Smelly Comfort

For the first 2-3 months following Emma & Elliot's births, I dealt with migraines. They were induced by lack of rest/interrupted sleep that happens to every mommy with a newborn trying to get on a schedule. With Emma, I was able to nap and the migraines would go away. Drinking coke would also help, although getting rest was always the best solution. After I had Elliot, I really wanted to take naps or sleep in, but didn't always have the opportunity since having a toddler to care for too. So I dealt with the migraines, knowing that when Elliot started sleeping through the night and I started getting a better night's sleep, they would go away. And they did ~ when he was about 8 weeks old he started sleeping 6+ hours at a time. Occasionally I would have a migraine return when I didn't get sufficient rest or when the kids would wake up during the night, but for the most part, they were gone.

Fast foward a couple months.

I started having horrible headaches again, but this time I couldn't figure out what the cause could be. Almost every day I would feel awful~ my head throbbed and sometimes I felt sick to my stomach. Recently I've almost lost my balance from being dizzy while having headaches. Since I was having back pain (probably from all the painting/moving I did during the last month of pregnacy), I had been going to the chiropractor's three times a week. He was pretty baffled about why the headaches had returned~ and we just amounted it to being a busy mom caring for the needs of two little ones/preparations for holidays/traveling to see family etc. It was very discouraging to think that I would have to deal with this pain every day. When my head would hurt, I was on edge, and I know it effected my attitude & responses to the kids and Michael. I could hardly think straight. The other thing that was so perplexing to me was that even when I did get the chance to rest, I would wake up with a throbbing head and it felt as if I never even took a nap.

Finally, we got answers. And I know it was completely of the Lord to reveal this problem to us. We have an old oil heater in our house. We have never been in a home with this type of heating system before, so we assumed that since heat was coming into our home, it was working properly. This past Sunday I took a nap, and when I woke up I told Michael that I felt better than I had in the past month (and I thought, man, I was really stressed out. All I needed was a little bit of sleep. You are doing too much nina~ slow down. sit with proper posture, support your head muscles with a pillow, don't spend too much time at the computer, try not to pick up Emma so much...)

The next morning, it was cold in the house and I asked Michael if it was possible that our oil had already run out. He thought that 100 gallons would last a lot longer than one month, but sure enough, the tank was empty. I was headache-free all Sunday and Monday, and didn't think twice about the connection until Michael came inside that afternoon. We just had our tank refilled and he had to crawl underneath the house to bleed the oil so it would turn on again. As he walked into the dining room, he said "...those fumes underneath the house are strong..they made my head hurt." A few minutes later, the heat was on again and my headache was back. Strange, I thought, becuase I'm well rested and doing nothing strenuous at the moment. . . then it all clicked~ could those fumes be causing my headaches?! The thought HAD crossed my mind a couple times before, but Michael wasn't having headaches like me, so I thought it was unrelated. He must have a higher tolerance for these types of fumes. I'll credit that to all the work he has done on over a dozen super-charged mustangs!

I can't believe that it took me this long to figure it out! Every time our heat turns on, it smells like you are standing behind a semi. Unpleasant, I thought, but probably a normal side effect of old oil heaters. Not so! Oil heaters are supposed to run clean and emit zero fumes.

We have a 325 gallon oil tank. We only had 100 gallons put in intially, thinking that would last us most of the winter(it cost us over $300 to do that much!). If we had filled it all the way, I would have had headaches as long as we had the heat on~ which would have been MONTHS!

My chiropractor has asked me a bazillion questions over the past few weeks to try to figure out what is inducing these headaches. You should've seen the smile on his face when I explained all this to him! I'm sure I was one baffling patient since it was so unpredictable when they would occur. I am so very thankful that we figured out the problem. I was beginning to seriously wonder if I had a problem with my head (I know what you all are thinking out there: I do have some problems with my head, fumes or no fumes).

Our landlord has been very gracious to us and a new heat pump has been ordered (thankfully those old oil heaters have gone way out of style). It will be installed the beginning of next week.

Until then, we will turn the heat way down & bundle up.