#and ive been doing 1-3 per week hah

[wonderwomantobe]

I have started Natacha Oceane's 'Cut' program by the way :)

[trauma-13]

Birth story.

I'm posting this mostly so I can remember it down the line when it's not as fresh in my mind.

On may 27th, I had my weekly OB appointment. I was 38 weeks and 2 days. I went in, peed in a cup, and waited for my appt time. I got called back shortly, and had my vitals take. My blood pressure was 128/88. Not bad, but higher than it had been, even just the day before. I honestly didn't think much of it. My provider comes in, says she wants to recheck my BP, draw labs, and schedule me for a induction once I got to 39 weeks. She was concerned because my BP was higher and I had slight protein in my urine-for those not in the medical field reading this, she was concerned I was developing pre-eclampsia which is a very serious complication of pregnancy. So the MA comes back, rechecks my pressure-136/96. I assumed it was from anxiety of now being told I may have pre-eclampsia. My provider was in another room, so the MA had me go to the lab area to start blood work while she waited for the doc to finish in the other room. My doctor walked in the room a couple minutes later and said "nevermind labs, I want you to go to Shea (my delivery hospital)" I immediately started to panic, and asked "why, am I going to be induced?" She told me she didn't know yet, but wanted me to get stat labs, and be monitor vitally and the baby monitored for a couple hours. She said depending on labs would depend if I would be induced. She told me she'd see me at Shea.

Needless to say, I was pure panic. I'm not sure how I didn't burst into tears right then, but I some how didn't. I was terrified. Being a nurse, I know the bad things that can happen, and of course that's all I was focused on. I got to my car, still not crying, and called my husband. I told him to get dressed, and grab stuff to go to Shea, that I was fine and that I would tell him everything when I got home. Still no crying. I called my mom, because well she's my mom and she was going to come and stay with our dogs when I went into labor so they weren't alone for potentially days on end. As soon as mom answered the phone, all the walls came down and I started crying. Not just normal crying, full blown, can't talk, sobbing. She, of course, panics. She knew I had an OB appt, and she assumed the worst. I finally got my self together enough to tell her "I'm fine, the baby is fine," I explained everything that was going on, and that I was heading to the hospital shortly. I talked to her the entire 6 minute car ride home, still crying, and scared. She asked me if I wanted her to come up, and I said yes. She lives 3 hrs away, so it's not like she's close. I didn't know what the next few hours of my life held, and that was terrifying.

I got home, James had grabbed all our stuff, and had made sure to get the extra last minute things too. He asked if I was okay because I'd obviously been crying, I told him physically yes, emotionally no and that I was afraid of the next few hours and the uncertainty. We took the dogs out, stopped to get gas, and headed to Shea.

We get to the hospital around 1pm or so. I told them everything my doc had said, and the tech checking me in said my doc had called ahead and let them know about me. Even more fear sets in. We get back to a room, I give them a urine sample and change into the lovely gown. My nurse comes in and does her exam and tells me the plan. We're going to draw labs, monitor me and the baby and depending on all of the results would determine our next steps. At this point I had let my mother in law, and 3 best friends know what was going on incase we did get admitted for induction.

We sat in the room for a couple hours. I was contracting basically the whole time, but they were about 20 mins apart. I asked the nurse about it, she said they were fairly strong on the monitor, but weren't close enough yet. So around 5pm or so, another nurse comes in, she says my original nurse got pulled into an emergency delivery, but that she was going to discharge me so we could go home. I was a bag of emotions at this point. I had accepted that I'd be induced and would meet our baby soon, and had gotten over the fear and now I was being discharged. I was given strict orders to go home, relax, drink lots of water and "come back in 24 hrs for repeat labs, and make sure to bring your hospital bags when you come tomorrow," to me, that meant we were being induced tomorrow. Apparently it's some insurance thing, that they couldn't induce me that day. No clue.

So we go home. My mom's at the house. I told her everything they said and the plan for the next day.

Fast forward to 4pm the next day, it was time to head back to Shea. We got all of our things together and head over. I got checked into triage and brought back to a triage room. They hooked me up to the monitors, and at that point everything looked okay. Babys strip was great, I wasn't really contracting and my BP was doing okay at 130s/80s. They drew blood and then it was a waiting game.

I had started contracting again about 45 minutes after getting to the hospital. They were strong, and painful, and about 8-10 mins apart. They were painful enough that I was having to completely stop whatever I was doing, and just focus on breathing. I was assuming it was because I was stressed because the same thing had happened the day before. Of course, my blood pressure started to go up. Nothing crazy, but it was higher, about 140s/90s. My doctor came in around 6pm and said she wanted to admit me and induce me. She was concerned that if I went into labor naturally my BP would elevate too much and cause further issues. The plan was to admit me to labor and delivery, start pitocin, do an epidural, and have a baby! My doctor said, "around 4am we'll have this baby, so try to nap and relax once you get to the other room." Shift changed happens at 7pm, so one of the triage nurses started an IV, some fluids and we waited for the night shift nurse to come on for me to go over to the other room.

Around 715-730ish my L&D nurse came over and we headed over to the other room. During the *maybe* 1 minute walk over to the other room I had to stop and just breathe because holy contractions! Again, still convinced I wasn't really in labor. We got to L&D, I sat on the bed, and my nurse started asking me all the normal questions and asked what my plan was reguarding an epidural and if I wanted to do that before or after the pitocin. I was right in the middle of a VERY strong and painful contraction, and I didn't answer her right away. After the contraction passed, she said I looked incredibly uncomfortable and asked if I was okay. I straight up just started crying and told her I was so uncomfortable, and frankly I was terrified of pitocin. James was rubbing my back, and she grabbed my hands and said "don't worry, I'll go page the anaesthesiologist right now and we'll put the epidural in before we even think about pitocin. I want you comfortable first and foremost." I tried to lay down and get as comfy as possible until the doc came in.

Around 8pm he came in, explained the whole procedure and we got it done. It was so quick, and easy and I had such immediate relief. I could finally relax!! Physically and mentally! After the epidural was in, my nurse checked me, I was 4-5cm dialated, 90% effaced and 0 station. My nurse called my doc to ask if we wanted to start pitocin or wait and see what my body did naturally, my doc wanted to start the pitocin just because my BP was still elevated at this point even with the epidural and pain relief. We started the pitocin around 830pm or so, and my water still hadnt broken at this point. The plan was for my doctor to come in at 930pm and break my water if it hadn't happened naturally at that point.

Fast forward to 945ish and my doc comes in to break my water. Weirdest feeling ever. She also put Baby J on one of the internal monitors because he kept coming off the external monitor. At that point I was 5cm, 90%, and still 0 station. My nurse helped me lay on my left side and we were going to try to nap since we were in for a long night. James had started dozing pretty quickly, and I started feeling contractions again. Crazy strong, very frequent, maybe about 1 minute apart or so. I was holding his hand and felt like I was going to break his fingers Everytime I had a contraction. I remember looking at the clock and it being around 1010 and thinking "okay if my nurse hasn't come in by 1015, I'll call her" because DAMN were those contractions painful.

Within a few minutes my nurse came in, I honestly don't know how many minutes it had been because I was busy breathing hah! She said she was going to have the doctor put in an internal contraction monitor as well because she wasn't sure that the external was super accurate. My doc comes in within a few mins, and goes to place the monitor and says "oh, oh, you're complete and we need to push now because he's practically crowning" (apparently all that pain and pressure was my body saying hey let's do this!)

Nothing was ready! We weren't planning on having a baby for another few hours so the birth cart wasn't even in the room. The nurse grabbed one really quick while my doc was putting on shoe covers, she had enough time to throw on the sterile gown and gloves before i felt like I needed to push. My nurse had barely had time to page the baby nurse!

I pushed 3x over that contraction. Definitely yelled fuck, but otherwise, I don't remember saying anything/making any noise at all. My nurse coached me how to push effectively and how to curl my body to help.

Second contraction, pushed 3 more times. The whole time James was holding my left foot and rubbing my shoulder. He was his usual quiet self, which I expect nothing else hah!

Third contraction I pushed 3 more times. At the end of the third one my doc told me to take a big breath and give one big push. So I did. And little dude was born at 1036pm!

I pushed for around 7 minutes total (per James) before our little one was born. I had to get stitches, but I don't even remember it happening. As soon as they put my son on my chest, nothing else mattered. I couldn't stop shaking, or crying. It was completely uncontrollable. I was so overwhelmed! I went from the thought of having a baby hours from now, to having a baby in my arms 7 minutes later! It happened so fast we didn't even have time to tell my mom that it was game time. The plan was to have her on FaceTime so she could help talk to me and support us even though she couldn't physically be there.

Baby J was a few minutes old and I asked James to call my mom on FaceTime. When she answered she immediately started crying once she saw the baby and heard him crying. I kept apologizing for not calling her, I felt so bad even though it's so silly! James told her I started pushing about 10 mins ago and had a baby so quickly we didn't even have time to think about anything else. Of course she wasn't upset at all.

Once I was stitched up, my nurse shut off the epidural and helped clean me up a bit. After she said she was going to step out, and give us time to ourselves with our little one, but to call if we needed her. I held my little boy and just stared at him. He was perfect! The only better thing than holding him myself, was seeing James hold him for the first time. Que crying all over again.

He was born on May 28th, 2020 at 1036pm, 6lbs 1oz, and 19 inches long. I didn't get my June baby, but he's absolute perfection and has our entire hearts. Our little one is turning 7 weeks on Thursday. I can't believe he's been here for 7 weeks already. Motherhood has been the hardest most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life.

[oldnintendonerd]

Prime Hunting Season Starting Soon

Official hunting season for 2018 is long over. With another season in 2019 just around the corner. I visited what was to be the final yard sale of the 2018 season on October 25th 2018. A brave older couple was downsizing and held a yard sale when it was 36 degrees out. Unfortunately, they were not gamers. Nor did they have any games from any kids or grandchildren. They did have some stereo equipment, and a surround sound speaker system. No music, or blu rays either though. The stereo was a shelf system, not a component type unit like I would be looking for to match the Sony TC-WE805S tape deck that I got at the start of the season. An all around bust of a sale for me. I wished them luck and headed on my way.

I closed out the last post with the PS3 find from 09.01.18. Giving me access to HD console gaming. A new era for this Old Nintendo Nerd. I do primarily game at 240p being that NES, SNES and N64 are the consoles nearest and dearest to my heart. GameCube and Wii weigh in at 480p at their absolute best, still falling short of HD. But now, with a PS3, we’ve got 720p gaming (mostly, some is 1080p). I have no problem with collecting a little for this system, I’ve heard good things about Uncharted, The Last of Us, and a smattering of a few other games that I will be looking out for.

Before we get into finds for the last, freakin 5 months, I have sold a couple things since the last post, and I should hope so, since its been forever! Right? Sorry. Life.

I had a bundle of 16 total PS1 games that I let go of. Titles were the likes of Syphon Filter, Driver, Test Drive 5, Rainbow Six, and a smattering of other luke warm titles. I’ve posted all of them up here at one point or another, so you have an idea. They were nothing I’d ever want to play, and since I only paid around $16 total for all of them at $0.99 a piece, I thought if I could average around $2 a pop on eBay id be doing OK doubling my money. They all added up to a value of about $95 on pricecharting. Now granted, that is fantasy prices, even those prices aren’t the prices the sellers MAKE when sold. Ultimately they all went for $52.99 as a lot. After fees and shipping it netted me $38.44, which comes to right about $2.40 each. 40 cents higher than I was hoping to get per game. Not bad!

The end of the last post left us with $9.73. Put that in with the $38.44 for a total of $48.17.

Additionally, I sold a disc only copy of Animal Crossing on eBay that I had laying around for $18.99. This came to $13.58 in pocket after fees and shipping. Tack that on and we now have $61.75 game hunting money moving into this post.

I’ll be honest, it’s been thin, it is cold here in the winter, there are no yard sales through the cold months at all. Places like Arizona or Florida where you could sale year round are lucky. Not here. Even donations to Goodwill slow down significantly as well, making the hunting quite a bit more difficult. I had zero finds for basically all of September. Which was surprising, it is really the last warm month here with temps still reaching 70′s and sometimes low 80s. But it wasn’t until the end of the month I ran across something at the Goodwill.

De Blob - Found 09.29.2018 at Goodwill

Disc, case and Manual all in pretty good shape, but nothing to write home about. If it were June and prime hunting season and I’d been getting finds, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

But I did, and it cost me $3.21. Takes the total down to $58.54.

Next up was the first official game for my new PS3. Again nothing fantastic, but at least it rang up at the DVD price instead of the game price. Saved me $1.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Found 10.04.2018 at Goodwill

Minty fresh.

But, again nothing special, not even a full game. But I sat and played it for an hour anyway. Probably already had $2 worth of fun with the thing. Despite being labeled $5.99, they still only charged me the DVD rate of $1.99. Hah! So, $2.13 out of the till leaves us with $56.41.

The next find was literally the next day. Different Goodwill though.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on PS2 and Grand Theft Auto IV on PS3 - Found 10.05.2018 at Goodwill

This was absolutely minty fresh as well. Both of them were. Discs, cases, and manuals / maps. I wasn’t going to buy San Andreas but when I saw that it was in as good of shape as it was, and had a bonus inside, I couldn’t not get it.

First time I’ve found a game in Goodwill with a Memory Card inside. Those are $8 to $10 each right there, and I am a little short on memory cards, so I had to get it. The game was technically the bonus, I bought it for the memory card. Heh.

Great shape for two Goodwill games, they look brand new. Plus I heard that while GTA V is superior graphically, GTA IV is better with exploration, in that you can enter buildings, and enemy AI is a lot better as well. So I thought, what the hell?

Those two ran $6.42 together taking us to $49.99.

The next find was from 10.15.2018, from Goodwill, another few halfway decent games. Borderlands, Alice, Dante’s Inferno, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3,  and a Disc only copy of Skyrim. It was actually in the same case as Alice, just under the Alice Disc for some reason. I wasn’t arguing with that so I left it there.

PS3 Lot - Found 10.15.2018 at Goodwill

Sucks about the two basically disc only games. Marvel Vs Capcom and Skyrim. One being from Best Buy pre-owned. The other hiding under Alice in the same case. not that I’m complaining about that one. Free game? Nothing wrong with that. How Best Buy even gets disc only copies of stuff is beyond me. Game system trades or returns with games still in them? I wasn’t aware they did pre-owned anything.

In any case... They are all in good shape. Minimal labels and damage.

Especially Alice. I dig the art on this one, and it is in very good condition.

As for Skyrim, well, I had a spare case laying around for FIFA 09, and I figured, why not print out a cover for it. I couldn’t give a shit less about FIFA Soccer. You can see the print lines, but it’ll do to hold the disc.

All of this ran me $12.86 being I paid for four games at $2.99 each plus tax. This takes the hunting money down to $37.13.

Moving into November, I had a spectacular find. At least, for the hunting money total. Not so much on the video game front, because it was just a Blu-Ray movie.

Wing Commander Blue-Ray - Sealed - Found 11.08.2018 at Goodwill

This thing, just looks like cheese from the cover. I picked it up, and immediately put it back down and walked around the corner to where some more shelves are. Then I said to myself you know what? No, let me check that, immediately dismissing something out of hand like that loses people money. Pulled up eBay on my phone and about pooped my pants. A sealed one was listed for $180. I thought that has to be some looney toon’s listing. I kept scrolling and no, used ones were just under $100. Check sold listings and there were real sales for $80+. Suffice to say I bought it, of course. Listed that sucker up, and I was hoping to get over $100 for it since it was sealed, but, there was some damage to the corner. The plastic was not in tact anymore.

This made the listing go for a lot less than $180. However, I was still pleased to see it sell for $85.00. For a $2 item? That’s a home run! After fees and shipping it netted us a nice cool $68.67. To be fair I will pull the money I used to buy it from the game hunting money, it was $2.12 ($1.99 plus tax) dropping us to $35.01. Then, adding $68.67 gives us...

**** DRUM ROLL****

$103.68!

We are now officially above the original $100 I started this game hunting journey with.

Not a bad note to end this post on. I’ll post up the finds for the very end of 2018 in the next post. Hopefully I can cobble that together here in the next couple of weeks and have it up much faster than I got this one up. There’s a really nice co-worker find to detail.

2018.03.25