Frustrations….

I’m having a baby shower! Please visit:

http://www.webbabyshower.com/mullen/

Well, I need to make this quick and go to bed, but I have quite a bit to relate, so don’t know how quickly this will happen.  Perhaps I should take those Tylenol PMs now and then when they kick in… stop writing.  That works.

So I didn’t get to sleep until 4 this morning, and got up at 6:10 having to go to the bathroom.  I LOVE my bladder.  It didn’t matter, I had to be up at 6:30 anyway, because I needed to go get blood drawn, and I didn’t want to wait, and had been told they opened at 7:30.  I should have known better.  When I got there, there were a TON of people there, and of COURSE they’d opened at 7.  So i signed in, and waited for 20 minutes.  They then told me I’d be there an hour, which I wasn’t sure if they had to do the glucose test, but they did.  So I took the orange drink, which is supposed to be nasty… but I actually don’t mind very much, and downed it pretty quickly.  I asked for some magazines, and they gave me four…a  woman’s magazine, a Sacramento magazine, a health magazine, and ironically, a Weight Watchers magazine.  LOL.  So I read the woman’s magazine and chatted idly with the woman next to me and her grandson, and an hour and five minutes later, realized they hadn’t called me, despite having someone just in there calling people.  So I went to the window, and almost as soon as I did, they came back to get me…evidently I was the FIRST person they’d called, and somehow I missed it.  My hearing is getting SO sucky.
So they drew something like 4 or 6 vials, which I put up with as best I could.  I usually find the people who draw blood are very nice, and TYPICALLY pretty competent… I have difficult veins, they don’t LIKE to be found, but she did a good job, and I didn’t look as she poked me.  Then i got a vial to give them a urine sample-always a joy, and after that, I left.

Instead of going to the welfare office, as I should have, I went home.  I was really exhausted, and knew I needed some sleep, since I was going not too well on two hours.  Well, I was fine, except while driving, then I felt a little out f it… not enough to feel like I SHOULDN’T be out on the road, but enough to feel zoned out.  So I got home, and Jerry made me a little breakfast burrito… fairly light fare so I wouldn’t throw up, and I drank some water with it, because I KNEW soda wasn’t going to agree with me.  THEN I went to bed, and had the ODDEST dream.  I dreamed that i had the C-section, Jerry wasn’t there.  They took the baby to a different building, and the doctor drove me to the building where the baby was.  I asked what the sex was, and the doctor said he wouldn’t tell me, it was a surprise.  When I got there, I called Jerry to tell him to come see the baby.  He didn’t come for quite awhile, and hadn’t been sure where I was.  He’d had to call the main hospital line, given them the number that I’d called from, to get the building where I was.  So it was 3 hours before he got there.  We went to the nursery, and they had creatures in what you’d expect to find the babies in, and I heard a cry that I thought must be our baby girl, because it sounded like Sammi’s (turned out, I’d brought that INTO my dream…as Sammi was crying pitifully downstairs for whatever reason, Jerry could not figure out why).  So we finally found our baby, a girl as I expected, and she was covered up, in a playpen.  And she was HUGE, like 11 or 12 pounds, maybe bigger, and she didn’t look like a newborn, she didn’t have that glazed, dazed and confused look to her.  I went in worried that they’d given her a bottle since I had been gone three hours… and I think here is where I must have woken up to Sammi REALLY crying pitifully, because I sort of remember in the dream putting the baby up to my breast, but I don’t remember anything after that.  Weird dream is all I can say.
So anyway, Jerry took Sammi to pick up Shabree, and I went back to sleep (after a visit to the potty of course!), and I slept until about 1…ish?  I had sort of woken up to Sammi banging on my door, and trying to turn the doorknob (won’t be long now, Jerry said she can get her whole hand around the doorknob, just can’t quite get it turned, and you can tell when you listen)  So I went downstairs asking where Sammi was, and Jerry said he’d put her to bed for a nap.  I’d gotten about 3 and a half more hours sleep… interrupted as it was.
So I had a little something to eat, and thought, well, I REALLY ought to go to the welfare office and get this paperwork restarted… I have to do EVERYTHING over again… they closed my original case, and now I’m stuck at the beginning.  I dragged my feet quite a bit, asked Jerry where we were on the deal closing, and we might be very close… So I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one.  THAT of course, will ease quite a few concerns for us.  Anyway, I finally left about 2…ish… and drove down to the welfare dept.  After filling out the initial paperwork, I told them I had been told to talk to a supervisor about expediting things, because I am due to give birth in a month, I waited probably 30 minutes, and the "supervisor" handed me ANOTHER pack of paperwork, and told me to have it in by the 8th of May.  They DO NOT GET IT!   So I left very, extremely, frustrated.  Shabree had gone with me, so we went to Costco to get gas, and she asked, inevitably, if we might get some samples, so I said sure, and we wandered around getting samples, got a Costco cash card for the gas, got our gas, and left.  Then we went to Sam’s Club and got ONE sample (I swear the Sam’s club in South Sac is SO sad…pitiful really), got 4 different kinds of fruit, and left… all I can say was, at least the lines were shorter than at Costco.  They’re like 3 blocks apart, but MILES separate the two for the "feel" when you go in.  The ONLY reason I shop there is because mom gave us the gift card… and it’s been keeping us in groceries.  Though, my GOD my children eat through whatever I buy like there IS no tomorrow…especially the fruit and any sort of "convenience" foods I might buy.  When I brought the fruit home, they and a bunch of their friends were out in the pool, so of COURSE they start handing out our fruit to their friends… I mean, not that we want to be greedy, but for the time being, we can’t feed the whole stinking neighborhood…it’s hard enough to feed the four we have.  I’ve only got about 60 dollars left on that card.  So we came home, and Shabree immediately went in the pool with the rest of them, and I got the paperwork out, filled one form out FIVE times!  FIVE!  I’m like, WHY am I filling out this form time and time again?  Jerry is trying to tell me they don’t want this and that, and I was already so frustrated… I told him, they wanted it last time, and we don’t have TIME to mess around with this… if we hold stuff back, and they decide they need it, it’s just going to delay things while we get it, and then we have to waste the gas taking it to them.  And Ifound where they DID need the things, like bank statements… it said checking and savings accounts, so he didn’t see it, looking for bank accounts.  He told me the trust shouldn’t be included because it doesn’t technically belong to us, and I told him, well, we spent the money, and then I found where they DO need that information.  Okay, I can understand his not wanting to give our whole lives away, and I can understand the privacy issues, but what I can’t seem to get across to him is that if we hold back, they’re NOT going to approve me/us.  The money in that trust is like a whole year’s worth of living money we had… it’s going to create quite a gap in bank account statements NOT to show it.  I know I’d be thinking…"How did they live?" and that would make me suspicious that they were holding things back.  I’d deny the application, due to suspicion of fraud.   Okay, I’m NOT excited about laying my life BARE for these people, but I’ve put this off, and put it off, HOPING that something would change and I could get care/have this baby some other way, but it hasn’t happened.  And now we’re a little more than a month away, and he’s trying to play games… or at least that’s what it feels like.  I don’t see where we can afford to hold anything back.  Okay, if there WERE money and we were trying to defraud the govt, then maybe I could see doing that.  But there is no money, we’re NOT trying to defraud the govt, and if he wants to keep our lives so private, then he’d better be choosing a home birth over a hospital one that someone has to pay for somehow…  I just am SO not amused by any of this.  I’ve got the damn welfare department NOT understanding the nature of needing this NOW, my damn husband not seeming to understand that ANY trying to hide on our parts is going to get this thing tossed OUT, and I’M the one who has to do all the repeat paperwork and try to get this thing DONE in less than FOUR WEEKS.  Crap.  It seems to me my best bet is to get this C-section done by the 26th of May, get released by the 28th, and the presumptive eligibility will take care of it.  But I’m not sure if that’s going to stand up or not.  So I’m pretty well frustrated, and you know, I have to wonder if that whole unassisted birth thing was such a bad thing… Jerry thinks it is… but then, he’s not making this easy on me.  AT ALL.  AND he had the audacity to ask me if I was still tired.  YES, I get irritable when I’m tired.  But I also get irritable when dealing with time wasting nonsense.  HE is essentially the reason I gave up in the first place… he did not get me the profit and loss statement I needed to finish up the paperwork.  FINE… there was a HUGE part of me that just didn’t care, still hoped that something else would come up.   Obviously, that didn’t happen.  So now I..we are very close to being stuck.  I suppose I could have just waited til I was in hard labor and gone to any old hospital, they could not turn me away… though I’m not sure they couldn’t order an emergency C-section… hell, I don’t know ANYTHING.  I can make up things in my head as much as I want.  I’d much rather KNOW what I’m getting into.  I have to see the doctor tomorrow, get the test results.  I imagine the glucose test, based on past happenings, will be inconclusive and will have to be done again, this time being a 3 hour test.  I sure as heck HOPE NOT, but it will not surprise me… then of course, the 3 hour test will be fine. 
Sigh.  Well, I think that Tylenol MIGHT be kicking in… I’m not sure, but I took it almost an hour ago… I forgot to mention I was so tired, that I crashed at 8:30 only to wake up at 10, of course.  Now it’s midnight, and I guess I’ll go back and see if I can get some sleep… if not, it’s 3 before I can take another PM… crud.  Because I WILL be up til then if this doesn’t work.  I should NOT go to bed anytime before 10, but dang, I was falling asleep on my feet. 

I guess I’ll wind up.   It’s been a long, hell kind of day.  I hope my life improves… I am so sick and tired of living like this in a land of worry.