Behold Blogger, I have returned!

Well, needless to say that it's been a very long time since I've been able to have the time to sit down and write an actual blog post. At first today I was really thinking about... now what could I talk about, I mean really? There's not too much going on in my life aside from the baby and gaming. But oh wait... that was the title of my blog, right?



So, Mr Darion is doing very well. He is 6 months old now and is getting bigger and cuter every day. He can sit up on his own now, can push most of his tummy off the ground, and is getting this first tooth! There is no joy to describe how being a mother feels like. Everyday that he achieves something there is just this swell of pride that can't ever be diminished by anyone else. He is my little man and I love him.

My big man is doing well as well. Next month it will have been 2 years since I moved here to South Dakota. And while I'm still not all that thrilled with being here I do love our little family. There are times when I wonder what like would have been like had I not moved here, but those thoughts are quickly tossed aside at the thought of my little guy. Everything has been so worth it. We're currently running a Dungeons and Dragons type campaign with a Pathfinder setting. So far it's been fun and perhaps I'll get a chance to blog more about that later. We're also playing Final Fantasy 13. I say "we" because he plays and I watch. I'd love to play but most the time I am with Darion taking care of him or something. So I just watch cause mostly I just love games' storylines.

Work has been excellent and I recently got a promotion to the assistant director of the daycare. I also am driving all of the children that are 5 and older to all their summer recreation activities. So it should prove to be a VERY busy summer. I love my job and all of the kids so it's really the perfect place for me. I do however, plan on going to school to finish my degree so that I can be a teacher. What can I say? I just love kids!

Not too much else to write though, so just a quite update on my life and now I still TRY so hard to actually update this with relevant thoughts and opinions on things now that I am in the mood (and have the time) to start posting again! :D

Darion John Schweigert

Well needless to say there should have been much more updating going on here. However with moving in to a new place and being extremely pregnant it was hard to find time to do anything in the past month or two it seems like.

Jake and I successfully moved into a nice little 2 bedroom house that we are renting. We have our room and then the baby's room. It's nice cause we can keep all his stuff in there(and believe me there is A LOT of stuff). We are also using his closets for storage space. Haha. Poor little guy. Which brings me to the story of a lifetime for me!

On November 20th at 4:39pm CST Darion John Schweigert was born via C-section at St Mary's Healthcare center in Pierre, SD. Our wonderful unplanned little bundle of joy finally decided to show himself after hours of induced labor. After I did not progress past 3cm dialation and after being on pitocin for nearly a whole day (21 hours) they finally decided to get him out of there.

We went in on November 14th because of bad back pain. I was afraid I was in labor since I'd heard so much about bad back pain with the first child. The pain was in short stabs and so I was sure that I was having bad contractions. This of course started when we were 3/4ths of the way through the movie 2012 in theaters. We finished the movie and then went home where I was in pain for another 2 hours. We then decided to call into the hospital and go in. It turns out it wasn't labor or even really contractions. My kidneys were very upset with something that I ate. We assume it was the greasy popcorn and Diet Coke. So I vowed not to have any more until this kiddo was out of me.

November 17th was my last prenatal appointment. I was still 1-2cm dilated and so my doctor told me that she'd like to induce labor since they were afraid that he was getting too big because of my gestational diabetes. We agreed that that would be fine and so we made an appointment for the next morning to be in the hospital by 5am to start on the drugs and everything that hopefully would have brought my child into the world. We were up early and ready to go on the 18th getting to the hospital on time, finishing all the pesky paperwork, and getting me all hooked up to the machines that they needed me on. They started the Pitocin at about 10am. For those that do not know Pitocin is something that the body produces naturally but the artificial stuff they pump into you more or less just helps your labor along and gives the body signals it's time to get the baby out. Or... it's supposed to anyways. So after 14 hours there and not much to show in the way of dilation they sent me home. Not going to lie... I was really bummed out. I thought I was finally going to be able to hold my little guy that night. They set me up so that I could come in to do this all again the next day (Nov 19th). This time though they were going to start me on low doses of something that was going to get my cervix more effaced at about 8pm and then on the 20th we were going to see how I was doing. Poor Jake was with me through the whole 14 hours. He slept a lot on the lame "couch" that was in my room and we watched A LOT of Family Guy. Haha.

I stayed the night there alone after they had given me an Ambien to help me sleep. Jake went home to get a good night's rest to be ready for the next day. At about 4am on November 20th they started my Pitocin again in my IV. At 7am my doctor broke my water hoping that it would help along labor if it was broken and my body would kick start itself past 3cm. After after 10 hours of laboring after my water was broke (probably like... 5 of them being the WORST pain I have EVER felt in my life) they decided to go ahead and do a c-section to get him out of there. They gave me a Demerol shot and from there things are a little fuzzy for me since pain meds make me completely drunk-like. I do remember things, but I had absolutely no concept of time at all while that drug was in my system. It was about an hour or two before they got me down to surgery. To me it felt like minutes. Jake said that I was slurring my words a lot and that I was just generally out of it. Haha.

I remember them shooting the intrathecal into my spine. I remember laying down on the table and Jake being there. We got some pics of this and I don't remember him holding my hand through the whole surgery but apparently he did. He was a very good sport and took a lot of pics for me. And finally I remember my baby crying for the first time. I remember Jake smiling at me and giving me a kiss. We were parents and while it was scary there was a love and a happiness there that can't even be measured to anything that I've ever felt before. We had our little boy. I was so scared that I was going to drop him when they laid him on my chest because my arms were slightly numb and tingly (I really couldn't feel ANYTHING from like my chest down). Jake later described to me how it looked while they were pulling him out and stuff like that but I'm not going to gross anyone out with that. I also have pics of that. :p

I gave him his first Mommy's kiss and then Jake followed as they took Darion out of the room. They sewed me back up and had me head out to recovery. They wheeled me out and I got to go past him in the nursery and I held my hand up to the glass where he had his hand out as well. To me it seemed like minutes but again it was a few hours. They loaded me into my bed in my room and I had all of Jake's family there with me (Mom, Dad, Stepmom, Grandma, and Grandpa), which was nice. It took a while before they brought him into the room to be with me but I have never been so in love with anything in my entire life. I loved just holding him and just hugging him and Jake close to me. I love my Schweigert men. I love my little family. And of course. I cried.

Seeing as this post is monstrous enough as it is I can chronicle the rest of the hospital visit later. I just figured that since most of the details were all fresh in my mind that I needed to get them out there!

California Trip

So now that I got a rather long and serious blog post out of the way I thought I'd follow it up with a nice fun and (hopefully) shortish post!

On September 5th 2009 Jake, the baby (of course!), and I went out on a trip to my hometown of Manteca, CA. This was a needed trip for many reasons. Mostly because I wanted to see my folks again. Once or twice a year simply isn't enough but sadly will probably have to suffice while I am still living in the middle of nowhere. Secondly, we handed my puppy (re:6 year old 70lb Samoyed) Mochi, to my parents for a few months. She loooooves people and we're pretty sure she could lick the baby to death on a whim. Having her around also is somewhat of a hassle so it's VERY nice that they offered to take her for a little bit while we adjust to being parents. And lastly, Jake had to get the best friends' stamp of approval.

But the best part?

OMG SUSHI.

Well... not really. All I had was California Rolls cause that's about all I CAN have right now but it was still beyond delicious to taste them again. I will never take them for granted again if I live somewhere where I can get to them with relative ease.

We had a baby shower for little Schweigert baby while we were there. And by shower I mean like 15 of us went to a sushi bar, I got present stuff, and then we went back to Jess and Dev's and watched Big Bang Theory. All and all it was really wonderful. Aside from Fanime it was one of the only times that I've really seen everyone get together like that. We need to do it more often and always when I get back into town. :p Everyone really seemed to like Jake and they were actually brutally honest about how much they liked him. After the Mike fiasco I made them all swear that they HAD to tell me if something didn't feel right about all future boys. They kept their reservations about the first boything I had and I think they are more overprotective now. And even with that Jake still passed the test!

It was also nice just taking a break from everything. My work (daycare) is pretty much having me up and moving around all the time. I get tired really easily nowdays and I found, especially after I got back, that it takes a lot out of me. It was nice to sit back and relax and watch a bunch of movies, or go to the movies, even... shopping. And I HATE shopping. But I guess when Dad and Jake talked they pretty much hit the nail on the head. I hate shopping for myself, but when it's for other people, the baby in this case, I go nuts with it. I love giving things to people so that I can see the happiness on their face and know that they will think of me a little bit every time they use what I gave them.

Now that we are back home though Jake and I are on the home stretch to this baby getting here. At the moment we are looking for a new place, looking for a "new" used car :p, and just trying to both mentally and emotionally preparing ourselves for the baby. Our first prenatal class was on Thursday and we have those every week now. It should be nice and informative and the teacher is a chiropractor which is nice cause I really have been having bad back problems. We were oddly enough the youngest in the class at 25. This showed when they passed around the diagram of how dilated I will be when I need to start pushing (10cm incase no one knows) and we had to try SO HARD not to giggle. We're so mature. Hahaha.

Over all, just loving life. I've been doing a lot more art lately and I'm really excited for our new addition to be here. Not only cause am I going to love it to death but I am also really excited about getting back into shape and getting a gym membership after the bebe. I want to get back down to like 150-160ish cause I look SUPER HOT in that weight range.

Mostly though I just want to have this baby in my arms! I want to know if it's a boy or a girl!! ><

Self examination: Relationships

I am 9 weeks away from giving birth to my first child. And with all this 'newness' coming into my life so soon it has made me think about and reflect about my past. I have to say that one of the things that came up in my mind the most was 'relationships'. Or in my case, my lack thereof.

A very brief backstory... I was 13 (2 months off from 14) when I met my ex husband online in a chat room. So at age 14 I was very very certain of myself that I had found my "soulmate". I would have said or done anything (and sometimes did) to keep us together. This is more or less a warning I guess you could say to those teenagers out there in the world. Please. Date.

My first "boyfriend" was my now friend Ben. We had very little in common except for the fact that for some reason I just started crushing on him really hard. This was waaaay back in the days of 7th and 8th grade. We "dated" which meant holding hands, basically. At the time I was still 110% LDS and I actually broke up with him because of religious differences. I didn't see us going anywhere in my immediate Mormon future. Ben himself wasn't so much of a Catholic but his mother was and I saw it leading to bad places in the future. Now I look back and I think about how stupid that was. Ben was, and is, a very decent guy. He was sweet, attentive, and we liked to hang out. He actually took me to my Senior Prom (he's a year younger) and I think we had a lot of fun. When I moved back home in late 2007/early 2008 for 7 months we also had another chance to hang out. He really is a sweetie and I'm glad to have shared part of my life with him even if it did end cause I was retarded.

Not too many months after Ben and I broke up was when I met "Halo" in 1998. I was new to the internet and AOL chatrooms. At the time I was also insanely devoted to my new Favorite show: Sailor Moon. I would frequent the chat channels on AOL that had anything to do with Sailor Moon. This is how I first got into roleplaying. I played the role of the main character (Sailormoon, Usagi, Serena, Serenity ect.) in her Princess form. One day by chance I ran into another character named Halo who had a hodge podge character background from a couple of different animes. So we started chatting, our characters got romantically involved and soon I found myself logging in every day to talk to him. I looked forward to it, but at the same time I did not see how dangerous and harmful this was to my social skills, physical activity, and emotional state. I was a teenager, what did I care about those things?

Things progressed. Halo soon became Mike. And then Mike and Jen (the nickname he gave me) were soon "dating". He was 3 years older than me and lived in Philadelphia. We were in a whirlwind romance of love notes and RP drama. It wasn't but a couple months in before I started to notice a 3 month pattern of his on becoming depressed and spiraling downwards into a pit of self loathing. But we were teenagers. This was normal. We thrived off the drama of it all. At the time I also stupidly was trying to hide my "love affair" from my parents. Mormons aren't supposed to date until we're 16. And even then the church encourages the youth to date around and not get serious with anyone. Surely my parents wouldn't understand my being in love so early and how I'd found my soulmate, even if he was an Atheist. This dragged out for 1 1/2 years until my parents found out about him. That was pretty much a HUGE mess between us and I rebelled against them in any way I could when it came to Mike. I wasn't going to let them take him away from me. Even though by now Mike had e-"cheated" on me a few times now and I had found out about them I was willing to forgive him. If I didn't I would have lost him. I had invested so much already I wasn't about to let any of that go and I was more stubborn than I care to admit about everything having to do with Mike. His Dad and Stepmom (who pretty much raised him) were going through a divorce, he was depressed, he felt unloved. I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to fix him.

This is where I messed up. You can't fix anyone that doesn't want to be fixed themselves. You have to let people be who they are. If they don't WANT the help when they get it they aren't going to take it to heart.

In my sophomore year of high school my parents pretty much forbade me to talk to him. But I found ways to do it anyways. By now Mike was in college and into a new game called Everquest. He was not logging in often if at all on AOL or AIM and I was becoming concerned. I quickly used my babysitting money to buy the game so that I could play with him and so I could be available for him to talk to if he wanted to talk to me. It wasn't long before Mike's first year of college turned to ruin. He was logged into the game more than he was going to classes, he flunked out and went back home for the summer ready to kill himself over the things that he let his life get to. Not too long after his Father found out about all of this Mike was enlisted into the Army. He wrote me love letters from Basic Training and I mailed him back letters almost every other day. I also sent him a Book of Mormon in hopes that maybe with his free time he'd read it and find something inside of it that stirred something inside of him. When I got home from Girl's Camp that year I was surprised with a call from Mike. He'd been baptized into the church. I thought nothing in my life could be going better. I was getting everything I wanted and hoped for.

As life usually does... the happiness died out and faded some. I was soon into my Junior year of high school and still seeing this guy from across the country. All my peers were out and dating and I was spending all my time connected to a computer just for the chance to see Mike. My grades soon slipped and I was banned from Everquest and sometimes even the internet until I got them back up. It wasn't that I couldn't get the good grades... it was just that I did not try at all. I was obsessed. I had to have Mike. We had to be happy. I had to spend every waking moment that I could with him. I was so blinded by my undying love for Mike that I did not take the chance or opportunity to date other people even when we would sometimes "break up" or he "didn't want me anymore". Eventually things always went back to a normal state with us. I think mostly it was because we were comfortable with each other, it was what was normal for us. Not being together was just too scary. I can't speak for him, but looking back on how I acted and everything that I did for him this is the only conclusion that I can come up with. I may have done some extremely messed up things to him way later down the road but when it came to our earlier online time together I never remember doing anything to wrong him. I bent over backwards to make sure that he was happy about things. Even when it was forgiving him for cheating, saying awful things to me, or trying to help him through another suicide attempt.

And because this blog could be SO LONG if I keep going I'm just going to limit it to the end of high school for me. By Senior year Mike and I were still together. Talking regularly on the phone and online and sometimes sending letters to each other. We were back playing Everquest and our characters Shintou and Kailena were together and everything seemed to be going perfectly. I was staying at home for college but we were planning on being together. In December of 2001 my parents invited him to come with us to Florida for a family vacation. He accepted and I finally got to meet him. We were both pretty shy about it all but we secretly held hands and shared our first kiss together. I was convinced that he was the one for me and I was going to do anything I could to keep us as a couple. My plan WAS going to work and I was willing to put his happiness and approval before my own needs and wants.

Just because we are now no longer with each other I am not going to say that we were not happy. I was with him for almost 10 years. We had some wonderful times together. I will never forget how he proposed to me. How he loved me. How happy that he could make me feel sometimes. I shared moments and things with him that were all firsts and he will always have that place in my heart. No matter how much I might not like what comes out of his mouth now about me or the hurtful things that were done and said when things were falling apart it doesn't change the good times that we had together.

My whole point of this post was just to the youth (and maybe older people too?) out there.

Please... date.

Date around.

That doesn't mean you have to get sexually active with each and every person you date. I'm not promoting that (although I do have an opinion on that... just too long of another post to do. Haha). But find out via different people what you like and what you don't in people. That quality time you spend with your peers and maybe with that special other person will show you the attributes in someone that you will want to one day marry. When dating please remember to be mindful of your partners feelings but at the same time DO NOT do things just because it will make them happy. In the end dating is about finding out about yourself too. Do not loose yourself in another person. You should be finding things out about yourself and other people too. Find out what you like and what you could do without. This might mean breaking up with people, this might mean losing a friend, you never know what could happen when it comes to matters of the heart. But you're young, don't get your sights set too high on one person so fast. It could end badly.

Myself... Mike and I were not friends before we were in love. I think that that says volumes about what happened with us. Now, I am lucky enough to be in a relationship with my best friend, the Father of my child, and I hope that someday soonish I will also be able to add the word husband to that list. I no longer believe in soulmates, but I do believe in people who are so completely compatible that you can see being with them for a lifetime and beyond (or just until your dying breath, whatever your preference on the matter is!).

Never said I was good at this type of thing!

So I NEVER said that I was good at this blogging thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've always sucked at keeping this kind of thing updated. Much has gone to the wayside, much like my poor poor Livejournal in days of old. :( But here I am trying to redeem myself and trying to cram as much baby stuff into this update as I can!!

First off since the last posting I have now turned 25 years old. Ooooh, scary I know. Jake came home from work that day with flowers, bath salts, and a little stuffed Mochi (Samoyed). And since it's been like YEARS (minus when Thrads sent me some) since I got flowers from a significant other it was like... wow. We then went to Cattleman's (a FABULOUS local steakhouse) and then to the movies to see The Proposal. Over all the best birthday I've had in years by far. And later I got a package from my parents with my new T-Mobile phone in it that I got as a present. They were switching over to T-Mobile from Spirit anyways... but my plan still had until the end of the year on it before I could switch. Instead they just got me a new phone on their new plan and Jake has my old number now so he'll have that incase of a baby emergency. At least until that plan ends in December and then they'll put him on our family plan. :D

But the baby stuff is even more fun!

So on June 29th we went in again, hoping to find out the gender of our little one. Needless to say this baby is probably going to be as much, if not more, stubborn than both Jake and I. Not a good attribute for a child this early! It decided it needed to get all curled up and not show us if it was a boy or a girl. My bladder was pretty full, but not as full as it could have been to try and get the baby all crammed into one spot. Haha. The doctor said she THOUGHT it was a boy but it would also not hold still enough to get a good finalized look at it's gender. So Baby Schweigert is still genderless. We're pretty convinced my amniotic fluid is made up entirely of caffeine and the sperm that made it was comprised of Red Bull. It moves around SO MUCH. It has also started to let me know when I'm doing something it doesn't agree with. More on that below.

But at least we finally picked out a theme for the baby room that is gender friendly! We decided on a Winnie the Pooh theme. Mostly cause all we have here is a Walmart and the theme of Pooh they have there is really cute. A light green and creme color'd theme. Baby has also finally decided to not only move (back in June) but it also is now in full kicking mode (late July/early August). It's favorite target is Mommy's bladder. Such a kind and loving child. However it is really really fun to be able to share these movements with Jake now. When I feel the little one starting to make a fuss inside I grab his hand and put it on my tummy. He's totally being a guy about it... but I can tell that he's excited every time he gets to feel the baby move. It's scary but we're taking it one day at a time and as we get closer to the due date it is a little more scary and real every day, but we also know in the end it's going to be so totally worth it.

On the gamer side of things...

We were playing WoW religiously and then Jake mostly got burned out on the leveling and the grinding (and my not catching up :p). So we decided to take a break and play Age of Conan for a while. It was a nice break, but now we're back on WoW again and I'm STILL trying to catch back up to him. One of these days I might be as into games as he is... but not anytime soon. Not with the bebe so close!

I think that's about it updating my life wise. I've finally got my art groove back and I have been posting new art up on my deviant art account. Also on that note I've started up Blessed again with the old Studio Eternity group. It's a nice fun thing for us all to do again together and I really hope we can get it back up off the ground. =D

Seeing is believing

I'm not gonna lie... all of this pregnancy stuff was extremely surreal to me until I saw that baby move for the first time on that ultrasound on May 18th, 2009. Until I got to hear it's little heartbeat and knew that I had created a life. Even though we weren't quite ready or even wanting to make this baby just yet I can't see living without it at this point either. I am completely and totally in love with a small mass of tissue and organs growing inside of me with it's tiny little soul. As I type out this blog I am 15 weeks pregnant. We get to see the little one again on Jake's birthday (June 2nd) and MIGHT be able to tell if it's a boy or a girl by then.

I have to say ever since I was little when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up it was a typical little kid response always followed by, "...but I want to be a Mommy most!". 2006 was a very hard time in my life when my ex husband and I were trying to conceive. Nothing we were doing was working. I finally started to talk to a friend of mine (who was also trying with her husband at the time) and she said that it sounded like I had what she had. She has PCOS (Poly-Cystic Ovary Syndrome). I have a lot of darker hair on my body, I have skin tags, I got overweight really fast and it was very hard to lose some if any of it, and I was always having really painful cramps randomly, not just during my period. So I went to my Gyno in 2007 about it but she said they couldn't start a test for it until we had been trying for a year. Anyone that knows me knows that 2007 is when my marriage unraveled itself (and not because we couldn't conceive). In May 2008 I had my gallbladder removed and while they were doing all the testing for that they said that they found a lot of liquid that wasn't supposed to be there in my ovaries. They said it was from cysts popping inside them and that I in fact did have PCOS. It was something that was devastating because like my friend I thought that I was going to have to wait until I was with someone that I wanted to be a parent with and that we would have to go through fertility treatments. And have my heart break a little more every month that we couldn't get pregnant.

Jake, bless his soul, was always joking about his 'super sperm'. But since I was on the pill (more to control the ovulation and cramp pains than actually preventing pregnancy) and I had my condition I just thought that such a thing really wasn't possible. I have never been so glad to have been so wrong. I thank God every day for my little miracle. And I've made a promise to myself and my unborn baby that I will love it no matter what it does. I will love this little baby and will give it everything that I can (within reason, haha) to make sure that it has a happy and comfortable life. While Jake isn't so poetic about what he wants for the baby I'm extremely happy to be with someone I really feel that I can trust with this little life. Someone that I love and that in turn loves me for the way that I am and loves this child already (maybe!) as much as I do. Going through this together is going to be one of the hardest but most rewarding things that we will ever do. And while we don't plan on having another one until after we're married and a little more prepared in life for more we're going to love this one to pieces in the meantime.

And honestly, I don't think life could get much better than this right now.