Now that my hormones have calmed down..

So my mom got after me about my last post. And I believe that I do need to clarify one thing, at the time I wrote the blog my post partum depression, and just depression over all was hitting me. No it does not excuse the non-acknowledgement of the good time that Richard and I had while we were at home. It does however explain that the "ruff" and "bad" things were on my mind and bothering me. Its nice to not have the black cloud of depression hanging over my head. I've been enjoying Richard more and I've put more effort into my loosing the baby weight. And now I'm getting anxious about Jason coming home, and I think that has lifted my spirits a lot. But in the end we did have a good time while home, visiting with family and friends.

Now for whats been going on lately. Right now Richard is sick. He caught a upper respiratory virus and I've had to keep him home with me all this week so that he didn't get any other babies at the CDC sick too. He's trying to work very hard on this walking thing.He is constantly pulling himself up on things and trying to get into things. I've concluded that we have a lot of stuff that we don't need. I keep trying to down-size on the amount of stuff we have, but the piles only seem to get slightly smaller rather than significantly.

The last couple of weeks I did take Richard out and around American Village to find a Birthday Present for Xander. At one place I had a bunch of the store clerks gather around and oo and ahh over how cute Richard is. I've even had baggers at the base grocery store play with him to see if they couldn't make him smile while I was checking out. The thing that made me chuckle recently was I was sitting at the pharmacy in the hospital waiting for our number to be called and I had a Marine Staff Sgt sit down next to me and randomly start playing with Richard and getting him to smile and make noises at him. It was like "you want to play with my child, sure thing!"

Next Monday we have Richard's 9 month baby well check up. I'm excited to see how much he's grown. He's gotten so big since Jason left, but I'm glad that through the pictures that I send and post on Facebook, Jason has been able to see him grow :)

Long Over due update.

I apologize for the over due update. In December Richard and I made the long exhausting trip from Okinawa to Buffalo NY to spend Christmas and New Years with family rather than being alone on the island. It took two weeks for Richard to become acclimated to the time change. And about the time we left he had decided that he was done breast feeding and needed to start having formula instead. I blame it on my stopping pumping and then the stress of dealing with some of the drama that I had to endure with when I went home. The whole experience proved the old saying "You can't go home again." I'd prefer not to go into detail about the drama, so please don't ask. The ones that it involved know about it and that's all that really matters. Lets just say I was relieved to get back to my own home and among my own stuff.
Since then Richard and I have been just doing our daily errands. I helped decorate cupcakes for a friends baby shower that she had right before she gave birth to her second baby girl. But other than that we haven't been doing much. I was able to get Richard signed in to the CDC: Child Development Center. And normally he goes twice a week for about four hours each time so that I can have some "mommy time". Unfortunately his little internal schedule got messed up so this week he is home with me while I try and correct this situation. He's doing great so far, poor thing gets bored to tears (literally) sometimes but we get through it.
I had to take him to the Dr, last week because I was afraid that he had a sinus infection. Turns out he just had a cold. However at seven and a half months Richard measured to be 28 inches and a whopping 21 pounds! He's such a heavy little chunkier. And he's started crawling now. He does a combination of the military crawl and up on his knees. He even gets into the position where it looks like he's doing planks or about to do a push up and he tries to crawl that way.
But in all honesty nothing is going on. We are still waiting to hear from housing on when we will be moved to the new building. They are scheduled to finish it at the end of April now.  So in about a month and a half we should be moved into our new apartment. Until then we just hang out in our house, with me trying to clean things because the mess gets on my nerves. This Saturday Richard and I are participating in the March of Dimes walk. But other than that its a pretty lonely existence that we have. Well Richard is screaming about something so I need to go. I'll update when something actually happens. Just know that no news is good news for the moment.

Thoughts...

So the other day when I looked at a calendar I realized that around this time last year I had an OBGYN Dr. tell me, that I would probably never be able to get pregnant on my own; Over the phone no less.  I hit an all-time emotional low, and after a few weeks felt like God was telling me to snap out of it and start taking care of myself and focus on my husband. And now when I think back to then, I give the baby that “probably never would be” an extra squeeze and kiss, then continue to praise God for his blessings.  Because I stopped worrying about other people so much and worrying about my husband and truly making more of an effort to be an “obedient/honorable” wife, I feel that our relationship is stronger and better than it has ever been. We laugh and marvel that we’ve been “together” for eleven years now and we’re still as crazy about one another as we were back in high school. We used to dream about what life would be like if we ever had a baby, and now we get to live it!! I remembered one day a dream Jason told me he had way back then about me picking our sleeping baby up off his chest, at the precise moment I was picking Baby Richard up from him while the two of them were passed out sleeping. J Just goes to show that Dreams really do come true.

Baby Richard, is now almost three months old. At his two month check-up on September 29^th he weighed 12.8 pounds, and was 22.83 inches. Recently when I took him into the Dr. because he has some red spots/sores in his little fat rolls between his legs, he weighed 14.85 pounds and was 23.75 inches long! He’s been sleeping for about ten and a half hours each night, which has allowed me to get some much needed sleep.

I have been very hesitant to take him off base to go for walks or shopping, mainly because he still has some pretty baby blue eyes. I keep hoping they change colors to look more like Jason’s eyes but at the same time I secretly hope that they stay their pretty blue. When I go home for Christmas I really want to get a picture of my dad with his three blue eyed grandsons. So my fingers are crossed that his eyes will at least stay blue until he gets to go to the states and meet all the family.

For the time being Jason and I are enjoying our time together. And I love watching him with Richard. I can honestly say I don’t think I’m ready for Jason to leave us again so soon, but I will endeavor to handle the upcoming separation no matter what.

One month !!!

I can't believe how time is moving so fast. My sweet little baby is one month old already!! Our little Jelly Bean is turning into such a little sweetheart. In the morning he loves to snuggle after he has his "breakfast", but then he is happiest when he's snuggling with me anyways. He snorts like a little pig when he's eating. I laugh every time because its so silly and cute. We are starting to work on learning that "I don't need mommy to hold me while I go to sleep".. So far I think its going pretty good, because he's been going down for naps by himself better. As long as he has his Bink he's happy. When ever we leave the house at first he screams at me for putting him in his car seat, but then after a couple minutes of "moving" to get to the van he calms down and will eventually fall asleep. Then he stays asleep for anywhere between 3 and 4 hours. Once in a while he'll be out for 5 hours but I try not to let that happen to often.
I am so glad that he sleeps while we're out.. mainly because that means his pretty blue jean colored eyes are shut. Reason why, the Japanese LOVE blue eyed babies. They will get in children's faces to see if they have blue eyes if its not obvious. I've even seen them come up to blond haired blue eyed babies and kiss them on the mouth without first speaking to the parents. I know it bothered that babies mother, heck it made me uncomfortable and I was just meeting the girl for the first time!! Because the light colored hair and blue eyes is so uncommon for the Japanese to "see" they love seeing babies with any "not dark" haired baby or a baby with eyes that aren't brown. (Robin be glad you cant' come out here with both your boys.. Xander would probably get completely freaked out by the attention he would get with his pretty eyes.)
I know that eventually I'll have to deal with locals getting in his face to see what color his eyes are. And more than likely I'll have them ask to take pictures with him (so they have proof they were with a blue eyed baby). I'm not going to lie, I'm a little nervous about it.. but I know that when the time comes and we have to deal with it, I'll handle it somehow. In the meantime I'll be flooding Facebook with pictures of our little man, so his daddy can "watch" him grow from afar. Thankfully soon he'll be home from this training deployment he's on. But once he goes to Afghanistan there should at least be one picture posted a day, so Jason can see how Richard is spending his days :)

At 12:25 am on August 1, 2011.....

God blessed both me and my husband with this beautiful and amazing baby boy.

Richard Everett Jones.

And thanks to the good ole' Marine Corps in combination with 9th ESB, starting week 2 after his birth I started to learn what it was like to be a "single mother". Jason had to go to the rifle range, so that left me at home with a new born baby by myself. To be honest I was scared to death, and I still sort of am. But thanks to "time" and advice from my friends who are all experienced mommies I'm getting the hang of it. My mom and dad came to Japan, and lucky for us Jason wasn't sent on his training deployment until two days after they got here; so they were able to spend some time with him.

And now baby Richard and I just "hang out" until Jason returns from the desert. Thankfully God blessed me with friends who are all willing to come over and spend time with the both of us to give me a break as well as conversation with an adult. I'll admit its hard to do this on my own without Jason, and I can't wait for him to come home. It will be nice to be a "complete" family once again.  Tomorrow Richard will be one month old, I'm sad that Jason isn't here to watch our son grow. But one day this being "separated" thing will be all over. God will give me strength when I feel as though I can't hold on anymore. Right now I praise him for his blessings that he's given me.

Richard Everette Has Arrived!!!

His Birth Story

On Monday my Dr scheduled me to be induced on Friday at 8am, because on Friday I would be a full 41 weeks pregnant. I was to call Labor and Deivery to find out if they had a room available for me. So starting at 7 am like I was told to I started calling, and as luck would have it every single bed was full and would be full for the most of the day. I finally got the call to report at 5 pm. So Jason and I packed up and went in. Before hooking me up to the IV the midwife checked me.. I was still at only 2cm, the cervix has yet again moved back behind the baby's head, and the baby has yet again gone back "up". The Midwife even said "this is going to take a while." Around 7:30 she came back in.... There is a woman who it is no longer safe for her to be at home, and they need to get her in. Because they hadn't gotten the chance to even start my induction they had to make the decision as to who needed their help more. Obviously the other woman wins that choice hands down, and I completely understand. For some reason just about every single pregnant woman except 3 (including me) who have gone to Labor and Delivery friday gave birth. So all five rooms have been utilized all day. The Midwife said that, usually they don't induce on weekends but because it is evident that this baby needs to come out I get first priority tomorrow morning. If we didn’t get a call in the middle of the night to come back in, we were to call at 5 am.
Needless to say that’s what we did, I called once and then Jason took over calling because my induction was scheduled and I needed to get my baby out. When I called they told me that they promised to call, and then at 10, Jason started getting very frustrated and called, he even gave them a little attitude saying how this was scheduled…. Time went by a little bit and we made cheeseburgers for lunch. (one of the last things we had in the freezer to make) and then I laid down to take a nap. Then around 12:40 Jason’s cell phone rang. Why his cell we have no clue but the call came. I heard the people on the other end ask Jason how long did he think it would take us, and he told them about 30 minutes. When he hung up alls he said to me was “move” and I bounced off the couch so fast that Jason had to stop and look twice. And I called my mom to let her know , that our little man would be on his way eventually.
Second time around we walked in and they took me back to the same room as before. Got me all hooked up and re-filled out some paperwork that because it was back dated . Then they wasted no time what so ever and gave me the medicine that would allow for my cervix to soften and dilate. And thus the waiting began Saturday July 30 at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon.
I went through the rest of Saturday randomly getting “checked” and experiencing almost constant pain, yet I still felt that I wasn’t in enough pain that I needed an epidural yet, so they gave me a different type of med that relaxed my entire body so that I barely felt any pain. It did however make me high as a kite. I got laughed at a lot but it didn’t bother me much. I slept a lot to make time go faster, or I played with my ipod. The only things I was allowed to eat were popsicles, ice chips and a major abundance of water! I was put on Pitocin, to help “move things along” however before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and the Saturday crew was on their way home.
The Doctor from Saturday kept trying to push me using a balloon of sorts that would go up into my slightly dilated cervix and then more manually force me to dilate. I refused because I had never heard of it before and because I did not want to experience feeling anything being shoved up me while I was in so much pain. However when Dr.Hoffman, (a female dr) “took over” she explained to me that she would make sure I was given my epidural and some pain medicine before they did it so I wouldn’t feel anything. She explained that they couldn’t go ahead and give me a C-Section because with this being my first pregnancy they had to get a history and try to let my body dilate. At that point I was only 3 cm dilated and begging for them to just get it over with and get the baby out of me because of the pain. So in came the epidural, as well as some sort of pain medicine that went into my IV and they had previously shut off the Pitocin. The next thing I knew Dr. Hoffman was putting her hand on my head and saying “Ok Sweetie we need to get this thing started.”
This was after about an hour and a half of having the Pitocin turned off, and Dr. Hoffman checked to see where things were and announced to the nurse “She doesn’t even need it!! She’s 6 cm Dilated. Let’s get the Pitocin restarted, break her water and work to try and get this baby out!”
Time went on, and I started to feel like I needed to attempt to push around 7:30 pm, Day crew had switched over with the night crew by that point as well. I wasn’t allowed to push for at least an hour because there was a “lip” of the cervix that was over the baby’s head. The Dr. said that if I started pushing we would be running the risk of tearing the cervix before the baby even had a chance to make it through my pelvis. When night crew switched I ended up having two male Nurses taking care of me. And around 8 pm we were given the go ahead and with the help of the one lead male nurses, and Jason I started pushing.
First off let me say Jason was AWESOME!!! He was a great coach reminding me to constantly keep breathing like I was supposed to, and constantly trying to help me with any other pain that I was dealing with. (I had developed a huge knot in between my shoulders) And while I did end up getting moody and grouchie with him, he still took it with a grain of salt and told me to knock it off when I started getting bad. When it came time to put my epidural in he came over to the bed and put his forehead on mine and had me focus on him and my breathing. And when it came time to push and we discovered what worked for me when it came to pushing, He helped me hold my legs up in the air and counted for me,
So like I said I was given the go ahead to attempt push the baby out. The male nurse would always tell me “push harder” and once I pushed so hard that I just let out this huge scream while I did it that made all three of us laugh and even resulted with the Dr. coming in to check on us :p Apparently everyone out and about the monitors stopped what they were doing and looked at each other when I screamed, and then looked at Dr. Hoffman, whose response was “uum I’m going to go check on that.” Only to find the me, Jason and the RN laughing. The RN even said “if she could keep pushing like that this baby would be out in no time.” Needless to say it made Dr. Hoffman chuckle and I promised not to scream like that again so as “I wouldn’t scare the other patients” :p So I continued to push… and push… and push… and push… I was fully dialated, but for some reason was no more closer to getting the baby out than I was when I first started. When I hit the three hour mark I was exhausted in a ton of pain and numb all at the same time. Dr. Hoffman came in and checked on me. The baby was unable to descend into my pelvis and it was looking like the baby’s head was swelling a lot, so they needed to get me into a c-section. I just looked at her with tears in my eyes exhausted and simply said “Please” And everyone sprang into action then. I was set up and made ready to go into the OR as quickly as possible (took roughly 30 minutes) My body was numbed again and I was given more pain meds to make it so I couldn’t feel anything and before I knew it I was strapped down in the OR and they were bringing Jason in to sit up by my head and hold my hand.
The first cut or whatever it was felt so weird that I can’t even describe it!! But once Dr. Hoffman got to the baby Jason and I could hear say “Oh yea this baby isn’t fitting through your pelvis at all! He is huge!” (pulls baby out of my belly and holds him up.. I heard Richard’s watery squeaky cry) “I’d say he’s at least 10 lbs. Go ahead and give her that medicine.” Things became blissfully dark.. and I was suddenly dreaming of “The Matrix” and everything was white and all the people who were working on me were there also dressed in white.. HAHAHA Then I woke up and they took me back to my room where Richard was being assessed and Jason was doing the good Hubby thing and taking pictures like I asked him to. The entire C-Section process took maybe 45 minutes.. Richard was Lester Naval Hospitals first baby of August being born at 12:25 am. And the biggest of the weekend being 8 lbs 13 oz, 21.9 inches long.
I can’t get over how cute he is. I kept waking up those first two days feeling like I was dreaming that what I was experiencing wasn’t real. But now that I’ve already started to deal with the first of what I know will be many “New Mommy Doubts”, I know that everything I went through was for a reason. Now the only thing I can do is be the best mommy I can be to this precious baby boy that God has blessed me with.

(pictures to follow in next entry)

Oh baby where are you??

Baby Richard’s due date has come and gone… I keep getting asked by certain family members why my Doctor hasn’t done anything to “help me” because of how miserable I have been. While it’s true that if I were home, back in New York or Pennsylvania more than likely the Doctor that I would have seen probably would have gone ahead and brought Richard into the world earlier. However the Military Doctors here have a completely different policy.
I’ve shed many tears over this, and I’ve been in A LOT of pain and endured with a significant amount of discomfort. I’ve even asked God the same questions over and over. Why? Why would the Doctors here allow a pregnant woman to go through a month of seemingly perpetual misery? Knowing that the baby inside her is on the large side while the woman herself is small in stature, why not do something to ease the woman’s pain?
The only answer I got from the Doctors was; “We have to follow the guidelines. And that means we won’t induce you until you’ve reached 41 weeks.”
I figure that I’ll never really understand, because in the end as long as Richard comes out “ok” and perfect… Large and perfect that is all that matters. Everything I’ve endured will mean nothing because in the end no matter what I’ll have the precious little life that God has granted me the privilege of nurturing.
I know when I go home for Christmas, more than likely some family member will ask me why the Doctors didn’t help me or didn’t induce me earlier than what they are. And will have some criticizing comment to make. Here is my answer to anything that may be said to me: I have been in a completely different situation than anyone here has ever had to deal with. I have been in a foreign country, being taken care of by military doctors. Who have been educated and trained that they must always go by guidelines and policies that have been set aside by the people who are in command over the entire Navy medical. In the end all that matters is Richard is born, and I live through it.
And as I sit here and look at the swing that was given to us, hours ticking by, bringing us closer to the moment when the precious life inside me will take its first breath of air, I can’t help but realize that life as we know it will truly never be the same. Life will be so much more important and special, all because by the end of this month we will be parents, and only God can take that away from us.