April 2005

APRIL 2005

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04/05/05
OK OK
Well, good news from Ol' CS - I now get 36 hours/week, and I get to be "on-call" which means that if Brenda doesn't show up I have to stay until 6am - which would suck but I get $15/day that I am on call. Not much, but it will add up. It's not like I'll be at the bar or anything, right?

Speaking of, it has now been a full month since I have been out....I miss it. I don't miss the nights that I spent too much money - but I do miss the nights when I didn't spend any money & drank way too much. Those were the days..

I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow. Probably I'll go & get poked & prodded in all the wrong places & come out with no more information than I went in there with. Can't wait.

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04/06/05

The Cost of Raising Children
I saw this in an email - thought it too good not to share!

"We saw this article on MSN - The Cost of Raising Children. The article attempts to break down expenses based on the child's age and the various expenses (housing, food, clothing, etc). In a nutshell, the articles states that a middle income family will spend $170,460 on one child from birth to age 17. Here's another way to look at those expenses. This came from an email.

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 17 and came up with $170,460 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition. But $170,460 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into $10,027.06 a year, $835.59 a month, or $208.90 a week. That's a mere $29.84 a day! Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice says don't have children if you want to be "rich." It is just the opposite.

What do your get for your $170,460? Naming rights? First, middle, and last! Glimpses of God every day. Giggles under the covers every night. More love than your heart can hold. Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies. A hand to hold, usually covered with jam. A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sandcastles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain. Someone to laugh yourself silly with no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $170,460, you never have to grow up. You get to finger-paint, carve pumpkins, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and never stop believing in Santa Claus. You have an excuse to keep: reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watching Saturday morning cartoons, going to Disney movies, and wishing on stars. You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.

For $170,460, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off the bike, removing a splinter, filling a wading pool, coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless. You get a front row seat to history to witness the first step, first word, first bra, first date, and first time behind the wheel. You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there with God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. Enjoy your kids and grandkids and thank God for them. The best things in life are family and friends!"

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04/13/05
Updates for me...
Well, most of the pregnancy symptoms have eased, clueing me into the fact that I am about to start my second trimester. Pretty exciting!! The only symptom still lingering is exhaustion. I sleep about 12 hours a night but wake up still tired.
Doctor put me on Wellbutrin one week ago. I can already start to feel the difference. Tomorrow I have a doctors appointment, they are going to do a colposcopy, which really sucks ass. I had one with my last pregnancy also, and it hurt. Doctor says "You don't have any nerve endings there so you won't feel it" Bullshit. When you grow a cervix, let me know. I will ask him tomorrow if we can listen for a heartbeat also, because I really need some reassurance that everything is still okay. I wish I still had the luxury to assume that everything is fine, but I don't have that this time around.

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04/16/05
My baby has arms!
So after the colposcopy (which was a blast, I tell you) the doctor tried to listen for the baby's heartbeat through a doppler. He could tell that I kind of panicked when he couldn't find it, and he explained to me that since I am only 11 weeks along, the baby is still underneath my pelvic bone, and it is sometimes impossible to find a heartbeat through the doppler. I knew that, but that didn't calm my fears any. So the doctor went & got this old sonogram machine, and did a quick sonogram on me. It wasn't very clear, not like the other one, and I couldn't see much, but the doctor said everything looked good, and most importantly, there was a heartbeat. I vaguely saw little arms & legs moving around. He didn't give me pictures but I was so happy to see a heartbeat I didn't care.
So being the emotional wreck that I am, on the way home I was so relieved I cried the whole way. I could barely see through the tears, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I was crying, but I couldn't stop. When I finally got home, & walked through the door crying I think I scared Javier to death, I know he had to have imagined the worst. He kept asking me what was wrong, I kept telling him that nothing was wrong, but I couldn't stop so finally I had to tell him that the reason I was crying is because my baby has arms & legs. I know he thought I was crazy, which I am beginning to think is true. I am crazy. And I blame it on the hormones.

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04/26/05
Dr's Appointment
Today's Dr's appointment went well, I heard the heartbeat again, it is going about 160 bpm, which is a little slower than last time. Doctor is having me go to Labcorp to get tested for all sorts of things, I can't wait. Apparently he is trying to figure out what happened last time, to see if it is inclined to happen again, and what they can do to prevent it. I'm just glad they are taking care of me. Dr says I will have to have a c-section again (which I kind of knew). Good news, though, my blood pressure still isn't so high that I have to take medications. Also, I lost another pound & a half, which puts me 2 pounds down from pre-pregnancy weight. Weird, because my freaking pants don't fit anymore. Don't really understand, but OK.