Belly Borrowing

Photo Cred: Megan's Husband JP

    I heard a heart beat today. An unborn baby's heartbeat. My sweet friend Megan is eight months pregnant.  She and her husband got pregnant in January and her husband deployed in March, so she had the daunting task of handling three months of her pregnancy alone.  She is an amazingly strong woman and today she invited me to an appointment with her midwife. I would like to consider myself blissfully ignorant on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth. There is a bunch in this world I am terrified of, but none compare to my fear of having a child. When I got married I did more research on birth control than I did in all four years of college! Do not misunderstand me, I love children but I love giving them back to their parents more.  As an ex waitress I am well aware of the messes children can make, and as a teacher I am well aware of what they can turn into, but I am in uncharted territory when it comes to the unborn.  Megan began asking questions during the hour long appointment about vaccination, circumcision, birth plans, and a million other things that might as well have been in Russian.  "I am not ready for this," was the statement that was on a continuous scroll through my brain.  How in the world did she even know what to ask?! Just as I was about to swear off children all together (sorry in-laws) the midwife pulls out a CTG machine. This is a small machine about the size of a toaster with a microphone attached.  She puts this weird green jelly on it and begins to rub it on Megan's ever growing belly.  With the flick of the ON switch our entire examination room is filled with a loud, and fast heart beat.  Now, I'm not a cussing woman, but holy you know what, Megan has a living thing inside of her!  His little heart was so strong.  Just as my own heart was softening to the thought of being a mommy I opened my mouth.
"The heartbeat sounds like it's underwater," I said to the midwife.
 "Well it's going through amniotic fluid," she replied.    
Oh, "fore-head slap," everyone knows that. Everyone except me obviously.  Joking aside, it was an amazing experience and something I am so thankful to have been apart of, but behind the midwife, taped on the door was a poster advertising birth control and I am not sad I can't get pregnant for three years.

       Through all of my pre-marriage research I discovered "Nexplanon,"  a birth control that is surgically placed in the arm.  It is basically, a two inch stick that will keep me from procreating for three years.  My arm was bruised for about two weeks and my lady time was jacked up for a few months, but Lordy it is great! I don't have to take a pill
every day, which for a forgetful young woman like me, is awesome.

       Russ and I did the majority of our relationship long distance with him a the Naval Academy and me in college in Georgia. Marriage did not help because two months after we finally married he deployed for seven months! So while I love kids, I am selfishly going to hog every free second my good-lookin husband has.  Maybe we'll evaluate in three years when Nexplanon is removed, and maybe we won't.  One this is for sure, this navy wife ain't doin the kid thing anytime soon, but I will soak up and learn everything from what Megan is going through!
 *Thank you Lord for amazing friends like Megan in this crazy Navy life.  I pray for her and her baby's safety during the birth, and to help the baby grow bigger and stronger during his last month in her belly. Your miracles never cease to amaze me. Amen*

Admit it Hawaii, we overreacted.

       
      I would like to say the cliché, "She Came, she saw, she conquered," but I cannot. A more accurate statement would be, She came, she barely saw, and she did anything but conquer. 
      As a new resident to the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii I was very aware of how little my home island was, and how huge the ocean was that surrounded it. The other military wives on base assured me of my safety, but the news was terrifying me.  I tried to play it cool.  You know, laugh when the commissary ran out of water and canned food.  Brush it off when Target put up signs saying they were out of water and would not be receiving anymore until the storms passed. But when my husband's squadron decided to evacuate all of their airplanes off of the island, I panicked.  I wanted to go and tap his Skipper on the shoulder and let her know that he had just returned home from a seven month deployment, and despite my cool exterior, I was completely positive of my immanent death if I was left to brave not one but TWO hurricanes alone! (Iselle and Julio) Unfortunately, my husband enjoys his job, and we both enjoy his income so I kept quiet and complained to my husband Russ only. 
* My husband flies a P-3 Orion, a very large plane.  Because of it's size and wing span the wind can easily flip the plane over.  The winds were expected to be 50 MPH, and the commanding officers of Marine Corp Base Kaneohe Bay decided it would be best to remove all the planes form the island and take them to the closest naval base on the mainland, Whidbey, Washington.
       So I cried, sue me.  Russ was packing up to leave and giving me instructions on what to do if the power went out, what to do if the house flooded, and to call him if I had to go to a shelter. So I started crying.  We've technically been married almost a year but he was deployed for most of it, so with that being said I'm not comfortable being ugly around him yet. When I say I was crying I mean my crying was PG (shiny eyes, one glistening tear down my cheek, ABSOLUTELY no snot.) I couldn't ugly cry in front of him, especially if this was going to be the last image he had of me before Iselle and Julio blew me away.
     By lunch on Thursday Russ was in the air, this was about 10 hours before Iselle was supposed to get to Oahu.  I went on a walk to the beach closest to my house to look at the waves, no bigger than usual.

Six hours before the storm was supposed to hit the beach looked good enough to tan on. Maybe I was overreacting?  I checked Accuweather (best weather source) on my phone, it did not even have 100% chance of rain anymore! When I returned back to my house I turned on the news and the weather map said it all.  Iselle was going to go right under us, and Julio was going to go right over us, five out of our six islands were going to be fine. At this moment I realized, I might have over reacted.  My bathtubs in my home were filled incase we lost power and water, every water bottle I owned, including a few pots were filled so I would have drinking water, (since all the other over-reactors out there bought all water) and I had a bag packed incase I had to evacuate. You know what I did the night Hurricane Iselle was supposed to kill me? Watched the movie Jaws, drank chamomile tea and passed out at 11 p.m. Now, I do not want to make the hurricane sound completely harmless.  The Big Island had 22,000 people loose power and they had some 12 foot waves! But on Oahu (my home island) about 200 miles away, the palm tree in my yard lost some leaves.  That's it.  Thank you to my sweet friends and family that called to check on me during this scary time! The sunburn I got the day Iselle was coming is healing nicely.

         Weather lesson: a hurricane needs warm water to grow and pick up speed. The reason Hawaii gets so few hurricanes is because our water is simply too cold. No matter how large the storm is it always down grades by the time it gets to us.  In this case the storm hit the Big Island first, this island has many large volcanoes the storm had to go through.  When the hurricane hit those and it was like Jackie Chan clothes lining a ninja.  It was stopped dead in it's tracks and became a tropical storm. Hurricane Iselle and Julio came from the east, in 1992 Hurricane Iniki (the last hurricane to hit Hawaii) came from the south west by Guam.  The water was very warm and the winds were extremely strong.  Iniki caused 1.8 billion dollars worth of damage in Hawaii! INIKI FACTS

         In summation, if you hear about a hurricane coming from the west heading for Hawaii buy me a plane ticket back to Georgia, but if it is coming from the west you should come and visit, the hotels will be cheap!

*Thank you Lord for keeping me and the rest of the Hawaiian Islands safe during the storms.  I can laugh and joke but you're the only one who knows what the weather will do.  I thank you for sparing me. Amen*