I announced that Matt and I were expecting our first baby last summer. He deployed to Musa Qala, Afghanistan in August when I was six weeks pregnant. It was Matt’s third deployment, but this was by far the scariest and most difficult deployment. Part of it was the simple fact that Afghanistan is a completely different ball game than Iraq. Less than a month after he arrived, I got a phone call early in the morning. It was my husband telling me he had been in an IED blast and had a Grade II concussion. He had to be under observation for a week. He was obviously fine, and no one had been hurt in that particular explosion, but it felt somewhat ominous. We ended up losing five Marines and one corpsman in his unit over the course of this deployment.

Of course, being pregnant while he was deployed didn’t make the deployment any easier on me — or on him. There was the simple fact that he literally missed everything. He missed hearing the heartbeat for the first time. He missed finding out the sex. He didn’t get to see a single ultrasound or go to a single doctor’s appointment with me. He didn’t get to see my belly stretch and grow. He didn’t get to feel the baby kick or move or hiccup. There were still plenty of touching moments, of course. I recorded the heartbeat for him and played it over the phone. He got so excited that he put the sat phone on speaker and made all the Marines in the room listen, bragging that it was his baby’s heartbeat. (That made me cry.) I found out the sex several weeks early, so instead of telling him over the phone I decided to surprise him. I filled up a box full of “Its A Boy!” stuff — ribbons, buttons, little blue booties, blue confetti, an ultrasound photo in a blue picture frame, and so on and so forth — and mailed it to him. So that was how he found out that he was having a son. He got the package, opened it, and called me a few minutes later, more excited than I think I’ve ever heard him before. He actually wore the “Its A Boy!” ribbons and buttons and got reprimanded for being out of regs. So while there were some nice moments, for the most part the pregnancy was extraordinarily difficult. It was our first child together, but I had to do everything on my own: paint and decorate the nursery, pick out everything for the baby, go to my doctor’s appointments… and go to the hospital alone.

That was something that ended up affecting my blogging. This pregnancy was not an easy pregnancy. Early on, in my first trimester, I started bleeding fairly heavily. I had to go to the hospital. They couldn’t find out what caused the bleeding, and luckily I didn’t lose the baby, but I was put on pelvic rest. No working out or heavy lifting, and while I wasn’t on bed rest specifically, I had to stay off my feet as much as I could. Later, in the second trimester, I started having some preterm contractions while I was grocery shopping. So it was another trip to the hospital for me. They ended up stopping on their own, but it was another scary moment. I was just past the point of viability. The baby could technically survive if born early, but the odds would be against him. And once I got into the third trimester, things didn’t get any easier.

It started with some swelling. One of the midwives at my practice noticed I was swelling up everywhere. My feet, my legs, my arms, my hands… there was even a pocket of fluid in my stomach (as if my belly wasn’t big enough already). Then my blood pressure started rising rapidly. And while my weight gain hadn’t been too extreme throughout the pregnancy, I suddenly started packing it on extremely quickly. As anyone who has been pregnant before can probably guess, I was heading towards preeclampsia. The doctors did some tests, and yep — I had preeclampsia. For anyone who isn’t familiar, preeclampsia is a condition some women get during pregnancy which can be very serious. If left untreated, it will develop into eclampsia which can (and will) cause seizures and eventually death for both mother and baby. The only “cure” for preeclampsia is to deliver the baby. Well, that was just not an option for me yet, and so I begged and pleaded for them to wait until Matt would be home at the end of March. So I spent a lot of the third trimester constantly either in the doctor’s office at my practice or at the labor and delivery ward in the hospital being monitored. I was constantly hooked up to blood pressure cuffs and external monitoring bands, measuring my blood pressure, checking for contractions, and making sure the baby was doing all right. At this point, I was on strict bed rest and was dealing with pitted edema — swelling so bad that you could poke me and leave an indent in my skin for several minutes. My legs, my ankles, my feet, my arms, my hands, my face… all were swollen to epic proportions. Matt was due home soon, and I can’t say I was exactly thrilled with the thought of him coming home to a gigantic, swollen wife. I definitely felt the least attractive I’ve ever felt in my entire life. But the homecoming was coming up soon, and I was still excited to see him, of course. And I was relieved. He’d been in a safe zone for a while, but I still wouldn’t feel like he was safe until he was home. I was also not going to be able to relax until he was home because we had both been stressed, through the entire deployment, that he wouldn’t be home in time for the birth of the baby.

Then, we ended up having to face what we were so worried about. Due to the preeclampsia, the doctors wanted to induce me about a week before Matt would be home. I cried and begged and pleaded, and they relented. Matt would be home on a Sunday, and they would induce me that Monday night. We were disappointed we wouldn’t have much time alone together before having the baby, but still… it was better than nothing. We weren’t about to complain. Then, his flight got cancelled. We didn’t know when he would be coming home. In the hospital, I tried to get the doctor to agree to push the induction back another couple of days, but this time they stood firm. I was panicked and terrified — I really didn’t want to have to go through the birth of my son, my first child, without Matt by my side. But, everything ended up working out. I was scheduled to go to the hospital at 5:00 pm, and his flight was scheduled to land at Cherry Point at around 8:00 am. It would be close, but he would be home in time, which was all that mattered.

Well, the military never makes things that easy, do they? The flight landed on time. But the buses were not there to pick them up. Somehow, someone had forgotten to make sure the buses were there to pick the Marines up and take them to Camp Lejeune where their families were waiting anxiously in the freezing cold rain. Around five hours later, they finally got to the base and Matt and I were finally reunited. It was the best day I could have asked for. Not only was my husband finally home, safe and in my arms, but we would get to meet our son later that night.

Of course, labor and delivery doesn’t always go as planned, either. I finally was given Pitocin to induce labor at around 3:00 am Tuesday morning. The baby was turned around the wrong way, causing back labor. My blood pressure was spiking to unholy levels, so we rushed the anesthesiologist in and got the epidural done quickly. I spent most of the day sleeping, on the advice of my midwife, who warned me that I would need my energy when the time came to push. I had an IV in with magnesium sulfate, along with the Pitocin and fluids to keep me hydrated. That, plus the internal monitoring they were doing to measure the contractions and the baby’s heart rate, meant that I was stuck in bed the entire time, so sleep was really the only thing I could do. We hit the first roadblock when the baby’s heart rate suddenly started dropping. It was a scary moment, and it was decided that we needed to stop the Pitocin for a little while to slow the contractions and let the baby recover. After about half an hour, when he was doing better, we went back at it. I dilated at a good pace and he was slowly moving down to where he needed to go. When I got to 9cm, everything started to go a little haywire. First, the epidural wore off. It was painful, obviously, but the anesthesiologist fixed it. The problems were just beginning, though. The epidural wore off a second time, and unfortunately, it wore off right around the time that I started feeling the urge to push. The contractions were painful — feeling like I needed to push and not being able to was absolutely excruciating. I was still at 9cm, you see, and the baby hadn’t moved past zero station, and it had been several hours like this. The doctor started worrying that he was too big to be delivered vaginally. We were making no progress, and we started thinking that we would need to do a c-section. To make matters worse, the baby’s heart rate was plummeting. It was getting lower and lower, and he just was not handling the contractions well. I wasn’t either, for that matter. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to start pushing. I was in agony, clinging to the bedrail, curled into the fetal position on my side, crying and panting. I decided that the safest thing to do was just to proceed with the c-section. I didn’t want to risk the health of my baby, and he clearly wasn’t handling labor well.

The c-section went pretty routinely, I think. When the baby came out, though, he was blue, floppy, and not breathing. I don’t know how long it actually was — it felt like a lifetime to me, and I was crying and asking every nurse who walked by if he was OK — but eventually his color pinked up and he let out a good loud cry. Matt got to go see him first, and brought him over to me for a moment before he had to be taken away to the nursery. I was taken off to recovery, where they were again trying desperately to get my blood pressure under control. I was in excruciating pain, and until my blood pressure went down to more manageable levels, I couldn’t go back to my room and couldn’t see the baby. After about two hours, which I spent alternating between crying, begging to see the baby, and sleeping, I finally got back to my room. About half an hour later, they brought the baby in and I got to hold my son, named Benjamin Matthew, for the first time. As you’ll see in the picture below (along with my grotesquely swollen hands), I was crying hysterically. It can basically be summed up that I spent most of the 24 hours of labor and delivery crying. And as soon as I held him, none of the hardships of pregnancy and labor mattered. He was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe how perfect he was. He really was perfect. He came in at a healthy 7lbs, 7oz and at 21 inches long. The decision to have a c-section turned out to be a good one, as his head was indeed too large to fit through the birth canal.

So, we’ve been spending the past few weeks adjusting to life as parents. Matt is a wonderful dad, as I knew he would be. Ben is going to be one month old tomorrow, and it really is the most amazingly life-changing thing I’ve ever done. It feels like I can’t remember what life was like before he was here. I look at him, and I look at my husband next to me, and I know that I am a blessed woman indeed. I honestly couldn’t ask for more than what I have now.

My plan from now on is to try to figure out a schedule where I can get back to writing in between taking care of the baby during the day. I ask that you continue to be patient, as posting will resume, albeit sporadically for now. Here are some pictures for you, though — pictures from the homecoming, from the birth, and of our beautiful little family.

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After extensive consultations with our committee, we have determined that the following blogresses, divas all, are the nominees for the coveted honor of Grande Conservative Blogress Diva 2011, the tiara commonly known as the “Ethel” in honor of one of perhaps the greatest Republican diva of all time.

Runners up will be honored as Conservative Blogress Diva Regent, also known as the Agnes or Endora in honor of another staunchly Republican diva.

Remember, to qualify as a conservative blogress diva, a nominee need only be a strong woman who commands the respect of gay male conservatives. She need not be conservative herself.

Let the cat fight competition begin.

Last year’s winner — and the winner the year before that — was Pamela Gellar, with neoneocon serving as regent. And I just cannot tell you how much I would love to be this year’s winner. (Do I have to pull out the hubby-serving-in-Afghanistan and the baby cards? Because I totally will.)

You can vote once a day, so I need everyone to please vote every day. I am up against some stiff competition — Michelle Malkin, Mary Katharine Ham, Tammy Bruce, Melissa Clouthier, Fausta Wertz, Ann Althouse, just to name a few — so I need your votes! Right now, I’m trailing to Clarice Feldman from American Thinker, so please go get me in the lead!

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And, OK, the entire military track doesn’t feature me. But I am going to be moderator for one of the panels. Here’s a little sneak peek of what we have planned for you:

Panel 1: Surprise for now
Panel 2: Social Media: Force Multiplier for Spouses?
Panel 3: Media and the Military: Myth versus Reality
Panel 4: Ideal versus Field: Social and New Media In Less Than The Best Circumstances

I was very kindly asked to be the moderator for the Panel 2, and I of course agreed. I’m really looking forward to being there. We also have two very exciting special guests on the panel with me!

Social Media: Force Multiplier for Spouses?
New and Social media have changed how spouses communicate with each other and share information within their companies and with other groups. It also is changing how spouses cope with the stresses of being separated and with having their other halves in harm’s way. Join spouse blogger and journalist Cassy Fiano, journalist and commentator Melissa Clouthier, and spouse blogger Cassandra of Villanous Company as they explore how changes in media and technology are changing the world of spouse blogging.

While Panel 2 will be amazing, of course, there’s even more excitement in store. A very interesting science fiction writer has agreed to be on Panel 3, and a surprise participant for Panel 4. It’s going to be a great time, you’ll get to meet a lot of new people, and learn a lot of interesting things about the military and new media. And hey, you get to meet me!

Hope to see a lot of you there!

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It’s difficult to look at Philadelphia as that beacon of freedom when you consider the big government bureaucrats looking to squeeze every dollar out of the city’s residents that they can. The newest scheme? Philadelphia wants to charge bloggers $300, regardless of whether or not they make a profit. Get that? Even if you make no money, you still have to pay up.

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic
, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

… When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city’s now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, “I was told to hire an accountant.”

She’s not alone. After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

Even if, as with Sean Barry, that profit is $11 over two years.

… Even though small-time bloggers aren’t exactly raking in the dough, the city requires privilege licenses for any business engaged in any “activity for profit,” says tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann. This applies “whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year,” he adds.

So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there’s the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, "Taxed Out," April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — “businesses,” and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

These despicable bureaucrats would have fined Thomas Payne for distributing Common Sense.

Let’s get realistic here. Most bloggers, even if they have ads on their site, make very little money. You can get plenty of hits, but making money as a blogger — to where you can actually support yourself — is difficult. If this is the route that Philly bureaucrats want to go, then they might as well start requiring kids operating lemonade stands to get business licenses too. Why not? Why stop at blogging? There’s a lot of good money to be made by squeezing every penny out of Philly residents.

Even worse, this is a gross infringement on freedom of speech. Philadelphia residents who simply want to publicly express their opinion on anything — whether it be politics, gardening, sports, music, anything — will be punished. There’s no excuse for this, beyond gross government overreach as usual. City of Brotherly Love? Doesn’t sound like it to me.

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Guys, make sure you swing by their blogs and bookmark them.

• House of Eratosthenes, Morgan’s blog
• Snark and Boobs, Lori’s blog
• Finding Ponies, Jim and Lynn’s blog

Again, make sure to pay them all a visit and here’s one last thank you to some great bloggers for helping me out!

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• To Cassy for letting us hang here.  Yea, we had to do the blog equivalents of feeding the cats and cleaning the fish tank, but it was pure joy.  I just want to make it clear that I was the one that fished Lori’s beer cans out of the pool.  And if the Kung Pao Chicken box is gone from the fridge, it’s only because I threw it away since it would have gone bad anyway.
• To Matt and Cassy for doing two of the hardest jobs in the world.  Protecting our country and supporting the protectors.  We’ll take care of you two anyday if it just involves having fun on the blog.  Ask us for something hard next time.
• To the loyal readers of the blog for sticking around and giving us some comments to keep us going.  We appreciate the dialog, and the occasional disagreements.  It’s all part of making things better, even on this small scale.
• To the current administration for keeping things soooo amusing.  It makes it easy to be prolific.
• To Lynn, Lori, and Morgan, for keeping it challenging to come up with even cooler stuff to write.
• To beer, just because.

Come see us on our blogs.

Thanks,

JimF

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First, we’ve got Morgan Freeberg of House of Eratosthenes. Morgan’s one of the rising stars in the blogosphere.

Second, the amazing and imcomparable Lori Ziganto of Snark and Boobs. Lori is one of my co-bloggers and fellow Feminist Hawks at David Horowitz’s Newsreal.

Finally, two bloggers from one of my favorite new blogs, Finding Ponies, Lynn Comp and Jim Fister are on board. I’ve been linking them for quite some time now, and they are both brilliant.

You’re going to be in really good hands with these four great bloggers. Make sure to give them a very warm welcome. And while I’m in gone, I’ll probably be checking in from time to time to post some pictures and updates from Hawaii. So make sure to keep checking back here every day, and enjoy the guest blogging!

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We’ll be talking about Debbie Schlussel, so you know it’ll be entertaining. Don’t miss it!

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Considering I’ve had a small amount of experience with Debbie Schlussel’s insane ramblings, I wrote about John’s post about Debbie.

How insane is Debbie Schlussel when it comes to Emily Zanotti? She searches out the blogosphere for any post, any at all, that mentions Emily in a positive manner. She then proceeds to troll the hell out of the comment sections, blasting pretty much anyone and everyone who has the audacity to not think that Emily is a vicious murderous Jew-hater (which, of course, she is not). This has happened to posts I’ve written several times, and I know I am not the only blogger to have been forced to peer into the depths of Debbie Schlussel’s insanity. Now, she’s like the boy who cried wolf, accusing every conservative who criticizes her of anti-semitism. As John pointed out, showcasing her stream of lunacy on her twitter feed last night (that’s some entertaining stuff, go read it), she’s now attacking Melissa Clouthier (a close friend of mine and someone I know is not an anti-semite), Tabitha Hale, and several others — including Dennis Prager and Michael Medved. She’s even accusing Mark Levin of supporting Hezbollah! My God, someone has seriously gone off the deep end. Most, if not all, of the bloggers she’s accusing of anti-semitism have been ardent defenders of Israel, myself included. I’ve received some of the worst hate mail in my life because I had the nerve to defend Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident, but I’m sure that as soon as I post this I’ll get slapped with the anti-semite label, too.

Gee, I must be a psychic. Because Debbie came along last night and wrote the most unimaginative, uncreative, and unintelligent attempt at an insult. What, exactly, did she do? She called me trash, a hooker, a two-bit whore, fat, and ugly. She based all of this off of a picture that isn’t even on my blog. She went digging through my Facebook and picked one that I guess she thinks is slutty or unflattering or something. This is the picture she used:

And what did creative little Debbie-kins put next to my picture?

Oh my gosh! That is just so insulting! And unusual! Because, you know, Debbie Schlussel never calls people Nazis or anti-Semites.

Oh, wait, that’s right. Debbie Schlussel always calls people anti-Semitic. Dare to disagree with anything she says or criticize her, and that automatically makes you an anti-Semite. It doesn’t matter if you don’t hate the Jews or if you support Israel. Hell, she’s even called actual Jews anti-Semites. But hey, in crazy Debbie-Schlussel world, logic and reasoning does not exist, so she can wildly accuse anyone of anything without any basis of fact.

Anyways, let’s dive into Schlussel’s stupid blog post about me, shall we?

Check out this photo, below. Is it a two-bit backwoods hooker . . . or an anti-Semitic “conservative” blogger who, today, joined the Twitter chorus of anti-Semitic bloggers on the right who’ve defended and praised lunatic Emily Zanotti and her four-year campaign of stalking me, filing raving (and quickly dismissed) complaints against me to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, and praising Holocaust-denying death, rape, and torture threats on my life? It looks like the former, but “looks” (if you can call this sleaziness that) are deceiving. I’d give you her name, but her site is barely read, and I don’t want to give her any new readers or traffic. She’s currently in oblivion where she belongs. Sorry, I’m not sure what she charges, but the outfit screams “no dolla, no holla.” Trash is trash. Belongs on the curb to get picked up.

Right. So basically, she’s admitting that she can’t debate or dispute anything I said in my post with any kind of facts. The only defense she has is to make lame personal attacks against me. And hey, I didn’t start that game, but I’ll play it. I find it extremely rich that someone who looks like this would have the gall to attack the way I look or call me fat:

As for my blog being in oblivion, well, I’m not the one starting a blog war with every single prominent conservative blogger in existence in a desperate attempt to get attention. What really cracks me up is this: the idiot said she wasn’t going to link to my blog or mention me by name because she didn’t want to send me any traffic. But hey, what do you know? Right there on the bottom, in her tags, is my name!

What a freaking idiot.

The other thing I noticed was her obsessive editing of her comment section. When the post first went up, there were originally seven comments. Four of them were defending me. In less than an hour, they were removed. Throughout the night last night, I know that several of my readers posted comments defending me. They were removed. I posted a comment, and it was removed. She apparently cannot stand the fact that some people disagree with her and have the NERVE to respectfully express it.

As for my being a hooker and a whore, I’d like to point out that I am married. I am MARRIED, to a Marine, no less. I love my husband so much and I am so proud of him. And he loves me. We are happy together. If we were out somewhere and a man called me a hooker and a whore in front of my husband, Matt would beat the living shit out of him. Debbie Schlussel should thank her lucky stars that she’s a woman, that she doesn’t live in North Carolina, and that she didn’t bring her crap to my husband. But we’re talking about a blogger who has absolutely no ammunition against me except idiotic personal attacks. I’ve been blogging for years now, and I’m used to the personal attacks. They don’t bother me much. In fact, I’m a little disappointed that anti-Semitic whore was the best Schlussel would come up with. It’s just so unimaginative! Come on, Deb. You can do better than that!

Seriously. Is this really the best you can do? Bring it on, Debbie. BRING. IT. ON.

She’s like the bully in the schoolyard who feels like a big guy because they keep all the other kids down. Debbie Schlussel is a nutjob who goes on the war path against other bloggers to make herself feel important, self-righteous, and relevant. She attacks people for no reason whatsoever because she is so miserable and crazy that she has to resort to desperate measures to make herself feel important.

Really, in the end, I feel kind of sorry for her. That’s got to be a miserable existence.

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