I’m sorry I haven’t been replying to your comments on my last blog post, but I read and enjoyed each one. I’m happy to have so many friends that are so supportive and loving, thank you all!

My mom has been here for the past two weeks and it has been so fantastic to have her here. She’s been a huge help in getting the house organized, man I never realized how overwhelming trying to organize baby clothes could be! It’s starting to come together though. Hopefully by the end of this week we’ll have our room totally “baby-ready” My poor husband has been busting his ass trying to get his work projects done before the baby arrives. I really admire his work-ethic, he barely gets any sleep.

I know I’ve said this before, but if you have Facebook, please feel free to add me. I update it on a daily basis and it has all the pictures of my belly bump, kitties, and also pictures from my mom’s visit. And of course it will soon have a million baby pictures

https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.bozsoy

39 Weeks

These days I’m singing a different tune.  Yes, I want a natural birth.  If the me now had been able to tell the me of a few months ago this, I would have told myself to shut the fuck up.

So what changed my thinking?  It kinda started when I watched the documentary The Business of Being Born.  It’s a very well put together movie that really shines a harsh light on the hospital system and how women have been convinced over the past few decades that they are simply incapable of giving birth on their own.  We’ve brainwashed ourselves with scary birth scenarios from movies and TV shows in which a birth is always an emergency situation, heightened dramatically for the purposes of entertainment.  When you approach any situation with fear and dread, of course there’s going to be a negative outcome.

Fear does physiological things to your body as well.  Your body goes into fight or flight mode and your blood is redirected towards your arms and legs and away from other ‘unnecessary’ organs, uterus included.  Your contractions are less productive and more painful and also your brain is unable to produce endorphins, the body’s natural painkiller.  When your uterus and surrounding muscles aren’t getting enough blood flow, your labor inevitably slows down and that’s when drugs or surgical intervention comes onto the table.

I think what changed my way of thinking the most was finding out more about the negative side-effects of the drugs, Pitocin and epidurals, and specifically how the counter-act each other.  Pitocin is given to induce or speed up labor, and it makes the contractions very powerful and very painful.  Epidural is almost mandatory at that point because your body is no longer controlling the contractions, the pitocin is.  The epidural tends to slow down labor, so when that happens they up your pitocin drip, the contractions become more painful again, thus more epi is given.  It’s a vicious cycle, and all the while your poor baby who doesn’t have the luxury of being numbed-out like you do is feeling the intense overload of drugs and being squeezed by the too-powerful contractions.  The baby more often than not goes into distress and that’s when a C-section becomes the only option.  Close to 50% of all births in the United States are by C-section.

The other scary thing is they have not bothered to do much research on the effects and safety of these drugs on either baby or mother.  It seems ironic to me to avoid every drug in the book during your pregnancy, only to figuratively have the book thrown AT you and your baby in the end.

The way I hope to approach it is to be as calm and relaxed as I can possibly be.  I’ve even been reading up on Hypnobirthing techniques (yes, the same technique that I scoffed at a few months ago) which is really a meditation technique rather than hypnosis.

I don’t want to jinx myself and declare that I WILL have a natural childbirth, it is simply the goal.  I give myself permission to do whatever I feel I need to do when it comes right down to it.  We will just have to see what happens!

So, we went to get flea medicine for Mavado (or Lil’Mo as he’s sometimes called, actually I just yell “Kitten!” and he comes running) and we end up getting another kitten.  We didn’t get him from the pet store, he was being taken care of by another shop owner that the pet store lady knew.   His name is Yoda and he’s TINY!

Here is Mo meeting Yoda for the first time:

Yoda is part Turkish Van which is why he has such unusual markings on his head and tail.  They’re also unusual because they like water, which was amazing when we bathed him.  I have never given a cat a more pleasant bath, I’m used to being clawed to death!  He didn’t care at all.  Mavado, on the other hand, always acts like we’re trying to drown him.

Mo still hasn’t come to the realization that we got this new little guy FOR him, and he’s very jealous and pissed.  There have been some signs of wanting to play with each other though.  Tonight Mo got super-frisky and tried to play but Yoda was too freaked out, he got all puffy and hissy.  I just find it hilarious when something so cute tries to look so mean, I was laughing my ass off.  Watching them is better than having a TV.  Since we only got the new one yesterday, I think it’s a pretty good sign that they’ll be playing with each other soon.

I know I’ve been a bad blogger lately and I apologize.  I’ve just been really preoccupied with getting the house ready and finishing up some work projects before Nasrin arrives.  I’ve also made some new friends here which is so exciting for me.  I feel like I’m finally getting a social life back, which I’ve been desperately craving!  The only downside is they’re both English teachers and their both leaving in June when their contracts are up.  I understand though, we want to move out of Adana as well.  There’s far more interesting places to be.

My mom is going to be here in ten days and then we’re going to go into baby-prep overdrive!  I’m so excited to see her, it’s been since June!  I’ve never gone that long without seeing my mom.  She’s staying with us for six weeks.  I have a feeling that with everything going on I may not be blogging much, but I’ll try to keep you guys updated!  You can also friend me on Facebook if you haven’t already (click on the facebook link to go to my profile).

Yes, my name is Jen and I am a Facebook addict.  “Hi Jen…”

I submitted it to icanhascheezburger, but who knows if it will ever get posted.  It made me laugh, hopefully it makes you laugh too.

(ps, if you’re wondering what he’s sitting in, it’s suitcase that I converted into a computer case.)

Man, these weeks are ticking by so fast! I’m starting to feel like an over-inflated balloon. I’m lucky though, I still don’t have any stretch marks (thank you baby Jesus) and my belly button has not popped out. I keep wondering if it will at all, I’d be happy if it didn’t – the idea still kinda freaks me out.

I had a doctor’s appointment last week and it went well.  All of my lab tests came back normal, and the ultrasound looked great. We weren’t able to get an ultrasound picture because she kept holding her hands over her face. We got a couple of quick peeks though, and wow, the detail is amazing. You never get a sense of how much you can see when you look at people’s fuzzy ultrasound pictures, but when you’re seeing it live the quality is actually remarkable. They gave us a DVD of all the ultrasounds up to this point, but when I got home I realized that all the DVD players we have (in our computers) are zoned for the US and they won’t read the turkish DVD. Bummer. I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to get it off of there eventually.

She has a big head and long femurs. Last week, over all she measured at 33 weeks, which is right on track, but her head was measuring 35 weeks and her femurs were at 37 weeks! Holy crap. I hope she’s not too long for her onesies, or you know, doesn’t kick me in the throat before she even comes out.

Three weeks ago - 31 weeks

My mom is coming in four weeks, and I’m almost more excited about that than anything else!  I haven’t seen her since June.  She’s going to stay for a month and I am happily going to put her to work, which she will happily do!

Also, I’m planning on attempting an all-natural birth, something I wouldn’t have even fathomed a few months ago, but more on that in another post…

Earlier this morning hubby had a talk with the client’s (we’ll call her “G”) business partner/investor (let’s call him “V”).  Basically the hubs let him know what needed to be done to resolve the issues once and for all.  They just need to send us more text and more images and their site will look better.  V agreed.  We also reassured him that the bilingual capabilities of the site would be up and running by next week.  In fact we are updating all of our sites with the latest version of our software which runs a million times faster and is much more user-friendly (I hate that word, it is so over-used).  The bilingual functions are part of that upgrade.  Hubs also told them that they could pay off the rest of their balance over time.  It was all good.  V assured him that he would keep G under control and keep her from going off on us again.

Literally a few minutes later G called us to personally apologize for her behavior.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a client apologize to us before, that was a huge surprise.

Then about six hours later we get forwarded email exchange between G and our business partner in the US (he usually handles all client relations but since this client is over here we had been more involved).  Her email started out as a request for an additional email server but then totally U-turned into this:

“Anyway your multi language not ready, We wanted to add Flash on web and Q already knows this but now he is telling me that need some one to do it,I mean we have to pay someone for design flash any way, We have pay to you 250USd for beginig I mean before starting web site and I told you that balance will be clear after web fnished.  Everything takes too long  time with you and be frankly I do not want to continue with your company. I kindly request you to refund of our payment.

What.  The.  Fuck.

He had already responded and agreed to refund her money, a fact that also took us by surprise.  As a company we had never really addressed whether or not we would give refunds, and even though it’s not a huge amount of money, it would be coming straight out of our pockets.  I wish he had talked to us before he responded to her, but I know he did it because he was frankly tired of dealing with her bullshit and would rather be rid of her.  He also wants to protect us from abusive clients.  I can’t say that we disagree, it just came as a total surprise.  We did not see this coming.  He had already taken down her website by the time I got his email.

I just finished drawing up a contract termination agreement.  They get their refund as long as they agree not to use any of the material we created for them.  For us it means a lot of hours down the drain, but for her it means she’s basically taken her business back to square one.  She don’t even have a logo now.

Le sigh…

Oh well.  Sometimes you just can help crazy people.

I’ve entered Kilax’s favorite things giveaway, which is particularly exciting for me since she’s been kind enough to open it to international folks such as myself.  This is my first, and maybe last opportunity to win something once she gets a load of international shipping rates!  Mwahahahaa… (j/k)  The giveaway includes such yummy favs of mine like gourmet peanut butter, Luna bars and Dots!!

I get an extra entry by linking to her post on my blog so all my friends can check it out as well.  Besides that, Kim is an awesome blogger; her topics are always timely and thought provoking, plus she just an all-around badass chick!  Stop by and give her a read sometime.