Carleen and Mike

So, it turns out that this Family Medical Leave Act has a lot of fine print to it. I always assumed that “post-natal” was a medical state and thereby worthy of a good reason for twelve weeks of leave but apparently it’s not. As long as I am “healthy” and my baby is “healthy” it’s back to work as soon as the doctor says you’re ready to return. For my doctor this is six weeks. This was the answer his nurse gave me on the phone today. The answer I got from him personally when I asked him a few months ago was a little more vague and much more reassuring. “Don’t worry, we won’t send you back until you’re ready”. I interpreted this as his way of saying that the decision would be based just as much on the needs I voiced as it would be on his medical opinion. From what I gather from the nurse today, what my doctor probably meant when he said what he did is that he could always extend the leave if something happened, like if I had to undergo a c-section (ten weeks) or had post-natal depression (send me to a shrink and he’ll write my employer a note).

So, my advice to any pregnant working mother-to-be is to make sure and do you’re own research early rather than relying on others to do it for you (see Department of Labor). As it turns out, my supervisors at work have never had to deal with a full time working pregnant women on staff yet so they were unware of all the details too. In fact, our Human Resource lady even had to do some “research” to find out exactly what the policies and laws were. As a result, I’m two months away from delivery, thinking about the prospect of having to put my child in day care a full six weeks sooner than I was planning. I admitt, I’m in a panic. I’m home for dinner and I can’t even eat. It’s odd to think of the differences between this country and the one I was born in. I know this sounds snobby, I don’t mean to be but Norway is certainly much better when it comes to social welfare, specifically maternity leave (”almost all medical care is free, including prenatal and maternity care, and free day care is available for children of working mothers. A compulsory National Pension Scheme that was put into effect in 1967 provides old-age, disability, rehabilitation, widow, widower, and other benefits, including one-year paid maternity leave and universal child support. The average pension, which begins at age 67, corresponds to about two-thirds of recipients’ earnings during their highest-paid years”). Sure, they pay taxes up the ass, but at least the money actually goes towards something helpful to families.

So, I’m not sure how this is going to work. If Mike were here he would probably tell me to stop worrying and that we’ll work it out somehow which I’m sure he’s right. We’ll just have to adjust quicker than we originally planned too. I can remember back when we started talking about having children, we kept telling each other that we should stop trying to plan for it so much, that we had already been doing that for the past few years and every year we kept putting it off. We knew we wanted to wait until I finished school, but we didn’t know whether we wanted to wait until I had landed my first real job and we had moved and settled in our new home. So, we just decided to go for it and I started reading all those lovely websites about how it would take at least six months to become pregnant after quiting oral contraceptives which would be perfect since that meant I could get pregnant while still in school but have the baby some time after graduation. Nice and organized. BAM! One month. I guess Liam was organized too because he didn’t need six months. And that’s ok. Because whether we think we’re ready or not, he’s coming and I can’t wait. We’ll work out the details later. They don’t call us the “slacker” generation for nothin’.

So, I gave my boss the final “yes, I am taking the full three months off after the baby’s born” answer today. I’m feeling bad because I know I’m leaving them in a lurch by doing this. We’ve been very short staffed recently and in addition to me leaving temporarily, the other reference clerk is leaving for good. What makes it worse is that we’re both leaving right at the beginning of the school year when things are often quite busy. I’m not sure how they are planning to manage this. Actually, I’ve been afraid to ask since I’m likely to change my mind and tell them I’ll come back sooner but I honestly feel that it would be better to tell them three months now then it would be for something to happen later and for me to then ask for more time off. At least this way they have more time to prepare.
Taking the three months off is also going to set us back financially since I’ll only be paid for about half of the time. I can’t believe with all the talk in this country about institutions and communities being more “family friendly”, our government still hasn’t come up with a better system for maternity leave. Sure, we’ll give you the time off and protect your job with laws in the mean time but we won’t provide you with any money or anything. So, in other words…you can have a baby…you just can’t feed and cloth it.
It dawned on me the other day that June is almost over with. I can’t believe how quickly this summer is going by. I have less than nine weeks left. Save for a few false labor pain episodes and some rather uncomfortable lower back pain, the last three months have been wonderful pregnancy-wise. It’s been so much fun feeling him move and how the movement changes as he grows. He was having a particularly active day last Friday. As I was laying on the couch watching his movements, there was a moment where I swear, I could have grabbed a limb with two fingers if only I were quick enough.

Ok so this is sort of an out-of-the-blue desire, but, I think I might get a tattoo. I’ve always admired them on people, but always felt that to spend that much money on something and not have something tangible is just a waste. I think I’m being swayed though. Supposedly tattoos are going out of style, mostly because SO many people want them now, that it’s just not the rebellious thing to do anymore.

But I’m gonna think about it. If I still feel like I want one in a month’s time, I’ll get one. The crappy thing is I’ll have to go to Oklahoma City or somewhere like that to get one, as there’s not really any place around here that does them well. And if I get one I’m paying the money to get a good one.

My design? A blue chinese dragon, streched across my back, with its tail snaking around my arm. Here’s the look I’m going for. I’d also like to get Liam’s name tattooed somewhere along it’s body. Then I’ll have to get a named dragon for each child we have.

Unfortunately it seems the big run of Zombie movies has all but dried up recently, and so I’ve had to turn to other media forms in order to get my “zombie fix”. Cindy checked out Monster Island for me, a book originally published in Blog form. The author is David Wellington. It’s a trilogy, with Monster Nation, and Monster Planet following it. All three are in Blog format, while only Monster Island being published as a book so far. The tone of the book is great, everything you need when dealing with zombies: fantastic gore, tongue-in-cheek humor, and lots and lots of guns. Plus a few surprise bonuses: a Scottish mummy, a guy who turned himself into a zombie, and 16 year old Somolian girls in schoolgirl uniforms toting AK-47’s. Rock!

After checking out Wellington’s website I came across a website for zombie based Browser/Flash games! Check out Undead Games.

It’s been a rough week. In fact, the summer in general is turning out to be kind of rough. The plan was to take the summer off from school, relax, sit at home, out of the heat, eating ice cream, reading and reorganizing the house in preparation for Liam’s homecoming. Due to various circumstances, including last weeks scare with Turbo, very little of that is actually happening. But that’s ok. That’s life.
Turbo isn’t exactly out of the woods yet. He had two more episodes today where he screamed out in pain, making me wonder whether the prednisone the vet gave him is having any effect at all. We’ve also been told to look out for signs of heart congestion, since the prednisone has a tendency to make a heart retain fluid and cause various problems. I don’t exactly understand how it all works. All I know is that Turbo is hurtin’ and it makes me unbelievably nervous.
I haven’t been handling this situation well from the beginning and it sort of makes me worried about how I’m going to handle similar situations with my children. Although, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Turbo is a dog and although he can communicate in various ways, he still can’t tell me what’s wrong and I still can’t tell him things like “don’t jump on the couch, it’s not good for your back”.
I was a complete mess the first morning. Some of my hysterics could be blamed on lack of sleep but the rest…if Mike wasn’t there I don’t know what I would have done. I’m just extremely sensitive to the whole animal in pain thing…especially when it’s my own dog.
Otherwise, I’m just trying to get things done around our house…something I’m not really very good at doing in general. It would be really nice if a house would just sort itself out…hey guest room…so like, there’s this baby coming in August and we kinda need to change things in here to accomodate his needs, so do you think you could maybe come up with something in the next month…great…I’ll get back to you then.
Actually, Mike has finished painting. The room already looks much cozier. There’s still a bunch of crap in there that needs to either be thrown away or moved elsewhere, elsewhere being a place in this house of very small proportion. My biggest problem right now is all our books and what to with them.
In other news, Mikey had his birthday yesterday. For a very brief month and a half we both get to be the same age, until I grow another year older in late July and once again gain seniority in our relationship :-). For celebration, we went out to eat at Rib Crib (delightful meal consisting of slaughtered meat and veggies sponsored by my wonderful parents) and discussed enlightening topics like whether the word “toast” is “funny to say” or why the expression “what’s up” has come to be interpreted as “hello, how are you”.

Turbo has just been sent home with a far better diagnosis than the one he got yesterday. Looks like it was only a slipped disc, for which he is now receiving a schedule of Prednisone - an anti-inflammitory.

He’s not totally home-free, however. He also has an enlarged heart; probably due to some congestion in the lungs. For this, he’s being put on Lasix - a blood-thinner - which he’ll probably need to be on for the rest of his life.

Oh, and that mass in the x-ray? Probably food and/or gas. Now, my question is, why didn’t this other cracker offer that FIRST instead of jumping to cancer? Surely he’s seen food in an animals stomach before. If you can’t differentiate between food and a tumor, at least offer the less dire circumstance until you know more. Thanks for the heart attack, ya’ freak.

We had a hefty scare with Turbo this morning. I’m still feeling a bit anxious right now, so my writing will probably be even less pretty than normal.

In January, we took Turbo in to the Vet’s one morning after I noticed him acting strange; pacing around and acting rather anxious. When I bent down to check on him, not only could I hear his heart beating (from a good few feet away), I could see it pumping in his chest. After rushing him to Dr. Newby’s, we found out he had a heart murmur. Some pain-killlers and a few blood thinners and we were set.

Last night, Carleen called me at work with the same problem, she gave him some of his meds we had leftover and everything looked to be all right. However, shortly after I got home this morning, he got worse. The pacing started up and when I picked him up to try to relax him, he yelped in pain. After that he started limping around, unable to settle or get comfortable. We called Dr. Newby’s office, unfortunately he’s on vacation today. So his nurse told us to take him to another vet.

We took him to Dr. Clinkenbeard’s, nearby Carleen’s parent’s house. Dr. Clinkenbeard was out in Copan on another emergency, and Dr. Bullen was at a Vet meeting. Just our luck. Luckily Dr. Clinkenbeard was on his way in from the other emerency, so we only needed to wait 10-15 minutes. Minutes that just would not go by. Turbo seemed only to get more and more anxious, yelping in pain, almost as if from a seizure.

They got him some x-rays and it looks as though he may have cancer. He has a large mass of something in his stomach about the size of a tangerine. The doctor thought it may be cancer, but he wants to wait until tomorrow morning when Dr. Bullen comes in so we can get a second opinion.

After looking around for a bit, I found the 3 main symptoms of stomach cancer are:

• Vomiting
• Weight Loss
• Loss of Apetite

As far as I know, he hasn’t shown any of those symptoms recently. He was vomiting a bit a few months ago, but it certainly wasn’t anything chronic. And his weight has only increased since we got him. Though he can be a finicky eater at times, I wouldn’t say he’s lost his appetite. All this is encouraging, but I still worry, and both Carleen and I will not sleep well until we get some kind of definitive answer. I’ll post more when we hear more.

I don’t usually like to write posts concerning my Role Playing hobby, mostly because I only got into roleplaying in my latter years of college and as such I’m not entirely comfortable with being open about something that screams “Geek!”. Not to mention very few other roleplayers actually read this Blog. But come on. Anyone who’s known me for any significant length of time know I’m a seriously harcore Geek at heart and there’s really no hiding it at this point.

Mostly our group sticks to the standard Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition, just like everyone else. But recently I’ve been trying to get my group into other RPG’s (roleplaying games). Mitch gave us a set of books called Burning Wheel a while back, but hadn’t gotten into it until just recently.

Basically, same setup as D&D, but a little more (pardon me, fellow D&D players…) grown-up. The rules are more detailed and lend to a more “gritty”, human, realistic game. Perhaps the biggest difference between D&D and Burning Wheel is, where D&D is very Game Master (the person who writes all the adventures) controlled - the GM writes the adventure, offering “hooks” to the players to get them to go along on the adventure - Burning Wheel puts the power in the hands of players.

Players are involved in every aspect of creating a “shared, imagined space” from the ground up. They help decide the focus of the story, the major antagonists and how each character is connected to the plot. The GM in a Burning Wheel story is really more of a player who knows just a little bit more than the other players, rather than an omnipotent, omniscient figure.

Click the “Burning Wheel” link above to check out the site if you’re interested in roleplaying games, if you’re used to playing only D&D, or any other d20 style game, Burning Wheel will truly be a breath of fresh air. Or check out this Blog by one of the developers of Burning Wheel who is taking his group through “30 Days of Burning Wheel”. He does a good job of getting to the chewy center of Burning Wheel, while bypassing all the crunchy rule bits, so novices can get a feel for what Burning Wheel is all about, without getting bogged down by confusing rules.

Anyway, as my group gets into it, I’ll post a bit more on how things are going, and their thoughts and opinions (as well as mine!) on the whole thing. Stay tuned…I’m sure you’ll all be on the edge of your seats…

On a related topic, you can follow the link to the right under Mike’s D&D World to keep up with what’s happening in our current D&D campaign.

I’ve been reading a lot of back issues of Baby Talk magazine lately, something I’m trying to do less and less of since it has a tendency to do weird things to me, such as convincing me that these retro styled monogrammed blankets are actually worth fifty bucks and that I wouldn’t be a proper mom unless I pulled out my already overused credit card and purchased one. As if Liam is really going to care whether he gets to puke his milk up on a trend setting item apparently being bought by our current star mommies like Gwyneth Paltrow. Anyway, one issue had this really interesting piece on the evolution of the magazine and how “expert” advice for pregnant/new moms has changed since WWII. Below are some examples…bizarre…

“Perhaps it should be a requirement of every wife that she hold at least one position outside the home before marriage. This is probably the only way she can realize the day-in and day-out grind her breadwinner knows” (September 1943)

“Pregnant you’ll look a real ‘5′ by 5″ unless you keep weight gain under 20 pounds. The tiniest junior miss figure blocks into a husky square.” (March 1953)

“When they form the habit of sitting on their knees…straighten their legs out, again and again, dozens of times a day if necessary. Continued sitting in such a position will deform their knees, flattening them.” (January, 1942)

“Many babies prefer to sleep with their ears folded like pink flower petals against their cheeks…On a bald-headed baby, narrow bands of adhesive tape will hold the ears securely down.” (January 1942)

“The trick is to look so altogether lovely, so perfectly exquisite, that your altered figure becomes just what it is-the mere ouward sign that you are having a baby.” (August 1942)

Although times have changed, things haven’t exactly gotten easier for women when it comes to pregnancy, especially in the area of body image. I found this article to be particularly revealing. Another article I came across on CNN awhile back claimed that with all the new Hollywood moms out there, it had now become “hip” to be pregnant. Sometimes it seems as though we are meant to view the swelling bump on our belly more as a fashion statement, rather than a glorious sign of coming motherhood. I think this creates a rather dangerous stigma. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wonderful that we now have fashions designed more to show off our pregnancy than to hide it like we used to. There’s just something happening in our society right now that I can’t quite put my finger on. We’re all health conscious…that’s for sure…and as a pregnant woman everyone’s main concern is obviously your health and that of the child’s. But, oddly enough, this hasn’t been my experience and people’s reactions when they see me don’t always reflect this notion completely. I think they mean for it to but their response comes out more to the tune of “You look good” or “You sure are getting bigger” or like the one I got today was, “You don’t even look like you’re due in three months”, which I’m not exactly sure is a good or bad thing.
This obviously has a lot to do with how sensitive a person is and I admitt, I have always been sensitive when it comes to remarks on my appearance, whether they be positive or negative. The more a person begins to comment on how I look, the more I begin to scrutinize over my appearance. This, of course, is nobody’s fault but merely a result of my own insecurities. Strangely enough, as this pregnancy has progressed, I have found myself becoming more and more comfortable with my body and I think I’ve even managed to deal with some of those image problems that I’ve probably always had but usually tossed aside as self absorbing nonesense. I’ve always been one of those people who tried to pretend I didn’t care about “thinness” and “prettiness” but like every other woman raised in the Western world, I would think about it constantly, secretly coming up with my own meal menu’s and excercise plans that I would play out as “just a simple healthy lifestyle”. The secret, I think, is when I realized that the look of my body wasn’t important. What was important was what my body could do. I need my body to be able to do things for me, provide me with stamina, joy, comfort, prevention from pain and illness. Thinness doesn’t necessarilly emcompass those things so why should I strive for it. Second, numbers need to be taken out of the equation. The only one who should be concerned with them is my doctor. My ideal body weight is whatever weight it’s at when I myself know that I am eating well and maintaining a healthy lifestlye. And lifestlye doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with excercise. It can but it doesn’t have to. It has more to do with doing things you enjoy.
There will definitely be some changes in my body after this baby is born. There will be all kinds of adjustments, emotional and physically that I’ll have to get used to. Some things will be bigger, some things smaller, saggier, whatever. If there is one thing that this pregnancy has definitely tought me, it’s that beauty isn’t meant to stay the same, it has stages like everything else in life. And I can honestly say that I don’t think I have every enjoyed a stage in my life as much as I’ve enjoyed this one.

However, the whole back and leg pain thing definitely makes me cranky.