All over the place

I'm a weepy camper.

Turns out, my incision is taking a little detour from the full-recovery route. Burn-y, pooling blood under-the-skin mounds (that look like leeches to me) have settled on either side of my incision. Up until the last day or so, my belly's still been so swollen in front, that I've been unable to get a really good look at the incision which has been obscured underneath it. Good news - swelling is abating, I can begin to see hints of my old belly button; bad news - I can see my scar and its new inflamed, purply friends. We go back to Dr. Wu's office tomorrow, and I think something REALLY pleasant like him manually aspirating the lumpy spots awaits me.

Oh joy.

Ken took to his wonderful mending self - Dr. Ken - to run hydrogen peroxide over the whole incision tonight. And, he made noises about attempting to push some ooze out of the incisions, per Dr. Wu's phone consultation this afternoon. This did not thrill me; I took a valium.

I feel like such a wuss. I'm not thrilled to be taking a drug that I believe is such a stereotypical crutch. On the other hand, I can't believe how much this relatively minor setback is just throwing my mood completely out of whack. To top things off, Audrey's been an EATING MACHINE all day. Which is good, b/c I think it means she's gearing up for a growth spurt/weight gain push. But, I've been nursing her and pumping afterward every time. I feel I should change my name to ELSIE and begin communicating solely with MOO sounds.

When I'm feeding her or pumping, that's all I can do. I haven't mastered feeding/pumping while say, reading something. No multi-tasking, yet. Just sit there. Half the time, this is okay, b/c I like just looking at her. The other half of the time, I feel like moss growing on a felled tree in the forest.

I fear that I won't be able to sustain breastfeeding for her first month, much less 6 months or more. It freaks me out a bit to witness my nipples getting bigger (teat-ier).

On the other hand, I like feeling the downy peach fuzz that covers her skin. I like how her big toes extend away from the rest of her toes - almost like a little monkey, who'll be able to grab things with her feet. I love her eyes, and her nose, and her ears.

And, I know this roller coaster of plunging weepiness and soaring euphoria is temporary. But, man, is this all unsettling, scary, and unpredictable.

Ack.

Boldly Into The Future!

A Sleepless New Father Ponders the Future in His Underwear

Just excorsizing a few demons here. Please bear with me.

Before we got pregnant I wondered with Lorie if bringing a new life into this screwed up world was a good idea in light of the imminent "perfect storm" of likely US economic collapse, global overpopulation, global peak oil, global climate change, global terrorism, and potentially never-ending global wars over dwindling resources. Whew! Am I leaving anything out? Plenty. But these are the biggies, and we're already seeing varying degrees of warning signs on all of these fronts. I won't bore you with details & supportive links; you already either agree with my concerns or you think I'm chicken little.

I could never come to a definite decision about this "child/no child" debate. One internal voice kept saying, "if only stupid, uncaring people reproduce, humanity will REALLY be screwed," which is the premise of the film "Idiocracy." Lorie was ambivalent, "what will be will be."

And thus nature decided for us. And I'm totally OK with that.


The Strengths We Carry Into the Future

1. FINANCIAL: Lorie and I are confident we will always have enough money for our family. We have no significant debt. In the last year we sold our Austin house for a nice profit and paid off all our credit card debt. One of our cars is paid off. Our biggest debt right now is "in the family" and structured so as to pose less of a backlash (I hope!) than an impersonal bank loan, should our economy crash. Financially we are better prepared for national economic troubles than anyone who has multiple liens on house and cars, tens of thousands in credit card debt, and no savings. In other words: most Americans!
2. FAMILY & FRIENDS: We've been pretty diligent about fostering good relationships with family and friends wherever we've lived, and I'm VERY proud to say my immediate family is as loving and mutually supportive as any I've seen in this scattered, disfunctional society; my parents are still very much married and in love, and all my brothers and sisters-in-law get along fantastically. Wherever we look in our family trees, we have strength and support and love. Whether or not life gets rough in the future, I think I speak for Lorie too when I say most positive things in our life involve the good friends and family we are blessed with. Uh oh, these are the kinds of thoughts that bring tears of joy and gratefulness to my eyes. Moving on.
3. LIFESTYLE: We've never been typical !AMERICAN CONSUMERS! usually choosing to do without rather than leverage debt or eat savings to feed our every materialistic want (although I hearby reserve the right to move my music collection entirely into the mp3 player world as soon as possible! I should be able to fund this migration entirely by selling off my CDs after I rip them.) We try to reduce, repair, and reuse what we have. We've casually learned about and experimented with food gardening and alternative building techniques. I lived for a year in Austin without a car, choosing instead to bike, walk, bus, or just stay put. All these practices and more will put us in good standing should future conditions force us to downsize and become more self-sufficient in the future.
   
4. MARRIAGE: Simply put, we love each other deeply and that emotion has only grown stronger with Audrey's arrival. Together we will boldly take on whatever the future holds!
   

- - -

Although Lorie agrees there are serious looming global issues, she willfully refuses to act from a sense of crisis. What will be will be and as humans have always done, we will cross each bridge as we get to it and we will help our friends and family cross theirs. She believes Audrey came into this world because there's something her soul needs to experience in these crazy times and who are we to deny her? Maybe she'll further clarify her point of view below.

Lorie's thoughts:

[...]


PS: I love that baby sling in the photo, on loan from Kelly and Olaf. At this early stage it gives Audrey that womb-like total body cocoon feeling of security and constant contact with the parent which I believe leads to a calmer and better adjusted little human down the road. Also, doing daily activities like laundry, etc with the extra weight gives me some sorely needed exercise!

PPS: I see how having a baby in a strong marriage like ours strengthens that bond (we have a new common project/goal to focus on together - the ultimate project: shaping a new human life), whereas an already unhealthy relationship would likely get worse due to the increased lifestyle-complexity and stress of this project. It's funny to note how we couldn't paint our Rockville condo together or move into this apartment without pissing each other off, but we're cooperating easily on this much longer, more complicated, higher stakes, more expensive, more painful, and more stressful project! Go figure.

I know I should be napping, but...

My little desk calendar still shows the page for April 14/15. It represents the last weekend before I knew when/that Audrey would join us. I've refrained from setting it to the right date up until now, because I wanted to jot down thoughts before about this whole experience before "moving on."

In no particular order:

My fantastic co-parent, husband, and all-around great guy:
Ken has taken to fatherhood like a duck to water. I love watching him with Audrey, and he's been of such strength and comfort to me. Over our years together, I've marveled that my love for him continues to swell -- and, this has been yet another experience that makes me fall in love with him all over again and even more.

Birth
You know how in movies and even in a lot of "birth stories" or birth videos the proud and emotional mother can't wait to hold and touch her baby upon birth? Yeah, that wasn't me so much.

I learned while in the hospital and going through a variety of as-yet-never-experienced bouts of pain, that I become Uncontrollable Shaky Woman big-time. I've had this response to pain, and to a lesser extent to stressful/exciting/enervating situations, for as far back as I can remember. A few years ago, I fell out of our ceiling in our Austin house - resulting in what turned out to be torn ligaments in my left ankle - and, it took a good 10-15 minutes to "come back into my body" while lying post-fall on the floor in "bombs-exploding-in-my-ankles" pain.

So, while in the OR for the C-section, the anesthetic applied to the bottom 2/3rd of my body rendered it numb and immobile. My top 1/3rd didn't get the memo. I shook so hard and relentlessly that they thankfully strapped my left arm down onto the table, where Ken held my shaky hand, and Tonya (our midwife) literally held my right arm down with her own two hands.

During the procedure, I remember saying to myself over and over again, 'Everything's good. I'm good. I'm good. Things are good. Good, good, good. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.' Then I noticed the surgical draping that rose up over my head and obscured my view of what was being cut open on the other side. The angle of it reminded me of a being in a tent. So, I babbled on about being in camp. "I'm in camp, and everything's great. Good, good, good." Then the anesthesiologist, Dr. Dudley (no, I'm not kidding), chimed in about his two daughters and their camp experiences. He was very chatty.

I'm being unexpectedly cut open; my upper body threatens to lift itself off the operating gurney, and I'm talking camp experiences with a stranger I'd only met about 35 minutes ago. Surreal.

After Audrey was pulled out of me - which felt a little bit like a big, bloppy deflation even through the anesthetic, I heard the sounds of the OR staff cleaning her up, exclaiming how pretty she was, that she was "pinking up" great, etc. Yay! I also starting feeling the glimmer of "I don't feel so hot."

"Do you wanna hold the baby?"

God, no. I wouldn't trust myself holding a nerf football right now. Shaky Mother Tosses Newborn Like Hail-Mary Touchdown Pass. I kissed Audrey's face right next to mine and said, "I'm going to be sick." Then I threw up.

Touching, no?

I never thought it possible to projectile vomit from a completely prone position on my back, but there you have it, Georgia.

Breastfeeding
In the hospital, Audrey latched on right away. I felt relieved that she successfully made "the chomp" so naturally, and that I actually had something come out of my breasts to nourish her.

Given this auspicious beginning, I was ill-prepared for the upheaving emotional drama that followed. Combine post-delivery, major-surgery pain with post-natal hormonal fluxes; throw in a hefty dash of rug-burned, blistered nipples; fold in sage advice from myriad nurses on methods to improve "the latch," and so forth; blend vigorously with the unforeseen need to have at least one additional, if not two additional arms to deal with errant flailing infant arms, correct tongue position, correct "fish lip" puckering needed to suckle whole areola, not just tip of nipple - all this while attempting each latch, and you have a recipe for Questioning One's Sanity and Natural Affinity For Motherhood.

I swear, at every single attempt/feeding over the course of about 5 days, I careened from "Success! I can do this!" to "New complication - God, I hurt everywhere - I can't do this and recover from this surgery at the same time - will my milk ever come in? (it came in four days post-delivery instead of the average three days...) Maybe something is wrong. Maybe I can't do anything "natural." I wanted birth to be "natural," and look how that turned out. - Maybe this is a SIGN that we should just resort to formula? - WHICH END IS UP ANYMORE?

Time to cry inconsolably at bathroom vanity. On sofa in middle of night. At changing table while looking for signs of pee and poop in our little Sweetpea's diaper.

Thankfully, we seem to have survived the storm. Nipple shields saved my sanity (for the time being - Ha Ha) and the condition of my skin on my areolas.

I can't believe I'm writing about the condition of my girl-parts like this on a blog; but, there you have it.

Well, I could go on with a Faulkner-esque stream of more thoughts, but I really should grab that nap now.

Audrey's first week: The Wrapup

It's Tuesday, the end of Audrey's first week "on dry land." We seem to have turned a corner and everything is on the upswing - thanks in no small part to friends and family who came to visit and help. Babies should come with warning labels: Do Not Attempt Alone!

Here's a lengthy "megapost" covering the time since we left the hospital.


Saturday:
Our first full day at home with Audrey. Lorie's mom drove in from Phoenix today bearing a large tub of delicious brownies and an arsenal of her own cookware, and proceeded to bring some order to our chaos. She did grocery shopping, prepared hearty meals, cleaned, generally helped out, and babysat while we caught up a little on lost sleep. Just in case you've never done this before, newborn parents don't get more than about 1 hour of uninterrupted sleep at this stage - so we have pretty much been walking dead since we checked into the hospital Monday evening!




Sunday:
The lactation consultant made a house call (oh, and god bless lactation consultants who make house calls on Sundays!) and she worked with Lorie and Audrey for about 1.5 hours while Sue and I hovered and observed. The consultant and I agreed it's a lamentable "sign-o-the-times" that too many new mothers today don't have the close network of experienced women around them like they used to, so they must resort to hiring a stranger to show them how to breastfeed, or they just give up and go to formula. Lorie learned a lot and afterwards she was optimistic, but chagrined that this purist consultant was disparaging of our beloved nipple shields - "they're a tool to be used sparingly, not a final solution." Later that day there was more frustration as Lorie & Audrey could not reproduce the success they had had with the consultant. sigh.

On the positive side, our Austin friends (and Lorie's partners on the Jumping Off Bridges film) Kat and Stacy stopped by this evening for a wonderful long visit. It was just what we needed to vent our frustrations to kind listeners and chat about things in general - reconnect a little with "normal."





Monday:
About 7am this morning it occurred to us to check Lorie's blood pressure again with our home monitor we bought a few weeks ago. Yikes! It was sky high, so we called Dr. Wu who told Lorie to take a valium and come to his office at the hospital right away. Damn. More stress and lost sleep. Thankfully Sue was here to babysit while we sped off to Glendale. With perfect timing, Lorie's longtime b.f.f. Ora called from Denver. She talked to Lorie during the entire drive which was a great stress reducer for both of us. It was funny to listen as Lorie's voice got more sing-songy, sleepy, and goofy from the valium. Long story short: Dr Wu checked her out, was not overly concerned, and prescribed very mild blood pressure medication. The whole time Lorie was like a blissed out rag doll.

From Dr. Wu's office we drove to midwife Tanya's office in Sherman Oaks where she consoled us both and put all the breastfeeding issues into perspective with a plan that synthesized the past instructions of all the other advisers with her recommendations. . She also gave us a bottle of hormone supplement to help stabilize Lorie's moods. Did I mention a newborn mom's hormones are going nuts and this puts her emotions in a blender on frappe? My mom called around this time with kind words and the unexpected good news that I would be inheriting a generous sum of money from Aunt Wilma (who passed away this year) and Uncle Bob (who passed away years ago.) Their kindness really blew me away and I choked back the tears. During the drive home I started to tell Lorie the good news but was interrupted by sudden uncontrollable sobbing that wracked my entire body for about 15 seconds - an obvious release of days of pent up stress. It was startling, and I definitely don't recommend breaking down while driving 60mph, but I was glad to be able to release all that toxic stress. This outburst reminded me of another in 1993: that first call home after weeks of stress, sleep deprivation, and brainwashing in Navy boot camp.

Tuesday:
Audrey's 1 week birthday! Today's big event was taking Audrey to the pediatrician in Santa Monica - the same that Kelly and Olaf Garcia use. She told us that Audrey is well on her way to regaining her birth weight. Got a prescription for some eye drops to clear up a blocked tear duct, but otherwise Audrey's perfect! We celebrated by walking across the street and treating Sue to lunch.

New entry added

I changed the format of the blog to make it wider (fits more pics side by side) and change the color to baby blue of course.

AndI just added a postdated entry with lots of pics from the day we left the hospital:
Land of Film and Money: Leaving the hospital

God Bless Target Stores and Nipple Shields!

After much frustration, anger, doubt, tears, scabs, and painpainpain, attempting to breastfeed with diminishing results, Lorie & I just moments ago discovered the miracle of nipple shields and Audrey is drunk on wholesome motherly goodness!!!

I searched far and wide for those simple little discs of clear flexible silicone with the perforated cone in the center. So many clerks in drug stores and baby boutique stores were clueless (and so was I!) No, a nipple shield is not a nursing pad. No, a nipple shield is not a 2" diameter dollup of rubber. And absolutely not, a nipple shield is not a flesh colored daisy-shaped felt pasty fer chrissakes! My next stop was going to be a nearby hospital pharmacy but I had to go to Target to get a bunch of other stuff. And it turns out Target has nipple shields just 3 blocks from our apartment! A nice clerk there knew exactly what I was talking about and took me right to the product on the shelf. I swear if there is anything that Target doesn't carry I have yet to find out.

Anyway we are relieved beyond words to see Audrey regain 100% interest in breastfeeding using these shields. However, we're still going to have a lactation consultant come over tomorrow so we can avoid any other pitfalls. It's so frustrating that something so fundamental and natural can be so difficult and painful. For millions of years of human evolution, if baby didn't suck, baby died, so you'd think nature would have totally perfected this activity by now.

Leaving the hospital

Today we left the hospital with our little bundle of joy. Here's some pics & brief comments from this special day:


That's the obstetrician Dr Wu, or as some of the nurses respectfully call him, "Doctor Woooo!" He was fantastic. Very mild, soft spoken, and very respectful of Lorie's wishes .



Getting ready to go.



Showing off the famous "Marsh Booties" that my dad knit for his sister's first child decades ago. They had made a bet that whichever had a child first, the other would have to knit the booties. Dad "lost". Since then, every one of dad's grandkids, has gone home from the hospital in these booties, and we were proud to continue the tradition!


And a new family heirloom is born: my sister-in-law Lisa Marsh made this beautiful blanket for Audrey! She wore it during the drive home. I was so focused on getting Audrey in the carseat securely and driving carefully home in the rain, that I didn't think to take a picture in the car, but here's what she looked like moments after arriving home.


Evil predator laying in wait, or benevolent protector on guard? Actually he has proven to be just a regular disinterested feline probably only thinking about his next nap or the sound of kibble hitting his food bowl.


Proud papa rocking his little girl in the same chair in which his momma rocked him!


I'll have the Audrey Burrito Special today!

Recovering

Right after the birth we spent about an hour in a temporary recovery room before moving up to the post-birth wing of the maternity ward. Then a day or two later these beautiful flower arrangements arrived from my parents (on the left) and and from Chris and MaryBeth (on the right). They really brightened up the room! We're going to save some rose petals from each bouquet as the beginning of a collection that we hope will grow throughout Audrey's life.

Another bright spot was when Aunt Gayle and Lisa came to visit... was that Wednesday afternoon? It's all running together in my head. Unfortunately Tracy had just left on a business trip, but we know she wanted to be there. Gayle treated me to dinner in the hospital cafeteria (thanks again Gayle) which is the best cafeteria I've ever seen. I ate three meals a day there for three days. At least half of the food there was vegetarian. I was told that up until recently they didn't even serve meat at this cafeteria. Who knew Adventists are vegetarians?



Anyway, it must have been wednesday

more later

Audrey's Here!

Audrey Rose Marsh was born by c-section yesterday at 2:29pm at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Glendale California!!!!!


A Few Details From Ken's Perspective:

After learning that Lorie's blood pressure had shot up dangerously Monday morning, we (midwife Tanya, obstetrician Dr. Wu, Lorie and me) abandoned the Birth Center birth plan and checked into Tanya's favorite hospital Monday evening. There they had the really serious drugs for lowering blood pressure, handling pain, and inducing labor - all of which the midwife isn't legally allowed to use. Plus they have a few more machines that go "PING," and you can't have too many of those when your blood pressure is threatening to hurt the baby!

With the help of pitocin, Lorie tried valiantly for about 20 hours to get full labor going, but Audrey just wasn't moving far enough into the pelvis and Lorie's contractions started getting weaker and blood pressure was still not great. We all agreed then that a c-section was the best route - not what we wanted at all, but due to the complications it seemed the best option - so Dr. Wu got the ball rolling as we waited in our private room. Speaking of which, we were told during really busy times at the maternity ward they sometimes have to put two women in one room. I just can't imagine going through something so personal in a room with a stranger 6 feet away behind a curtain also having a baby. Thank god we didn't have to deal with that!

Minutes before leaving our labor room to go to the operating room, Lorie took this shot of our midwife Tanya and me in our clean suits. You can see by the clock on the wall that it's almost 2pm. At this point Tanya is on Dr. Wu's turf, and he is running the show, but they have a good relationship so thankfully he and his crew allowed Tanya to be with us throughout the birth.



When the time came, a nurse pushed Lorie's gurney while we held Lorie's hands and offered encouraging words. They rolled Lorie right into the operating room to start preparations and Tanya and I waited in a hallway nearby for about 10 minutes. Then we were called into the operating room where there were at least 3 doctors and 2 nurses already busy working on Lorie or tending to various things in the room. I really didn't look around much. Tanya and I were directed to two stools on either side of Lorie's head with a blue sheet hung up between us and the action.

And at this point I'm just going to say Lorie was wonderful, the staff was great, Tanya was a blessing, yadda yadda yadda, Audrey was born, and I didn't pass out!

About a half hour later we all moved across the hall to a temporary recovery room where Lorie and I took turns holding our daughter for the first time:



Her eyelids are shiny because they put something on them.

Tanya gave Audrey her first bath - a very gentle, soothing bath complete with comb out and styling :-). It was very peaceful and Audrey seemed to enjoy it. Tanya was such a big help during and after the birth, and of course all through the pregnancy.



First meal!

Maybe Audrey wants to be a Taurus...?

Still pregnant. On Friday, baby was sitting "high" up in my uterus - not any closer to head down in my pelvis. I've had some contractions, my cervix is softening, and my blood pressure is holding steady, plus the other symptoms of pre-eclampsia have abated, and the baby's heartbeat registers all happy healthy on the non-stress tests -- SO, we're still just waiting.

Which is fine. Sometimes boring, sometimes desparate-feeling, sometimes "zen," but fine.

On Monday, Ken and I will go see the back-up hospital OB/surgeon to get his take on our status, and whether we might be looking at the need for a hospital-based induction (midwife won't induce at birthing center if baby's head isn't in pelvis - could lead to umbilical cord dropping into pelvis before baby's head, and that would be bad) and/or potential C-section. There's a question about whether Audrey's head might not fit in my pelvis anymore...? Not sure how Dr. Wu might be able to gauge this, but we'll see.

If everybody decides to wait until Friday or later next week (baby, midwife, OB), Audrey'll be a Taurus instead of an Aries. Can you tell I'm looking for reasons for this wait anywhere I can find them? :)

Ten Years

Today is our tenth wedding anniversary - yay for us!

I'm really glad Ken asked me to marry him, and that I said yes. :)

We're gonna go walk around the Getty Museum this afternoon. Audrey's still sitting "high" up in my uterus, so we continue to hope that walking and gravity will help her "drop" into my pelvis for that final Swoosh! into the daylight.

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAst it! 4 down, 2 to go!

Just a quick entry to say I passed my forth exam today on the XP operating system. So now I have achieved the mid-level MCSA certification (Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator). This is a great stopping point before Audrey arrives. Then later I'll have to decide if I want to keep going or stop for a while and work at this level. Everything's up in the air right now.

Walkin' & Waitin'... Waitin' & Walkin'

When she doesn't feel like going outside, we walk around our doughnut shaped hall.
c'mon Audrey!

UGHHH

Is it possible to be good-naturedly "spittin' crabby?" 'Cause that's pretty much where I'm at. I'm crabby, but I know it's due to circumstances beyond my control.

I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of Limbo.

I could go on, but I'm too cranky.

Ugh. :)

Lorie Stubs The Bejesus Out Of Her Toe.

Lorie is sleeping peacefully this afternoon, and her blood pressure is lower today than it has been the last few days, thankfully, but we had a tiny bit of excitement last night.

It was about midnight last night and I was still enjoying the afterglow of passing my latest exam, relaxing in a guilt-free evening of watching TV, drinking a few beers, and most importantly, NOT studying. So about this time, Lorie goes into the bedroom to sleep and soon begins emitting hurt-puppy kind of noises like, "oh, ow, ow, ow, oh, ow, shit, shit, shit!" I go in to check on her, turn on the light, and she's sitting on the bed holding her foot still sounding like a hurt puppy.

"I stubbed my toe on the damn vaccum cleaner!"

She had left the little canister-vac on the bedroom floor after vacuuming earlier, and in the dark she had smashed her foot into it. OK, that smarts, but she should be fine in a few minutes, right?

"I think I'm bleeding."

Uh-oh. This is not the kind of thing you want to hear from your extremely pregnant wife.

We both look at the injured second toe of her right foot and amazingly the entire toenail is flipped up and back like a trap door, still barely attached at the cuticle like a hinge. And where the nail should have been there was a toenail sized pool of blood.

The mother of all toe stubs! Fascinatingly gross. And painful to say the least.

What are you supposed to do with a partially attached, flipped back toenail? Yank it off? Immobilize it in its current position? Put it back into place? Whatever, it's going to hurt. I recommended immobilization, but she wanted to clip it off first to minimize future snags. So over the next hour she soaked her foot in water to soften the thick little nail, then froze it with ice cubes. The nail was so thick and curved it wouldn't fit into the clippers for a single big snip without sending her through the ceiling, so we had to do a series of smaller less painful snips. Then she gingerly affixed a band aid and I helped her into bed.

It was all very distressing and painful, but she impressed me with her trooper-ism.



Wouldn't you know it. Right after the midwife tells us Lorie should be walking around to induce labor, she stubs the living hell out of her toe.

Why do we have toenails anyway? All mine have ever done for me is put holes in my socks.

I passed my tehhhh....HEST! 3 down, 3 to go!

Everybody sing:

I passed my tehhhhh-HEST!
I passed my tehhhhh-HEST!
I passed my tehhhhh-HEST!

Yes, I just passed my third exam, and that's my new victory song, do you like it? Some people think it sounds a lot like my last song "I Paaaa-asssed!" but I don't care. You know why?
'Cause... I passed my tehhhhh-HEST!

This was another tough one like the first one. It was all about the intricacies of DNS servers, DHCP servers, Routing And Remote Access servers, VPN's, routing tables, subnetting IP address blocks, and the various options for negotiating data encryption between two computers that want to talk to each other. Ugh. If that short list made your eyes glaze over, I don't blame you. It was a slog for me.

During my three weeks of studying this book, it was all I could do to muster the strength just to read and highlight the text and make a few notes on index cards. I didn't even bother with the questions and summaries at the end of each little section, nor the questions and summaries at the end of each chapter, nor the hands-on practices and case scenarios at the end of each chapter, nor the 300 computer-based practice questions that came on CD... and my exam score today showed it.

With a passing score being 700 or higher, I got a score of 700!!! You just can't cut it any closer than that! Whew.

The next exam should be much much easier: Windows XP - a subject with which I am already quite familiar.

The latest...

Okay, I'm in a good mood. :) The short skinny is that the perinatologist said the placenta and everything else in utero looks great; so, we're in a good spot to continue waiting for nature to take its course. If Audrey hasn't gotten the party started on her own by next Monday, we'll go back for another look-see, but we're good right now...

She weighs 7 pounds, 13 ounces in there! Plus, the technician surprisingly got a really good image of her face which is difficult at this stage apparently.

And here are a couple photos from a couple recent visits: