The river has dropped a lot. It is still horribly flooded, but is no longer touching or climbing the walls of the dike.
When we finally do get the water cleaned up, we'll have plenty of boxes to sort through and plenty of bleach to pour over all the walls and floor, and work to see whether our furnace is functional or not (which, by the way, controls the fans for our air conditioning, so we are totally without a/c right now). There is still a ton of work ahead of us. But compared to the panic of yesterday, we feel under control, and like things are now destined to get better, even if slowly.
Turns out, when you live in a flood plane and it rains 7.5" in 8 hours, it's not rain that shows up in your basement. It is river. Now we know.
Anyway. We are safe. We are stable. We are dealing with a lot, but not nearly as much as neighboring communities that had to be evacuated, and not nearly as much as neighboring communities who lost many houses and buildings to floodwaters.
We are grateful beyond grateful to all offers and gestures of assistance, and all the prayers and support of this community. It's been amazing to see everyone taking care of one another through this. We are exhausted. We are impatient to move forward in clean-up. But we are on the far side of the worst of things, as far as we know.
Thank goodness.
Ok. The rest of the story.
Tuesday night, when I was giving Sam his bath, it started thundering and flashing lightning outside. The forecast had mentioned the chance of rain overnight, but nothing about storms. Ah well, it's August, and it's hot, and these things pop up. Sam, meanwhile, is fascinated by thunder and also scared of it. Which means that after a full week of being a very tantrum-prone toddler, he was instead so grateful for a mama to keep him safe that he got out of the bath without argument, and wanted to snuggle as he dried off, and was a perfect angel getting into his pajamas, reading bedtime books, and laying down in his crib. He settled himself on his belly with his hands over his ears, and fell asleep almost immediately.
So I went downstairs, and it was a normal evening, except that the rain was DOWNPOURING, and the storm was being all stormy, so I turned on the TV to catch the weather report. The radar suggested that there was a bit storm over us, but that it would likely move on, and all would be well, and that a second storm might also come through and hit us. When we went to bed around 11, it was still downpouring, but we didn't think anything of it.
I woke with a start at 3:45 a.m., realizing that it was STILL downpouring. We have gotten water in our basement just a handful of times, and I had a nagging feeling that it would be wise to go down and check. So I did. And was greeted with about three inches of water at the bottom of the basement steps. I ran upstairs, woke Matt up (poor guy!), and then went with my rain boots into the basement to move some boxes off of the floor and up on some shelves. For both of us, we have experienced water in the basement as a reality when it rains. Both of our parents' houses sometimes get water during storms. And in our experience, rain gets in the basement, and then the rain stops, and then the water goes down. We have a drain in our basement floor, so we weren't terribly concerned. Some of our boxes got moved up high, some to shelves about 3.5 feet off the ground, and some to shelves just a few inches off the ground, but well above the water that was there.
Back to bed we went. Matt fell asleep. The rain stopped. My phone kept buzzing with flash flood warnings and flood watches, and I started to investigate (the best I could on social media and weather websites) what the rain had done in Decorah. It became apparent, very quickly, that the rainfall had been spectacular and that the river was rising at a truly worrisome rate. Needless to say, I did not succeed in falling back asleep. I kept checking news on my phone, and kept wishing that I could see out to the dike through our window in the dark, and about 5:45 a.m., I gave up and went downstairs and turned on the TV news.
At that point, the news was giving all sorts of flood warnings and talking about roads that were flooded (with lots of encouragements to STAY PUT and NOT DRIVE), and two nearby towns that were all the way under water. I was worried about the river (which is less than half a block from our house, over the dike), and feeling helpless, so I went again to check on the basement. I was pleased that the water there had not risen.
Around 7:00 a.m., Sam and Matt and I started our normal morning routines. We showered and got dressed. Looking out our second floor windows, we could see the river flowing angrily near the top edge of the dike. Fascinating. A little scary. But hey, the rain had stopped hours ago, so it should be fine, right?
I was trying to get out the door early because I had an 8:30 a.m. meeting. Matt was trying to get out early, too. And so we checked the basement again as we were getting closer to leaving. The water looked a little bit higher, maybe? But nothing immediately concerning, and we still at this point honestly hoped that since the rain was long gone, the water would start to flow back down into the drain.
Meanwhile, though, I had expressed on FB my anxiety about the river, and flooding, and the basement, and despite the fact that we had just a few inches of water, people kept offering help. Two different friends dropped off shop-vacs, and more friends were offering assistance. This made Matt and me begin to think that maybe we needed to do a little bit of work instead of just waiting for the water to drop. Our shop vac efforts were slow and painful and not helpful. And as we worked, we noticed that the water level had risen from four inches to six or seven.
At this point, we started to feel a little worried and helpless. I decided to ignore the travel warnings and drive Sam to daycare. The roads I needed to take were all high and dry, and he was happy to get to school. Thank goodness.
When I got home, a good friend of ours just randomly stopped by to check on us (thank goodness!!!!), and we decided that we needed to track down a pump, which would be more efficient. Meanwhile, the sky grayed over and thundered, and the river, which I had gone up the dike to look at earlier in the morning, had rapidly risen another foot.
It was at that point that we first started thinking that things were actually pretty serious.
The rest of the morning...and afternoon...was spent tracking down not one, but three pumps, as the water in our basement kept rising to about 2.5 feet. I kept feeling worried and anxious about different things. First, worried about the things that were being damaged/destroyed in our basement (thankfully, most stuff in plastic tubs, and nearly all of it old baby clothes and Christmas decorations which, while sentimental, are ultimately replaceable). Then, worried about the height of the river and worried that we might be evacuated. Then, worried about how, despite our efforts, the water in our basement kept rising and rising, and would it actually rise enough to defeat our basement? At one point, I realized that I was so helpless (while waiting for more pumps to arrive), that I went for a coffee/breakfast run for all of us.
So the rest of the day was a flurry of friends stopping in and out, checking on us, and a flurry of emails and texts and offers of help on Facebook, and pumps, and hoses, and tracking down longer and better hoses to route the water to the street. Of course, while we were working, little spouts of water kept appearing through the side walls of our basement steps, and even with pumps in place, the water kept rising, albeit slower and slower. We also started wondering if we should be worrying about the water and our house electricity, and whether we were at risk for any structural damage.
We commiserated with our neighbors, and kept watching the river, hoping that it would crest and start to fall.
In the afternoon, I had no reason not to go to my doctor's appointment, so I left while the guys kept tabs on the situation, and am thankful for a very nice, very uneventful appointment.
We had to give one of our three pumps back to its owner late in the afternoon, and so we were back to negligible progress, until another friend from church spontaneously showed up to see what we needed, and just happened to have a pump in his car. So. Back to three. At that point, we took a break, went to grab Sam from daycare, went shopping for dinner provisions, and went back home to eat, using paper plates because the county was asking folks to limit water use because of sewers running at capacity. After dinner, we hung out and played with Sam, and Matt and I were so very tired from bad sleeping and lots of work and anxiety, and the stress of having missed an entire day of work (and both of us are soooo busy in late August). As Sam ate some banana ice cream on the couch, Matt and I wearily talked gameplan for the night, which involved trying to get some work done, and then heading to bed and taking turns getting up every hour or so to check the pumps and the water level, and to reassemble one of the pumps which kept detaching from the hose.
I was BEAT. I mentioned, offhand, that so many people had offered us help, and we didn't have anything for anyone to do. I said that what I wish we could ask for was a)someone to put Sam to bed because I had no energy to do so; and b)somebody who wanted to take the night shift and babysit our pumps while we got at least a little sleep.
Seriously, not more than ten minutes later, two cars pulled up in front of our house. It was one of the guys who had been by earlier, and his dad. They came bearing a FOURTH pump, plus some extra and better hoses. They started working to get things set up, and had to run back home to grab a couple things, and no sooner had they pulled away than another car pulled up, with another friend from earlier in the day, who had come by with more hoses and with hose clips that would solve our detachment problem.
So by 8:30 p.m., we had four pumps running, which a better-engineered set of hoses and tubes running across our yard and into the street, and for the first time, I started to relax. The river had started to recede in a visible way, and we were finally feeling on top of things.
We still got up twice overnight to check on the pumps. Both times, the water level in our basement had dropped four or five inches, and both times we checked, the incoming dribbles of water had stopped.
As far as today goes, we have decreased from 2.5 feet to about half that and are holding steady. Water has started coming in again, but our pumps are keeping up with it. We aren't dropping a lot right now, but we aren't rising. The river has dropped a lot. It is still horribly flooded, but is no longer touching or climbing the walls of the dike.
When we finally do get the water cleaned up, we'll have plenty of boxes to sort through and plenty of bleach to pour over all the walls and floor, and work to see whether our furnace is functional or not (which, by the way, controls the fans for our air conditioning, so we are totally without a/c right now). There is still a ton of work ahead of us. But compared to the panic of yesterday, we feel under control, and like things are now destined to get better, even if slowly.
Turns out, when you live in a flood plane and it rains 7.5" in 8 hours, it's not rain that shows up in your basement. It is river. Now we know.
Anyway. We are safe. We are stable. We are dealing with a lot, but not nearly as much as neighboring communities that had to be evacuated, and not nearly as much as neighboring communities who lost many houses and buildings to floodwaters.
We are grateful beyond grateful to all offers and gestures of assistance, and all the prayers and support of this community. It's been amazing to see everyone taking care of one another through this. We are exhausted. We are impatient to move forward in clean-up. But we are on the far side of the worst of things, as far as we know.
Thank goodness.
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