March 11, 2010

20,000 LEAGUES!

Nearly three years ago, I had the idea to take this photo.  I finally got to take it...and Baby couldn't have posed better if she were an actor!  Well done, Baby.  Way to make Mommy's dreams come true.


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March 06, 2010

FINDING MY FLOW

I'm still going to finish that blog post that got lost -- I started rewriting it and got sidetracked nine hours ago -- but I just wanted to let you all know that I am doing much better tonight.  My fantastic husband took the baby all afternoon and let me take a long nap and do my sitz bath.  The two of them drank beer and watched The Godfather all afternoon, which is so adorable.  He knew I needed a break, and didn't even ask; he just disappeared with her and let me be alone for a while.  I appreciate it so much.

I am feeling much better and ready to face another sleepless night.

And as requested...a photo with cute feet.


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WASTED

I could just cry...I was working on an enormous blog post while baby was catching some sleep...and I went to save the draft and accidentally hit the back arrow in the browser and lost the whole thing.

And it was a post about how every minute in the day is precious and can't be wasted because there's too much to do.

Seriously, I could just cry.

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March 05, 2010

EXHAUSTED

I don't mind sharing the baby's name with people, but I just don't want to post it publicly.  If you want to know, shoot me an email at tryingtogrok at hotmail and I will let you know.

When I find time.  Which has proven to be phenomenally hard so far.  I haven't even found the time in two whole days to take a sitz bath -- something I desperately want to do -- because I feel like I am constantly starting or ending a feeding.  I haven't taken a single nap.  And most days I forget to take my medicines too.

This is chaos.  I am still figuring it out.

Has anything happened in the world?  Baby watched O'Reilly with my mom last night, so she's more up to date on current events than I am at this point.

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March 03, 2010

THE BABY STORY



I had my 39 week appointment Monday morning.  I had been having contractions over the weekend, but nothing that I felt was enough to warrant going to the hospital.  At my appointment they determined I was already 5 cm: halfway there!  And that I was having regular contractions.  It was news to me, as I was feeling fine.



They admitted me at about 1:00 and started me on penicillin because I was GBS positive.  I would need four hours on the IV in order for the baby to get all the meds.  They decided to break my water at 3:30, figuring I'd have plenty of time before baby arrived.  I assumed she'd get here around midnight...

As soon as my water broke, the pain kicked in, and I started dilating fast.  I finally decided I wanted an epidural, and they checked me as they called the anesthetist.  I was already 10 cm.  So I just decided to go for it.

They set me up to push and I closed my eyes and pushed with everything I had.  I was concentrating so hard and was in so much pain that I never knew what was happening: the baby's heart rate went berserk.  The midwife grabbed the scissors they use to cut the umbilical cord and started cutting me in all directions, while the doctor grabbed the vacuum.  She came out and they whisked her away to check her out.  I didn't get to see her for the first hour, which broke my heart, but thankfully her Daddy and Gramma got to spend the time with her. 



Meanwhile, I had to get put back together again.  And let me say, I never really understood the gravity of the words "tear" and "episiotomy."  I do now.

She looks just like her Daddy, which I love.  We are working hard on breastfeeding, with about 85% success.  We got home this evening and Charlie went bonkers.  He wants to lick her constantly.  She squeaks, just like his toys.

We are happy...



(Daddy just said that he hopes her SSN shows up soon so he can open her accounts.  "She's been alive for two days and she doesn't have any money yet."  And then Charlie licked the top of her head.  I love my family.)

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March 01, 2010

BabyGrok Is Here!

Born at 5:30 pm and weighing in at 7 lbs 14 oz.

Yay! 


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airforcewife Reporting In

So, I finish up my boxing workout and the phone rings with Sarah's name showing.  As soon as I heard Mr. Grok's voice I shouted, "Do we have a baby?"  Which is really very silly, because "we" don't have a baby, but please forgive me for being a little proprietary here - I'm sure you all understand.   We're a little invested in this whole thing, right?

The news is that Sarah is in the hospital and getting down to business.  And doing quite well, apparently!  It was reported to me that she's got the "best contractions in the ward." 

And I'm totally not surprised by that at all.  More to come soon - BabyGrok is on her way. 

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February 27, 2010

IS NESTING THE SAME AS TWEEKING?

Husband:  I think you'll make a wonderful mother.
Sarah:  You do?
Husband:  Yes, and so does everyone else on the internet. Then again, everyone on the internet thinks Ron Paul would make a good president so...we'll see.

My husband is getting impatient.  He wants to hold her and be with her.  Me, I just feel nervous.  I have begun to get frightened of the pain.  I am in a cranky mood and want to be simultaneously left alone and completely taken care of.  I hurt a lot of the time.  I want the hurt to turn into labor, so I try to stoke it.  But it doesn't; it's just pointless pain.

I am not nesting so much as freaking out that I have wasted the past eight years of married life.  Why didn't I clean the garage or finish that quilt or sort through worthless old college textbooks?  What if today is the day and I still haven't gotten the oil changed in my car?

I don't feel like a good mom.  I feel like I'm already starting out on the wrong foot.

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February 24, 2010

UP AT 6 WITH NOWHERE TO GO

When my husband has been home for a while, I get used to sleeping with him. I can sleep through his movements and even his early departures. But I'm not used to him yet, so his 6 AM wake-up is now mine.  Fortunately, I'm not having any of the insomnia problems that I had when he returned last year.  I pretty much want to sleep when he wants to sleep.  But I'd just like to sleep a little longer in the morning while I still can.

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February 23, 2010

I MEAN, THE MAN HAS HIS OWN CURVE

If you love Art Laffer the way I love Art Laffer, might I recommend watching his ideas for how to fix the ecominy?  He laid them out on Glenn Beck last week; check out clips two and three here at Glenn Beck Clips.

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SORRY, MOM, THE MOB HAS SPOKEN!

We interrupt my boring posts about not having a baby yet to bring you this...



OK, Republicans, take a deep breath. Or at least I need to take a deep breath, before I slap you senseless.

Scott Brown? Really? Really?

Hey, Obama sucks because he wasn't vetted and he'd only been in government for five minutes. He just won because he was charismatic and had some good slogans during the campaign. Hey, I know, let's do the exact same thing on our side! Let's get behind the flavor of the month!

I don't even think it's possible to type the amount of sarcasm I want this post to be dripping with.

Maybe Scott Brown would make a fine president someday, I don't know. But not now. Are you people insane? Does the entire electorate just get distracted by something shiny and lose their everlovin' minds?

I can't help but feel lately that we're all as dumb as the people of Springfield. We're all set to spend our money wisely to fix potholes when the flashy monorail salesman promises us hope and change.



And then we just follow like lemmings right off the cliff.

Well, except we don't even have the fix-the-potholes plan.  42% of us have no idea who we'll support next.  It's a pretty barren field.

But not Scott Brown, for heaven's sake.  Just let's kill that idea right this instant.

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February 22, 2010

NOT QUITE MENTALLY PREPARED

The good news is the bed rest worked.  The bad news is the bed rest worked.
I am stuck at the same dilation and effacement that I was at two weeks ago.

And really, other than the fact that life is exponentially more painful now than it was then, I guess I am OK with that.

Last night I had a bit of a freakout.  I somehow feel like I am still not ready.  I don't feel anxious to get the baby out (other than because of the pains) because I am still scared to death of having to take care of her.  I feel like everything I've read about labor and newborn care is not enough and I still feel overwhelmed and unprepared.  I am feeling the weight of the awesome responsibility that is motherhood, and I am OK with postponing it for another week or so. 

Plus we still need to paint her bookshelf.  And a million other things.

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February 20, 2010

A FAMILY AGAIN

My husband laughs when he touches my belly.

I stayed in bed until the very end.  He was supposed to arrive late Thursday night but ended up here Friday morning instead.  I passed many excruciating Hours In Between dreaming crazy things like that his flight had been diverted to Cincinnati or that he had to hitch a ride on Noah's Ark to get home.

When I saw him, I thought his beard looked a lot nicer in person than in pictures.  He thought my belly was much smaller than he imagined it would be.

He likes getting kicked.  But he says he's ready to meet our baby on the outside already.

I got out of bed after two weeks, and my legs are weak.  The baby also seems a lot bigger and heavier than she did previously.  I can't believe how much she's grown while I was just lying there.

And I now officially understand lightning crotch.  I wish I didn't.

But I promise I won't complain.  I got everything I wanted: a healthy baby, a safe deployment, and my family all together again before baby arrives.

I will remind myself of that when my legs go numb with pain.

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February 18, 2010

TICK TOCK

FYI: Tick Tock
I only have to hold out a little longer...

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BROKEN WINDOWS

I think the broken windows fallacy makes perfect common sense once you hear it.  Frankly, I don't understand how one could argue against it.

So why do we continue to base policy on it?

The idea that government spending creates jobs makes sense only if you never ask where the government got the money. It didn’t fall from the sky. The only way Congress can inject spending into the economy is by first taxing or borrowing it out of the economy. No new demand is created; it’s a zero-sum transfer of existing demand.

The White House says the $300 billion spent from the stimulus thus far has financed as many as 2 million jobs. Maybe. However, the private sector now has $300 billion less to spend, which, by the same logic, means it must lose the same number of jobs, leaving a net employment impact of zero. But the White House’s single-entry bookkeeping simply ignores that side of the equation.

Even Washington’s transferring money from savers to spenders doesn’t create demand, since the financial system already converts one person’s savings into another person’s spending (as I detail here). A family might normally put its $10,000 savings in a CD at the local bank. The bank would then lend that $10,000 to the local hardware store, which would then recycle that spending around the town, supporting local jobs. Now suppose that the family instead buys a $10,000 government bond that funds the stimulus bill. Washington spends that $10,000 in a different town, supporting jobs there instead. The stimulus has not created new jobs. It has merely moved them to a new town.

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SMART WOMEN

Some recent reading that has made me excited about the task before me and happy that I will finally have a job towards which to apply my meager thinking skills.

I really feel this is the task I was born to undertake.

First, Smart Women

This isn't a politically correct thing to say, but I knew - even at 18 - that I wanted to marry and have children. What's more, I wanted to raise my children myself. It made absolutely no sense to me to place a home and family last on my "to do" list when it was first or second on the list of things that were important to me. And it made no sense to me to spend years and years prepping myself for a high powered career I would have to give up almost as soon as I attained it.
[...]
I raised two fine sons and ran a household well and efficiently. And my support enabled my husband to have a family and concentrate on his career. A lot of folks sneer at that sort of thing, but I always wondered why society would want only the "stupider" sort of women to raise the next generation.

Second, at The Thinking Housewife (a site I might need to read more of).

Teach your daughter that grades will not be the most important factor in her future. It is important for her to learn for the sheer pleasure of knowing too, not just to win approval. Someday she will be a woman and engaged in the project of loving a man and starting a small society together. This is primary. All she learns can be put to use in this task. Every interest she has and every scrap of knowledge will be of value. Let her know how exciting it will be for her.

And thirdly, from an anecdotal history of Abigail Adams:

How could America produce "Heroes, Statesmen, and Philosophers," she wanted to know, if it didn't also produce "Learned women"?
[...]
Abigail never doubted that women were men's intellectual equals. ...  Unlike the radicals, she believed that women found their highest fulfillment within marriage and the family.  With a better education, she said repeatedly, a woman would be a better wife and mother and contribute more in the long run to the well-being of the new nation than if she were uninformed.  Well-educated women, she insisted, could help their husbands safeguard republican liberty; they could also rear boys qualified for leadership in the young republic and girls who in turn could become the devoted mothers and wives of patriots.

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February 17, 2010

ONE STRESSED PUPPY

Apparently the dog likely has stress-induced colitis.

I must be putting out some major vibes, because I've stressed the dog out so much he got sick.  Poor thing.


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OF ALL THE TIMES

At SpouseBUZZ we like to joke about "deployment gremlins," all the little things that go wrong as soon as your husband leaves for deployment.  Well, I have been having bed rest gremlins.

It started with a broken garage door.  Two days before bed rest started, the garage door decided it likes going up but not down.  And then I ended up in bed before I could fix it.  Luckily I haven't needed my car in two weeks.  Unluckily, the door is still busted.

Then my mom arrived to help me.  My mom with the broken foot who moves at half her normal speed and has trouble getting up and down stairs, which is the whole reason I needed her help.  She's still doing it, bless her.  I am not picking on her, just stating a fact.  Of all the times for her to break her foot...

And then the dog.  The first day my mom was here, the dog ate her meds.  She had to induce vomiting.  And now, the dog is mysteriously sick.  We can't for the life of us figure out what could've made him sick, but he has had diarrhea and vomiting for three days.  The first night, I tried to take care of him, but after going up and down the stairs six times to let him out, I knew I had to relinquish the chore to my mother or else the baby was gonna fall out on the stairs.  So now the dog wakes me and then I wake my mother so she can let him into the backyard.  And he probably needs to go to the vet by now, but that means sending my mom with him.  Of all the times for him to get sick...

And you know, I don't remember having any moral qualms about letting my mom take care of me when I had my wisdom teeth out at 18.  She fetched and comforted.  But it's a whole different game for me as an adult.  I hate asking her for help.  I hate it.  I hate waking her in the middle of the night so she can wipe my dog's bottom with toilet paper to make sure he doesn't soil my bedspread again...since it's had to get washed twice already in the past two days.  It's one thing to have her go make me a sandwich -- and believe me, I don't like asking her to do that either -- but it's a whole nother thing to make her take care of my dog's vomit and poop.

We're both exhausted and stressed out.  And unfortunately, this story won't end with a nice vacation and a long nap; it will end with a crying baby who needs even more attention than the dog.

I can't believe this is how I'm spending the end of my pregnancy.

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February 15, 2010

TEN YEARS

Ten years ago today, this happened:

I loved my husband's qualities before I ever had any inkling he would become my husband. In fact, he had declined my suggestion that we date. Weeks later, he came to me with his mind and said that he had made a mistake and we should be together. We figuratively shook on it, and that was that.

Effectively, our love was transacted like a pound of butter on a grocery counter.

My husband earned my love. I too had to earn it from him, and it took him two weeks longer than I to weigh the merits of it.

We sat there in his dorm room, and he said that after much thought, he agreed that we ought to be together.  And we looked at each other shyly and said, "OK then, I guess we're dating."  And that was that.

Today he finally got access to a webcam and skype.  For the first time since July, I got to see him.  His appearance was shocking; I am definitely not used to the beard.  Or the muscles.  And on the flip side, the size of my belly blew him away.

Ten years.

And I get to see him in person soon.

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February 14, 2010

WHAT, IT WAS? HOORAY!

Six years ago my husband was leaving on his first deployment on Valentine's Day.  Now I am anxiously waiting for him to come home.

Even though we're apart, I will still participate in our traditions.  And look forward to tomorrow, an even better day for us to celebrate.

And soon we'll do all our celebrating in person.

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