Mil-Spouse Friday Fill-In (#55)

Sorry to have taken a break last week! BUT, it was only because I was in the hospital after giving birth to my precious new son on the 17th. =)

A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together.
~James H. Boren

Here are the questions this week from wifeofasailor.com. Please go see her blog for more info on the MilSpouse Friday Fill-Ins.

1. The first thing I think of when I get up in the morning is I wonder what my son needs now.
2. Lately, I’ve been craving water because this boy is a weed and I need to build up my milk supply for when I go back to work.
3. Whenever anyone says the word Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it reminds me of my childhood because my oma was born a German national and that movie title tends to come out of her mouth decidedly less child appropriate than it might seem since there is no real "ch" sound in her dialect (sounds a bit like replacing the C's with S's; and yes, I know, not really "a" word as a string of words, but my best childhood memories are with my oma).
4. The happiest word I know is  supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but damned if I can ever spell it correctly (had to look it up!).
5. My spouse may hate it, but I absolutely love Mexican food or anything spicy.

My son the PITA

Lot's of inquiring minds were curious today as to why, even though my son dropped into my pelvis 4 weeks ago, I haven't shown any improvement on the dilation/effacement front.

3 hrs and 2 ultrasounds later it's decided that his head cannot dilate my cervix efficiently because he won't stop sucking his thumb. My pelvis is narrow enough that the shoulder movement required to get his hands to his face prevents his head from descending far enough into my pelvis to put any worthwhile pressure on the cervix and dilate it.

I cannot begin to express how unamused I am by this turn of events. There is nothing wrong with my son and if he'd stopped sucking his damned thumb 2 weeks ago the show would have been on the road and he'd be here right now. No one thought to do an ultrasound then though. They're giving him one more week to give up the thumb in utero and then forcing him out whether he wants to or not.

Unfortunately for me this does nothing to help my work/maternity leave/sick days situation. I hope your thumb was worth it, son, cause Mom is mad.

Annnnnddddddd....

...another person with my due date has given birth.

I am upset. I am the last preggo standing.

Now we move onto those who are due after me. (And by after I mean due after me by at least 2 wks) Several of them are further along in the "my body is ready" process and I'm thinking some of them will probably give birth before me, especially since my MTF is so hesitant/refuses to give me an induction date.

I'm also upset because now there is no chance to save my sick-leave days which means that my maternity leave will end up with me starting off the new year, in a new district a) not being with my students at the start of school but b) docked pay right out of the gate. I'm already facing not getting a paycheck for Sept, but now my Oct paycheck will be docked for every day I miss making the paycheck that much smaller. Additionally, all appointments for me and my son, both routine and sick-based will be docked out of my paycheck as well -- since I won't have any sick-leave days to use. It also means that when I start out the next school year I'll be starting from the bare minimum...again.


I wish I could be more optimistic about things but I'm too much tired of this whole process and feel like I'm going to seriously break down at any moment.

TroopPaws Give Away over at MrsMamaHen

MrsMamaHen is holding a give away for one of these adorable Troop Paws pups. Similar in concept as the Daddy Dolls sometimes popularized to give to kiddos for when their parent is deployed, but I think a hell of a lot cuter (and less creepy).

Check her and the Troop Paws out.

Purposefully elusive

No one can say I'm boring. More/better update later.

ETA: soooo...i am due to pop out my little boy any day now. I'm warned at my last appointment that I need to have all metal jewelry removed prior to arrival at labor and delivery as a precaution. I'd changed out my metal belly bar for a plastic one months ago out of comfort, but had yet to change out my 7 earrings. Problem being that it had been several years since I had touched any of them. Somewhere between 2 and 5 i would guess. The backings and the posts had all pretty much fused together. I had the brilliant idea of using pliers. Maybe you can see where I'm going with this.

Four out of the 5 lobe piercings came out just fine. The 5th did not and after pulling the gem out (accidentally) and flattening the prong setting (accidentally), I didn't have a good grasp and pulled the flattened prongs halfway through the piercing hole...of course, accidentally. Now I am bleeding profusely out of my ear. My mom is useless and says let's go to the ER.

I will now lose the hole, for now, but after 2 hrs I am metal free sporting a swollen stitched up ear lobe. Wonder if my husband will notice.

Mil-Spouse Friday Fill-In (#53)

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. 
~e.e. cummings

Head over to Wife of a Sailor for more info on Friday Fill-Ins.


1. The best thing my parents taught me to do when I was a child was _________________.
...be independent. I wasn't always the most forward of children and definitely had a shy streak (I think I had to have been 7 years old or more before I could order for myself at a restaurant). However, they certainly let me take charge of what I wanted to do and it's come in handy as a milspouse to be able to figure how to do things on my own or strike out and do something without needing a push.

2. However, one thing I wish they did differently was _________________.
...treat my brother and I more equitably. I totally get that every child is unique and that one technique may not work for all of your children; we see that all the time in education and I fully believe that. However, I think that they've done him a bit of a disservice. He's fully capable of being a successful, contributing member of society and yet because they were not as tough on him to stick with things, go outside his comfort zone, become more independent, etc...he's living at home, without a job, overweight, after flushing away an 80K college scholarship -- at 27 yrs. old. This to me is unacceptable.

3. One thing I’ve always wanted to try but haven’t is _________________.
...woodworking. I love doing things with my hands. I don't mind buying furniture that requires some assembly and I LOVE to craft. I bake more than I cook because most of it requires more use of your hands as part of the process. I would love to get into woodworking and making my own furniture from the bottom up, but I'm hesitant because of the cost involved, the time involved, etc.

4. One thing I never thought I’d try but I have is _________________.
...being a milspouse. My whole family is military. My parents met in the Army National Guard. My aunt and uncle were dual military. Most other uncles were in the military. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII and beyond. I was lucky in that my parents didn't constantly move because of being Guard only; but my cousins were constantly in new places. It was cool for me getting to visit them in all of these awesome/new places but you could tell they suffered for it. They're unusually close and dependent on each other for support and I believe that their education, especially in the early formative years, took a hit because standards are not uniform across all states/overseas. I swore up, down, left, right, and halfway to Sunday that I'd never end up with a military man -- and I did.

5. If I could give my 16-year-old self one piece of advice I’d tell myself _________________.
...don't lose your head. Everything is sooooo dramatic when you're a teenager. Yes, it takes knowing the bad stuff to appreciate the good but you're going to hit times much worse than you can even imagine at this point in your life so you might as well enjoy the good stuff now while you can. Water off a duck's back, hun!

Well....

...This is going to be long and involved.

Mostly because I don't feel like I have a place I can vent about this without pissing someone else off. I would love to vent about this with my fertility group friends but apparently the ones left who are not pregnant yet are tired of hearing from those of us who're pregnant about our troubles because it reminds them that they're not pregnant yet. And I can't vent about it in regular formats like Facebook or whatever because quite frankly that's where some of this need to vent is coming from and besides that, when I vent about anything on FB I get ugly messages from my husband's sisters accusing me of not being thankful for what I have, etc. Nevermind that my husband and I have problems frequently because he doesn't know how to or refuses to talk about ANY issue that comes up. My parents see this as this huge major issue that **they** have to fix (last I checked, I'm the one married to the jerk). Stupid me thought that having my mother here while I'm due to give birth "any day" would be a smart idea because you never know when you're going to go into labor and I didn't want to be waiting around on my husband to make the 2 hr round trip to come out here to get me and then get us back on post in time to actually make it into labor and delivery prior to my son's arrival...you know, assuming that he's somewhere on post with cell reception and gets my phone call in a timely matter.

Anyhoo, I'm tired of being pregnant. Just done. I'll be 39 weeks *very* soon and I want this kid out. The pregnancy has been a bit rough. I had bleeding off and on during the first 2 trimesters. I've developed PUPPS and SPD. I don't think I've had a restful night's sleep or a pain/itch free day since I hit 20 wks and I'm working on sleep deprivation that's been additive since that time. We PCS'd (read: moved 2500 miles because the Army said so) and my husband left me to take care of the details regarding that on my own. That is no small feat when you're not grossly pregnant, etc. but I had to conquer that mess (to include fighting with USAA over our mortgage approval after coming out here and finding a house worth buying, etc). He was as uninvolved as you could possibly be in that process. I had to leave my job in KY before the end of the school year and be docked pay accordingly because of that. Because I had to leave my job in KY that meant I was trying to find a new job in WA at nearly 8 months pregnant and despite being heavily qualified for every position I applied for I was being denied left and right with some superficial external reason to cover their butts so that I couldn't sue for being discriminated against. Meanwhile, my husband began to say horribly mean things to me like "getting pregnant when we did was a mistake" and "you better be willing to flip burgers after the kid is born" and any other number of just ridiculous hurtful things.

Yes I ended up finding a job, but the only reason I ended up with the job is because I was finally able to produce a teaching certificate that proved I was certified to teach any of the sciences and they weren't sure what they might need a teacher to teach past this upcoming school year. The timing of my pregnancy is beyond inconvenient to them and I am more than acutely aware of this with the constant phone calls to check on my progress, etc. I can't make even the simplest inquiries about something pertinent to how this school year is going to run for me, since I'm teaching subjects I've never taught before, without asking permission to get inside the building or having someone prod me information about when my son will be here.

I am also getting paid less than I have ever been paid....ever. And the only way to rectify that is to finish my masters degree. Except to do that I need money. If I don't enroll in a class this fall I am suspended from the program and must reapply to get back in, which I don't have time for. Yet because I left KY early my checks are smaller. And because WA schools don't start until almost a month later than what I'm used to there looks to be a month where I'm not getting a paycheck to begin with. Nevermind the fact that I have NO sick leave built up because I am new to this WA district. If this kid is not here by Tuesday I have to take maternity leave and start burning complimentary sick leave. If this kid comes on his due date, I still have to take maternity leave, but will have burned through ALL of my complimentary sick leave prior to being able to go to work which leaves me taking deductions in my pay before I even set foot in the door with students. Not to mention that both my son and I will require regular doctor's appointments to assess our health status after delivery and that each of those days will then be docked against my paychecks too. Heaven forbid one or both of us ever get sick and I have to take days off then because again it will be unpaid. Just accounting for maternity leave and the late start to the school year my next paycheck may not be for another 2 months and while I have tried my best to prepare for this I am uncertain that I can be a financially contributing member to my nuclear family. Considering how my husband treated me upon facing the fact that I might not be generating any incoming while going through the job hunting process I do not necessarily relish the idea that he's going to see me as some burden to carry and make no qualms about letting me know that. All things considered it seems extremely unlikely that going to school this fall can happen financially; which will just have an awesome domino effect on our finances seeing as how I'll have to reapply to the program and it delays finishing the program in enough time for it to affect my next year's salary.

My very expensive computer is also on the fritz, as in the screen display won't stay on. I don't know how much it will cost me to have that fixed, though I can imagine it will be some inordinate amount of money that neither my husband nor I were planning on. I'm usually fastidious about backing up my data and it occurred to me right after this happened that somehow between the move and my pregnancy brain that I'd left off backing up like I should. There are extremely important things on that computer now that are NOT on my external hard drive, but because the display won't stay on I have no way of backing up my data prior to taking the computer in to be fixed. Any place I take it will offer to back up my stuff for me, of course....for an additional fee which is incredibly frustrating because dammit I can do it for FREE myself.

I love my mom and I'm glad she's here "in case" but I can't take her constantly harping on me day in and day out about how I'm not doing anything to help my marriage. Without getting into the litany of things I've tried over the last 2.5 years to get my husband to pull his head out of his ass on put us on the same page...let's just say that I'm tired of doing all the work. I'm 9.5 months pregnant. I'm just....tired. Of everything. And I don't have the energy to fight with anyone right now. Not my husband, not my mom, not anyone. Thankfully the husband understands this and is pretty much on his best behavior right now, but every. single. day. my mom is picking a fight with me about something that she doesn't like. I almost wish she wasn't here anymore, except that the second I tell her to go back home I know I'm invoking Murphy's Law and I'll need her to take me to the hospital.

Which brings me to the straw that broke the camel's back:
I'm still pregnant. Every single person I've known who had (yes, had!) a due date within 2 days of mine has already given birth. Early. They all have their birth stories and cute baby pictures up on Facebook with everyone cooing and awwing over their new arrivals. Yes, I'm glad for them...but I don't want to hear about it right now because not only do I not have my boy here yet, but it looks as if he's more than content to stay in there.

I've been having all these signs that my body is working at getting him out of there (WARNING TMI): losing my mucus plug, menstrual style cramping, dried blood in my ever increasing amount of discharge, i haven't had a solid bowel movement in weeks, the kid has dropped...a LOT. But my cervix is apparently still behind my son's head, it's not really effaced at all and it's only dilated to about 1.5 cm. I feel like a failure that my body seems to be working so hard and NOTHING, almost nothing is happening. It's not just that I'm jealous that they all have their babies right now (obviously that's part of it), but their bodies did things right and mine seems like it doesn't know what to do and I'm left mad and frustrated...and hugely, uncomfortably pregnant without any sign of relief. I know...I won't be pregnant forever, but I had this idea that I was going to be able to do this thing naturally. That I wouldn't have to force my body to get this kid out, that it was going to be wonderful, beautiful experience. Now it's probably going to end up with me being induced with either my kid being so drugged upon his arrival or me being drugged from a c-section that I won't be able to appreciate it like I expected to. And of course, having to wait to do any of this for another 2 wks because my OB/GYN clinic won't induce me until 41 wks.

You know the worst thing about this is that I don't feel like I have an outlet.

My fertility friends don't want to hear about this stuff because some of them are jealous that they aren't pregnant yet and they would kill just to be pregnant and deal with any of the things I'm dealing with because -- OMG it means I get to have a baby!
But that doesn't meant that I don't still need to vent.

I can't just put this all over FB because I don't want to ruin my other friends who've had their babies' happiness and I don't want to incur any wrath from his sisters or anyone else that I'm ungrateful. I know I have a job, I have a house and plenty of other things to be thankful for and I am....but I'm also just beat-up tired and have been going through a LOT of bullshit over the last 5 months or so.
I still need to vent.

When I try to talk about any of this with my husband I either get "the wall" or an argument and I don't need that right now.
I just need to vent.


Most of my friends and family don't know that I have this blog, so hopefully I can get away with this post here. I really apologize to those of you just stumbling across this who managed to read it all. I'm not normally such a sour puss...I just needed to get it out.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-in (#52)

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today. 
~Cherokee Proverb

 

Go here for more information on MilSpouse Friday Fill-ins: http://wifeofasailor.com/

1. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and ___________________.
… and you'll never be able to get the stink of dead fish out of your garage.

2. It is amazing what you can accomplish if  ___________________.
… you put your mind to it.

3. If you can’t stand the heat ___________________.
… suck it up or move to Alaska.

4. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to ___________________.
… the crap going on in the here and now.

5. Well behaved women seldom ___________________.
…know what they're talking about; you gotta live a little to learn a lot.