...and I thought I was busy before the baby.

These past four weeks have been a brand new experience, both good and bad. It's been the shortest and fastest four weeks of my life and I think that I've experienced every emotion known to man all within the same hour... my poor husband.
I had to go back to school a couple days after I had Travis and this is basically how it's been... My bum hurts when I sit, my feet hurt from standing and walking at clinicals and my head hurts all the time. I don't want to go to school because I want to be with my baby and I can't concentrate at school anyway because I am just thinking about my baby. When I go home I have so much homework to do, but I don't want to do it because I've been gone all day and I want to hold my baby so I hold my baby and then I feel guilty for not getting my homework done and then I feel guilty about feeling guilty. So then when I do start my homework I feel guilty about not holding him. Then my exams come around and for the first time in this program I have not read the chapters at all and I have not taken any notes and I haven't paid attention in class so I just go off of a prayer that I get a 70% on my exam because that is the minimum we are allowed. Then there is my clinicals which are anywhere from one to three times a week and they range from 8-12 hours and the twelve hour days are more like 14 hours if you count driving. So I go all day at clinicals feeling tired and crappy from getting up to pump in the night and then getting up for Travis to give Ben a break. When I get home from clinicals I am tired and worn out so all I want to do is go to sleep, but I want to hold Travis too and he is higher priority.
Things are getting better though. I see a light. We only have two weeks and then a big nasty state board exam and then I am a nurse. My bum feels a lot better, my legs don't hurt as much and my head.... well that still hurts a lot, but my mom tells me that's what having kids does to parents. Ben has been really good while I've been in school too. He gets up half the time with Travis and on nights I have clinicals he usually gets up all night with him so I just have to worry about pumping.
It's been a whole new experience. We've really enjoyed having Travis with us and if we could go back I would do the same thing again. Travis has been with me literally since day one of nursing school (my teacher felt the need to calculate) so he has been my biggest motivation to get through school. He's so cute and he's getting so chunky. It has been good for Ben and I too. It's almost like getting married all over again. It's both exciting and scary at the same time and we've gotten to see a whole new side of each other that we've never seen before. It has been good and worth all the stress.

Travis Jay Cook

Tuesday morning at 4:30 a.m. Ben and I welcomed our newest member of our family Travis Jay (named after his daddy and his Grandpa Cook). He was a very naughty boy and gave his parents and Grandma quite the scare. They started me on Cytotec at 7:30 p.m. and around 8:30 or 9:00 I started having contractions. The contractions werevery long and abnormal. I had one that was 4 minutes and then one that was almost 7. Every time I had one Travis's heart rate went down to 66. A bunch of nurses came in and put me in different positions and strapped oxygen to my head. They couldn't get a hold of my doctor so they called the on-call doctor and told me I was going in for a c-section. Ben signed a bunch of papers so we could go, but just as we were leaving my doctor called and told the nurses to wait until he got there. They gave me two shots of this medication to stop the contractions and it made me get the shakes really bad for the rest of the night. When the doctor got there he told us he wanted us to hold out until midnight so we did, but I had one more bad contraction so he came in and broke my water around midnight and after that everything went smoothly and he came happy and healthy. I wasn't going to get an epidural, but after I started throwing up my mom talked me into it. I held off until 2:00 so I only had it in for 2 1/2 hours so I'm not a complete wimp.

There is no question about it, Ben is the daddy. The only thing he got from me was his big eyes and curly toes.

Grandma Hagg (a name picked by my sister) and Travis.

Daddy and Travis.

Mommy and Travis.

Here is his big blue sleepy eyes.

He is a very happy baby, he has already started to giggle in his sleep.

He is a little camera shy.

Finals Week

There is nothing more stressful in our house than finals week. It is usually the week Ben and I stay away from eachother and don't talk because we are both so stressed we don't have anything nice to say at all. Usually we live off of pizza and rootbeer all week, but this time we lived off of peanut butter and jelly and two loafs of bread. That is all we ate all week and I'm not exaggerating, these two jars were full with the seal on them at the beginning of finals week and now they are down to this. I think it will be a while before we will have peanut butter and jelly again!

Our stress and studying did pay off though. We both pulled out with all A's. I had a close call. I have a 5 credit class I was getting an 89.95% in, but it turns out on the final there was a question with all the right answers on it, but for some reason the computer marked it all wrong so with that one correction I pulled out with an A-.

Personality Test

I found a personality test online that you can compare yourself to your spouse so I made Ben take it with me. I thought that the results were pretty accurate for the most part. It was kind of funny so here is the differences between Ben and I....

Openness to Experience/Intellect

High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative.


Ben enjoys having novel experiences and seeing things in new ways.
(Your percentile: 84)


Erin is somewhat conventional.
(Their percentile: 20)

Conscientiousness

High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent.


Ben tends to do things somewhat haphazardly.
(Your percentile: 30)


Erin is very well-organized, and can be relied upon.
(Their percentile: 89)

Extraversion

High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet.


Ben tends to shy away from social situations.
(Your percentile: 37)


Erin is neither particularly social or reserved.
(Their percentile: 42)

Agreeableness

High scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous.


Ben tends to consider the feelings of others.
(Your percentile: 79)


Erin finds it easy to criticize others.
(Their percentile: 17)

Neuroticism

High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy.


Ben remains calm, even in tense situations.
(Your percentile: 1)


Erin tends to become anxious or nervous.
(Their percentile: 71)

Clinicals

Only one more time in clinicals for the semester. This semester has been really fun because there have been more hands on opportunities for us to learn and our group this semester has been really good. Our instructor is always giving us a hard time because we all meet together for lunch and what is supposed to be a half hour always ends up a little longer.

Jeremy, Amanda, Allison, Clara, Jayson (our instructor), Meghan, Taylor, me, Ivy.