Good luck with all your hopes and dreams!!

I've been wanting to transition in my job for a long time but the timing was never right.  Finally after a lot of waiting and then a LOT of waiting I am now a labor and delivery RN.  And the proud owner of about a thousand tons of stress.  I mean I knew I needed much more training but I am just now discovering the depth of my ignorance.  I figure about the only thing that could stress me out more at this point would be going into the OR naked.  

And I've had to relearn things from my nursing school days like EKG strips so that I can be in the PACU alone.  And just in case I had some sort of memory loss about just how horrid cardiac strips are, the class brought it all back into crisp clear awful focus.

It's exactly as fun as it looks.

But the good news is, I absolutely LOVE my job.

I come home exhausted both mentally and physically but drenched in the amazing miracle that is childbirth.

I don't care how many times I see it, it's still incredible.  And I get to be a part of it.  I get to come along side a family or single mom or scared teenager and hold her hand as she meets her son or daughter for the first time.  As she feels the rush of motherhood and watch as her tears mingle with the tears of her baby and it's magic.

So I'll grumble as I take a stupid cardiac test and try to rub out my sore muscles as I stumble to the bathroom at five am for the sixth day in a row and I'll even try not to panic as I'm watching my patients strip on the monitor and I know in my heart things aren't going well.

But when I'm in that moment with my patient and she's pushing and I'm counting and I say "Take a look dad!  You can see the baby's head!" and then is eyes get big and my patient stops pushing and says "You can see her?!" only now she's crying as she says "Does she look...happy?!"

That moment makes my day.

I don't think it's good to live vicariously through your kids...but sometimes they get to do more awesome things than you

Like dress up from the 1920's.

I mean come on.

How fun is this??

Instead, I was behind the camera in my yoga pants and frumpy t shirt wishing I looked like her.

But whatever.  What. Ever.

Someone has to keep this show together.

What would be the point of being a procrastinator if I actually did things in a timely manner?

So here are some pictures of Daymon I said I would put up, oh, forever ago.

You know how it goes it with those poor youngest borns.  Always the last to get pictures yet always the first to make sure you know they want donuts.

Well you did come here willingly so yeah, now you have to look at pictures of my kids. Have you learned nothing from mom blogs?

I absolutely love to take pictures.

And some of my favorite subjects are my kids.  Aliya is fairly easy to capture because she's a natural and she loves to pose.  Plus she's willing anytime I ask so it makes for super easy shoots.

The boys however are much harder to convince and often dodge my requests.  They run as soon as they hear the click of the camera and are quick to make silly faces.  But I was able to convince Dylan recently and then Daymon said he would let me shoot him as well so those will be coming soon!

I adore these miniature humans.

I feel the need to add I did not edit her eyes at all.  They are just that dreamy all on their own.

I'm pretty sure neurology is actually the study of "I have no idea what's wrong with you".

My brain is a jerk.

It's been that way for a while though and it knows it so I doubt it's up there getting very offended.

When my mom was giving birth to me she almost died and had to be flight lifted to another city and during that time, while she was in the throws of seizures, I was all nestled in not getting much air in the mean time. Now do I believe that the lack of oxygen during my birth is to blame for the massive migraines I deal with as an adult?  No.  But when you're born in a helicopter you kind of just need to find places to bring it up later in life.  As a matter of principle.

But my brain has been being a jerk for as long as I can remember.

And what about nursing school in clinicals with my instructor staring me down for the correct answer and all my stupid brain would do when I ran to it for help was:

That does not build trust.

Then came the migraines and I didn't really do anything about them for a very long time.  As the years passed I would go see a doctor he/she would shrug and presume to know more about my body than I did and then say there was nothing they could do.  Unfortunately I believed them.

After finally finding a doctor who listened I was on my way to seeing a neurologist.  It was a long strange journey that included a lot of elbow rubbing (on his part) and lack of eye contact (again him) and awkward feelings (me).  I decided to find a new neurologist.

And just in time for the grand daddy of all migraines to hit.


The only way I can think to describe a migraine is like this.

But with more awfulness.  And horror.

On day five of the misery hubby took me to the neurologist and we sat in the waiting room until she could see me.  It was that or I was ready to find a crack dealer but hubby said that was ridiculous because everyone knows crack dealers don't take debit cards so I had to wait.

She asked me about all the meds she has recently put me on and how they were working and I had a nice good long laugh about that but had to stop because you know, pain.

She then asked me if I wanted to have a couple injections in my head to make the pain stop immediately and she could hardly get the sentence out before I said yes.

However it wasn't exactly a couple...it was twelve.

So the good news was that I felt instantly better for about two hours.  Then I felt worse.  Much worse.  Right about the time I needed an MRI.  But because I'm so claustrophobic I also had to take Ativan but by my thinking the Ativan would make me not care about the pain right?  I am a stupid, stupid person.

First of all, if you are fortunate enough to not suffer from claustrophobia, you slightly suck.  Secondly, because I had never taken Ativan, my expectations for it were way too high.  Hubby needed to be back at work and he offered several times to stay with me but I insisted he go and have my sister take me instead.  As I waited for the Ativan to kick in I also waited to feel...something.  I don't know.  High maybe?  To not care about the world?  Different perhaps?  What actually happened was I felt no real difference as I was pinned down, had my head strapped to the board, and lastly was shoved into a metal tube the size of my tooth paste container.  That's when I started crying and completely regretted not taking hubby up on his offer.  As I'm sure the MRI tech did as well.  I mean through all my tears and shaking and hyperventilating I kind of felt bad for the guy.  He just kept patting my hand and telling me not to be afraid.  Well it wouldn't be called an irrational fear if I could help it buddy.  He eventually went and got my sister to take over the hand patting and shoved me back in.  Just about the time he pulled me out and my sister pulled her earning off the side of the machine, I started to feel very unnatural about the world.

Turns out my MRI is fine.  I mean, that's good and all, but I sort of wish it were something tangible that could just be yanked out and done with.  Like I could take a good hard look at the pain and stomp on it.  Or keep it in a jar.

Day nine of the debilitating pain I went back to the brain doc because now this is getting crazy.  But I didn't want anymore injections.  I could barley move I was so sore from the last ones.

Instead she prescribed more medications.  Different ones.

So I'm currently taking six new medications aside from the others she prescribed.  I feel sorta Jesse Pinkman up in my domicile.

But I'm starting to break through the fog.  For the first time in almost two weeks I feel like a human again and like maybe I don't want a head transplant after all.

But I've learned some valuable lessons through this a couple being, don't trust doctors who won't look you in the eye and will only rub their left elbow and if offered the chance to be knocked out for an MRI always say yes.  They won't let you take your own hammer into the room.

I thought I could speak cat but it turns out all I was saying was "Pizza! Turtle yesterday sweater, noodle!"

When what I meant to say was "Hey, you, don't have any babies around here or I'll give them all away!"

So my sweet, adorable, kitty exploded and became six.

Girlfriend was shacking up in the bushes out front and 63 days later (thanks to Google) out came 5 slimy rat looking things that quickly turned into fuzzy cute little kittens!

I mean, I guess it's mostly my fault for not getting her lady parts snipped but I kind of thought she was too young at 15 months.  She's like a teenager having babies.  Where did I go wrong! 

The fun started when I was at work and Dylan was texting me that she was having them "in the chair".  As in, she climbed up into the inards of the chair and gave birth multiple times.  And the boys were home alone.

Him: Mom, I can't get her out of the chair!

Me: Just leave her alone and pick them up and put them into the basket.

Him: But one of them has this cord thing coming off of it and it's connected to what looks like...an organ.

Me: Oh, that's just the umbilical cord and placenta, Zoe will eat them later.

Him:  WHAAAAAT?!!

Ah the miracle of birth.  Combine it with a twelve year old boy and it's magic. 

Daymon was too into his video game to really care about the delivery situation at all so it was up to Dylan to escort them into the world.  He was all "What, new life coming into the world right behind me?  Naw, you got this."  Although Daymon did happen to catch the eating of the placenta and gagged for quite a while. 

Aliya was at friends house and missed the whole debacle much to her delight.  She was quite satisfied to have bypassed all the gory details and to be left with only cute fuzziness.

I hope this teaches them all the valuable lesson that if you mess around in the bushes you could potentially make and pop out five little beings only with more gore and screaming and not only do they not make chairs that big but you can't just saunter off and hang out outside when the fancy strikes like some cat I know.  

Mexico, oh how I love your beaches, lazy river, pina coladas and maybe even your murderous jelly fish stings..

So we did this crazy thing where we braved the Mexican border and get this...absolutely nothing happened.  Well I mean not if you count tanning in the perfect weather around four amazing clear pools next to the warm ocean with a breeze while holding pina coladas, because that totally happened. 

It was kind of amazing.

Some friends of ours own a condo down in Rocky Point and were incredibly kind enough to allow us to stay for a week.  It was exactly the break we needed.

And Dylan getting stung by jelly fish?  He thought it was awesome.  Because he's twelve.  And a boy.

I thought briefly about peeing on his chest only the medical personnel said we should put Windex on it instead because of the ammonia and I was like, but my pee has ammonia but I guess my twelve year old prefers Windex over his mom's pee.  Fair enough.

And just when we had our ultimate fill of Mexican awesomeness we tried to get back into America and that only took a mere six hours.  In a car that we could not keep running because it has transmission issues so it was honestly 123 degrees in the car with the windows down.  No biggie.  It was like America was all "Oh, so you want to go to another country to have fun?  And you had to go on my Independence day too?  Like all rubbing it in my face?  We'll see you who gets back in in a 'timely fashion'".

Totally worth it.