November 5, 2014
PiC and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to parental leave.
He’s eligible for all state/federally mandated leave, and will have some days or weeks of vacation accrued if I carry to term as long as we’re careful about what we do up until then.
I have none of these things. I work for a small shop and so they aren’t bound by any of the state/federal leave laws. It’ll come down to a conversation with my generally accommodating and awesome (grumpy strikethrough) boss to work out something.
No matter what we work out, I’m staying on top of our saving right up until I can’t, in case anything happens and I can’t go back to work or I need more time. I hate this uncertainty.
Worst case scenarios.
If none of my leave is covered, I’ll need to work out the budget for being without income for 2, 3 and 6 months just to project how much money we need. At this stage, my feeling is that we’ve saved enough that I shouldn’t forgo a minimum length of leave (2 months?) just because of the money. It’s a luxury to take that time whether or not we have income but these are the first months of LB’s life, I probably want to be there. (And if I don’t, well, work should always take me back!)
A warning from experienced mothers
Try to prepare things before the third trimester, you won’t want to need to do too much at that stage:
This wars with my preference not to get ahead of ourselves preparing for something that, well, might not really … work out. As first-timers, we’re pretty cautious about the outcome; I think we’re both so cautious we won’t truly breathe easy about this whole pregnancy thing until we’ve got a healthy baby at the end of it. We also don’t want to accumulate too much stuff, either. We don’t have a lot of room to begin with, so it really makes sense to purge everything we’d been meaning to move along and then add just a few essentials. On the other hand, ebbing energy is absolutely a concern and if I can expect to be even *more* tired at that stage, well… we’ll have to figure something out.
I’m grateful for some online resources that give me an idea of what on earth might be going on in there as I wait for time to pass. Though it’s always a great reminder that on some forums, people are dirt stupid and seem to think that all science was just a joke – be leery of those folks.
I’d read the scary stuff like SaverSpender’s first time mother notes and while I’ve had a ton of childcare experience, obviously I’ve hadn’t had any in the actual birthing department. Despite having heard what I thought was “it all” from so many mothers, there were still a lot of “ewwww ….. !” notes.
Reading also doesn’t prepare you to live through the bumps in the road, but having now done a certain amount of reading, I find that I”m not interested in reading all I can get my hands on anymore. I’m grossed out enough by the realities, there’s only so much one can take!
I’m not one of those people who either glow or enjoy their pregnancies. I’m doing my best to be healthy, be active and be responsible and I’m sure the end result will be cherished, but no joke, this is hard work.
October 27, 2014
I’m super grateful for the good friends and relatives who would like to come help. Not just visit, but help. Lord knows most of my family won’t be there for us. There’s a huge difference between the two and I expect that we’ll be so exhausted in the early days I simply can’t take regular visitors who just want to come to see Little Bean and hang out to be entertained. We won’t have help ongoing except that which we pay for so I’m extra grateful for those who would be willing to travel to come lend a hand. We’re luckier than we realized in that respect.
It’s funny how people are gung ho when it comes to buying new things; is it just because tiny things are funny and cute? We’ve shared the news with close family and friends and immediately know who’s going to go shopping as soon as we hang up the phone. I asked them to hold off as, where possible, hand me downs make much more sense to me than new clothes but I suspect I’m being ignored.
Little ones don’t know or care what they’re wearing or using so as long as it’s clear, dry and safe. I don’t want people to waste money on new things with all the perfectly good used stuff floating around.
That said, there’s definitely a few things we’ll need, mostly in the vein of furniture, to help with my limitations.
*Note: I don’t mean to be or sound ungrateful! I am absolutely grateful for whatever people like to give. It’s just a funny thing I’ve noticed.
I’ve joined Amazon Mom (the name still gets my goat a bit: moms are not the only parents or caretakers!) though it feels pretty darn early to do so. It’s just so I can start building a thoughtful and carefully curated registry list. We do have to get some things new and some friends have been after me to get this together the second they heard the news, so I figured I’d get a start on it.
I’m not sure what we’d order regularly just yet but I’ve been experimenting with some Subscribe & Save items and the extra 20% off where Amazon is the best deal (not always the case, remember!) will of course make a big difference. Correction: they’ve gone and reduced the discount to just 15%. 🙁
We’ve been in the Bay Area long enough for the extra concern for the environment to seep into my consciousness: we’re considering some form of cloth diapering. I simply don’t have the energy to do it the truly frugal way which is normally my very first concern, but we might be able to afford some kind of service, modified for our needs. Just contemplating since it’s not cheap to do the service and we’ve already got plenty of costs to stare down.
October 13, 2014
Food was a problem.
PiC is the saint of making food happen, though. He offered me meal option after meal option, my revulsion scratching things off the menu faster than he could finish the words. I was so hungry I could have cried; it felt like I was going to starve every day because Little Bean only let me eat and keep down one meal a day. Couldn’t repeat meals either so leftovers were right out. Fun game.
My blood, the traitor, revealed my glucose to be a touch on the high side; diabetes is a worry because it’s in the family history too (I have a crap family medical history). You know what’s super fun? A 3 hour glucose test. That means: Drink 100 ml of artificially sweetened clear liquid in less than 5 minutes. Gag. Desperately try not to gag because next is retching and next is throwing up which means starting the test all the hell over.
Get jabbed in the arm, blood draw 1.
Wait an hour. Get jabbed in the arm, blood draw 2. Be stupid and choose to use the same arm which hasn’t fully healed yet so get alcohol swabbed on an open wound. FRAK.
Wait an hour. Try to work, give up three times because thinking, breathing and moving are all vomit-inducing. The front desk says don’t throw up, you’ll have to start over. Switch frakking arms, blood draw 3.
Wait an hour. Nap a while taking up a whole row of chairs not giving a damn who looks at me sideways. Try to walk off the nausea. Switch arms again, last blood draw! Get the hell out of there.
I’ve been told very sternly by about seven people NO SUSHI as if I had Sushi Fiend written across my forehead. (It is. I’ve been craving sushi with clawing madness for weeks. Being told “no” helps exactly zero.)
I’m also constantly being told not to gain more than 25 pounds, about one third of that per trimester, during the whole term. First, I barely eat for one, forget for two. Second, why do people who know me think I’d be trying to gain more than I have to? It’s a weird thing.
Theme: “If YOU want to survive, you have to let ME survive.” Turns out that eating, sleeping more than a couple hours, and breathing are all difficult. This is completely counterintuitive and inefficient!
I’d been warned years ago about fatigue. In some ways, the fibro fatigue prepared me for the feeling of utter uselessness when I can’t even lift a limb. Doesn’t make it easier, nor does it make leaning on PiC so heavily easier, but at least it wasn’t a shock.
Having wavered between having to watch my words with everyone and being pretty nervous that this would all come to tears, I find myself wishing to fast forward a few months so I’d know what happens and so that I could actually TELL someone.
October 8, 2014
Planning soothes my soul, even if we’re not ready to really share this with family and friends offline, so I’ve retreated into making lists, plotting and planning.
My initial conclusion: This is going to be $$$.
The truth is, we know we’re going to have to throw money at the problem(s); it’s a matter of figuring out which problems can be creatively solved and which require money. I used to tough everything out to save money; that’s not a viable solution anymore. I’ve used up my allotment of tough and now it’s going to have to be accommodations and thinking ahead. I’d already been thinking along these lines when we were just becoming a dual-dog household, it’s even more important now!
Childcare: We know that we’ll need a lot of help around here, my health isn’t awesome, ever, and a little one will require care no matter how good (or not) I feel. The cost of childcare, even just to help during the day, is rather daunting from my initial research. We don’t have good family and friends nearby to rely on in a pinch, it’s all on us.
Unfortunately we aren’t close to any colleges so we can’t really steal a page from Nicole & Maggie’s book of hiring college age mother’s helpers but I will still look for any such possibilities.
Housekeeping: I only clean when my body isn’t too pained AND when I have energy. Those two rarely coincide, I’m sorry to say. I do bits and pieces of cleaning as and when. We’re not terribly picky but I do like a reasonably clean house so I’ve been thinking more and more about that robot vacuum. PiC is skeptical I have $100 saved for this extra expense so far. $400ish more to go! Or, we could use that money for semi-regular housecleaning, I’ve gotten a couple of quotes that are nearly reasonable.
Housing: We’ve enjoyed having an extra room but since we’re nowhere near being able to afford a bigger place in the Bay Area, we’re going to have to give up that luxury. I’m also eyeballing things for The Purge and we’ll likely start to Tetris for maximum utility.
Transportation: To date, our cars have been all about the Doggle. He was our first baby. We never anticipated getting anything that didn’t also have his comfort and safety in mind so we hit the research into minivans that we both like (safe, roomy enough for the family, automated enough for my level of use) and it was a bit scary. Good gravy but they are expensive.
I’m not yet prepared to sell one of our current cars and pony up something on the order of $30K for a new to us vehicle. And now that Doggle’s not around, sadly, it’s just Seamus and Little Bean to consider so it’s less pressing to move forward with the bigger family size option.
Healthcare: For now, we are lucky enough to have solid healthcare providers but they are job dependent. Neither of us are particularly worried at the moment about job loss but you know me: never assume you’re safe.
I’m not in love with some of our end-game options (y’know, actual childbirthy related things) but overall everything routine (checkups, labwork, radiology related stuff) is covered by our insurance for now at no extra cost. I still need to see what adding LB to the insurance as a full human will cost monthly and for actual visits.