Category Archives: adult-only

Published in the adult-only category

I don’t get it.

Why will she transfer from my tummy to the bed for a nap during the day but absolutely refuses at night when I want to sleep?

Although I must say, Shanna has earned some gratitude today. I explained to her this morning when she was being fairly fussy that I was having trouble staying patient because we had a very sleepless night and I needed her to settle down for a couple of hours and take a nap with me. She looked at me and fussed for another few seconds. Then she turned to the boob, latched without being fussy and fell asleep a few minutes later. She slept soundly for a few hours and I got in a much needed nap.

I’ve been surprised several times by how well she responds to verbal negotiation. I’m pretty sure I can’t count on it at this point, but… it’s been working. I don’t do it constantly and in general I let her do her thing without trying to change whatever it is she is doing. But a few times I’ve told her what I needed from her and she just did it. Very cool. 🙂

La di da

Alright, it’s official. I’m bored. 🙂 I’m still not feeling perfectly up to snuff. My abdomen hates me on a regular basis. But when I’m sitting still I mostly feel ok. And as much fun as Shanna is to babble with, her response is not yet intellectually stimulating. 🙂

Thus I am now to the point where I will say: Hey! Come visit! The visit can last a couple hours! 🙂

w00t! I is smart!

I was reminded that SJSU posted grades (Thanks Mitrian).

I got an A- in criticism and a B+ in genre studies. Yay! Considering how very little effort I put into the classes I am thrilled. 🙂 This ensures that my GPA is high enough to earn an MA. (Not that I was actually worried…) Now I need to study for a comp exam and study Spanish some more so that I can pass a written translation. I’m really rusty on Spanish, but I figure this is doable.

The cute!!

This morning I have been playing music for Shanna and singing along. Mostly she is just very intently looking at me. Then I got to Cher, the “Believe” album, which is very techno. She started swinging her arms like mad and squeaking with glee. It was ridiculously cute. 🙂

At some point I will get back to blogging about things other than the cuteness of my daughter. But for right now I am sitting on my bed playing with, holding, and feeding my daughter all day. Yeah… I just don’t have anything else going on. We’ll see how things go once I heal from birth.

This is interesting to me.

Infant Primates Given Vaccines On U.S. Children’s Immunization Schedule Develop Behavioral Symptoms Of Autism

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/107989.php

A primate model for autism using the U.S. children’s immunization schedule was unveiled at the International Meeting For Autism Research (IMFAR) this weekend. The research underscores the critical need for studies into vaccine safety and the immune and mitochondrial dysfunction of autistic children. The National Autism Association (NAA) questions why the government hasn’t undertaken these vital studies and why researchers have had to depend on private money to perform this critical science that will surely impact the health of millions of children worldwide.

While the authors and organizations associated with this study are withholding comment until publication, University of Pittsburgh’s Dr. Laura Hewitson, Ph.D., described at the IMFAR meeting how vaccinated animals, when compared to unvaccinated animals, showed significant neurodevelopmental deficits and “significant associations between specific aberrant social and non-social behaviors, isotope binding, and vaccine exposure.”

Researchers also reported at the scientific meeting that “vaccinated animals exhibited progressively severe chronic active inflammation whereas unexposed animals did not” and found “many significant differences in the GI tissue gene expression profiles between vaccinated and unvaccinated animals.” Gastrointestinal issues are a common symptom of children with regressive autism.

NAA calls for the NIH to conduct large scale, non-epidemiological studies into the biomedical symptoms surrounding young children and all vaccines, including those containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal and other additives like aluminum.

This request for further research echoes that of Dr. Bernadine Healy, Former NIH Director in a CBS interview earlier this week. “I think public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as ‘irrational,’ without sufficient studies of causation… without studying the population that got sick,” Healy said. “I have not seen major studies that focus on 300 kids who got autistic symptoms within a period of a few weeks of the vaccines.”

Recently the government’s vaccine court conceded the case of Hannah Poling, admitting that vaccines triggered her regression into autism by exacerbating mitochondrial dysfunction. “The recent Poling case and this new research provide further evidence that the CDC has fallen down on their job to protect children from harm. The biomedical research to date suggests that parental reports of regression following vaccination is not only plausible, but likely in certain individuals,” said Scott Bono, NAA Chairman. “To date, the CDC has conducted no safety testing on the possible harmful effects of simultaneously administering multiple vaccines to infants, and has steadfastly refused to state a preference for mercury-free vaccines to be given to children and pregnant women. It’s time for HHS and Congress to step in and take vaccine safety away from the CDC.”

Whoa

In the past four days I have lost 16 pounds. Granted, 8 of that is Shanna… but still! My Weight Watchers trained brain boggles. I’m 6 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight. But my body sure looks different. 🙂

Things I want to remember

The first triage doctor we saw asked me, “So what brings you here today?” In tears I responded, “I want an epidural.” Luckily, she went away and we didn’t have to deal with her again. We didn’t have another person that dumb the whole time in the hospital.

Our baby is apparently an over-achiever on pooping and peeing. I’m going to say that comes from my side. 😉

Sleeping with her on my chest is way easier and better than I thought it would be. And she can go from awake and fussing to deeply asleep with only three strong sucks on my nipple. That’s incredible.

Noah continues to astound me with his awesomeness. I still haven’t changed a diaper. I bathe every time I want to. Food appears magically if I mention out loud that it would be good.

I was told horror stories about going to the bathroom post-labor. I won’t say that everything is back to normal–but I had reasonably normal functioning and only mild discomfort four hours after the birth.

I was told the swelling would be horrible and I have none. I got a second degree tear and two stitches and I didn’t even notice. The extend of the tearing in my labia was enough that my midwife stood there looking at my crotch funny while the doctor sewed up the main perineum tear. I asked what she was looking at and she said, “I’ve never seen anything like these tears.” I’m special.

Noah asked me, while I was still laying there on the delivery table, “Do you think you will want to do this again?” “Yeah, sure.” 🙂

The best laid plans…

We have a daughter. Her name is Shanna Francesca. She was born at 9:54 May 24th after a 49 hour labor. We didn’t have the home birth of my dreams because after 40 hours of difficult labor and no sleep I was only 4 cm dilated. At the rate I was going I wouldn’t have had the strength to push when I got to that point. I transfered to Valley Med where we had the best hospital experience I can imagine having. I was presented with options and gently encouraged in the direction that the given nurse/doctor felt was best but at no time did I feel actual pressure. When I turned down their suggestions they would very cautiously and respectfully ask if I was sure then accepted my decision without judgment. I am thrilled by how accommodating the staff was. Multiple people were very pro-home birth and understood that I was not gung-ho about the hospital procedures and made every effort to bend or break rules so that my wishes could be accommodated. Really–it was great. Our delivering doctor made the extra effort to find us a private room so that Noah and the baby and I could stay together all night. If she hadn’t then the baby would have been taken to the nursery and Noah would have been kicked out at 10. Really, I’m grateful to the staff.

I find it funny that I was discussing “compassionate epidurals” with someone a couple of days ago and I was less than thrilled with the idea. At this point I’ve changed my opinion. I needed sleep. There were big chunks of labor that weren’t really painful. The actual pushing (I did almost three hours of it) wasn’t terrible–and the epidural was basically worn off. (They had finished my first bottle of medicine and never bothered to get me a second, I was effectively unmedicated for the final hour.) Labor got hard when I was too tired to be coherent and when I became terrified that it would go on for three or four days at the intensity it had. That was a reasonable fear considering how slowly I was progressing.

At this point I am grateful for modern medicine. I needed to use it and everything went breathtakingly well for me. The hospital was good to us and for us. I’m going to try for a homebirth again next time. I hear that once the cervix has opened once it usually is more willing to do so the second time. 🙂

I have no regrets or anger or upset over how things went. I made it through 40 hours on my own. That’s a very long time and I’m quite proud of myself. I pushed for freakin ever and I got my 8 pound baby out. (She’s also 20″ long.) She’s gorgeous. I have been with Noah and Shanna almost constantly since her birth and I may well have missed as much time as I did at home. 🙂 I’m so joyful. This is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. We signed out of the hospital this morning AMA and now we are home.

I am so very lucky. I’ll get pictures up very soon, I promise.

The most annoying thing

about reading romance novels is that I always end up wistfully thinking, “I wish I had a glittery hooha. I know this is lame. I know Noah adores me. But he’s not obsessed with me like that. I haven’t spoiled him for sex with all women for all time. Granted he may not have sex with a woman (uhm, other than me) again–but it won’t be because I’m just so amazing that the thought is unappealing. The thought of me getting upset isn’t worth facing… but that’s different.

My night for weird phone calls.

And then I talked to another woman I know. She is a fairly new mom and she hasn’t been married that long. She expressed a great deal of shock that I am so consistently positive in talking about Noah. I recognize that very few people are as effusive about their mates as I am, but I always kind of chalk that up to people having more of a sense of decorum… but they feel similarly. She was really wistful when I talked about how I’m so positive about Noah because he has earned it. And she was really bitter when she talked about how I won’t feel so happy with him once I have a baby and he isn’t doing anything to help. I told her that I would be absolutely shocked if Noah was less than helpful because it would be a 180 in his personality. She was skeptical and almost hostile.

She was also really negative when I was upbeat about prodromal labor and that I’m feeling pretty well and I feel like I just don’t have that much to complain about with pregnancy. She was miserable and pissy by this stage and she doesn’t understand why I’m not. When I told her that I see no point in being pissy and upset by having to wait on the baby because “This too shall pass” she told me that everyone will be throwing that in my face once the baby comes when something is terrible. I said that it’s true and that I try to remember in bad moments that they aren’t going to go on forever. She then got quiet and sad and said, “Maybe you’re just better at all this than I am.” I told her that I will probably be better at some things but that I will suck compared to her at other things–there is no use in comparing.

I feel really sad for her. I feel really sad that her life has gone this way and that she has become so bitter. I don’t generally think of myself as all that positive/upbeat/optimistic, but compared to her I’m Pollyanna. It’s interesting to get that perspective. I hope that she finds some peace.

How very odd.

So I haven’t posted in a while about how much I love my therapist. There have been some reasons for this. A few months ago she had some personal medical stuff happen and she went on hiatus to deal with stuff. Fair enough. When she came back she started behaving… oddly. Our sessions started involving a lot of personal details about her life. It started feeling more like she wanted to bond than be my therapist. This was a gradual process and for a while I wasn’t sure if I was overreacting or if things were starting to get way too friendly.

A few weeks (months? my time sense is toast) ago I noticed that almost half of our session was spent with her telling me how much she and I are alike in great detail and telling me about how we have overcome the same things in our lives and how special we are. Riiiiiiiight. Then I had the prelabor issue and I canceled sessions for a while because I was afraid of driving to Oakland. During this period I talked to a few people and decided that no really, she was being completely inappropriate. After I was on bedrest for a bit she offered to drive down and do a session in my house. I figured that I needed to talk to her about the weird boundary stuff anyway so sure. Only she just couldn’t seem to get here. She called 30 minutes before the session was to begin and told me that she was getting a late start because she had been having anxiety issues and her current med cocktail makes it unsafe to drive when she is freaking out like that. I said that we should maybe cancel because I had another appointment after her with not a lot of wiggle room. She indicated that she was already on the road, but she had stopped on the way and she could make it in time. She was pretty aggressive about still wanting to come down. So I agreed hesitantly and sat and waited. At 15 minutes past the start time she sent me a text message saying she was lost but almost here. When we got to the point where I needed to leave in 15 minutes I sent her a text message saying that I needed to leave soon. She called me and said that she understood that I needed to leave and that being punctual is very important to me. She then said she was very sad because she had really wanted to at least see my house and touch base with me–she hadn’t been planning to charge me for the session anyway. *blink* ? What? This was odd. I told her to just turn around because I was going to head out.

Then she sent out an email to all her clients saying that she needed people to pay in cash for a while due to an issue in her personal life. Well that’s odd…

I agreed to one phone session after that, but there was a weird connection and she lost phone connectivity (battery?) and so she didn’t charge me for that. Then I got to the point where I was just not up for the continued weirdness and I told her that I was going to be opting out of therapy for a while because I didn’t really want to be driving to Oakland and I thought I was doing pretty well anyway. She reluctantly agreed to this.

Then tonight she called me. She has missed me and wanted to know what was going on with me and why I haven’t called her. I was very very clear on my boundaries and told her that I’m doing fine and if I want to see her again I will call. Noah couldn’t figure out who I was talking to–he thought it sounded like my conversations with Rebecca when I’m being extremely clear on what I am interested in talking about. 🙂 She wanted to be sure that I would let her know when the baby comes and that it will mean a lot to her. She stressed a few times that if I want to talk on the phone because I’m processing anything she is totally up for that and she won’t charge me at all. Or if I am able to come up and see her that she won’t mind me feeding the baby at all. I’m starting to feel pretty freaked out. I left the phone call by saying that I was feeling like maybe I wouldn’t need therapy anytime soon but if I decide I need to see her I’ll let her know. That was probably too ambiguous. I’ve been seeing her for years. The next time she calls I’m going to need to tell her to stop calling and that feels so very uncomfortable.

I wish she hadn’t freaked out on me. My therapist is not supposed to be a source of freakin conflict.

Inspiration?

My blogging has gotten particularly boring lately and I’m aware of that. So, if you would like to have something more interesting to read, here is your chance. Stolen from my Sarah.

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don’t blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don’t blog about, but you’d like to hear about, and I’ll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on Orlando Boston drivers, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques literary criticism, what I actually studied in school, teaching, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

Comments screened, posts might be filtered – possibly just to the person who asked the question, if it’s touchy enough. We’ll see. (Though I’m usually not that sensitive and people basically never ask me questions that violate my sense of appropriate.)

Doing my best.

So I kind of freaked on Noah yesterday. I’m not telling you why. Suffice to say I was not as awesome of a wife as he deserves. But I tried to find solutions. Then more stuff got complicated today. ACK. But I sent him off with his best friend tonight. It’s been hard for him to be stuck at home all the time with me. It’s hard to be supportive of someone getting their needs met when your needs are conflicting. I’m trying though.

This life and being a grown up and taking care of your partner stuff is all a big fat pain in the ass.