Creeva on July 14th, 2008
You would think that on a blog named parent phobia, that when I start a blog post off with the title “Planting Trees” that I’m going to be speaking in the metaphorical sense. Well, your half right.
Today I slept in late and did my normal computing activities. I knew I had to wake up early tomorrow so I proceeded to mow my lawn. On a side note if you turn your mower upside down and it doesn’t start, you need to replace your air filter. I’m not a normal out in the yard kind of guy. I’m a in the artificial light sit at the computer kind of guy, much to the chagrin to my “I love the outdoors” wife. But I stayed outside I finished the yard and proceeded to weed.
As I was weeding I noticed that there was some saplings growing here and there. Now they weren’t in a spot where I wanted them to stay, but I didn’t need to outright kill them. I spent hours (I said I don’t take the best care of my lawn) taking out saplings from here or there and replacing them in along the edge of my properties. The varieties were Oak and some such tree I can’t identify. Xie came outside and helped with about half of the planting. Quite a few of the Oak saplings came from my gutters, we will go back to the fact I don’t care.
All said and done almost 40 saplings were planted, with another 10 – 20 to go tomorrow (more if I find another stash. Not all the saplings could be saved, some were mangled trying to remove them. It wasn’t in the cards for those trees. Currently on the property we had 16 trees – so now we have a total of 56, with of course more coming. This means less grass for me to mow in the long term.
Now for the metaphorical part of the discussion. Being a parent is a lot like plantings trees. You will push ideas down to your child and hope some of them take root. I know all the trees I planted won’t survived, but it cost me nothing other then a day of planting. Exposure to ideas, even those you don’t agree with is important. Your child needs to understand your views as much as they need to arrive at their own conclusions. You shouldn’t expect your child to be a clone of yourself, nor should you even want that.
This of course is just a the metaphor that I came up while I was working. Take it for what it is, but it still was alot of physical labor.
xielanthia on July 11th, 2008
Part 1 is available here
On the very next Monday I had made an appointment that day with my family doctor. By then I was freaking out because I was having some spotting and I was terrified I was once again having an ectopic pregnancy like I had October of the previous year. I remember sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office just thinking about the possibility of having to have a third surgery in under a years time. What friggin luck, man!! I wasn’t as scared as I was angry. I was downright furious. But I calmed my nerves, took a deep breathe and thought, “I’ve had some bad luck this past year but it is my turn for some good things to happen. Stay positive.” So I put on a brave face as I walked into one of the exam rooms. I sat down and waited for my doctor to arrive.
When she appeared, I expressed my concerns and fears. Being obviously more level headed than I, she said, “Well let’s confirm the pregnancy first. We’ll start with a urine test and go from there.” After I deposited my specimen, I only had to wait a few minutes back in the exam room before my doctor reappeared. “We didn’t even have to wait the full time,” she said, “the test showed you were pregnant almost right away. Congratulations Xie, you are very much pregnant.” My face must have drain of color or something because she pointed out that I didn’t look to happy. Well the truth was I wanted to be but with my past I was afraid. But knowing full and well why I wasn’t jumping up and down for joy, and to my doctors credit, she ordered a blood test to once again confirm the pregnancy, check hormone levels, and also managed to squeeze me in to get an ultrasound that day.
Three hours later and a bladder nearly bursting with the 32oz of water I walked briskly into the local hospital bound for my ultrasound appointment and preregistered. They sent me into a changing room to strip the bottom half of my clothes and put on one of those icky dressing gowns. For fifteen minutes or so I proceeded to pace around the waiting room doing my best not to break out into the pee pee dance. The result turned out to be quite a spectacle I am sure.
By the time the technician arrived and set me up for the ultrasound I was in pure agony. The technician took her own sweet time with the procedure or so it felt like. Every slight pressure from the probe had me cringing. The technician could find nothing through the normal ultrasound probe which she reassured me was normal since the pregnancy was still very early. Since the normal probe found nothing, she informed me we were going to be doing a vaginal ultrasound and sent me off to use the restroom.
Women have to go through some pretty humiliating stuff throughout our lives. The yearly exam to name one and the vaginal ultrasound to name another. I am a very private person. I usually get very uncomfortable from any sort of physical contact form a stranger. Even things as harmless as a hand on my arm. So you can imagine how I felt about this. She checked for a heartbeat. Nothing yet. Thankfully this part was over fairly quickly and after another thirty minutes of waiting while the tech went and asked what they were supposed to do with me now. They ended up sending me home, telling me I should get a call from the doctor in the next few days with the results.
Mid morning the very next day I received a call from my family doctor. She had the results of the blood work and the ultrasound. The blood results confirmed the pregnancy, no red flags there. Good! The ultrasound showed that I might have what is called a uterine septum. To drop the medical mumbo jumbo basically it means there is a piece of tissue divides the uterus in half. Supposedly this shouldn’t be a problem. A lot of women have uterine septums and have a very safe and healthy pregnancy. The ultrasound also showed that I was about four or five weeks pregnant. The fetus was where it was supposed to be. Which meant it was definitely not ectopic. Whoo hoo!!
Creeva on July 10th, 2008
You know I thought people at least waited a bit for they started getting out the baby presents. Xie is only eight weeks pregnant and yet we already have our first baby gifts. Last weekend it seems that her mother bought us a crib, we haven’t seen yet but we have a crib. We told her mother we don’t even want it until we’re well into the second trimester. Her grandmother, not wanting to be left out of the fun, purchased us a playpen, something we won’t need for at least a few months after the baby is born.
It seems everyone wants to get into the celebration and be a part of the pregnancy. The best sign of that is that it seems we will have an excellent support network to draw from. Of course there is always the chance that after baby is born everyone disappears when we need help. I don’t think that will be the case.
xielanthia on July 10th, 2008
Earlier this month (June 4th to be exact) I had an operation to remove my gall bladder. They made four small incisions in my stomach. One at the belly button. The other three were located horizontally from right under my rib cage in the very center of my abdomen to the right side of my abdomen. They inserted air into my abdominal cavity so they could see what they were doing. Through one incision a tiny camera was inserted and through my belly button incision the gall bladder was removed after it had been drained of all liquid. I don’t specifically remember what they told me what the other two incisions were for. I assume one was tiny scissors or a scalpel and the other was how they drained the gallbladder. I awoke with my stomach wrapped in a sort of supported brace.
The very next day I had another, minor operation to remove stones that had been passed from my gall bladder into my main bile duct. There was no incisions for this one. They put a tube down my throat, followed my digestive track to where the stone lay and removed them that way. Luckily I was under what they call twilight. I guess it is more like sleep than when they put me under all the was for the gall bladder surgery. Having a super strong gag reflex there was no way in hell I could have handled them sticking something down my throat while I was completely awake. My lunch which consisted entirely of orange jello would have ended up all over the doctor, the floor and the poor nurses.
A few days before the surgery I had confided in my Mom that I was afraid of possibly being pregnant and if/how that would complicate things. We had both shrugged it off. There was no real reason to think I that I was pregnant. The day I was released from the hospital I once again voiced this fear. Again with nothing but maybe a womans intuition.
I few weeks later I found out that my intuition seemed to be dead on. On the 15th of June (a Saturday) I took a home pregnancy test and found out I was indeed pregnant. The time I took the test it was still pretty early. My husband was still sleeping and I really didn’t want to wake him and bombard him with the news. So I waited an hour and a half to two hours (it seemed like forever) in hopes that he would wake soon. When I could take it no more I guiltily walked in the bedroom, woke him up as gently as I could and said, “Umm, Creeva?. “What?!,” he said groggily. “You’re gonna be a daddy.” For a moment he looked at me like I had spoken in some long dead ancient dialect. Then, “Okay, Lets wait and see how this one turns out.”
For part two click here.
