Here we go AGAIN.....

Last week was a very eventful one! After weeks of bedrest to stop pre-term labor, I finally reached FULL TERM and was doing anything I could to start labor.  I ate two whole fresh pineapples over the course of three days, walked about 20 miles in those same three days, had as much sex as my poor exhausted hubby could handle, and even used accupressure & aromatherapy to get things moving.  I had lots of great contractions, but any time they started to get into a good 'productive' feeling pattern, they would stop.

Tuesday morning I had my 40 week checkup at the OB, and she checked my cervix for progress; I was dialted to 'almost 5 cm' .....a loose 4, at least, and was about 70% effaced.  Five days prior, I had been a 'tight 4 cm', or 3 to 4 cm and 70% so this was at least SOME progress.  I felt my body was finally getting ready enough for me to get more aggressive, so I made plans to take castor oil late that night (as planned ahead with my doula, who also gave me the protocol for Evening Primrose Oil to further ripen my cervix).....but as it turned out, I didn't have the chance to get more aggressive with it.  I went home from the checkup and started fixing lunch for my hubby, who was in a strange mood. I finally asked him outright what I had done to upset him, and he told me he wasn't mad at me.....

This is where he let me in on a BIG SECRET he had been keeping from me for weeks:

ANOTHER FUCKING DEPLOYMENT!

We don't have the exact time frame yet, but we know roughly where he's going and for how long. And we know it will be 'SOON'.  Too damned soon.  He wasn't trying to be deceptive, but he didn't want to upset me when I was supposed to be on bedrest.....finally he HAD to say something because his command was bugging him to confirm that I was 'on board' (what, like I have any fucking SAY in the matter?!?! HAH.)

I didn't cry (very much) and didn't throw a fit, just discussed it with him for a few minutes - what this means for our family, how it changes plans we had for the next year, etc. - and I went back to fixing his lunch.  I sent my best friend/battle buddy a panicked text and she calmed me down while I worked on the food.  I took Jarhead's food to him in his office/mancave, and brought mine in to join him.

Not two bites into my own lunch, I had a STRONG contraction - like a serious HOLY SHIT THAT FUCKING HURTS contraction.  I actually halfway laughed once it had passed, because my text to my friend 15 minutes prior  had included the phrase "I feel like I was just punched in the gut".  I was speaking figuratively, of course, and yet here I was LITERALLY breathless and in pain.

So all that work to get labor going, and it turns out all we had to do was give me the craziest bad news I could have imagined.  Baby #5 was born about 12 painful (all-natural) hours later, and is healthy and PERFECT.

I don't know how on earth I will survive this coming deployment, especially with a newborn AND a toddler to care for....but suffice it to say I will be blogging here more frequently.