It’s been a while since I managed this one, but I decided to take advantage of the kids’ naps and add new coupons and discounts to it. It takes a lot of time to research the coupons, and I make sure to add the expiration dates, both for my own tracking and in case I miss one and a coupon stays up past the expiration date.

Getting everything done I would like to do isn’t easy. I have a goal of going back to medical transcription on Monday, so I don’t have much time left to finish the things I would like to. But it is fun.

They’re rather difficult to mix in some ways, but very much worth it. I’m having to get used to working more slowly now that I have a baby again, and find more ways to spend extra time with my daughter so that she doesn’t feel left out.

How do I do it? It’s not uncommon now for me to type with one hand… slow, more difficult, but it lets me keep going even while nursing. I don’t work on the computer during all feedings, but it’s one thing I can do relatively easily.

On days like today things get even more difficult. Both kids have colds, so I have to deal with children who really need me. This cuts down quite a bit on what I can do. Fortunately, Ariel’s cold was at its worst yesterday, so she’s relatively content to play. It’s a cool, cloudy day, so I’m not letting her play outside while she’s still sick, but there are still things she and I can do. I pulled out a little radio with earphones for her, which she enjoys quite a bit.

I’ve also taken quite a bit of advantage of Ariel’s computer, encouraging her to work beside me. She’d rather play the few games she has on this computer, but the other one suffices most of the time. It was cheap – just $15 or so at Target. Much cheaper than the $50 or so that many cost, although I see Amazon has a Disney Princess Laptop on a pretty good sale right now.

I also tell Ariel a lot about what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter that she isn’t 3 years old yet, she likes to know what kind of work I am doing. She is fascinated by my medical transcription, which I have not started back up yet, and is curious about my websites. I hope that by involving her from a young age that she will be encouraged to be something of an entrepreneur herself someday.

I made some changes on my ebook review page. I added a bunch of books to be reviewed on parenting and kids. It will take me a long time to get all the books reviewed, but it’s a nice start to have them available for visitors to consider.

There’s so much I want to get done, and I really need to push right now to get it done before I utterly have to go back to medical transcription. I want to have more content so I can increase my revenue and finally only need to work on my websites. Some of this does cost money, such as buying the ebooks, but it should be worth it in the long run.

Gage actually makes this easier than I expected. Aside from very long nursing sessions, he’s a very easy baby. My brother-in-law just dropped off what I had hoped would include the bassinet to my Pack ‘n Play, but it had all the extra parts except that. Guess we’ll have to go look for it tomorrow.

Get your Craigslist posting transmitted into outer space!

Yes, really. They won an eBay auction to send postings into outer space. This happens May 15, 2005. It’s free, and just looks like a fun thing to do.

Let’s face it, you’ll most likely never find out that some other civilization received your ad, and it certainly won’t help your home business, but it’s also an intriguing thing to participate in. Yes, I put in an ad for one of my sites, just for the fun of it.

I’m finally almost back to myself… online at least.

I got quite a surprise at my February 23 OB appointment. The doctor did an ultrasound and ordered me straight to the hospital for a C-section. It turned out that my amniotic fluid was extremely low. Fortunately, fetal monitoring showed that my baby was not in distress, so it was merely an urgent C-section rather than an emergency one, meaning they waited for enough time since I had last eaten or had anything to drink before doing the surgery. How I wished I had eaten more, as the meal had been rather light!

All this put me pretty much into a daze for the entire day, and frankly for a few beyond. I just could not focus on anything as I waited for the surgery, filled out paperwork as requested, but really had trouble absorbing that I was having a somewhat premature baby. I was 36.5 weeks along, full term starts at 37 weeks, but the OB warned me that there was a 50-50 chance that my baby would spend a week in NICU. Scary stuff to have to absorb over a few hours. We called my mother and my husband’s parents on our way to the hospital. My husband’s parents were watching Ariel, who had been told that we would only be a couple hours – how it hurt to break that promise to her, but this kind of thing was why we’d been having her stay overnight with them regularly.

There was some joking around in the operating room. The nurse who checked my wristband to confirm who I was and what I was there for teased that it was to ensure that I didn’t get a breast job by mistake. I pointed out that having a baby meant I’d look that way shortly anyhow.

Having a C-section is weird. The spinal means that you don’t feel any pain; from the hips down I felt warm and a pins and needles sensation. The surgery itself just felt like a bunch of tugging. It’s very strange having such a disconnect from the birth experience.

The worst part was waiting to hold my son afterward. They kept him in the nursery for hours after the surgery. Thank goodness he was fine and did not need to spend time in the NICU. They did, however, feed him with a bottle during that time several times, so I feel quite fortunate that he is so good at breastfeeding now. It is the loneliest feeling to know that you have given birth and to have to wait to hear if your baby is okay.

Things are going well now. We named our son Gage, and he is growing well. He was 5 lb 9 oz at birth, and now, at less than 2 weeks old is up to 6 lb. This is wonderful because the usual rule of thumb is that a baby should reach his birthweight by 2 weeks of age. So nice to be told that he is thriving. It no doubt helps that I have been following my doctor’s orders and making Gage nurse every 2 hours during the day. It’s very hard to wake him up sometimes. I have to wash his face until he’s willing to nurse. This can take 15 minutes some days, but it’s getting better.

Ariel is a wonderful big sister. She loves touching her brother’s head and is very gentle with him. I’ve helped her to hold him on her lap. We do everything we can to keep her involved, so she doesn’t feel too left out.

Getting back into running my business has not been easy. I still have some things to catch up on, and doing those every 2 hour feedings takes up a lot of my day. Then there’s coping with the pain from the C-section. I can finally sit up comfortably in the computer chair for several hours, so I can finally get things moving again.

It will take a bit longer to get into transcription again, longer until I can work a regular schedule for it. I’m still exhausted from my surgery, and I don’t know how long it will take to get past that. I love to take a nap when I can each day right now – some days it’s the only way I can cope. But I do what I can when I can and take note of areas where I need to get things done. Over time, I know I will get things back to normal.