My Manifesto

What you see is what you get.

I don't read people particularly well, so if I offend you, you'll have to let me know. I'm a big girl, I can take it.

I probably do things differently than you do.

I prefer to have my babies at home, and breastfeed them until they want to wean, I prefer to vaccinate them on a separate schedule, and I prefer to leave my little boys' foreskins on.

Our family prefers to use alternative medicine before our family doctor. He knows this, and he's okay with it.

Of course, in a perfect world, I'd think everyone should do the same.

However, we're not in a perfect world, so I don't give a rat's ass what you do with your kid as long as you're not beating or starving them and don't do it to mine.

Nothing I do is a value judgment on what you do.

I've had to defend my choices regarding pregnancy, birth, and childhood more times than I care to think about, so I may come off as a little brash about it. My apologies in advance, and I reiterate that I really don't care what YOU do with YOUR kid.

Do I think my kid's better off than your kid? No. I think MY kid's better off than MY kid would be if I did some of the same things you do.

So if you get offended by anything I do or say, please stop to consider these statements, and either realize where I'm coming from, or if you're really offended, ask yourself why.

Heard last night over the phone

"N, Daddy wants his pants back."

On the way back from grocery shopping, I called home to let B know I was on my way. N has recently learned that pants can come off. I now have an 18-month-old who has decided it's okay to randomly 'pants' people. He sooo did not learn that from me.

:)

Some good news. :) After pestering the OB's receptionist into letting me speak with a nurse (Dr J's nurse had already gone for the weekend), I asked if a Rh factor antibody screen had been done in my initial prenatal workup. One had.

Guess who's not sensitized?! ME!!!!!!

In a nutshell, should all continue this way, the homebirth is still on, Baby Fidget is perfectly okay, and things are hunky dory. :)

Please inform the Drama Dispenser that I now have more than enough? Really. Thanks, I've got all I need for the next oh, say, several years or so.

For the patient, here's where it starts. For the rest of you, I was going to say skip to the last couple of lines, but I reread them, and you're gonna need the whole thing. Sorry. Chocolate at the end.

I had a check-in with the backup OB on 12/30. It was fine, everything was great, and then he looks at my chart and mentions that it looks like we'd need some bloodwork done on Brandon. I asked why, since we knew him to be O- (like me) from a blood test done during my pregnancy with N. It was an Eldon card test, but from what I've been able to gather, those are usually very reliable. So we went that day and got Brandon blood typed.
I took N to his 18 month well-baby last Thursday. Waited in the waiting room for nearly an hour before being called back because they had a patient who needed some extra care. That's fine, no problem, it's a doctor's office. N's weighing in at 26lb, 7oz, measuring 34 inches, and has a 19 and 3/4 inch head, all topped off by "looking great" and having a cold in his eye (wtf?). Anyway, Doc asked me if there was anything else I needed, and since our house was built in 1940, I opened my big mouth and reminded him that we hadn't done a lead test at his last visit. We got to the lab, wait 15 minutes with a cranky, tired kiddo there, only to find that they'll probably have to do a blood draw so we need to go to another lab (fortunately, this one's 4 stoplights from my house) where they can do a draw on a little kid. N's in desperate need of his nap, so we leave the office and head home so he can get some sleep and regroup into his usual pleasant self.
We go to the lab that evening after picking Brandon up from work (no way am I going to be the only meanie in the house this time), and the phlebotomist (I swear I'm older than she is) wouldn't listen to me when I told her to stick his heel or toe, because it was 30 degrees, and his fingers weren't going to have enough blood in them. FIVE finger and toe sticks later, she says she has enough blood and we leave.
The next morning, I get a phone call from someone who sounds like she's hiding under a desk. We're talking about an audible cringe here. "Um, Mrs. B---?"
"Yes."
"Um, this is The Lab, and um, we took N's blood on Thursday."
"I remember--is everything all right?"
"Um, well, wedidn'tgetenoughbloodsoweneedtogetsomemore."

"I'm sorry?"
"Yes, um, if it's going to be inconvenient to bring him in, we can send someone to the house for you."
My thoughts? "You'd damn well better use up your own gas and send someone over here if you can't figure out how to get enough freaking blood from a toddler in the first place."
My words, "Yes, please, that would be fine."

So a different tech comes out to the house, gives N a sterile (not anymore) empty plastic vial to play with to keep him happy, and says to him, "I've heard you're a strong one--should we do this really fast?" I jokingly asked if they'd warned her about him. She said, "Not really warned, but the last tech did say he was really strong for a little guy." This one pokes him exactly where I tell her to, and in less than 5 minutes, with no crying from N (a few minor baby swear words were heard, however), she's done and out the door.
Monday: I realize that it's been a few weeks and that we haven't heard anything from the OB's office. I call, and am told that the lab hasn't sent over the paperwork, but they'll drop it in the mail, and by the way, they have my husband listed as O freaking POSITIVE! This is normally not a big deal, but Rh incompatibility, which is usually dealt with immediately after (or in some cases during) the first pregnancy, can be really nasty. If this were my first pregnancy, this would be no big deal. However, this is my second, and we don't know N's blood type. What it comes down to, is that my previous midwife, when doing the Eldon card, read it as Rh negative. It was in fact, Rh positive, and had circumstances been different, her mistake could have cost the life of one of my children. While I'm seething, I call my midwife, and we go over what we need to do next, and our worst-case scenario. If it does turn out that I'm severely sensitized, then home is not the safest place for me to give birth. :/ Obviously, if the hospital's the safest place for our baby, then I'll be the first in line to go in, but the mental leap from home to hospital is not really something I'm wanting to deal with. I've had enough stress this pregnancy without somebody else's snafu screwing things up. I don't want to go from a place of being in my element, and having people know what I want and respect it automatically, and who trust me, to a place where I have to hire someone to advocate for me, and convince others that I'm not a trainwreck waiting to happen. D (current midwife, and good, too) would accompany us as a doula, so I wouldn't have to start over there. It's just that I'm so weary of the whole thing, and I just want to be left alone to have my baby.
We're not planning for hospital yet. Only 13% of women end up Rh sensitized with their first pregnancies anyway, and given the fact that this baby has been very healthy so far, things are looking good for Fidget, too. So my odds to stay home are good.
Here're are the things that are really getting me. I can't really talk to many of my friends here about how I feel. The reaction I'm sure I'd get would be, "And would this have been taken care of if you'd just gone to the hospital in the first place?" and I'm afraid (not completely without reason) that the reaction in the thought processes of these women would be, "Okay, so midwives are incompetent." I do not want to come off looking like an ignorant hippie because the Rh incompatibility wasn't detected when it should have been. Midwives in general are not incompetent. D is not incompetent. M (old midwife) made a pretty serious mistake. I don't know whether it was a true accident or negligence. Since she has a professional relationship with Dr. J (my back up), I may say something to him. But I need to be very careful of saying something negative about a midwife in a medical setting. Especially since Kansas is a state with no regulations, there are plenty who would take such an opportunity to make midwifery very difficult to practice for all of the midwives, not just the one nutjob. My old midwife is a member of NARM, and I'm seriously considering writing to them, but again, I don't know. I don't feel like I can take the choice away from other women, but I do feel that if this was not just a 'shit happens' true accident, then she needs to be called on it.
I'm also upset at the prospect of sticking my baby again. Poor N. It's really beginning to bug me that he doesn't cry when he gets poked with a lancet (2 recent hemoglobin tests as well as an allergy work up--poor kid's been a pincushion). If my fogged over 2am brain has this down right, the plan of action for now is this: Test N. If N is Rh positive, test this baby for sensitization (which would likely mean amnio) and then we'll go from there. I've emailed my midwife and asked her if there's anyway we can just test me and leave the poor kiddos out of it, and I'm waiting for her reply.

I'd never do anything to hurt a child of mine. I'm not just skipping through life oblivious to the risks one faces. I just wish the stupid Eldon card had been right the first time, and that I didn't have to worry about any of this. "This," coupled with the sheer stupidity of the whole SRS thing has really shaken me. Am I really doing what's best for my kids and me? Do I really know anything at all? And why the hell didn't they make me pass some sort of competency test before I had the first kid?

Soooooo....

Since I've been lazy about updating, B's interview turned out to be an oh-so-lovely pyramid scheme, and when he discovered what it was and called the interviewer back, she had figured that he'd be one to actually get off of his ass and do some research about the company, therefore, she wasn't the least bit surprised at him cancelling further appointments.

Finally watched Elisabeth Rohm's "dramatic exit" from Law and Order last night. I thought it was about time for a new ADA. This one was starting to bug me. Anyway, I'm going to be ruining it for those of you that haven't gotten around to your TiVos yet, so if you still haven't seen it, skip this.

For those that don't care about ruining it and haven't seen it, Rohm, as Serena Southerlyn, ADA, comes into the DA's office after a case in which she firmly believed in the innocence of the accused (he was, but the kid had a million chances to be honest and save his ass and didn't--sucks to be him), and was told that she had a lot of passion and that she was an advocate, and that prosecution was not the best type of work for her. Branch, the DA says, "You're fired." She says, with tears in her eyes, "Oh." A dramatic pause ensues. "Is this because I'm a lesbian?"------Ummmm....WTF? She's a lesbian?---Anyway, Branch looks really surprised and answers that it's not, and she says, "Okay." And that's the end. Wow. Oh well....at least they didn't kill this one off.

First of all, who gives a rat's ass? Second, I cannot recall a single episode (and I'm a dedicated viewer) in which this was ever mentioned before, or where it was even hinted at that this might have been an issue. So, this seems to be a really lame attempt at a ratings grab, and frankly, I like L&O much better than CSI:NY, so if Nielsen would just contact me, they wouldn't have a thing to worry about. I'm now headed over to Jump The Shark - Chronicling the Moments of When TV Shows go Downhill to go to see if this moment made the site yet. I think this might just be it.......

Good to know...

The Godiva dark chocolate bar I received for Christmas from my little sister has exactly 20% of my daily value of iron, according to its handy dandy nutrition facts label. This makes me happy. Now all I need to do is eat 5 of those things a day, and I'll be just great on iron.

Now....the crap

I didn't really expect to hear from any of The Playgroup after hearing from H. I truly didn't. I didn't even expect to get a phone call or a text message when J had her baby. That was supposed to be this Friday, but this kid had other ideas. I didn't even expect A (who has a tv of mine, by the way) to call when she got back into town. I know she got The Email. I'm just.....just.... Yeah. I feel so defeated by the whole thing. I talked to M today, and she told me J had had her baby, and that there's a playgroup at A's scheduled for tomorrow. Of course, I haven't heard a peep from anyone still. That's really okay, I guess. I mean, I don't want to waste my time with backstabbing catty girls who never left adolescence, but after today's developments, I've decided I'd like some farking closure.
I'm now thinking that perhaps A and J did it together. So now I'm mulling over the best way to get the tv back from A, and to drop off the baby gate of J's we've been borrowing. I think I'll just email H and ask her to take it by when she goes to playgroup at J's next week.

It would be nice if my sweet little baby weren't affected by this crap. N's missing his friends. We have a picture of all of them at the Pumpkin Patch in October, and he spent an hour carrying it around saying, "Baby!" to it, and giving it kisses. It's hard to watch him miss the kids he's been closest to for the last year. Dammit, hurting me is one thing, but I hate hate HATE that this is bugging my baby.

Happy 2005!

It started out well. :) It's been a while since I've updated this thing. Here's the skinny: N is now sleeping blissfully in his own bed, and is nursing less and less at night. My nipples sing for joy, as pregnancy is not a fun time to be a nursing mama. This is great. I'm loving sleeping in my own space, even though I miss my little space-heater. He's on a crib mattress on the floor on DH's side of the bed, and he likes to listen to him snore at night. N was starting to kick and flail like a maniac at night, and since he started off the night by himself well, we decided to go ahead and see how a move out went. If there is such a thing, it's been the perfect transition ::::knocks on wood:::: and we're all reaping the benefits.

Aside from a 32 pound weight gain, and some uncomfortable varicose veins, the pregnancy is going smoothly, and I'm beginning to fall in love with the idea of two little boys. I wonder if this one is my Dream-Baby. If not, I know he's waiting in the wings, which is a definite possibility, considering B said we could keep going until we have a girl, and the strong dominance of the Y chromosome in his family. LOL

B has a job interview on Tuesday, for a mid-level management position with a large financial corporation. We have no idea what it entails, but we'll see how the interview goes.