Happy Birthday

The morning of January 31st was less than pleasant even to start the day. I could barely sleep the night before, anyway. I had been very anxious and stressed the past couple of months because I was so worried about whether or not I was going to be a good mom. I didn't think that I had what it took to actually raise and be responsible for the life of another human being. But that day was here, and I was extremely nervous. Plus, any woman that says she's not nervous about labor (which is not that many lol) I think are lying to themselves. We were supposed to wake up really early and call the hospital at about 5:30am to see if we were still good to come in for an induction. I was hardly asleep in the first place so it wasn't difficult for me to be awake. My lazy husband on the other hand actually said to me, I really hope they don't have you go in because I don't want to go in. Thanks for the support, honey. Unfortunately for him, we were good to go. We drove to the hospital in silence and when we got there and they got me settled in the room the first thing my husband did was pull out the chair that turns in to a bed thing and go back to sleep. Are you kidding me? You're wife is about to have labor induced and you're going to sleep? Your first son is about to be born and you are SLEEPING?! I was pissed. They started my pitocin drip at 7 and for the first few hours it really wasn't that bad. I had made a birthing plan and I had decided that I wanted to go as long as possible without an epidural and if I could avoid one altogether, that was fine with me. Around 5pm I hadn't gotten any farther than 3 cm. Which now I understand is pretty normal especially for induction AND a first time mom. So my wonderful husband, who hadn't even been awake that much, decides that he's going to leave the hospital and get something to eat. I was semi-ok with that. I knew he was probably hungry but my contractions were starting to get really uncomfortable and I didn't want him to leave me. I didn't fuss because I didn't have the strength to. There were a couple of places to eat in the hospital and there are fast food places right outside the gate. I expected him to be gone for about 30 min. He was gone for TWO HOURS. When he got back I was really getting pain during my contractions. But true to form, he wasn't awake for long and he laid back down and went back to sleep. I was on my own for this. Around midnight they checked me and I was still only at 4 cm. I asked the nurses to wake my husband up so that I could discuss with him whether or not I should get an epidural. I knew that if I was only at 4 cm I was going to have a long night and my contractions weren't letting me sleep. My concern was that if I didn't get any rest I wouldn't have very much strength to push. Our discussion lasted only a few seconds because his reply was, do whatever you want. Thanks! Great support! I caved and got the epidural. I wouldn't be able to do it without if he wasn't going to be supportive. Obviously he wasn't very supportive because he was more concerned with sleeping. After I got the epidural I PASSED OUT. I was probably sawing logs. Around 6:30 am they came to check me and I was at 7 cm so they went ahead and broke my water. Things progressed pretty quickly from there. By 7 I was at 10 and ready to push. Aiden, on the other hand, wasn't quite ready to come out. I pushed for two hours to get that baby out of me. At one point they had to put oxygen on me because his heart rate dropped really low. It turns out he had the cord wrapped around his neck. But when he did come out, he came out red and screaming his lungs off. It was beautiful. Aiden was born at 9:09 on February 1st.

 Now let me backtrack a bit and tell you why I wasn't happy about the date of his birthday. My husband had a daughter. A daughter that he had never met. He found out about her the spring semester of the one year of college he completed. She was a big reason he quit school and joined the military. He had to pay child support. Her birthday? February 1, 2002. She was EXACTLY 3 years older than Aiden. I just wanted him to have his own unique day, but I had to be reminded that my husband hadn't even met his daughter every time Aiden had a birthday. I had pushed him to meet her and be a part of her life. His mom had told the mother of his daughter that I was the reason he wouldn't have anything to do with her. (Isn't she a nice lady?) That couldn't have been further from the truth. I pushed and pushed and he wanted to make her go away. He and his family had tried whatever they could to find a way that he could sign his rights to her over. You just couldn't do that if the mother didn't want it. And she didn't. She wanted a child support. I understand that completely. So my son shared a birthday with his sister. A sister that to this day he has never met.

Welcome Home

The day my husband came home I was a nervous wreck. I had gotten pretty big while he was gone (pretty big in the pregnancy sense let's not even start in about my weight right now ugh) and I wasn't sure how he was going to react to it. I hadn't had anyone to take pictures of my growing belly so he didn't really know what I looked like. That morning I put on my make-up, my cutest maternity shirt, my cutest maternity jeans. I threw on my tennis shoes to take the dog out and got so excited about leaving that I forgot to change my shoes. It was pretty funny. Let me take just a moment to say something about dressing to go meet your husband. Inevitably there is ALWAYS at least one (usually more than one) woman that is dressed very provocativly at the coming home ceremonies. It's pretty funny, you can tell she just went and got her hair and nails done. She's wearing a very cleavage bearing shirt and a very short skirt and some hooker heels. Cracks me up. They usually end up getting it on before they leave. If you are this woman, believe me, no one but your husband thinks you look hot. Everyone else thinks you look desperate and slutty. Anyway, I got up to the gym next to my husband's unit as quickly as I could and actually met up with my husband before the ceremony. We hugged and kissed and he was showing off my belly and I was thinking "ok! here we go! this is going to be good!" We made it through the ceremony (where I understandling cried my eyes out) and made it home and my husband went to bed. To sleep. I let him sleep. I assumed he was tired (of course he just had a long flight) and just let him sleep. This was the beginning of my husband's favorite past time after he came home. My husband liked to sleep, and when he wasn't sleeping he was eating or watching porn. After the first couple of weeks we just didn't talk very much. I would work and when I wasn't at work we would switch off being on the computer and watching tv. When one person was watching tv the other was on the computer then after a while we would switch that was our existance. I new that he needed an adjustment period (even though he hadn't been gone that long) and I was willing to give that to him. I was willing to give him whatever he wanted because he would very often remind me that he deserved it. He deserved everything he got because he worked hard (I guess I didn't) and it was HIS money. I wanted to go ahead and start slowly buying things for the baby and while he was deployed that was fine. When he came home it became a huge problem. He would flip flop back and forth between being ecstatic (when people were around) and seeming like he couldn't care less (when we were alone). My pregnancy was very quickly starting to wear me down. I didn't feel well and it was affecting me at work. I would feel fine and then all the sudden I would feel hot and flushed. Twice I almost fainted while helping customers. I went to the doctor and found out I had very high blood pressure. I had planned on working up until Aiden was born, but one doctor's appointment in December I was told if I don't quit I will end up with preeclampsia. Two weeks before Christmas I had to quit working. December also brought a very huge fight between my husband and me. The first of some pretty horrible fights. We had fought before but that's when the accusations and name calling really settled in as a fixture of our fights. Not on my part, but on his. I don't even remember what the fight was about, but at one point he actually pointed at my belly and said "Is it even mine?" I didn't even know what to say. To this day I can vividly see him say that to me in my mind. I don't pretend that I was perfect in our marriage. However, at this point in time I think the most horrible thing I had done was give him whatever he wanted and bow to his every whim. He would blow up at me then come back and say I'm sorry. The beginnings of abusive behavior. I just thought he had a hot temper and he really did regret it. I think he did to some extent but I don't know how much of his "apologies" were sincere. After I quit working I spent my days trying to prepare for our son and keeping my feet up as much as possible. I had a due date of February 5th and I didn't think it was every going to come. I was so big! I had only gained 20 lbs but I don't have much of a torso so I was my tummy was REALLY big! The last week of January my doctor didn't like that my blood pressure wasn't going down so I was scheduled to be induced on January 31st.

No....I'm not pregnant.

Well, needless to say we still had to go to the hospital and feign a sickness. Although I looked a lot worse than he did. Two of his sergeants came up to the hospital to check on him. One of them, a woman whose name I cannot remember, sat down with me and started talking to me. I was in no mood and on the verge of tears. She picked up on that and started asking me why I was so upset. I told her about my pregnancy and started to cry. She actually asked me why I was so upset. To me it was pretty obvious. Hello! I don't know ANYONE here and my husband is deploying! I'm going to go through the first half of this pregnancy all alone. After my husband and I had been dating for a few months he had started doing a pretty subtle job of seperating me from friends and family. I didn't really notice it until around the time I got pregnant. When I started college I had a huge group of friends. A large christian family and that embraced me and loved me. My relationships with my family were strained and will probably always be, but I had friends. Very close friends. Great people that would support me. When I got pregnant, I didn't really have that anymore. I still had a few but I had removed myself from so many people and been so selfish as a friend because of my own problems. That sergeant just didn't understand this and I didn't really expect her to. "You're married!" she said. "This is great!" It would take me a long long time to think my pregnancy was great. The next two weeks were pretty horrible. My husband spent money that we didn't have for things he didn't need. We fought about a lot. Then I apologized even when he should have. The day he left I was glad. He left me pregnant with $10 to my name and a week and a half until payday. I still had to get to work and we didn't really have groceries. When I came home from dropping him off to deploy, I came home to an apartment with no electricity because he didn't pay the bill. What a great way to take care of your pregnant wife.
Let me tell you another great thing about the military. There are a LOT of us. Especially on a post like Fort Lewis. Fort Lewis is also connected to McChord Airforce Base. So all of those people come to the hospital on Fort Lewis. Then we have Bremerton Naval base about an hour or so up north. They come to Madigan as well. Madigan Army Medical Center is the hospital and all doctors clinics on Fort Lewis. Very nice facility but a LOT of people to serve. It can sometimes take 2 hours to get a precription filled at the outpatient pharmacy. We may not pay a co-pay for that medicine, but, we pay in time. Because of this, I wasn't even able to get in to see a doctor until the middle of JULY. So I had skipped 2 periods and known for almost a month that I was pregnant before I could get in to see an OB/GYN. When I finally did get in I saw a wonderful guy named Dr. Sessions. I will always remember that man's name. lol We estimated I was 16 weeks pregnant based on my last period and I got my prenatals and some books and I finally started to get excited. I wasn't sure if I wanted to have a girl or a boy but my family seemed to think that I was going to have a girl. I think it was more because they wanted me to have a girl. I secretly wanted a boy. Even my husband thought we were having a girl and he wanted a girl (so he said). Since I was 16 weeks along at the time I was far enough along to have a blood test done to see if the baby might have some genetic disease. A few days later I got a call from the doctor saying something was something abnormal I needed to come in for an ultrasound. I immediately thought the worst. Something my mom taught me to do really well. I called the couple of people I felt like I could and waited for my husband to call me. That was excrutiating. I knew that he was driving trucks and fuelers in convoys so it was very unpredictable when he could call me. When I told him he was pretty calm and collected and said I'm sure everything is fine. I just wasn't taught to think that way. Everything in my life had always been drama. Thanks, Ma. I went in a few days later for my ultrasound and yes, everything was fine. The baby wasn't as old as we thought, I was only 13 weeks pregnant instead of 17 weeks. So I hadn't actually been far enough along to have the blood test done and that's why it came back abnormal. Baby looked good. Moving around a lot and seeing my little baby healthy was when I started to fall in love with him. The next couple of months were stressful for me. My mother-in-law (whom I had never had a good relationship) called me one time and asked what reason do you have to be so stressed out. Ok, drama aside, I think I had quite a few reasons to be stressed out. That was just rediculous. I still went to work and brought home my little paycheck. I entertained customers and my co-workers. The rest of the time I was eating, sleeping, or on the computer talking to my husband. The majority of the time I was sleeping. I was depressed and the only time I actually felt like human being was at work. September came and I was 20 weeks pregnant. You know what that means! The BIG ultrasound! Build-A-Bear has this great thing that you can put in a bear called a record-a-sound. I bought one and took it with me to the ultrasound so that I could record baby's heartbeat and put it in a bear for my husband. Everything looked good and normal and then the ultrasound tech asked, so do you want to know if it's a boy or girl. YES! I can't stand to not know! It was a boy. My sweet baby boy. I started crying. I was so happy. She thought I was upset. Haha! No, I explained to her, I'm so happy. I would NEVER in a million years trade my sweet boy for a girl. I was over the moon. My husband got to call me that night and he was very excited. My mom was happy for me (I guess) but I know she was disappointed it wasn't a girl, my mother-in-law as well. For the next couple of weeks we tossed around names. He never liked any of my choices so I finally said fine, it's up to you. You give me options and I'll say yes or no. One day he came back to me with Aiden Patrick. I loved it. Probably one of the few things he did perfectly in our marriage. A lot of people said, Why not Patrick Aiden? No. Aiden Patrick. At the time, I didn't realize that Aiden, Brayden, Jayden, Hayden, Kaden, and any other variant of the name was extremely popular. I just wanted an Irish name. Now I kinda feel bad for my son! lol But the name suits him perfectly. A few days before Halloween my husband was set to come home. I had fixed a lot of our financial mess but not all of it so he decided to go ahead and REenlist early so that he could get a bonus. That money was gone about 2 days after we got it. Paid of debt. And we STILL had mounds of it. But that's ok, I thought, we'll just wait until he gets home and things will be good. We'll start our family and things will get better. Our relationship had gotten better while he was gone (wouldn't that be a big red flag to you?) so we were going to be fine. I just needed to wait until he got home. There I was...waiting for everything to be ok....again.

Maybe it was just Korea?

I had gotten to the point right before I left Korea where I thought, maybe it's Korea. Maybe we're just under a lot of stress because we are broke and we aren't sleeping well (two people on a twin bed for 2 1/2 months SUCKS). I convinced myself that we would be fine as soon as we got to Washington. We would move and start our life together (for real this time) and we would be happy. I didn't realize that I would think that just about every 6 months for the entirety of our marriage. I came home at the end of February in 2004 and he came back to the states about 2 weeks later in the beginning of May. We got my little apartment packed up, loaded up our two vehicles, the dog, and the cat and started the drive to Washington. It was kind of fun. A road trip across the country as newlyweds. The only problem was the army. Before you PCS you are supposed to be given an allowance for moving. We didn't receive ours in time. So my husband had to drive to Fort Campbell and get an Army Emergency Relief loan just so we would have money for gas, hotels, and food on the way to Fort Lewis. We got to Fort Lewis the last week of May. We had to stay in very very dingy crappy motels for about 4 days before we found an apartment to move into. The thing we found out the hard way is that Washington is a lot more expensive to live in than Tennessee or Kentucky. Everything was more expensive. We found a 2 bed 2 bath apartment that allowed pets and we moved in as that day. However, we still didn't have our furniture. How does that process work? Let me explain. The army contracts out to a civilian moving company (i.e. mayflower). Mayflower will come and pack you up and move your stuff but it's not taken to YOU. It's taken to a warehouse on or around whatever post you're going to. So a lot of times your stuff beats you to your destination. Then you have to call and make an appointment for your household goods to be delivered. So, you get moved in and have your stuff delivered next day right? WRONG. More like two weeks later. So here we are in a fairly nice apartment with a dog and a cat and absolutely no furniture. Not even a pot to cook in. Barely any money left. We got put in a position that a LOT of young military couples get put in. We need money. I started applying for jobs immediately. The thought of going back to school was too financially stressful and there wasn't a college in our vicinity that had my program anyway, so school was getting put on the back burner. About a week after I started putting in applications I got interviews at Starbucks and Build-A-Bear. I got offered positions at both places but I ultimately went with Build-A-Bear. Sounds fun! I started working there at the end of April. The unit my husband was assigned to was already in Iraq and since he had been in Korea for a year he was supposed to be stateside for a year. Sometime in the beginning/middle of May he came home and told me that they were sending him to Iraq anyway. He would be leaving in the middle of June. I flipped. I was mad at the army. How could they do this to me? We just got married! We just moved! I don't know anyone here except the people I work with! My husband wasn't helping himself very much at work either. He would sleep through his alarm clock and miss PT. (This happened several times during the course of our marriage.) He would fake an injury. He was lazy to say the least. Sometimes I really wonder how he even made it through basic training. But the sad thing is, the military is FULL of people like that. They aren't all hooah and patriotic and serving the greater good. Don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of guys and girls like that but my husband wasn't one of them and a lot of soldiers I met are like him. He always pushed the blame on the military. It was always anyone else's fault but his. Two weeks before he left for Iraq I was NOT feeling good. Very nauseous and crabby. My period had always been irregular so I didn't notice that I hadn't had a period in May and now I was missing June. So I went and bought a pregnancy test. I wanted to wait until the next morning to take it (morning pee is the best for clear results the box said). I was a nervous wreck. The next morning, true to form, my husband slept through his alarm clock and missed PT formation. He immediately begins trying to form a lie to tell them about why he missed. Since I was such a supportive wife I tried to help and said, why don't I take this pregnancy test and if it's positive then we'll go to the hospital and tell them I'm feeling sick and then we can "find out" at the hospital. No good. They won't care if you're sick, he tells me. It has to be him. So he decides he's going to go to the hospital and say HE'S sick. I take the pregnancy test anyway. DING DING DING! We have a winner! You're pregnant!!! I threw the pregnancy test across the bathroom. I felt even more sick. I was beside myself with worry. I can't be pregnant my husband is deploying in TWO WEEKS!!!

Post Martial Bliss or Something Far From It

I'd love to be able to say that, yes, Army Wives is a correct representation of what we army wives go through on a day to day basis. It couldn't be further from the truth. I watch Army Wives every sunday night but not because I feel connected to it. In fact, I feel very disconnected from it. It's all fantasy. We don't have drama that clears itself up after a couple of weeks then we're magically ok with very little there to scar us. You will never catch me hanging out with the post commander's wife. That just does NOT happen. For several reasons but the most compelling reason is because you would never catch us in the same circles. Not dissing what Army Wives is trying to achieve. I think that the show gives civilians a glimpse into what it's KIND OF like. But the truth is much harder than what they are willing to put on tv. I think that's my goal here. Even when things get bad, I won't sugar coat it and tell you that it's ok because that's what we army wives go through.
To pick up where I left off last time, when my husband came home in September of '03 and we got married he had to turn around 2 weeks later and go back to Korea. I had to return to college and pretend I was ok. I played the role of pining wife really well. Everything revolved around him being in Korea and me being here. Oh pity me. This was a year or so after things had started getting really bad in Iraq, but him deploying to Iraq wasn't really a thought in my mind. I was so focused on him being in Korea that I wasn't thinking he could be in any other place. Much less an actual war zone. In the middle of my fall semester, he came down on orders for his next duty station. We were being sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. We would be moving to Washington in the middle of my spring semester, so I wasn't going to be able to finish my junior year of college at Murray State. We decided that I should fly to Korea the week before Christmas and spend two weeks with him in Korea. By this time we hadn't spent more than two consecutive weeks together in over a year. I thought it was brilliant. However, before I could even get there he was already accusing me of cheating on him with one of my very best guy friends. That doesn't really bode well for a new marriage. All of the guys he was friends with in his unit had him convinced that I was cheating on him. After the 18 hour flight to Korea I was exhausted and in no mood to do anything but sleep. I was going to be staying in the barracks with him (with special permission from his higher-ups) so I unfortunately had to be introduced to everyone that we came across. I got very, hm how do I put this, not very nice looks from a lot of them. Some of them were very nice to (which I found out later is because they wanted to have their way with me). One friend in particular decided to tell me that if I ever did anything to hurt my husband I would regret it. Great. What a way to start off the trip. Over the next two weeks I got a crash course in barracks life. Not only was is barracks life, it was OVERSEAS barracks life. There was more drinking than you can imagine. Everything revolved around going out to the "ville" and getting drunk. A great majority of these guys were married and you wouldn't have known it to talk to them. I was an oddity in Korea. A white girl that wasn't a slut. Not only that I wasn't military. In those barracks, if you were female you were more than likely having a relationship with more than one guy. I hate that that is the case, but it's the truth. On top of that, they were even MORE likely to be making fun of them for it behind their backs. The " Barracks Bicycle". Everyone's had a ride. So after everyone getting to know me and realize that I was NOT the type of person to cheat on their husband, I became a target. My husband's friends got very protective of me. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere alone. And this is where I met Jenny. Jenny's husband was in my husband's unit. I wouldn't really say they were friends but they were friendly towards each other. Jenny's husband was a real piece of work. She was there "against the rules". She wasn't just there for a visit, she was living outside the post in town in a very very crappy little apartment and she was working on post. She wasn't allowed to live in family housing on post because her husband wasn't an officer so she wasn't sponsored there, just like I wasn't. She and her husband were also newly married so we got to be very close friends. A couple of days before I was supposed to leave my husband begged me to not go back home. I mean literally begged me. I don't even really know why. We had been fighting about EVERYTHING. Money mostly. But he liked to keep me close to him. I think he was so insecure about our relationship that even though he knew I wouldn't cheat on him he still worried about it. He was (and still is) a very insecure guy. So I purposefully missed my flight and stayed in Korea for another two months. We were constantly broke. My husband had gotten $5000 as a sign on bonus after he completed AIT in March of 2003. To this day I have no idea what he spent it on. My only guess is alcohol and movies. It was gone by July. It was supposed to pay for our honeymoon but it was gone, so our honeymoon got put on THREE of my personal credit cards. He didn't pay for anything. The 2 1/2 months I spent in Korea is a blur of alcohol and fighting. I don't even have any pictures of me IN Korea. How sad is that? The most beautiful thing I saw in Korea was the plane I got on to leave.

How did I get here?

Things never turn out the way you planned. Unless of course you are filthy rich or extremely controlling. I am neither of those things. Some would argue the extremely controlling part, but those people don't really know me. Ten years ago I was about the embark on the "greatest time of my life". My senior year of high school. HAHA. What a joke. There is no way on God's green earth that my senior year was the greatest time of my life. Still, I did have some good times. I was even voted most likely to succeed. I didn't really consider that a compliment at the time and I still don't. I think I was just the most obnoxious smart girl. I ran for FFA state office for the state of Kentucky the summer after my senior year. I had scholarships for college. I had everything going for me. So tell me, how did I end up married to a man that was all wrong for me? That question still baffles me to this day. I don't know what I was thinking except that I was young and "in love". Unlike a lot of military wives I met my husband before he joined the army. We were both in college and I was doing horribly at keeping up with being independant and disciplining myself to go to class. He was just doing horribly. So after a year of college he cashed it all in and joined the army. He proposed in July of 2002 and I thought I was big stuff. It was drama and what 19 year old girl isn't into drama on some level? I was young and in love and my future husband was joining the military. What a classic predicament. I was a WRECK when he left for basic training. It was terrible. What was worse is that I was starting to realize that maybe our relationship wasn't so perfect. But again, I was young and considered it part of the normal hardship you go through when you've been together for almost a year and you're really starting to know each other. I was stupid. I should have ended it. But I felt locked into the relationship because we were engaged and my mother had already started planning our wedding. Heck, I had a wedding dress after we'd been engaged for 2 weeks. Eeks. So he goes to basic training. He goes to Advanced Individual Training, surely we're ready to get married and start our dramatic military life together, right? Wrong. KOREA! Whoohoo! An overseas assignment! But were spouses allowed to follow? Nope. Not unless you're married and an officer's wife. (Aren't they so special!) So he went to Korea and I spent the next 7 months planning our wedding that I didn't even want to have and detaching myself from all of my friends because they didn't know how hard I had it. I was awful. I went to summer school to catch up, I distanced myself from all the people that loved me, and I fell more into the drama of the military. In September of 2003, he came home from Korea and we got married. Wow! I'm a woman! I am free from the constraints of being a young woman still under her mother and father's rule! I can make my OWN rules! Ok, I can make my own rules within the parameters of the military. I should have been tremendously happy and confident. Right? Yeah, I should have...but I wasn't.