Ready for a Break

Long birth yesterday, culminating in a csection after 7 hours of pushing that went exactly nowhere. Babe was 11lbs 12oz, and sealed the deal by presenting acynclitic and deflexed.

Anyway.

My biggest hugest issue is child care. My friends are wonderful but far-flung. My neighbor/aunt has placed herself off the roster for anything but a few hours here and there in between other arrangements. She has 5 kids of her own and her reasoning - that it was insane in her house with 8 kids for a whole day at a time - is not in the least faulty, however inconvenient it may be.

I wish, yet again, for family. MIL is wonderful when she is available, willing to move mountains for the kids. But she is one person and she's got a difficult schedule herself. Fran isn't shirking, but he's got to work to keep this whole crazy enterprise afloat. I've survived for four years out here 2000 miles from my family, and I still miss their presence often.

I cannot afford to hire someone to watch the kids, I just can't. And my help is stretched so, so thin and sometimes nonexistant. I had to scramble hard to keep the kids watched yesterday, and it is fortunate it worked out, but it almost didn't.

I have nothing to offer people in exchange for watching my kids.

Figuring this out could make or break my education. This whole school thing just isn't going to happen if I can't get it set up.

I find myself scrambling to get covered for the last few weeks of this placement, and looking very much forward to the time Fran is spending away in HI, when I've placed myself entirely off of the clinical schedules and call and backup lists. At least I won't have to stress out, hour by hour, about what I would do if I were called *now.*