Sick and alone...

So, it's been another month and here we are with Medical Mondays again - I have LOVED participating in this blog hop and finding so many new blogs to read and follow - I haven't been fantastic about leaving comments, but I am working on getting better with that! If you're here from MM - welcome! SO glad to have you here! I'm Jessica, mom to Owen (21 months) and soon to be mom to Noah (34 weeks in my tummy), and wife to J - a first year ped. surgery fellow here in the Midwest! Feel free to look around and stay a while - we are always looking to make new friends!

One thing that I didn't realize would be coming when I married my then resident and now fellow was all of the travelling. I knew he'd be on call and all of that, but I didn't realize we'd spend months on end with him off interviewing for fellowships, weeks away for board review courses and tests, and the conferences that seem to be happening far too often. Now, I see some of the other wives and families totally taking advantage of these conferences and heading off with their med. spouses and making a family trip out of it (which we plan to do with the next one in October) - but that isn't always feasible - I mean, I am 34 weeks pregnant!

Anyway, this last week - J was away at another one of these conferences - he left our house at about 4am Wednesday morning and returned home at 11pm last night - and now for the kicker - he's on call today! LOVELY! I guess we'll see him tomorrow! So, enough with setup already - let's get to the sick and alone part....

It seems inevitable that with as much as J is gone - he's not going to be around when some a lot of things happen. Last year, when he was away what I'm pretty sure was this same conference - although it could have been another - Owen and I contracted some HORRIBLE stomach virus and we were both down for the count. It was completely terrifying watching my 9 month old throwing up over and over scared, because he didn't understand what was wrong with his body - and being so sick myself that at one point - I just threw up on the carpet right on top of the baby vomit I was attempting to clean up! I convinced J to stay at his conference (we couldn't afford a last minute flight home anyway) and we eked through the week, survived the terrible tummy bug, and managed to be mostly better by the time daddy got home (although clearly didn't rid the house of the germs well enough because J got whatever we had the day after he got home!).

So, this year - J was prepared - especially knowing how far along I would be in this pregnancy - he went off to his conference and he made sure that his mom would come visit us for the weekend - so we wouldn't be alone. Unfortunately, he was right to have worried! Wednesday morning I woke up with a killer migraine and you really can't take anything but Tylenol while pregnant - so that didn't help much - thankfully Owen's Cars obsession saved me and allowed us to spend most of the day cuddled up on the couch watching both movies in the dark - by midday Thursday I was feeling much better - I chalked it up to Murphy's Law that I/we only seem to get sick when J is 1/2 a country away, but we made it through - with some convincing again that J didn't need to come home as his mom was coming in Friday afternoon.

My MIL arrived and we were able to spend the rest of the weekend getting lots of freezer meals prepped for when Noah arrives and doing some other prep - but of course my migraine wasn't the end of the "my-hubby-is-away-and-couldn't-possibly-get-back-to-help" drama! Saturday night I started having contractions - more than just a little minor Braxton Hicks tightening, but not super bad either - I had quite a few while we were out to dinner and called J to let him know (effectively ruining his evening and scaring the poo out of him) and I went home to chug some water and lay down - contractions subsided and baby is still in there baking away - but I'm fairly certain that J doesn't plan on leaving us at home and going to any more conferences any time soon! Although, I seem to do the same to him when he's on call too and he can't really avoid that (if you haven't read Owen's birth story - J was on call when I went into labor last time and had to scramble in the middle of the night to get someone else to the hospital).

How about you? Does everything seem to fall apart when your spouse leaves town or is on call? It seems like in this house - if something is going to go wrong, it will only happen when it is impossible for J to help/be there!