Category Archives: special events

Aug1

A Labor Story, Part II

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A Labor Story, Part II

I know it’s been a while, but when it comes to getting some sleep or writing done, sleep wins hands down. Sleep also beats shower, unless it’s been too too long. To read/review Part 1, click here.

We arrived at the hospital and checked in at 2:00 PM. I had heard that checking in and registering, even when you have “pre-registered” at the hospital, can take forever. And I had heard right.

First, we did paperwork. Then, we did more paperwork. Then, we were asked a zillion questions about my medical history. I was slightly annoyed by all of this, since we had gone through all those questions before when we had our emergency hospital pit-stop back in March … you’d think that they’d save that information somewhere. Because unless you and your extended family have some drastic lifestyle changes or suddenly were showing symptoms of some serious genetic diseases in the span of a few months, then most of the answers would remain the same… yes?

You could tell the nurse that we had did not like the fact that I had taken “so long” to arrive at the hospital, along with the fact that we had a doula. We had let the person at the registration desk know that our doula would be coming soon, and that she could come right in.  We wanted her there as they told us the options for how they wanted to induce us.

However, the nurse was a bit tricky. She first reminded us to think about what we wanted to do for the inducing; the doctor wanted to do an anmiotomy (break the water) but pitocin was another option. (When I had spoken to my doula earlier in the day, she had actually recommended trying to start with the pitocin so that we didn’t have to be on the 24 hour timeline that the hospital puts you on when your water breaks.) Then the nurse said, “Oh, by the way, I think your doula might be here, but I just need to ask you a few questions before she can come into the room.” Then she proceeded to ask me the zillions of questions about my medical history and family history, occasionally punctuated with “By the way, have you decided what you’re going to do, yet?” Both Jared and I were getting a little frustrated because this was definitely more than “a few” questions, and it was clear she was trying to get us to decide before we could have better input from our doula.

Fortunately, our doula, Cary, wasn’t a pushover, and after about 15 minutes of this, she came into our room anyways. (I didn’t mind- I don’t have anything to hide about my medical history!) Once again, the nurse gave us a look of disapproval, but since it was my privacy at stake, and I was allowed to have two “support persons” in the room with me, there wasn’t much she could do. We finished answering the menial questions and then decided that we’d try starting with Pitocin and see how labor progressed from there, that way we wouldn’t start the 24 hour time limit. Of course, if the baby didn’t “tolerate labor” well, then we’d have an emergency c-section and the time limit wouldn’t matter anyways, but we were willing to try it.

Finally, around 4:00 PM, I was hooked up to the IVs and started on the Pitocin. (See what I mean about how long just getting in the hospital took?). I had donned my nightgown from home, which would be more comfortable for me than the hospital gowns, especially if I ended up walking/moving around like we planned on doing as labor progressed.

Once again, we had a few hiccups with what we wanted on our birth plans. We knew the hospital had wireless fetal monitoring, but the nurse we had didn’t want to let us use it because it wasn’t “as reliable” as the normal monitors if we were to walk the halls (which we hadn’t been sure we would even want to do!) Despite asking multiple times, she essentially refused to let us use them, so I was fairly stuck to the bed.

For a while, Jared, Cary, and I just chatted about various things. I know that I mentioned it was a big day for my parents: their first grandchild was coming into the world, and my youngest brother, Jacob, was coming home from his two year mission in Fiji for the LDS church. Every fifteen minutes or so, the nurse would come in and slightly increase the amount of Pitocin dripping into my IV.

By 5:00, I could definitely tell that I was having contractions, and they were fairly painful and close together. I would have contractions that were 60-90 seconds long with about 2-3 minutes in between. I was surprised by how frequent they were so soon after starting the medication (and from being on so little of the medication), since the “textbook” labor generally says go to the hospital when contractions are every 5 minutes. Because I knew they would tell me soon that I wouldn’t be allowed more food, I snuck a granola bar in.

It turned out to be a wise time to sneak the granola bar, because at 5:30, our doctor came in (she was the doctor “on call” that night at the hospital, too) and measured me. She said something about me being at “A loose 3” dilated (from my “tight 3” that morning?!). I guess you could just say 3 ½ or something, but again, I’m not the professional. She also quickly decided to break my water and told me explicitly that I was to have no food from here on out.  Honestly, I don’t think it would have been much longer for the water to have happened on it’s own, with how quickly the contractions had already intensified, but so it goes. Jared marked the time so that we would know our twenty-four hour time limit, as long as the baby was tolerating labor well, so they didn’t rush us into a C-section if it wasn’t needed.

I know this will sound totally “hippie”, but I had opted to have as natural a birth as possible. Since I was essentially forced into being induced, this plan was slightly altered, but I strongly wanted to go the entire birth without pain medication. I wanted to have full control of pushing and my body. I’m not a glutton for punishment, however; I had been reading several books on ways to manage my pain without medication. In case you wanted to know, the three books I focused on were Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth , Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way: Revised Edition , and HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method: A natural approach to a safe, easier, more comfortable birthing (3rd Edition) . (If you are interested in doing it “natural”, all these books were helpful; I started with the Ina May book and went on from there. I will say my least favorite was the Bradley book just because its tone was a little condescending towards anyone who might have a differing opinion than the author’s, but it still had some good tidbits. Maybe some day when I have time to myself again, I’ll review the books on here individually for you all.)

Anyways, I digress. I was determined that I wouldn’t become some sort of wacko in the delivery room—I wanted to stay calm and cope well with the labor process. To help cope with not having pain medication, I had studied a few methods, and Jared and Cary brought various items to help. We started with an old friend: watching “Shrek” on Jared’s laptop. (Awesome, I know, right?) As the contractions quickly got more intense, I used an exercise ball and breathing methods to help me cope.

Unfortunately, because the nurse wouldn’t allow us to use the wireless monitors, I was tethered pretty close to the bed. Even then, the monitors weren’t working great. First, they weren’t even catching most of my contractions (and trust me, they WERE happening!) Additionally, as the contractions intensified, I would want to curl up or bend a little more, and then the monitors couldn’t catch the baby’s heart rate as well, and they would think that she wasn’t tolerating the labor well. We were able to convince them that it was the monitors that had the issue, but still, I had to keep them on. Eventually, I gave up and mainly just stayed on the bed, laying on my left side as that seemed to be the best position for the monitors while being remotely comfortable.

Because of my struggles with anxiety, I have had a lot of practice with using deep breathing to remain calm. Being able to focus on counting the seconds of breathing in and out have always been a great way to clear my mind. In this case, I just added in the “rainbow balloon” method. As you breath in, you imagine you are filling up a balloon, and as you breath out, you imagine you are pushing it down and out. You start with red, and go through all the colors. By the time you reach green or blue, the contractions were usually close to ending, but boy, did I really hate the colors orange and yellow!

For some reason, though, this really worked for me. Both Jared and the doula had a hard time telling when I was having contractions unless I told them I was because I would just close my eyes and focus on the breathing and images. At one point, Jared stepped out to warm up and make a few phone calls to family (he claimed the room was freezing… I was perfectly fine, except for random moments were I would have a 60 second hot or cold flash!), and Cary, the doula, stayed with me and thought I had been sleeping because I was so still and calm.

Trust me, though; it was more pain than I could ever sleep through at that point. It wasn’t to be ignored, but it hadn’t reached unbearable proportions by any means.

So it went for a while. 7:00 PM brought the changing of the guards: we met our new nurse. Incidentally, we liked her much more because she almost immediately offered to let us use the wireless monitor if we stayed in the room. Freedom! Somewhat limited, but I would take it. We paused “Shrek” just about halfway through, since we figured there would be plenty of time to watch it later.

So it went some more. It was less of a hassle to go to the bathroom, at least, though the wireless monitoring didn’t do any better than being tethered when it came to picking up the contractions or baby’s heart rate if I moved.

Around 8:00 PM, our new, more likable nurse checked me and had the good news that I was already gone from my “loose” three to a five and that everything was progressing well.

Soon after that, things got a little crazy.

Jun5

Activity Swap Report

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Activity Swap Report

After mentioning the texture cards a few posts ago, I had a few people ask me about how the activity swap went.

Last Thursday I met up with some other ladies, mostly ones that I go to church with, though there were a few other lovely people there that I hadn’t met before, and did the activity swap. It took a little bit of time to get things sorted out, but before long, we all had a good handful of various activities.

As you can probably see, there’s various levels of difficulty and effort that was put into the different projects. Some of them I won’t be able to use for quite some time too, since they have little itty-bitty pieces. The blocks could be fun though; they have clear tubes that you can use to stick the pieces together. I’m thinking about painting them some bright, fun colors to add to their interest level.

All these felt games were really cute. I can imagine it was a pain to make several of those fish for the fishing game!

The last few activities, including a set of my texture cards (somebody dropped out at the last minute, but I had already made the majority of each set, so I figured I’d finish them all anyways). The top left activity is a puzzle (barnyard animals on Popsicle sticks–pretty clever). The blue bag is kind of a putty that kids can put on a flat surface (it stays in the bag) and write/”draw” with their fingers or cu tips.

So overall, I am really happy I participated. I stressed myself out a little too much over the cards, but I think it was fun to get involved with this sort of activity and some of these activities will be great to have once Baby Boothe goes mobile. 🙂

Jun4

Farewell to Teaching

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Farewell to Teaching

I have several things that I need to get around posting on here, and I will soon, I promise. But today was a pretty significant moment in my life.

Today, I officially left the public education profession.

I spent most of last week and the weekend organizing and cleaning my classroom to get it ready for whoever will be moving in after me, and getting my stuff organized and packed in a way that I could potentially find it again if I decide to ever go back to teaching. Plus, the person checking us out of the rooms is extremely strict about the condition of the room, so it had to be completely empty of any of my personalized touches before she’d approve it.

(It doesn’t even look like the room I’ve worked in for the past two years at all… In the end, it was only a loan, right?)

(This used to have my name under my room number, but between leaving work Friday and coming in this morning, it was already wiped clean of my existence.)

Packing up four years of my life was more emotional than I thought it would be.

Leaving the school behind? Not as emotional. A few sweet goodbyes from people, a few hugs, a few who asked me to come back and visit with Baby Boothe when she arrives. But really, the official death of my profession was quiet and without fanfare. I think it made it easier for me to not shed many tears.

I turned in my keys to the classroom.

I handed my badge to the Admin Secretary.

And then I walked out the door, and I didn’t look back.

May18

Running, not walking, away from teaching

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Running, not walking, away from teaching

When people hear that I am leaving teaching, they automatically assume it’s because I want to be a stay at home mother.

Ironically, one of the biggest reasons I considered teaching as a career was because I thought it would allow me to still work, but have more time with my family, whenever that would happen. An honest confession for you all: growing up, I never really had the desire to be a “stay at home mom”.

Don’t get me wrong, here. The prospect of staying home with little Baby Boothe, at least for now, is more exciting than I ever dreamed it could be. But, I think that there was some serious divine intervention in my life that she is coming at this time, because knowing that she would be here this summer helped make the decision to leave teaching more obvious and clear-cut.

But the true reason I’m leaving the teaching profession:

I have to leave for myself, because the system is broken.

I first wanted to be a teacher when I was in high school. I had a few teachers in particular that were truly inspirational to me, and I saw how they loved their work and their students. They were truly mentors to me, and I wish they all knew it now. In college, the decision became more clear and obvious, and I realized it was more than just a job to me; it was a calling.

I am crying a little as I type this, because there was a point in my life that I thought I would never want to do anything but be a teacher.

I loved teaching. I loved watching my students “get it”. I loved (most of) my students. I loved sharing beautiful poetry, tense short stories, and exciting novels with my kids. I loved getting to know my students and watch them grow throughout the year as better readers and writers. I especially loved this time of year where we would have conversations about what they learned about writing, and they would proudly pull out their favorite project of the year and excitedly explain to me what they learned by doing it. I loved how students would declare at the beginning of the year, “I hate reading. I never like the novels we read in class.” And before they knew it, these same students were begging to read the next chapter of The Outsiders, or they had finished The Hunger Games early and asked if it was okay to start Catching Fire on their own. (Picture me rubbing my hands together here and giving a little evil laugh). I even loved most of those crazy things they would say and do that would make me laugh out loud when I retold the stories to Jared that evening.

This year, those things I loved so much were almost completely gone.

The government and state have shown how much they value education, which is precious little. That meant that time with students went down, while number of students and classes went drastically up. I went from teaching roughly 70 students to 120 students.  90 minutes daily with these kids went down to 50. And state testing standards/expectations just got more ridiculous.

First of all, trying to give meaningful, constructive comments and criticism on 70 papers takes time. When you nearly double that number, the hours of grading go up dramatically. As any good writing teacher knows, there’s not a shortcut or mnemonic device to help you be a good writer. It a process. It takes multiple drafts, revision, editing. It takes time and effort.

I know that it’s nothing new for a lot of teachers out there. Many have dealt with shorter times and lots of students for years. But those 90 minutes were absolutely beautiful and precious to me. My district was DOING IT RIGHT, investing in their students’ future by giving them valuable extra time for math, reading, and writing.

For many of my lower students, that was the difference between feeling like they could be writers and readers, or shutting down completely. We could conference one on one, discuss particular things that they enjoyed or were worried about in their writing. I could ask them what book they were reading, would they recommend it, why, and if they wanted any suggestions for when they were done. We could sit and discuss the beauty of a poem, and how it related to the novel we were reading or world around them, because spending 15-20 minutes to let THEM share what they noticed was not taking away from “Core Curriculum Standards”.

So, so many of the exciting things I wanted to do with my students fell to the wayside because we just “didn’t have time.”

Funny, how the other day, we had an activity at my school that shortened each class period by about 5 minutes. As one of my average, normal students was leaving to go home at the end of the day, he turned to me and said, “Wait, we only lost five minutes of class? It just felt like so much more, for some reason. I wish I had more time in here today.” I nodded, and before I could decide if that comment made me want to hug him or made me want to cry, he walked out the door.

Many times this year, little things that I could brush off my shoulders quickly started to stick like a nasty case of dandruff. The millions of monotonous meetings  and tasks that took up precious planning and grading time were too much, because I was still losing hours of sleep every week trying to make it all fit at home. The emails of parents angry that “This year in LA hasn’t been like last year” stabbed me to the core. When over half my students didn’t show up with their homework assignment, (they had a week to find a poem or song they liked and bring it to class; it could have been typed or hand-written), I was crushed with disappointment. And the morning sickness and fatigue of pregnancy didn’t make it any easier, especially when you are afraid of telling people why you really do look like crap. (How many times after I DID start letting people at work know was I asked, “Oh, really? Was it planned?”  If looks could kill…)

Ever seen this go around on Facebook? It’s completely true. I have lost track over the past year that I have gone out of my way to give up my lunch time daily to get kids in to work on an assignment, or before or after school, and still haven’t “Done enough” according the the parent who emails the principal to complain while CCing me on the email as an afterthought.

Every time something happened in my school that shouldn’t have happened, every additional favor or task I was asked to do, every parent email I had to write or respond to, extra paper work that wasn’t supposed to be mine, nearly overwhelmed me.  Daily, my sweet husband told me when I needed to vent, “It’s not personal.”

Angrily, I reminded him that teaching IS personal. Almost every teacher I work with devotes hours and hours of unpaid time because THEY LOVE TEACHING STUDENTS. We even love the awkward middle school ones, who aren’t as sweet as elementary kids, and not as mature and capable as the high school kids.

It was personal, and it was making me constantly physically ill and more stressed. My immune system had been low all year because of stress, but was even more drastically affected because of the pregnancy. By mid December, I knew that I would not return to teaching middle school, and was trying to decide if hanging in there to apply to high school was even worth it. (Turns out, it wasn’t.) But I didn’t quit like I desperately wanted or needed to, because I didn’t want my students to be affected by the mess it always is when a teacher leaves mid-year.

As I said earlier, the impending birth of my daughter has been the biggest blessing in this whole ordeal. If I didn’t know that I would have her, I might try to cling just one more year to this broken system, in hopes that it would “get better.” But I’ve seen what happens when people chose between their jobs and their own families. I’ve taught those kids several times. I’m putting my family first.

Daily, something happens that reminds me why I am so glad I made this decision. I will miss some of the amazing students I have taught and the incredible people I’ve gotten to work with, but I have never felt better or more confident in a decision than I do in this one to leave teaching.

Does it mean that I won’t be working at all next year? I don’t know. I’m looking into different options right now for extra income. If those don’t work out, I will stay at home, and I will not regret the decision to leave teaching public education.

Will I ever return to this profession? I don’t know. Maybe if some of the problems get fixed, I could go back. But until then, I am running, not walking, away from teaching, and I’m not looking back.

May1

To the best decision I ever made…

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To the best decision I ever made…

This weekend was the five year anniversary marker for Jared and I being married.

(Here we take a moment of silence for skinnier days and sexy high-heeled shoes.)

In case you didn’t pick up on it, my post title is referring to the fact that after five years, I know more than ever that marrying my husband was exactly what I needed. I know that now MUCH more than I could have ever realized at the time I had to make the decision.

Example: Jared has been fabulous throughout the whole pregnancy. With all my symptoms and tiredness mingled with work stress, Jared really has taken over with doing stuff around the house and making sure that things get done. Laundry, grocery shopping, stuff with the dogs… you name it, he’s helped out with it. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive partner. I don’t know how some people do this on their own and stay sane.

Anyways, this is the guy who planned the whole 5th anniversary as a surprise for me.

We went to a cabin in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, (really, nobody I’ve talked to has known where this place was or the towns nearby it, for that matter) to relax and get away from everything. It was a B&B of sorts on a ranch, which had a lot of coolness potential. There were no TVs or internet access, and even our cell phone use was extremely limited, which was fine by us.

There were some extreme negatives, but I am not going to focus on those here, because they were completely beyond Jared’s control and I know he still feels really bad about it. Despite the negatives there were some great positives.

Like the beautiful scenery:

Or cool “wild” life:

But best of all, I got to spend the weekend with my best friend, not having to worry about anything work related. That was the best present I could have asked for. He tried so hard to make the weekend as perfect as possible for me despite the big, fat, pregnant slug I’ve turned into lately.

So, happy five years to the love of my life. I can’t imagine anyone else I would have preferred to spend the past five years with, or spend the next future fifty with.

Even if sometimes that means we go camping or to a place with no cell phone reception. 🙂