I cannot tell you how much I admire this woman. They made the decision after lots of prayer and desire for a child to adopt. They are such a testament to the power of love, prayer, and putting family first.
I think that SO many people are:
1. Curious about adoption (especially for all my military friends)
2. Wondering about the process in your heart and effects on marriage and career
This is a GREAT read. Congrats to Marcus and Maureen on their growing family :) We miss you guys and trivia night!!
Here's Maureen's story:
I'm Maureen, and I'm happily married to my hubby Marcus, who is an Air Force officer. Our 12-week-old baby, Maxwell, is as cute and can be, and we're half way through the process of adopting him. We were blessed to be at his birth, and we love being new parents.
I both stay and home at home with Max and work. I'm working from home as a Financial Counselor teaching people how to handle their own finances by getting out of debt, budgeting, and saving/investing. On a side note, I have always appreciated when people have asked me about this as follows "Do you work outside the home?" It's a small thing, but it's made an impact on me every time I've heard it. It just seems kind and respectful over a delicate issue, especially for the 2 years that we were married without kids and I wasn't regularly employed outside the home.
Those two years were tough. When I married a military man (and moved right away), I knew that it was highly unlikely that my law career would go anywhere, so I made the decision to find another field and job that interested me and would be flexible with my hubby's constantly changing location and a hoped-for family. I considered all sorts of things - some related to law, some not. The base where we were stationed was on a hiring freeze, and I wasn't licensed in the state we had moved to. Moving right after getting married hasn't helped in general - I left my job, friends, our church, and felt rather alone in a new place and growing in a new marriage.
It took me about a year to land on Financial Counseling, but so far it's been a really great fit. It was weird to be back in "school", but I love the work. I find it practical with broad implications, and therefore fulfilling. I love that I can take it anywhere (even overseas!) and I can do it after my morning cup of tea or during Max's naps. I can take on more work or less as my schedule allows.
Is this the best choice for my family? So far this arrangement seems to work. I spent a long time in school - B.A., M.A., J.D. - and I've always been the goal-oriented, active and involved type. Maybe that's why, in theory, we're going to have 6 kids. In theory. I wonder sometimes if I'll still want to - or have time to - do Financial Counseling with a passel of littles (or bigs, as they will become). I wouldn't be surprised if I do want to continue it since I enjoy the challenge and the work. Even now, I find that the time focusing on putting someone else's financial affairs in order energizes me when I need to return to baby care. It probably has a lot to do with the satisfaction I get from completing a task or project.
Being a mom is a long and wide job with few landmarks along the way. Calculating how much someone needs to save to meet their retirement goal gives me a completed task with useful information in a couple hours.
More than number crunching, I just love being Max's Mama. The transition for us has been different from most since we're adopting Max. But I also think that our struggle to have a family makes us appreciate the blessing of it more - and perhaps more importantly, focus more on the fact that our baby is a blessing rather than bemoaning all of sacrifice and adjustments that come along with children. Sure, taking shifts on the living room couch because baby sleeps best on our chests and changing a poopy diaper at 2 am after JUST changing a diaper and having warm, curdled spit up flow down the front of your shirt and into your unmentionables when you need to leave the house is all annoying. I have definitely grunted in frustration and moaned aloud at getting out of bed in the middle of the night. Perhaps the kicker is that my time is no longer my own. Or at least it's thrown in my face now. That one hurts. But I know, deeply know, like it fills my whole being know that what I am dong here - what hubby and I are doing as parents - is eternal. It's not just poop, pincer grasps, and play dates. I am charged with caring for Max's soul. In humility, I hope that I am able to show Max every day that I love him because I've been so loved by Jesus. This is a heavy and exciting task, so it requires much of me, but I desire so much - so very much - to do this.
Important days with big questions and important talks will come, but right now, my favorite thing is insisting to Max that he's a genius. Really, though, Max has just started to laugh, so I tickle him a lot. I also like to smell his little baby head and rub my cheek on his soft baby hair.
I've found so much support in friends who have kiddos and work hard to raise them. This may be the biggest surprise of parenting for me - the great importance that my fellow traveler's companionship on the journey is. I've always been a "I'll figure out what I need to know and do it myself" kind of person, but parenting doesn't seem to lend itself to this approach. So I enjoy the time spent with these ladies. It's refreshing. But if I were to spend a day away from Max, a spa day is at the top of my list - lavender oil and lots of time wrapped up in towels, please!
I think - and hope! - that my choices to parent and work from home will positively affect our kids. I'm still early in this whole parenting thing, but the plan is to perfectly communicate to my children that they are very important to me without pandering to them or inflating their egos. So maybe taking time to work is good because they have to learn that Mama won't always be there for every little thing. We'll see how that turns out. Regardless, I know that I'll mess up, but I hope that my kids will have learned the importance of forgiveness so that our relationship doesn't suffer.
Regarding the hubs, he is wonderful beyond reason. He works hard and provides for our family. I support him in his career, he supports me in mine. It does not escape me that staying at home with Max is a luxury, and I'm grateful for it. Without a doubt, a great strength of my parenting is that it's really our parenting. We get that we both have a 100% responsibility to parent our small ones. Marcus gives Max a bottle not because he's doing me a favor, but because he's Max's dad. Knowing that we're doing this together gives me confidence, peace of mind, and, you know, even a sense of freedom. Don't think it's perfect! We, ah, disagree, sometimes emphatically, and I tend to over-express my emotions. But the transition to parenthood has been made easier for me in seeing that Marcus has taken on fatherhood enthusiastically.
Why is there such a big stay at home mom vs. working mom debate? I don't know - it's weird to me. I mean, I'd give moms - at home and at work - the benefit of the doubt that we all want to raise our kids well and give them good things. Maybe there's some elusive idea of giving them "best" things, but everyone defines that differently, so then there's no basis for comparison. So maybe that's what the fight is over - my best vs. your best. Is there an absolute best? Regardless, any choice we make to do something is simultaneously a choice not to do something. Opportunity cost, people! I'm not working as a lawyer, and if I were, I wouldn't be home with the kiddos all day. There's a loss on either side. I don't think it's valid or fair for me to become defensive over my choice or continuously bemoan the thing I gave up. That, lovely people, was a lesson long- and hard-learned. I spent many a day sad and sometimes mad over my job-less state and then many a day sad and sometimes mad over my baby-less state. As I was plunging headlong into bitterness, I learned that the only way out was to be grateful.
I had made a prayerful, thoughtful, and informed decision when I married a military man and decided to not practice law. So the best thing I can do is be thankful for the choice I've made - the good and the bad - and be glad that I had the freedom to make it. You're probably thinking it - trouble getting pregnant was not my choice. But I wouldn't trade what I've learned about God's goodness in the midst of sadness. Once, that sadness was overwhelming, but it becomes so small in seeing that, all along, Max was meant for us and we for him. So, yes, that is me with a baby on my lap, drinking a latte and getting a pedicure at 1:30 in the afternoon. And I'm enjoying every minute.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Severe OHSS Resulting in a Paracentesis
So on saturday, March 16th, all was well. Troy, Kristen (who was visiting), Avery, and I went to a family appreciation day at Creech with Troy. There was a tour of the new facility that his squadron is moving into and a BBQ, complete with bouncy castles and sunscreen (because is was 90 degrees that day).
Everything was peachy. In fact, here is a picture of us, all looking normal, and Avery looking adorable.
Kristen and I went and saw "Safe Haven" that night, because, hello?? Whenever we're together, we always go see a movie with man candy (in this case Josh Duhamel).
On sunday morning, I woke up around 430 in some pretty bad pain. I went downstairs and got comfy in one of the recliners and watched Pitch Perfect. When I got up to go take a shower and get ready for church, I looked like this...NO kidding:
We were all shocked. I looked about 5 months pregnant. I gained 11 pounds overnight. I wasn't in a super amount of pain, BUT I was more worried about what I looked like and answering questions about "when are you due?" and "wow, are you having a boy or a girl?" That seemed like the cruelest part of the whole deal. I looked pregnant and wasn't.
Kristen and I went and got pedicures after church, which turned out to be a great decision, because I ended up spending a HUGE amount of time in a hospital gown/with swollen feet/getting ultrasounds in the next week.
I started getting uncomfortable, having more pain, and having a hard time breathing with all the fluid build up in my abdomen. So, sunday night, Troy and I headed to the ER at Nellis. I got an abdominal ultrasound, a pelvic ultrasound, a heart ultrasound, and a chest xray. Part of the danger with OHSS is the dehydration of your body while it pumps fluid into your abdomen (trying to heal your ovaries) and then your blood thickens up and you can get a clot (in your heart, lungs, brain, etc). My blood levels weren't looking great. My ovaries were 10cm and 12 cm (almost 5-6 inches each) and I had a bit of fluid around my heart and lungs. Ughhhhhhh. They sent me home with pain meds and a follow up the next morning with my fertility specialist. They had given me morphine while I was there for pain. I threw up in the street for about 5 minutes when we got home. No more morphine for me. We are not friends.
I got up monday morning and got ready for work. I weighed myself. 6 more pounds... and went to my appointment. They gave me a note to be on "light duty" at work. I gave my note to my boss and she took one look at me and sent me home. I wasn't allowed to work until this was resolved. Awesome.
I kept getting bigger and bigger. I gained 8 more pounds by tuesday.
I kept eating my high sodium and drinking gatorade. It was awful. The electrolyte drinks were all so sweet and syrupy. I tried the Pedialyte. It was SO gross. All the pain medication, salty food, and high protein was making me so constipated. I seriously started to feel like I was dying. And I felt this feeling of SO much hopelessness. I felt like I was NEVER going to shrink back. My skin hurt SO bad.
I couldn't pick up Avery. I couldn't hardly eat because my body was so swollen that there was no room in my stomach for anything. And I wasn't peeing. AT ALL. Like downing fluid, and NOTHING. All fluids straight into my belly. I could feel like skin stretching every time I ate or drank anything. I couldn't sleep because my belly would flop over and pull all my organs over. It is SO different than pregnancy, where it's all hard and baby. The pressure was building and my kidneys were getting CRUSHED. My lower back was killer.
The swelling started to spread. I wasn't allowed to wear pants. Troy was rubbing my back and he said I looked like Quasimodo because the fluid was pushing my back out at the bottom. It was CRAAAZY. My hips, butt, thighs, and knees tripled in size and none of my maternity clothes fit.
Wednesday night was the worst. WORST. I woke up around 11pm DYING. Like pain worse than labor. Crying. Screaming. Writhing in bed. Troy holding me down. Me punching him. He loaded me in the car and we went to the ER. Again.
We walked in and they thought I was in labor...I was that big and uncomfortable. Until we told them what was going on. Some of the same nurses/doctors were there from sunday night and they remembered us. They immediately gave me an IV and loaded me up with dilaudid. Thank you Jesus for dilaudid. And Zofran. They redid the pelvic ultrasound to see if my ovaries had changed (same size) and look at my abdominal fluid (there was way more). They sent me home with percocet and zofran. And another follow up with my specialist. My lab work was worse. I was taking the max dosage for pain meds every 4 hours and it was not helping.
On thursday, my fertility doc told me to wait it out through the weekend and if I was not getting better by monday, he would recommend the paracentesis to drain the fluid.
Needless to say, it was not getting better.
Sunday night, Troy told me that I was bigger that night than I was the day I delivered Avery. He was helping me in and out of bed, on and off the toilet and with showers. It was awwwwwwwful.
This is Sunday night. I was SOOOOOOO swollen.
This is me, the morning I went to Nellis for the paracentesis. And up 31 pounds in a week.
We had to wait for a bit. The doctor who checked us in at Nellis was like, "I do this procedure all the time, hold up a second and we'll have this done in a few minutes." He was contracted and didn't realize Nellis procedure for performing a paracentesis and we had to wait on the interventionist radiologist to do the procedure.
I was feeling like SUPER poop and Troy was trying to make me laugh. They told me my liver enzymes were not so great from taking all the pain meds and I needed to stop taking anything with tylenol in it. So no more percocet.
We finally got everything in order (6 hours later) and were set up in a small procedure room in the ER for the paracentesis. The doctor was WONDERFUL. He ultrasounded my belly to looked for an area where he wouldn't poke bowel, ovary, stomach, or liver. He used lidocaine to numb my skin (OUCH) and then put in the catheter to start draining the fluid out of my belly. He guessed he would remove about 2-3 liters. In the picture below, you can see where the needle is in my skin, how he pumped out the fluid manually, and then the bag (which is a 2 liter bag). The bag was emptied twice and he had me roll onto my side to move more fluid towards the drain. He ended up removing 4.5 liters of fluid. SURPRISE!!!
The hole WOULD NOT plug. I had fluid in a constant drip coming out of my belly from about 3 pm until I went to bed at 10. SO MUCH gauze. They sent us home with gauze, tape and absorbent pads for leaking. Gross.
That night, we were worried about leaking all over the bed, so Troy fashioned me an absorbent diaper. Luckily, during the night, the leaking stopped and no damage was done to our mattress or sheets :)
Since the procedure, I have been feeling 100000000% better. With WAY less pain. My abdominal muscles are trashed. A human body shouldn't go from normal to 10+ mo preggo in a week. I'm lucky I made it out with no stretch marks. I'm so vain. I'm also lucky that my friend, Kristen was here and Troy's parents were here to help with Avery. Ughhhhhh. I have an appointment at Nellis next week for another draining. They are guessing the fluid will come back. I hope not. I started having increased kidney function. So hopefully I'll just pee the fluid out now.
What are the odds of this happening? It happens to a 10th of a percent. A TENTH OF A PERCENT. Very uncommon. Odds were not in my favor. Or were they? Should I buy a lottery ticket? Or avoid skydiving?
My mom is here now because I'm still supposed to be on bedrest and I can't pick up Avery. Poor baby doesn't understand :( Love her.
Everything was peachy. In fact, here is a picture of us, all looking normal, and Avery looking adorable.
Kristen and I went and saw "Safe Haven" that night, because, hello?? Whenever we're together, we always go see a movie with man candy (in this case Josh Duhamel).
On sunday morning, I woke up around 430 in some pretty bad pain. I went downstairs and got comfy in one of the recliners and watched Pitch Perfect. When I got up to go take a shower and get ready for church, I looked like this...NO kidding:
We were all shocked. I looked about 5 months pregnant. I gained 11 pounds overnight. I wasn't in a super amount of pain, BUT I was more worried about what I looked like and answering questions about "when are you due?" and "wow, are you having a boy or a girl?" That seemed like the cruelest part of the whole deal. I looked pregnant and wasn't.
Kristen and I went and got pedicures after church, which turned out to be a great decision, because I ended up spending a HUGE amount of time in a hospital gown/with swollen feet/getting ultrasounds in the next week.
I started getting uncomfortable, having more pain, and having a hard time breathing with all the fluid build up in my abdomen. So, sunday night, Troy and I headed to the ER at Nellis. I got an abdominal ultrasound, a pelvic ultrasound, a heart ultrasound, and a chest xray. Part of the danger with OHSS is the dehydration of your body while it pumps fluid into your abdomen (trying to heal your ovaries) and then your blood thickens up and you can get a clot (in your heart, lungs, brain, etc). My blood levels weren't looking great. My ovaries were 10cm and 12 cm (almost 5-6 inches each) and I had a bit of fluid around my heart and lungs. Ughhhhhhh. They sent me home with pain meds and a follow up the next morning with my fertility specialist. They had given me morphine while I was there for pain. I threw up in the street for about 5 minutes when we got home. No more morphine for me. We are not friends.
I got up monday morning and got ready for work. I weighed myself. 6 more pounds... and went to my appointment. They gave me a note to be on "light duty" at work. I gave my note to my boss and she took one look at me and sent me home. I wasn't allowed to work until this was resolved. Awesome.
I kept getting bigger and bigger. I gained 8 more pounds by tuesday.
I kept eating my high sodium and drinking gatorade. It was awful. The electrolyte drinks were all so sweet and syrupy. I tried the Pedialyte. It was SO gross. All the pain medication, salty food, and high protein was making me so constipated. I seriously started to feel like I was dying. And I felt this feeling of SO much hopelessness. I felt like I was NEVER going to shrink back. My skin hurt SO bad.
I couldn't pick up Avery. I couldn't hardly eat because my body was so swollen that there was no room in my stomach for anything. And I wasn't peeing. AT ALL. Like downing fluid, and NOTHING. All fluids straight into my belly. I could feel like skin stretching every time I ate or drank anything. I couldn't sleep because my belly would flop over and pull all my organs over. It is SO different than pregnancy, where it's all hard and baby. The pressure was building and my kidneys were getting CRUSHED. My lower back was killer.
The swelling started to spread. I wasn't allowed to wear pants. Troy was rubbing my back and he said I looked like Quasimodo because the fluid was pushing my back out at the bottom. It was CRAAAZY. My hips, butt, thighs, and knees tripled in size and none of my maternity clothes fit.
Wednesday night was the worst. WORST. I woke up around 11pm DYING. Like pain worse than labor. Crying. Screaming. Writhing in bed. Troy holding me down. Me punching him. He loaded me in the car and we went to the ER. Again.
We walked in and they thought I was in labor...I was that big and uncomfortable. Until we told them what was going on. Some of the same nurses/doctors were there from sunday night and they remembered us. They immediately gave me an IV and loaded me up with dilaudid. Thank you Jesus for dilaudid. And Zofran. They redid the pelvic ultrasound to see if my ovaries had changed (same size) and look at my abdominal fluid (there was way more). They sent me home with percocet and zofran. And another follow up with my specialist. My lab work was worse. I was taking the max dosage for pain meds every 4 hours and it was not helping.
On thursday, my fertility doc told me to wait it out through the weekend and if I was not getting better by monday, he would recommend the paracentesis to drain the fluid.
Needless to say, it was not getting better.
Sunday night, Troy told me that I was bigger that night than I was the day I delivered Avery. He was helping me in and out of bed, on and off the toilet and with showers. It was awwwwwwwful.
This is Sunday night. I was SOOOOOOO swollen.
This is me, the morning I went to Nellis for the paracentesis. And up 31 pounds in a week.
We had to wait for a bit. The doctor who checked us in at Nellis was like, "I do this procedure all the time, hold up a second and we'll have this done in a few minutes." He was contracted and didn't realize Nellis procedure for performing a paracentesis and we had to wait on the interventionist radiologist to do the procedure.
I was feeling like SUPER poop and Troy was trying to make me laugh. They told me my liver enzymes were not so great from taking all the pain meds and I needed to stop taking anything with tylenol in it. So no more percocet.
We finally got everything in order (6 hours later) and were set up in a small procedure room in the ER for the paracentesis. The doctor was WONDERFUL. He ultrasounded my belly to looked for an area where he wouldn't poke bowel, ovary, stomach, or liver. He used lidocaine to numb my skin (OUCH) and then put in the catheter to start draining the fluid out of my belly. He guessed he would remove about 2-3 liters. In the picture below, you can see where the needle is in my skin, how he pumped out the fluid manually, and then the bag (which is a 2 liter bag). The bag was emptied twice and he had me roll onto my side to move more fluid towards the drain. He ended up removing 4.5 liters of fluid. SURPRISE!!!
The hole WOULD NOT plug. I had fluid in a constant drip coming out of my belly from about 3 pm until I went to bed at 10. SO MUCH gauze. They sent us home with gauze, tape and absorbent pads for leaking. Gross.
That night, we were worried about leaking all over the bed, so Troy fashioned me an absorbent diaper. Luckily, during the night, the leaking stopped and no damage was done to our mattress or sheets :)
Since the procedure, I have been feeling 100000000% better. With WAY less pain. My abdominal muscles are trashed. A human body shouldn't go from normal to 10+ mo preggo in a week. I'm lucky I made it out with no stretch marks. I'm so vain. I'm also lucky that my friend, Kristen was here and Troy's parents were here to help with Avery. Ughhhhhh. I have an appointment at Nellis next week for another draining. They are guessing the fluid will come back. I hope not. I started having increased kidney function. So hopefully I'll just pee the fluid out now.
What are the odds of this happening? It happens to a 10th of a percent. A TENTH OF A PERCENT. Very uncommon. Odds were not in my favor. Or were they? Should I buy a lottery ticket? Or avoid skydiving?
My mom is here now because I'm still supposed to be on bedrest and I can't pick up Avery. Poor baby doesn't understand :( Love her.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Military Mom in Germany
I met Shana about 3 years ago in Dover. At the time, all of the officers in Troy's squadron fell in 2 categories.
1. Young lieutenants who were single/married without kids.
2. Older Officers with older (read high school or older) kids.
Shana and Donell fell right in the middle, with kids in middle school. Most of our "CGO Ghetto" friends living in the lieutenant area on base were just freshly married or just starting families. So Shana and Donell were a mystery to me for several reasons.
1. They had got married young and had kids young.
2. They were really cool.
3. Shana was a stay at home mom and I was planning on being a working mom.
4. She was freaking smart and witty and involved in everything.
5. They made choices that were best for their family, making no apologies about doing the right thing, no matter if you agreed with them, or thought it was difficult or mean.
How can you do all of those things and keep your head above water?? Shana tells all here. They live in Germany now and their kids are thriving and doing great over there traveling around Europe and living it up. Ahhhhhhh, I yearn for an overseas PCS...
Here's Shana:
My name is Shana, and this is the quick look at how I became a stay at home mom. Let me start out a long time ago in northern Michigan. For the first 5 years it was just me and mom, but by the time it was all said and done, I was the oldest of four kids. We were poor. Not the reduced lunch kind of poor, but the government cheese, one bath a week kind of poor. My parents worked multiple jobs just to keep us fed, and by the time my baby brother was born (I was 12) I had to miss school the day he came home from the hospital because mom had to work (it was an unexcused absence, but I digress) and she needed me to babysit. That was also the year I got my first paying job stuffing envelopes for an advertising agency. I would not be poor.
Flash forward to high school (mind you, still pretty poor but doing better). I am smart. Like, really smart. I got advanced classes, dual enrollment for college, even a scholarship that covered almost all my community college, but not quite enough. When I got pulled in to the guidance office, I had to tell them what I was going to be. “Housewife” was never on the list as an option, and I'm told to "pick something else." I do, and I worked hard, at school and at jobs. Sometimes working two or three jobs at a time, all while involved in cheerleading, band, and advanced classes. I fell in love. He had his own plans, and he was a year ahead of me, and he enlisted in the military. We got married, and I stayed at my parents’ home while I tried to finish college. But, their finances were still not much better and they were moving…without me. It was time for me to move to my husband’s apartment four hours away from my scholarship and make a home with him.
I got a job, then another one. At 20, I was offered an assistant manager job at Domino’s Pizza (I was still planning on going to college and “being something” at this point) and when the Domino’s owner found out I was a military spouse, he rescinded the offer because “I wasn’t going to be around long term.” This was the exact moment in my life when reality kicked me in the butt. I was not going to be able to be one of those successful women who had it all. I was going to have to choose, and the worst part is that I didn’t really get to make the choice, it was decided for me by denied opportunities. I worked two more years before we were sent overseas. It was a perfect time to make my break from being a wage earner to housewife. We moved to Alaska and I went back to college and tried to get pregnant. I did get my AA but what I didn’t get was pregnant. Turns out, getting knocked up wasn’t as easy as everyone around me made it look. We got extremely lucky and there was a fertility program at our base, for which we qualified and several tests and rounds of drugs later…I was the mom of two kids under the age of two.
I thought I was super mom. I had this thing locked down! They slept all night right away, everything was easy! I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t stressed, I had plenty of “me time.” I was happy. I had my hobbies, my husband was as eager to be with the kids as I was. My kids were happy, everyone was happy. This was working! Money wasn’t plentiful, but we wanted for nothing. I was surrounded by other SAHM’s (we were overseas, it happens a lot). I could be happy even without doing what I had been groomed to believe I was to do. I didn’t need a career. This euphoria lasted for about 5 years. As soon as the kids started school, there was "a shift." Not in my home, but in my neighborhood.
By this point, my husband had finished college (which was a miracle of co-parenting, creative solutions, and money magic, but that is a different story) and we were back overseas, as an officer’s family. That was when I started getting what my family calls “the look.” That is the way women, particularly Active Duty and college educated women, would look at me when I answered their “and what do you do?” question. They thought I was a modern day Peg Bundy, eating bonbons and watching soaps. That I couldn’t work because I was uneducated (which is true), and unable, and dumb. At one gathering, I was chatting about politics and my husband’s commander, a single mom who had previously given me “the look” when she said to me “Wow, you are smart?!” And when the kids were in school, I was constantly asked, “When are you going back to work?” I'm not done raising kids just because they are in school. One time, I caved to the pressure and enrolled in pre-Pharmacy classes. But the universe is unwavering in it’s signs. Things would block my way and show that it was not right for our family at the time. Women still give me “the look” but they can’t see that the choices we have made were the best for our family. That we decided even though I could do great things, the greatest thing I could do for all of us was raise two children as if it were my life’s purpose because now, it is and I am GOOD at it. I mean really, really good at it!
This is where I have to confess something. My version of good at it, doesn’t look like how I thought it would. I thought our schedule would be scripted like a day in pre-school. Breakfast, creative play, snack, read stories, lunch, recess, nap: Repeat. It didn’t look like that. It was “oops, we should eat lunch” and “we can play after I get all the laundry and shopping done.” The photos show that my kids were in onesies for most of their diaper days. And there was that one time that baby Brandon escaped the house. He was a very crafty child, very accident prone, and small. Yes, the Air Force investigated us for "failure to thrive,” which is code for neglect. We were cleared by a civilian agency. With the crisis averted, I went on raising amazing kids, exactly the way Donell and I had planned.
"The shift" was not just in my working contemporaries attitudes. I also saw a shift in my fellow SAHM’s attitudes. Some called me lazy. Yes, to my face. Because I am a SAHM, raising my kids not as if my life depended on it, but as if theirs did. What the other mom’s see is that I don’t do laundry, I don’t clean bathrooms, I don’t do dishes, and there are even nights I don’t cook. I don’t pack lunches and I don’t check homework. These are things Donell and I feel were important the kids could do for themselves. The quality of their life depends on these skills. I think they need me home more now than they ever did as toddlers. They need me to model a great loving and working relationship with my husband, they need to see me doing things that I love, and supporting our family in my own way. They need me to be there for them, every day and wholly present. They need dinner at the table every night, and life as usual when the military takes Donell away, or moves us to foreign countries. They need me to be the parent that drives them to the mall, or does their nails, or teaches them the electric slide before the big dance. My job is to release into the world two capable, stable, respectable adults and I’m not done until I am done.
1. Young lieutenants who were single/married without kids.
2. Older Officers with older (read high school or older) kids.
Shana and Donell fell right in the middle, with kids in middle school. Most of our "CGO Ghetto" friends living in the lieutenant area on base were just freshly married or just starting families. So Shana and Donell were a mystery to me for several reasons.
1. They had got married young and had kids young.
2. They were really cool.
3. Shana was a stay at home mom and I was planning on being a working mom.
4. She was freaking smart and witty and involved in everything.
5. They made choices that were best for their family, making no apologies about doing the right thing, no matter if you agreed with them, or thought it was difficult or mean.
How can you do all of those things and keep your head above water?? Shana tells all here. They live in Germany now and their kids are thriving and doing great over there traveling around Europe and living it up. Ahhhhhhh, I yearn for an overseas PCS...
Here's Shana:
My name is Shana, and this is the quick look at how I became a stay at home mom. Let me start out a long time ago in northern Michigan. For the first 5 years it was just me and mom, but by the time it was all said and done, I was the oldest of four kids. We were poor. Not the reduced lunch kind of poor, but the government cheese, one bath a week kind of poor. My parents worked multiple jobs just to keep us fed, and by the time my baby brother was born (I was 12) I had to miss school the day he came home from the hospital because mom had to work (it was an unexcused absence, but I digress) and she needed me to babysit. That was also the year I got my first paying job stuffing envelopes for an advertising agency. I would not be poor.
Flash forward to high school (mind you, still pretty poor but doing better). I am smart. Like, really smart. I got advanced classes, dual enrollment for college, even a scholarship that covered almost all my community college, but not quite enough. When I got pulled in to the guidance office, I had to tell them what I was going to be. “Housewife” was never on the list as an option, and I'm told to "pick something else." I do, and I worked hard, at school and at jobs. Sometimes working two or three jobs at a time, all while involved in cheerleading, band, and advanced classes. I fell in love. He had his own plans, and he was a year ahead of me, and he enlisted in the military. We got married, and I stayed at my parents’ home while I tried to finish college. But, their finances were still not much better and they were moving…without me. It was time for me to move to my husband’s apartment four hours away from my scholarship and make a home with him.
I got a job, then another one. At 20, I was offered an assistant manager job at Domino’s Pizza (I was still planning on going to college and “being something” at this point) and when the Domino’s owner found out I was a military spouse, he rescinded the offer because “I wasn’t going to be around long term.” This was the exact moment in my life when reality kicked me in the butt. I was not going to be able to be one of those successful women who had it all. I was going to have to choose, and the worst part is that I didn’t really get to make the choice, it was decided for me by denied opportunities. I worked two more years before we were sent overseas. It was a perfect time to make my break from being a wage earner to housewife. We moved to Alaska and I went back to college and tried to get pregnant. I did get my AA but what I didn’t get was pregnant. Turns out, getting knocked up wasn’t as easy as everyone around me made it look. We got extremely lucky and there was a fertility program at our base, for which we qualified and several tests and rounds of drugs later…I was the mom of two kids under the age of two.
I thought I was super mom. I had this thing locked down! They slept all night right away, everything was easy! I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t stressed, I had plenty of “me time.” I was happy. I had my hobbies, my husband was as eager to be with the kids as I was. My kids were happy, everyone was happy. This was working! Money wasn’t plentiful, but we wanted for nothing. I was surrounded by other SAHM’s (we were overseas, it happens a lot). I could be happy even without doing what I had been groomed to believe I was to do. I didn’t need a career. This euphoria lasted for about 5 years. As soon as the kids started school, there was "a shift." Not in my home, but in my neighborhood.
By this point, my husband had finished college (which was a miracle of co-parenting, creative solutions, and money magic, but that is a different story) and we were back overseas, as an officer’s family. That was when I started getting what my family calls “the look.” That is the way women, particularly Active Duty and college educated women, would look at me when I answered their “and what do you do?” question. They thought I was a modern day Peg Bundy, eating bonbons and watching soaps. That I couldn’t work because I was uneducated (which is true), and unable, and dumb. At one gathering, I was chatting about politics and my husband’s commander, a single mom who had previously given me “the look” when she said to me “Wow, you are smart?!” And when the kids were in school, I was constantly asked, “When are you going back to work?” I'm not done raising kids just because they are in school. One time, I caved to the pressure and enrolled in pre-Pharmacy classes. But the universe is unwavering in it’s signs. Things would block my way and show that it was not right for our family at the time. Women still give me “the look” but they can’t see that the choices we have made were the best for our family. That we decided even though I could do great things, the greatest thing I could do for all of us was raise two children as if it were my life’s purpose because now, it is and I am GOOD at it. I mean really, really good at it!
This is where I have to confess something. My version of good at it, doesn’t look like how I thought it would. I thought our schedule would be scripted like a day in pre-school. Breakfast, creative play, snack, read stories, lunch, recess, nap: Repeat. It didn’t look like that. It was “oops, we should eat lunch” and “we can play after I get all the laundry and shopping done.” The photos show that my kids were in onesies for most of their diaper days. And there was that one time that baby Brandon escaped the house. He was a very crafty child, very accident prone, and small. Yes, the Air Force investigated us for "failure to thrive,” which is code for neglect. We were cleared by a civilian agency. With the crisis averted, I went on raising amazing kids, exactly the way Donell and I had planned.
"The shift" was not just in my working contemporaries attitudes. I also saw a shift in my fellow SAHM’s attitudes. Some called me lazy. Yes, to my face. Because I am a SAHM, raising my kids not as if my life depended on it, but as if theirs did. What the other mom’s see is that I don’t do laundry, I don’t clean bathrooms, I don’t do dishes, and there are even nights I don’t cook. I don’t pack lunches and I don’t check homework. These are things Donell and I feel were important the kids could do for themselves. The quality of their life depends on these skills. I think they need me home more now than they ever did as toddlers. They need me to model a great loving and working relationship with my husband, they need to see me doing things that I love, and supporting our family in my own way. They need me to be there for them, every day and wholly present. They need dinner at the table every night, and life as usual when the military takes Donell away, or moves us to foreign countries. They need me to be the parent that drives them to the mall, or does their nails, or teaches them the electric slide before the big dance. My job is to release into the world two capable, stable, respectable adults and I’m not done until I am done.
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