I'm A Whipcracker!

Yes folks. It's official. Someone actually wants me to crack a whip over people's heads. Ok. As much as I would like to be a literal statement, a figure of speech will have to suffice.

I've been hired to be an Asst. Manager! Yay. Me? A Boss, you say? Can't be true!

It is. hehe.

What's the catch? *ahem* yeah, ok. You got me there. It's not a fancy office position or anything. It's a new store opening up down the street (a couple doors down from my daycare). Yeah, it's a Cinnabon/Carvel store. You may commence with the laughter now.

It's paying a dollar less an hour than we need to get caught up... but hopefully there will be raises soon, and I have a couple potential website contracts across the street.

Anyways... tata for now. I start Monday. Time to scramble for daycare. *enter sarcastic "weee" here*

Happy 4th

Ok. Like everyone else, here's my Happy 4th of July, Happy Independance Day, happy red white & blue day, happy stars and stripes day.... etc. ad nauseum. You get the idea.

We'll be launching some of last year's leftover fireworks. Baby's decked out in her white dress with red and blue stars. We may go across the street where we were invited to their BBQ.

I may even get some website business out of them too! (YAY)

Anyways, that's all I have to say for now.

Oh, and I got my IMVU account back. YIPPIE.

Hooray For IMVU (Beta)

We got a Toofer

We got ourselves a two-fer.... I mean toofer... I mean...er... oh hell, we have tooth number 2! hee hee. She's getting more accepting of the pains in her mouth -but every so oft, she has a really bad moment and it's screaming to high heaven. Which is totally out of character for her.

She's now nibbling on Del Monte (2) foods. I mix a little of the strained foods in with her oatmeal or rice cereal for flavor. I mean, really... would you want to eat rice cakes and tofu for every meal of every day? Even babies need some flava! Besides, I figure it will help against picky eating. Not that I think that will be a problem in the slightest. With exception of bananas (which she will eat, but more ends up on her chin than in her mouth), she pretty much inhales anything you put in front of her.

I also got a huge bag of frozen fruit pieces from Sam's Club a while back. Not only is it good for blending into a Vanilla SlimFast shake, but it also fits real nice into those little mesh chewing contraptions for babies. The frozen fruit feels good on sore gums, tastes good, has Vitamin C and stuff, and because it's in the mesh, she can't choke on it. It's fun to play with, to boot! So far her favorites (and the only things I've given her yet) is frozen peaches and frozen bits of honeydew.

The New 7 Wonders

I just knew someone was going to have some fun with 07/07/07. It seems someone's done just that. They decided to try to rename the 7 Wonders of the World. I cast my vote.



I voted for (in alphabetical order):



Acropolis



Easter Island Statues



Great Wall



Kiyomizu Temple



Machu Picchu


Petra



Stonehenge



By the way, you can't vote for the pyramids of Gyza. They're 'grandfathered in' already. hmph. I wanted to vote. heh

Employment Spam from CareerBuilder

“After reviewing your resume, we'd like to invite you to apply for our sales management training program at [insert Insurance Agency here] Company.”

Here is what I'd like to reply (but hubby thinks I shouldn't actually send it):


Dear Buster,

So, did you actually Read my resume? Personally? You mean you took the time to look at it yourself? Or did you just spam me? If you took the time to review my resume, you would see that sales is not my strong point by a very long shot. I can’t sell ice to a man dying of thirst.

Have a pleasant day.

The joys of life

Well, baby broke her first tooth last Monday, and is needing much love and attention. On top of that, it seems we're financially in trouble, and will likely have to move soon. So baby doesn't get to grow up in this really nice house that she was brought home from the hospital to. Too many bills are coming in, and not enough money coming in.

On that note, I'm going to break my golden blog rule. heh.

If you need a website done, any photo touch-up work, any splicing of images for HTML, or any such job, please contact me at webmaster@web-dzynz.com or visit www.Web-Dzynz.com for more information.

By the way, thanks for the clicks on my AdSense ads. So far I've earned 10 bucks. But they don't pay me until it's 100. Buggers. heh.

iPood

This is just WAY too funny. (Image clickable.) It's just the best. Thanks Komando.com for sharing this brilliance with all us moms!

IMVU Fun

So I recently partook in the rapidly-growing community called IMVU.
If you're interested in a very fluid, very customizeable 3D Chat (that is sometimes more Virtual World than it is chat), click the link below. And let them know Pragmatist referred you. ;)


IMVU - The World's Greatest 3D Chat

'Office' Parties in PA

Here's a fun factoid for D.B. Echo: It seems there's an office party in his backyard.

Mother's Day Thoughts

I had a great Mother's Day.

It was better than my 30th birthday that I had the weekend before. My 30th birthday was spent in the E.R. because my daughter had boils on her diaper area that had become a bit infected and was causing her a fever, on top of the severe pain they were causing her. It seemed no matter how much I kept them clean, they kept getting worse, and we just couldn't wait for the normal doctor, and being still new to the area, we weren't sure where the urgent care clinics were. They didn't do much except let her wail in agony for hours, stuck an IV in her, then waited another hour before they actually hooked it up to anything. Then they gave her a half hour's worth of antibiotics, wrote a prescription (that was dosed way too strong for a 6-month old), and charged me over $1,300! (With No Insurance) In the end, the IV was probably not necessary, and all I really needed was just an Rx for a good antibiotic. Lesson Learned. They tried to yell at me for popping the boils to relieve the severe pressure, but that is the only thing that seemed to help heal it!

"Mom-Knows-Best" Rant: This is why they call doctors "Practicioners" = They have to keep practicing medicine because they don't have a clue what they're doing.

In any case, they're healing pretty good. They aren't causing her much irritation any more. This made Mother's Day so much nicer.

My parents sent me an azalea bonsai tree, and my in-laws sent me a box of tulips. My hubby took me and baby to San Antonio for the weekend. We were going to see the Alamo and Sea World, but it just got way too hot, so we just hung out at the hotel and ordered room service and bought a PPV of Ghost Rider. No complaints here! I had a lot of fun getting out of the house. When we came back, we visisted the new game store up in the Woodlands, the Fat Ogre. The owner let me paint a miniature for grins and giggles while I was there.

I have to go back to work. It seems I wasn't able to bring in any money on the side from home. I suck at sales. I dread it and avoid it whenever possible. But I did some today. "Already have a site", no answer, no answer, machine, no answer.... ugh.

So I put a few lines out at places, but I may have to back to the place I don't want to go back to. Too much gas, driving, bad management practices, mediocre pay, no insurance, but they love me and will take me back. Le sigh.

I'm also missing a lot of my old friends. I hope the best for She Travels' arriving son, but I haven't heard from her in a while. She's probably mad at me for some reason, and I'm probably a bad friend for not knowing why, but there it is. I tried emailing her and it got rejected as spam (which it never used to). I'm not sure if she blocked me, or her mail system has deemed my email as spam (which Has happened before for some reason, though I'm not sure why).

In any case, I hope all the mothers out there had a great day Sunday.

Second Puppy Shots

Baby goes for her second round of puppy shots today. I already feel bad, but it needs to be done, I guess. Hopefully I won't have to pay an arm and a leg for this, since Medicaid still refuses to help the likes of me.

Don't they know that in America, caucasians ARE the minority?? Sheesh. Oh well.

Identify Yourself

Your unwanted callers (namely bill collectors and telemarketers) have found a few new tricks on how to be annoying. They think they're being clever, but really, they're just irritating and a nuisance.

A bill collector called me this morning. It's one that has called before, and the caller has this knack of not identifying themselves in order to speak to my husband (whose name the bill is under). This one in particular keeps calling trying to collect a debt that we've already settled, but they keep thinking we owe them. Every time they call, it's always a woman not wanting to identify where she's calling from, but from experience, we know. I keep teasing my husband that one day, I'll answer the phone, and tell her to "stop sleeping with my husband and never call here again." We laugh about that. This morning, I tested the waters on that one. >:)

Here's how the call went:

Me: Hello?
Her: Hello, is [enter husband's name] there?
Me: May I ask who's calling?
Her: Stacy.
Me: Stacy. Just Stacy?
Her: Yes. May I speak to him?
Me: I'm sorry, I don't know a Stacy.
Her: Probably not, since you're not [husband's name].
Me: (calling to my husband who was right next to me and heard the whole thing) Hunny... your girlfriend, Stacy's on the phone.
Husband: Tell her I don't know a Stacy.
Her: (frantic and enraged) That's a LIE. How can you say that!?
Me: Sorry, he doesn't know who you are.
Me: (..click..)

Lesson: If you're going to call and talk business, identify yourself - or you'll be the object of a practical joke.

GoDaddy - Prince of Thieves

I offer a challenge to anyone reading this. Go to www.godaddy.com and do a search on some random URL. The stranger, the better. In a week, go back and do a search for the same name. My money's on the fact that in that short amount of time, someone mysteriously had the same idea you had, and grabbed the URL. So now, instead of paying the $8 you Could have spent on the initial purchase, you now get to pay $18 for the backorder, wait a year or so, and Hope it releases. Or... you can pay the $60-some dollars (PLUS Commission), and have a third party try to buy it back for you - but there's no guarantees - and you're out a chunk of change.

Whether GoDaddy is directly responsible for this or not, it matters little. Don't do a search at GoDaddy unless you want to buy that URL right then and there. I used to love them. Now I think they're a bunch of thieves. This is not a good business model, GoDaddy!! BAD DADDY! ... or is it "HoDaddy"? meh. Either fits.

And The Winner Is....

After much debate and deliberation with myself, I left my position at my full time place of employment. I am now a stay-at-home mom.

I have a trip to California for my grandmother's 95th birthday next week, and me and baby will be driving there while hubby works. He'll be flying there and back. This gives baby and me a chance to take all the stuffs we need to take, and be able to bring back stuffs as well. While I am not comfortable with the idea of me and baby alone on the road for two days there and again coming back - it makes the most sense financially and logistically.

It's ironic, that the same day I sent in my letter of resignation to my former employers, another girl there quit because she got a new job elsewhere. It really shook up the company. Not only was it the same day, but at almost the same time. We couldn't have been more than a half hour apart. To some, it probably looked like a conspiracy of two disgruntled employees. It would be an easy leap - since the company has recently been putting on greater demands on the employees without compensation or assistance from additional hires. While the owners are very sweet gentlemen, they got greedy, and are now breaking the company by trying to grow too fast. Oh well. "Whatever will be, will be."

In any case, I have finally had time to complete my major contract's website, and to begin some others. Shortly, I'll be redoing my business's website completely (with a blog of its own, even). It's about 3 years overdue.

Baby's grandfather bought her first dragon! (The package says for ages 5+, and she's only 4 mo. But she can still look at it.) It's a Frost Dragon by Dragonology. Very cute.

New Look

I thought I'd try a new look - as baby decides to christen the design with a goopy line of drool on my shoulder. Well, I guess that means she likes it.

Impasse - Remains

So it's been a week or so... and the few potential customers we had, didn't pan out as we had hoped. One wanted everything for nothing - something we've experienced more times than we can count now. They see ads for $100 websites, and think they can get a year's worth of the works for that. *sigh* What they don't realize is these cheap websites don't bother to update their site, maintain it, or offer anything more than a business card online - and 'when' you decide to use a better service, they've hijacked your URL with no hope of return.

So that makes my decision even harder. We're not comfortable being without that extra money. Since my husband is a contractor, there's no telling if we'll make enough every month.

We did find a daycare center near the house that seems acceptable to our standards. But, still - it's over a half hour away from work, and if anything happened.... Plus, I'd be away from her all day.... But I'd only be losing about a third of my pay every month, which would go towards all the comfortable things in the house. We'd be pinching every dime otherwise, and I'm also not sure I want to do that to our daughter.

With that said... It's highly tempting to take up d.b. Echo's offer. LOL (see comments on Impasse).

Work is getting worse. They are piling on more work, and still refraining from hiring - yet want to grow as a company by 10 times in a matter of months. Impossible. They'll break the company before that happens at the rate they're going.

Then I get a call from our auto insurance that my husband got in a tiny fender bender at a whopping 2 miles per hour, but the other person filed a claim already. Sheesh. Maybe if they didn't drive like jackasses by darting in front of a laden work truck and expecting it to be able to stop on a dime.... such incidents wouldn't happen.

I don't get people's fascination with getting around one car, just to get off at the next exit 1/4 mile away. Or my favorite.... weaving like a madman in and out of traffic, to gain no more ground than the one staying in one lane.

Men in Black had it best:

"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

But I digress. In any case, I still haven't made my decision. Though, as much as I fear the idea, I may have to turn my daughter over to strangers to raise - at least for as long as it takes to get more business coming in.

*le sigh*

On the upside (i guess), my website will be getting a major makeover in the coming months... including a corporate blog (as opposed to this personal one), a new gallery, a sample shopping cart, and a few other goodies. Then I'll get to work on my husband's site so he can start publishing his writings.

Impasse

The choice every working mother faces has finally reared its ugly head. Domestic Engineer - or Career Mom.

I've been lucky enough to be able to work from home these last few months, watching every smile, cough, cry, poopy diaper... but yesterday I was asked to come back to the office effective March 1. When I thought of someone else watching, raising, teaching, caring for my daughter that was not me or my husband -

... Then I thought of returning to the office. I'd have to fork out childcare bills and gas. The smallish web e-tailer wanted to grow to ten times their size, and they wanted this to happen overnight. They wanted to change the infrastructure and appearance of the site and the company as a whole, but were unwilling to change their micromanaging ways, creating more work for the overworked and not willing to employ additional help. Dissention was beginning in the ranks. Employees that were once joyous, harmonious and happy, were now turning bitter, overworked, exhausted, and frustrated. Salary employees were being treated like hourly, and growing more noticeable by the day... clocking in, not getting paid overtime, getting docked for time short...

Then I thought - if I left, what would I lose? Granted, a decent chunk of money - but money that would largely go towards gas and daycare. I would lose vision benefits and 401k. There was no health insurance. Not even an option for it - and no sign of ever getting it. No yearly bonus. A weak raise every year (1%).

....Then I thought, what would be gained by leaving? Growing with my child. Time to work on my websites and my clients' websites (that - over the last month, are starting to come in), time to care for and give attention to my daughter, time to keep the house tidy, time to do all the little things I don't normally have time to do.

Everyone has been supportive, asking me questions, but never trying to sway me one way or the other. It's ultimately my choice, and undoubtedly, the hardest one I've ever made. But a few key questions became the telling points. Do I choose the office over my daughter? No. Do I want to go back to the office? No. Those answers really brought to light my true feelings. In fact, it feels like I quit months ago, but only now realized how much so, and frankly, I'd rather leave now, while I still respect my employers as people, and not to leave them full of resentment (something that is soon approaching).

So, now, I have to figure out how to make my websites profitable, get a few more contracts, and go from there. Our extra spending is going to have to come to a full stop once again, though the fancy living for the last couple months have been such a needed relief from years of financial turmoil.

So - if you know anyone that wants a website .... =)

I was reading some things on MSNBC.com, and figured I'd grab a few snippets for later reflection.

Industry signals Bush to do more on warming
10 companies join activist groups in calling for caps on
carbon emissions

Major corporations and environmental groups on Friday announced what they
called an "unprecedented alliance" to push for quicker action against global
warming — urging lawmakers to pass mandatory curbs on carbon emissions, in
contrast to President Bush's voluntary approach.

In a statement, the 10 U.S.-based companies and four environmental groups called for mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, including those from power plants, transportation and buildings.

"There must be a reasoned and serious debate about the solutions," the group stated. "But debate cannot substitute for action. We hope that the consensus we have reached through our unique partnership provides further impetus toward the creation of sensible and effective policies to address global climate change."

Kyoto's results:
Rich nations' emissions were 3.3 percent below 1990 levels in 2004, mainly
due to a collapse of Soviet-era industries. Emissions are now rising in many
countries. In the United States, which is outside Kyoto, emissions were up 16
percent from 1990.

I'll tell ya. Our next president better damn well have an iron fist on our ecology. Wars and religious factions will come and go. That's just human nature. We forget our history and repeat ourselves all the time. But our environment is a one-shot-deal. If we mess it up - there's no second chance. Sure, we can colonize some other planet in biodomes or rely on a Star Trekkish 'artificial life support system' to survive on our own planet, or make an artificial ozone like in Highlander 2 - but that's not solving the problem.

Boten Anna (take 2)

My previous entry seemed to stop playing. Maybe it was my computer (that needs an overhaul *read: replacement*), or maybe it's something else. In any case, I still love this video, so pth.



OK - I'm convinced it's just my computer. Quick, someone get me a sledgehammer, and a tub of water. I'm gonna go gangsta on this compu-tator.

Google to Take Over Universe

No, really. They aren't happy enough with the U.S., with the World, with the Moon and Mars. No siree. It's sights are now on the whole universe. Look out Janeway, Kirk, and Picard, your territories are about to be invaded and your jobs are about to be downsized due to the supersearch gurus taking over.

What am I rambling on about? How can Google take over the universe? I asked the same thing. And I bet d.b. echo didn't even know this yet (but I'm sure it will be on his blog soon).

According to the A.P.:
"Google has already planted its flag on Earth, the Moon and Mars. The universe could be next. The Internet search company has struck a partnership with scientists building a huge sky-scanning telescope, with hopes of helping the public access digital footage of asteroids, supernovas and distant galaxies...

The 8.4-meter LSST is expected to begin surveying the sky in 2013, from a mountaintop in Chile. Its goal is to continuously scan space, taking a series of 15-second exposures that allow it to cover the sky every three nights.

Officials say the telescope will open "a movie-like window" on nearby asteroids and far-off exploding stars, and help explore the mysterious "dark energy" believed to fuel the universe's expansion.

Google's stature should also bring the project more attention, which could be crucial as the $350 million telescope competes for public and private money."

I figure with Google's new addition, personal telescope sales will drop considerably. Why look out your window when you can look at your computer?

All Dumb No More

I are sad. A while back, Alldumb.com sold their dumb souls to CollegeHumor, and nothing from Alldumb.com ported over. So now, if I want to see my old favorite vids, I have to go to GooTube. So all my old links on past posts... they are dead now. Poor me.

Site Meter

Much to d.b. echo's delight, I've finally added SiteMeter to the site. It's not bad. I may think about supplementing my own website with this, even though it has it's own very good traffic tracker program built into it.

Long Awaited Update

Well, I bet you're all dying to hear what's been happening since the bundle of joy came bouncing into our world. Well, my story is completely outside the timeline, but maybe I'll come back and streamline it all. Until then, you'll have to deal with my stream of conciousness.

Savannah will be 7 weeks old this Saturday (for all you non-pregger people, that's about a month and a half). It's strange, pregnancies are measured in weeks, not months, and it's amazing how different the timetables get when you do it that way. Unfortunately, once you start converting everything to weeks, you forget to stop. I promise, I'll try not to do the whole... 184 weeks bit. I will go to normal people's time soon. :)

This little girl is awesome. Of course, I'm biased... but if I weren't, I would say the same. She is very quiet. There are few things that upset her. Cold, hunger, gas, and laying on her back. She is impervious to noise, but she is certainly not deaf. She simply doesn't care. Her grandma was holding her about 4 feet from an electric saw cutting through wood and nails, and she remained completely passed out - and she was only a week old! The phone ringing, or the smell of dinner, will occasionally wake her.

Mikey, the oldest cat, gets very concerned when she cries. He comes up and sometimes meows at her to make sure she's OK. I have to pet Mikey to soothe him, while taking care of Savannah at the same time.

I've learned to juggle her and working from home. I've about got the one-handed-feeding skill down. Actually, it's more like a feat. :)

She doesn't cry just to cry. When she cries, something is wrong. She's never been collicy, she's never puked (yet.... I know that will change with the introduction to solid foods), she doesn't spit up, she doesn't need to be entertained or stimulated to eat, sleep, or anything like that. Just holding her is good enough for her.

She's not a huge fan of pacifiers, but she'll use them from time to time. She's already into the 1-month diapers. No more newborns for you little girl. You ate too much to fit in them anymore. ;)

She lost her embilical stump after about 2 weeks. Her poor father picked her up, and felt something crunch. It scared him to death. He looked, and saw it dangling by a thread of skin. He felt so bad, that he had injured her or something. But it hung there, like a loose tooth. We were strangely fascinated by it, and we stared at it for a few minutes... poking at it, seeing if it would come all the way off if we touched it again. When we were certain it was still fairly well attached, her daddy picked her up again, and the rest came flying off her belly. It was probably very comical from a third person's point of view. He kept appologizing to his daughter - who was more upset by being partially unclothed and on her back while we inspected the 'wound' than actually losing it. I was actually relieved when it fell off. It was one less obstical when changing her diaper!

Her room is coming along. My mother bought her a bedding set - a nice light sage green with ladybugs and black & white check accents. Now all we need is a mattess to put it on. But she's not sleeping in her crib yet.

She slept with us in a co-sleeper between us in bed until this week. We brought up her converta-crib (it's a playpen that has an attachement that turns it into something of a crib) and it's next to the bed now. So she's still not far from me, and she's still in the co-sleeper, it's just in the porta-crib now, to keep her from rolling around too much. When we feel more comfortable, we'll work her way into her room.

She sleeps pretty well. I usually only get up about once... Maybe twice a night. She doesn't like baths much. It gets cold getting out. I don't blame her. I was the same way.

Her favorite game is pulling dad's chest hairs. I think it's her personal goal to make him cry. She grabs a nice handful, then throws her body weight in the opposite direction. He's been very good not to scream. >:) Wicked little child. (Yup. she's definately our spawn!!) lol

She doesn't like to breastfeed, much to my displeasure. I'm stuck giving her formula, because the hospital ruined it for me there. As soon as she was born, her blood sugar was 'too low' so they stuck a bottle in her mouth right off the bat to get her levels up again. Sure, it worked... and her levels stayed good, but now she refuses anything else but plastic.

Our holidays were pretty uneventful. We took some candid Christmas pictures of her, and that was about it. New Year's, we took her outside to watch the neighbor's fireworks. She stared at the sky, but wasn't bothered by the noise at all.

She's growing too fast! When she was born, her 4 fingers would wrap around my index finger and from the tip of my finger, the width of her 4 fingers would only reach my first knuckle. Now they already reach the second joint. too fast. I couldn't wait for her to be out of my belly - but then I wanted to freeze time after that. No more growing!! lol.

A big part of me would love to be a stay-at-home mom. If I could afford not working, I think I would quit in an instant. That's not to say I don't love my job. The people I work with are awesome, and my bosses are super-cool. But... with the way things are in this day and age, I don't want anything to happen that I can't take care of instantly. As it is, I give her divided attention most of the day. I feed her, but focus on the computer. I don't like that idea much, but there's little I can do about it at the moment.

When she was born, she had a bout with some eye infections. Her tear ducts weren't developed yet, so her eyes would ooze a bright yellow goop. A little bit of erythromycin and a few weeks solved that.

Savannah was also born with jaundice. It was pretty bad. They stuck her under the lights twice to try to cure it. The first time, her bilirubin levels went down, so they pulled her out. But, she rebounded just as I was being discharged. That left me free to go - and her trapped in the hospital - under the lights, working on her tan (not literally tanning - but it certainly looked like a mini tanning booth).

This was probably the worst time. I was far away from home (Galveston island is a long drive on a good day), no phone, no supplies (my hubby somehow managed to leave without getting my the suitcase I had packed and the cellphone he did bring me died in no time), and no vehicle. So the hospital put me up in the local Ronald McDonald House a block away. $10 a night plus daily chores and I got free shuttle rides to the hospital any time I wanted them, free food, free clothes, toys, use of video games, you name it. Sadly though, everything about the House was kiddified, which only made me think more about the daughter I couldn't bring home. I lasted a day there, and that night I had gone through half a box of Kleenex (post partum hormone drop didn't help things). So I called my husband and told him I couldn't take it anymore and needed to come home to get my mind off it. My parents were driving in that night, so they came with my husband and picked me up. The next morning, I called the hospital, and they said Savannah was free to go. Her bilirubin levels had dropped enough.

If there was one fantasy I had about having a kid, it was being wheeled to the curb with her, as her dad came and picked us up... but that didn't happen.

As for the delivery itself, it HURT LIKE A SUNNABITCH!! My little mantra of "It has a time limit..." was the only thought I had.

I used very little pain meds. I asked for a half dose of their lightest stuff to take the edge off. Mostly because the night before her delivery, I had a bad (unexplained) fever with violent shakes and it drained all my energy. I needed any kind of relief I could get. The staff kept asking if I wanted an epidural, and I was adament against it. I was in a lot of pain, but I didn't want that. The pushing was the worst. The contractions were OK in the beginning, and very tough in the end. They gave me pitocin because of the fever, despite she was coming along at her own pace quite well. (I was 4cm dialated and 80% effaced by the time I got there). But because I had a fever, they wanted her out of there faster.... and let me tell you... no one ever tells you how much it hurts having them determine "how far along" you are. That was worse than the contractions!

They gave me only one stitch, and without anything to numb it. Yup. 1 stitch. (She said... "I can stick you 4 times and stitch you, or I can poke you another 3 times for the anesthesia, which will hurt more than 4." No brainer there. After all that... what was four little sticks?) They didn't cut me. I didn't want to be, and my husband made sure they knew that. Which was good, because I the light sedative they gave me had me passed out between contractions, so I wasn't aware of my surroundings. But at every contraction, I had a deathgrip on the siderail of the bed. Hey...better than breaking my husband's hand. lol Instead of being cut though, I did ask for a hot compress - and that made ALL the difference! Of course, the midwife laughed at me and made a comment that "someone's done some reading!" Damn right I did... and I was glad for it! Going in blind would have been dreadful. I felt more in control by knowing what was happening or going to happen.

My poor husband didn't know what to do. He wanted to help me, but there was nothing I could think of that he could do for me that would actually make me feel better. The classes that say I needed distractions, and massages.... that might work for most people. But I wanted to just get through it. There was no distraction strong enough to pull my attention away from that kind of hurt. At one point during the contractions, I had him rub my feet. It was the only place that didn't bother me during the contractions. I had him get me ice chips and call the nurses when I needed something else... but unless they had figured out how to let men have children, there was nothing else he could have done then that would make me feel better. At the worst of it, they had put an oxygen mask on me to make sure I was getting enough air...but come time to push, it was almost making me feel chlostrophobic (sp) and I couldn't breathe with it on. So I about ripped it off.

One thing that disturbed me about the delivery, was that they used internal monitors. I didn't mind so much, until later that day, when I was holding Savannah and I asked why she had little scabs on her scalp. They told me that's where they clipped the monitors! I didn't realize they were injuring her head. It was bad enough that my contractions had bruised the back of her head pretty badly, as well as the back of her arm where she was laying on it. Then to see the scabbing... I wasn't amused.

They had a chair that folded out into a sort of bed that my husband tried to sleep on that night. Not very comfortable for him. The room was decked out with ammenities that I barely used. They had me on an I.V. because the fever had me dehydrated, so I didn't get to walk around or do anything (not that I would have). Halfway through labor, they thought they'd have me turn from one side to the other. That didn't work. It felt tons worse, and Savannah seemed to not like it either. They had the large exercise balls available (or so they told me), but really, moving was not in my interests. I was too tired and exhausted from the fever to be active. I did take a shower when I first got there, which helped.

I had checked in the hospital at about 7 in the evening on the 17th. She was born the next morning by the coolest midwife. I gave her a lot of grief, but she gave it right back - which I totally needed! I guess I needed to be pissed off enough to push, because I Really didn't want to. lol. If I wore hats, I'd take it off for her. She was awesome. She had a sense of hujmor too. She told me I had to push, because Savannah didn't have a handle to pull. Of course, when she was out, and all that was left was the placenta, the midwife grabbed the umbilical cord and with a smirk said... "But this does have a handle". I think I laughed. It was all a blur. Once the head was out, the rest of her just flew out. I'm glad they didn't try to stop me to clean out her nose before she was all the way out. I don't see the purpose of that. And at least they didn't grab her by her ankles and smack her ass. I think that's going out of style. Yay.

She's already holding her head up pretty well. She likes to kick and climb on daddy's chest hair. She likes to lay on her side the most. She doesn't like to play with things too much. We put a silver rattle in her hand, and she doesn't pay attention to it. Doesn't care. I introduce small toys, and she doesn't seem to care. She will, however, watch the Baby Channel.

If we keep her up during the day, she sleeps pretty well at night. If we don't wake her up enough, she wakes us up very well at night. :) It took her a good 2 weeks before she realized that she had a set of pipes. Now she uses them often when hungry, or burping, or gassy, or getting a bath. She's not a screamer, but she will cry. Most of the time she just looks at us crosseyed with those big, steel-grey-blue eyes. =)