Antzy

For weeks I have been wishing for more than 2 hour sleep intervals. I have finally gotten it, we are up to 3 1/2 hours at a time at night now. But now I'm getting closer to my normal energy level which I haven't been at since I was 3months prego. I have been asking to get some pictures printed so I can do a scrap book because I could feel this coming on and we just haven't gotten to go do it. I explained to Issac today that I need a project like today or I'm gonna lose it. He said "Don't you still have that blog thing going." Well sure I do but geeesss you can only check this like once a day, and if I blog more than I do now I'm afraid it will get quiet boring and be about my moods and feelings. :)lol But seriously I don't think I have more than what I already write about to write about, if you know what I mean. I belted out all my baby sewing projects before the baby and I want to make cloths for my 2 year old but have to go get patterns and fabric first. Ahhhhhhhh I just want to go get and do these things by myself but Im still not sure about taking both girls out without my hubby yet. I know Ill get there but not yet. So Im feeling a little nutz at the house today. I reorganized our closet if that tells you anything. So lets hope for my blogs readers sake and for my sanity that I soon get a project to work on that will inspire me to write interesting things. Actually we did go to an expo or fair the other day and I will blog on that a little but it will be kinda short.

Hosea

The study I have been doing (or trying to do on the mornings I can without one child or the other fussing at me) is on the book Hosea. The interesting thing and the reason I'm actually blogging on it is because after each chapter there are questions and a lot of times they ask you to compare your current society to Isreal in Hoseas day. I cant help but compare both the society in the States and in Mexico because I still feel so close to the one in the states and hear about it a lot from friends and family. But after being in Mexico almost a year I really feel that to say "my society" it would be Mexico.
The first question I came across like this was: Do you feel encouraged or discouraged about your society?
When it comes to the states I know everyone is all freaked out about the economy and the war and the change in government. But even with all this I see the U.S. as a strong country that will pull through. And that Americans as a whole will hopefully learn to appreciate what they have through this. I already know a lot of people who appreciate their jobs a lot more than they did less than a year ago. And Ill be the first to admit that I didn't appreciate my job like I should have when I was there. As far as how I feel about Mexico, things are not as bad as people may think. Like in the states if you really want a job you can find one, and you can cut back to live with in your means. Since my husband has been here (for 3 years now) he has lived in 2 states and 3 towns and has been able to find a job the whole time. We are living on one income right now and sure sometimes we don't get to buy all the crap we want but we have yet to go hungry. I will have to admit that we do dip into savings at times to indulge in things like extra junk food or pictures for me to make a scrap book. And we can only hope that when the savings are out I will be able to work to replace the amount we are using out of it. But even if I cant we know that we can survive on what my husband is making. So I have to say although things are rough in both societies I am encouraged that things can and will get better for both. I see changes here everyday that seem to be moving in the right direction. And although things in the States seem to be going south I know the American people can withstand it and that the country will pull through.
The other comparison question was how I would compare my society to the society in Israel in the time of Hosea. I think here in Mexico and in the States things could deff be described similar to Isreal in Chapter 4. Although the type of sexual sins have changed and although there may still be prostitution I feel things have shifted slightly. But as far as the idolatry I know that both places have a lot of that. In the states the idolatry is centered around money, and things. Here in Mexico the Catholic faith idolizes the saints and Mother Mary. I'm sure Noncatholic Christians at times still idolize things, I know I still have this as an issue to continue working on.

Easter in Mexico

Well I was so surprised last month when I saw no Easter treats, baskets, bunnies, or anything related was in the stores. Here Easter is just a catholic holiday. Yes the Christians who are not Catholic are reminded and thankful for the resurrection of Christ but they don't do eggs, baskets ext. And really anything else but to go to church as usual. Also for like the last month or so there has been no meat for sale on Fridays. Anywhere that normally sells or makes food with meat literally closes down or they only cook fish. Everything here except the supper markets where closed from Friday to Sunday, including the bars, and regular stores this weekend. I am determined for my children to be raised with not only the holidays my husband was raised with but also the ones I was raised with. We bought a summer beach basket for Alana and filled it with treats. We celebrated Easter on a wed because my husband was off work that day. The night before we died eggs. We only had red food coloring and the store we went tried to get other colors at didn't have any. So all our eggs where red but our 2 year old still had a blast with them. We used her crayons and made them all different looking and after putting the die on them she put stickers on them. I told her that the Easter bunny only hides pretty eggs so she put a lot of work into them. The next morning we hid the eggs around the house and she had so much fun looking for them. While she ate eggs, mostly candy and played with her treats we read the verses out of Mathew that described the resurrection of Christ, and thanked Him for his love. Although no one else in town seemed to care much about Easter we had a great time in our little apartment with our family. Then on Sunday because my husband was working, I was able to catch my best friend from childhood online and we chatted all Sunday morning on the web cam. My daughter sang for her and we had a great time. She is in Canada going to school and was also alone for the Holiday. Everyone here seems more preoccupied with the April celebrations of the town. I will soon be writing about that.

more details about having a baby in Mexico

The last blog was more just an announcement about our new baby girl. Before I moved here and even more so after I got pregnant I got extremely curious as to what it would be like to have a baby here. First I asked some of my husbands family but they didn't have a lot of input for me, they had all been through the public health system to have their babies and saw noting wrong with laboring in a room with 5 other women and no support person at your side. I knew that the private sector would be different but I wasn't sure how different from Mexicos public, or from the states. Iv written before about my doctor appointments but let me just say again we ended up with a great Doctor and I have no way of recommending how to find one. We drove around town looking for an office that looked decent and had good parking, seriously that's what we did. We made our first appointment and had decided if we didn't like him we would keep looking. He ended up impressing us so we stuck with him. In our town there is no phone book or list of doctors at the hospitals. The drive around method is used for everything, or you can ask but his family just kept telling us to go to the public facility and we didn't know anyone else at the time.
A few things are different even if using the private system, and I need to say this is in the area of Mexico I live in I cant speak for anywhere else. I think I mentioned this before but I'm so amazed by it Ill mention it again. Our doctor and/or a nurse was by my side the enitre time until after I was back in my room after the baby was born. Im sure this has to do with the fact that I didn't have a million monitors on me that would have alarmed for the staff to know if something was wrong. But it was nice and I felt well taken care of. Now for months before the baby I kept asking my doctor if I would receive pain meds after the baby. With my first they gave me percocet and I still remember how much the cramps hurt when I first nursed her and how bad the stitches felt. He kept reassuring me yes he would give me pain meds. He wrote for me to have what they call Tylex. Its Tylenol 750mg. Yikes that's not pain meds, but I bit the bullet and took it, I actually think this has a lot to do with how quickly I healed. My hospital room had an extra bed in it for Issac to sleep in which ended up being more comfy than my hospital bed. :) The hospital beds where the old electric brown ones that first came out after the crank beds. I almost bet they were donated from a hospital in the states when they up graded. Again Ill say there where no IV pumps so the nurses kept having to calculate the drip rate of my IV. Oh I got fancy slippers that Im still wearing around the house not those crapy socks the hospitals give out in the states. I think I mentioned before but Im not sure that my 1 week appointment with my OB was free. This is also amazing to me. A big difference was the 1 week appointment I don't remember seeing my OB that soon after the baby but I do remember going to the pediatrician like every week for a bit. Here they don't want to see the baby until 1months. I do think that now for regular doctor visits we are going to seek the public health system, as long as there are no hospitalizations involved. Being a nurse I feel I can disregard or listen to what I know is best from an office visit and I dont plan to go to the doctor for a common infection because you can get just about any medication over the counter hear. Oh something else I found out lately is that the shot records for children are pretty similar except for a few months, and the only big difference is that they all get their tetanus shot at 2yrs old. I think this is because they are expected to start Kindergarden at 3yrs. This is another reason we need to get the girls into the public health system.

In and Out

Joslin Ray Hernandez-Seyer was born Sunday March 29th at 330am. Things couldn’t have gone smother. I started feeling the contractions at 1130, I woke up Issac and we called the doctor who wanted to check me in his office first. By the time we got Alana up and over to our friends’ house my contractions were closer than 5min apart and the doctor agreed to just meet us at the hospital. The nurse in me insists that I give specifics on the differences between the experience in the States and Mexico. We got to the hospital which looked closed and the door was locked. Issac got out of the truck and shook the doors and someone came out of nowhere and unlocked them and told him to bring me in and go park the truck. Its a small hospital so the parking lot is right there by the door. Issac quickly explained to the front desk girl that I didnt speak Spanish. Honestly my Spanish is doing great and I can do very well but the pain and excitement and emotions were messing with my memory and there’s no way I could have tried at that point. She My doctor came through the door next and lead me into an exam room explaining they would tell Issac where I was. My doctor checked me out and said I was deff. in labor and that I would be admitted, it was now 130am. Then a very nice and professional male nurse helped me into my gown and to my room while Issac checked me in. They brought me into a room and the nurses started my IV. Ok here is a difference, no IV pump, he calculated the drop rate and counted it next to his watch. Wow I haven't ever had to actually do that except on tests. I was happy to see he signed dated and put the needle gauge on my IV dressing. Then I got moved onto a stretcher and brought into the birthing room. My doctor was never farther than a few steps from our room the entire time if not right in the room with us. This is another major difference. At this point Issac was left in the other room and I kept asking why and first the nurse told me he was changing. The delivery room was sterile and they all changed into clean scrubs. Ok I was fine with that. But then he was still not there and when my doctor came in he said he wanted to wait until the "procedure" was done. He meant the epidural, but the anesthesiologist wasn't even in the hospital yet. Finally I got the epidural and the anesthesiologist did a great job considering I was having strong contractions and was hard for me to hold still, again no pumps used for the medication. Let me just say there were no machines at all. I mentioned this to the nurse and he seemed to not know what I meant. But for the fetal heart rate my doctor would just use a hand held doppler between contractions. So finally in walks my proud handsome husband. About 30 min later Joslin was alive and in the world. My doctor told Issac to come see her be born and he did and is so glad for it. So all in all I was in labor for 4 hours, and not one machine around to help out the wonderful staff except a hand held doppler. I was so proud of Issac then the doctor showed him the placenta and he got dizzy and had to go lay down. :) I was allowed to hold and give her kisses after they cleaned her. Then they brought me to my room and the doctor told me I needed to rest. I slept till abut 6am, begged for food until 8am then got a shower with help from Issac, got Joslin back with us around 1030am and was discharged home by 12noon. Yes that’s less than 12 hours of a hospital stay. But we were so ready to get home to Alana and just be comfortable.
Also we just had my one week check up with the OB and get this it was free. Can you imagine that. And then the dentist who's office is across the hall checked my teeth for free. Only in Mexico. :)

Spanish continued with chile rellenos

I have gotten many chances over the last couple days to see the improvement in my Spanish. Its funny this is the way it has gone over the last 9months: I see great improvement through a conversation then I plateau for awhile no matter how hard I try to excel, then out of the blue I see improvement again. Im hoping that learning in stair steps like this I am actually letting more of the language sink in. Yesterday I took my daughter to the park (thank God we needed to get out) and ended up having a 30 min conversation with a lady who was there with her grandchildren. Im happy to say she knew absolutely no English and wasn't to good at slowing down her speech for me. And I understood almost everything she said and only had to say "dilo otra ves." a few times. Then I was on messenger with one of my husbands cousins and did quiet well with that also. He does know some English but we have a deal where he types in English as much as he can and I type in Spanish and we correct each others sentences. Yes this can make a short conversation very long but it is extremely helpful with learning the written language. As you may be able to tell from reading my blogs IM not the best speller in English and Im finding that I screw it up in Spanish also. I didn't think this would be a problem because Spanish is always spelled phonetically which is what I try to do in English (Thank God for auto spell check).But this is why learning correct pronunciation is so important in Spanish, I use to always say to my husband "But you understood what I meant." when he would correct my pronunciation but now I see why its so important. Aside from being just annoying to fluent speakers when you say a word weird you also cant picture the word correctly and later put it in writing. So for any new learners don't brush off all the people who stress pronunciation and enunciation. Ok so the last thing that happened that proved to me that I am doing better was the best. My husband has a friend from work who we have been slowly getting closer to. They are a younger couple like us (Ok she younger than me by like 7 years but hey who's counting right) and have a daughter the same age. Anyway last time we were over there I borrowed her cook book because my husbands family will not give me any recipes unless IM there to watch them cook the meal. We also found out that she is a trained hair dresser, Whoot Whoot. See Im spoiled because my mom is one and I hate going to people I don't know so this was a huge deal and comfort to me. Anyway we went over there last night after the guys got off work and she cut my hair (it looks great, shes good) and we cooked dinner together. I picked a recipe I wasn't sure I understood completely and that Iv always wanted to make even before meeting my Mexican hubby. Chile Rellenos, OMG they are so yummy and I had no idea the true way they were made. So the guys hung out and we cooked and I understood her the whole time. The only time I had to go ask Issac something I actually knew the answer and was just being timed about it. I find that my best learning comes when I am with someone who is patient and doesn't seem to think Im stupid just because I speak like a 5 year old. So how exciting I found that Im doing better than I thought with my Spanish and learned how to cook a yummy dish. We plan to do this more often although Im not sure it will fit in before the baby and then will have to wait a bit but hey there's goodness in the future. :)

Which country do you like better was the question.

I am at this point so ready for baby and less belly, my due date is April 3 so its coming soon. The Dr. confined me to home and gave me some meds for about 10 days 3 weeks ago due to some contractions I was having. They are not gone yet but because its safe to go into labor now I dont have to take the meds or rest as much. I have had a couple people ask me questions lately that got me to think about my situation. Its funny because with out these questions being brought to me I'm just going about my merry little way like things are normal. First a boy who sells tacos on the bottom floor of our apartment was proud to tell me he knew English and that he lived in the states for 5 years. His English was actually very good and I'm glad to now be able to have a random conversation with him when passing. But then he asked me which country I liked better. I was surprised that I couldn't answer him right away, many thoughts came rushing to my mouth and I couldn't get any of them out. Here are my thoughts: I'm happier now, but does that mean I like Mexico better or that God has me to be with my husband and that's why I'm happy, I'm not stressed and feel like there is always a load of crap to do, but is this just because I'm not working yet and I have my hubby around to help me with our daughter or because things move so much slower down here. I still hold a grudge against the US gov for kicking my family out on our rears, but then again if they hadn't God would have found another way to get us here, I miss walmart-target-the dollar tree- nursing but I love that each corner has a little tienda that I have help when going to the grocery store, that I get to share my bed with my hubby and see him with our daughter. There is supposedly a lot of corruption her but isn't there in the states, There is not a lot of money here but most people here ignore the fact and live their lives, in the States people act like the world is going to end if they can buy their fav snack or new cloths. After stuttering for a min, which I never do, I finally said, "Well I was more comfortable in the states but I am starting to get comfortable in Mexico."
Then my sister asked me the other day how I was dealing with the pregnancy down here if it was more or less emotional being here with Issac or in the states without him. That one was simple. At this stage of my pregnancy my husband had been gone for 1week, my doctors had to up my dosage of prozac so I could get out of the chair in the mornings and I still cried myself to sleep every night. So if you have been reading any of my blogs lately you know that I am doing much better emotionally. My husband is such a great supporter of me and is always encouraging me. Whit Alana I hate to say that what I thought often was that I just wanted to hurry up and have her so that I could sooner travel to Mexico to be with my husband. I realized the other day that Im actually more excited about this labor rather than just feeling like I just want it to be done. My husband plans to be in the delivery room with me and he has done all his reading and studying and he is so excited about it. He had done all the reading and studying with Alana in hopes she would come before his mandatory departure date but that didn't happen. Oh and yes we asked for a few extra weeks and the government said no. Obviously I still hold a grudge maybe over the next year or so I can let that go I hope. But for now I sigh and let it roll back to the background and realize that my life is where it should be and that although money is tight we are happy, in love, and raising our family on the path that God is sending us down.