And so it begins . . .

The End of Lost

This post will only be of interest to anyone who's watched Lost. It'll also be full of spoilers so if you were thinking of watching the dvd's, I'd advise you to stop here.

LOST first aired on September 22, 2004. From the very beginning Jeremy & I were hooked. The first episode cost $11 million to make but it was worth it. It has to be one of the best pilot episodes of a tv show ever. In that first 2 hours we met many different characters, all who crashed on an island while flying from Sydney, Austrailia to Los Angelas. There was a monster who killed the pilot & uprooted trees in the jungle. And there was a message in French that had been repeating for 16 years. So lots of mystery.

It all ended this past Sunday. And there are mixed feelings about the finale.

Personally I'm fine with the whole "they-made-their-own-limbo-place-so-they-can-be-together-when-they-die" ending. I liked getting to see characters that died so long ago, like Boone, Shannon, & Libby. Watching some of them remember their time on the island was touching, like Jin & Sun or Charlie & Claire. Probably the one I was most excited about was Sawyer & Juliet because her death was so sad & I cried like a baby seeing Sawyer cry. And it's kinda neat to see the show end with Jack closing his eye to be opposite of the beginning when he opened his eye after the crash. No problems with all that.

The problem is the producers lied. They said we were going to get answers. For 6 seasons they bring us question after question. Sure, they answered a few through this last season (Adam & Eve, Richard's story, who the whispers are). But there is so much left unanswered. Let me just name a few:

1. Walt - probably the biggest question is "what was special about Walt?". He was kidnapped by the Others, he freaked them out about something he did, & then they just let him leave with his dad. It looks like his story was overlooked because he aged & grew so much that it just wouldn't work. So let this be a lesson to tv show writers: Don't give a child on the brink of puberty a major storyline if it's not going to progress faster than 3 months. But it still would have been nice to at least been given an answer about him at some point, even if you never bring him back on the show.

2. Jacob's cabin - So who was in there & said "help me" to Locke? My guess is that it was actually the Man in Black (MIB). But had it ever been Jacob's cabin? If so, why did he leave it & let MIB in it? And what about the ash circle around it? Was that to keep him from escaping it? But that wouldn't make sense since the smoke monster went all over the island.

3. Preggos - Why couldn't women who conceived on the island sustain a pregnancy? They would die during their 2nd trimester. Did that statue have something to do with it? Ethan was born on the island but we know the statue was destroyed by then because Richard's ship destroyed it when he came like 100 years earlier.

4. The Purge - I still don't understand all that. Was Rousseau on the island & if so, how'd she survive it? And why did Ben have to do it? Was it Richard that told him to do it as mediator for Jacob? But would Jacob have told him to do that or was Richard unknowingly following MIB's orders?

5. Ben vs. Widmore - Ben said Widmore "broke the rules" when he allowed Ben's daughter to be killed. What were these rules?

Those are just a few because I know there are others that people want answered. What questions do you have?

My other problem with the finale is Ben. They just kinda let him go. I think Jack should have let Ben be the new protector of the island. He didn't give himself over to Widmore's people & allowed his daughter to be killed because he thought he was protecting the island. Ben was my favorite character of the show. I never believed he was a bad guy. He just did whatever benefited himself. Michael Emerson's acting was so good & he totally deserved last year's Emmy. Unfortuantly I don't see him getting nominated this year since he was so under-used.

So now that I've seen all 6 seasons, would I still recommend it? Yes. I really would. Yes, it makes me mad that we don't have answers to some major mysteries. But I still love the characters (except Ana Lucia). The show did a great job of getting you to like these people so early on & to have your favorites. It made it that much harder when one of them was killed off.

Whether you liked the finale or no, LOST will still always be remembered as being one of the greatest tv shows ever.

Namaste.

4 Month Checkup

Shaylin had her 4 month checkup today. I enjoy these, minus the shots. It's fun to see how much she's grown since the last time. Here are her stats:

Head circumference - 16 in.
Weight - 12 lbs. even
Length - 24 3/8 in.

This puts her in the 50th percentile for her head, 25th for weight, & 50th in length. She's practically perfectly proportionate!

I'm also a runner

I started back running as soon as my doctor gave me the green light, which was at 6 weeks post-partum. He warned me to go slow since my body had just been through a whole lot for the past 9 months. As a pleasant surprise I didn't have near the problems I thought I would, particularly with my hips.

On May 8, I ran my first post-partum race, a 5k called the Mom Run. It couldn't have been a more perfect first race! My official time was 36:53, which is only 8 seconds slower than last year's race.

Now I've set my sights on a marathon. Most days I really feel like I can do it. The marathon is in October so I still have just over 4 months to train & since I don't work outside the home (because being a mom is still work!) I have more time to train. But then other days I kinda freak out!

But I really want to do this & I feel like this is my one shot to do one, at least for quite a few years if God blesses us with more children.

I'll update from time to time on how it's going. The actual scheduled training starts in 3 weeks & the marathon is on October 2.

The Birth of Shaylin Joy - Part 3

I think it was around 4pm when I got the epidural. I also agreed to them giving me pitocin, something else I originally didn't want. But I was barely 4 cm & it had been 16 hours since my water broke. They don't like you to go past 24 hours for risk of infection to the baby. Once they gave the pitocin we were to wait & see what happened. If I had not made enough progress by 8pm they would start prepping for a c-section.

Somewhere during that wait Shaylin's heartrate dropping some so they put me on oxygen & started monitoring her by screwing a probe in her head. This was yet another thing that did not go according to my birth plan. But being tired & out of it I didn't argue.

8pm came & I was pregressing very well so we were cleared to continue laboring.

I think it was around this time when my parents made it . . . from Georgia. See, I called my parents at 1am to tell them I was in labor. My mom immediately got online & started shopping for tickets. They had just bought tickets a week earlier to fly the week after my due date. But now Shaylin decided to come 2 weeks early & my mom didn't want to meet her 2nd grandchild for the first time at 3 weeks old. As an answer to prayer they found an incredible deal & were both able to fly in time for the birth!

At 10pm I had made it to 10 cm so it was time to push. That's when they turned off the epidural. Big mistake! I had no idea what I was doing because I couldn't feel a thing. It was just me holding my breath for 10 seconds at a time. Somewhere over an hour later I started gaining some feeling & could even tell when a contraction was coming.

Finally at 11:38pm on January 23, 2010 our little Shaylin Joy entered the world.

To say I cried is an extreme understatement.

I sobbed.

It was a moment I had waited for for 3 years.

Shaylin weighed 7 lbs. & was 19 inches long with lots of dark hair.

And this is our little family. We are so in love & so thankful for this precious gift. All praise can only go to the Lord for this little blessing.

The Birth of Shaylin Joy - Part 2

I'll admit the order & time of what happened the rest of the day is blurry.

I had my first internal check & learned why my OB doesn't bother with those for checkups. OUCH! I thought she was trying to grab my tonsils! We learned that I was barely 1 cm, 0% effaced, & Shaylin was at -4 station, almost as high as she could get. Not a good way to start.

I should also mention that I had tested positive for strep B so I had no choice but to go to the hospital so they could keep me on anti-biotics. This also meant that I couldn't try to labor in the tub. Total bummer.

I do know that sometime around 3am or so my contractions started. The on-call doctor gave me permission to walk the halls to hopefully get Shaylin to drop. So we did & I was checked again & had made little progress.

The nurse was already talking c-section because at that time I didn't want any drugs & wanted it all natural. This upset me pretty bad. So to try to get things going & prevent a c-section I agreed to use cervidil. This forced me to have to stay in bed for an hour. But it got contractions going then. We started walking again but at this point it seemed like contractions were every 30 seconds & I was having a really hard time. So I agreed to some meds, one for the pain & one to help me sleep. The sleep meds worked fast. I remember falling asleep to Jeremy reading me encouraging comments people were leaving on Facebook & the next thing I woke up & my mother-in-law is in his place so he can have lunch. They told me later that I was still having contractions while asleep & was moaning through all of them.

The best pain relief I found was the shower. I could just stand in there with the water hitting my lower back & all the back pain went away. But of course I could stay in there for the next 8 cm.

At one point I tried the birthing ball but after about 2 minutes on it I made the difficult decision to have an epidural. It wasn't something I wanted to do. I was so certain that I could go without. So the pain was not what I thought it would be. My emotions really got the best of me because all I could compare it to was one of my miscarriages so I just couldn't focus.

The Birth of Shaylin Joy - Part 1

If I'm going to have a blog about being a mom, then I should at least start off with the day I became one.

On January 22, Jeremy spent the day with me to get some errands run & help me clean around the house. That night we went to dinner & called it our "last date night" for a while. All day Jeremy was joking that I wouldn't make it to Sunday. He was certain my belly had dropped.


I went to bed around 11:30 & Jeremy stayed up to play a video game. About half an hour later I felt . . . something. I'm going to spare everyone from too many details. But we eventually figured out my water had broken.


Let me just say, that is the weirdest feeling in the world!


My hospital bag still wasn't packed & we didn't even have the carseat installed yet. Jeremy called his parents so they could take the dogs home with them & we scrambled around the house grabbing anything we could think we'd need.


We checked into the hospital around 2am. At this point I hadn't had any contractions yet.


I changed into my lovely hospital gown & the nurse proceeded to ask all sorts of questions. We didn't really like her. We were excited about having our baby & joking around & she wasn't having it. Well, lady, then don't take the night shift!

New Chapter, New Blog

I'm back!

My old blog was the Texan Toad & I used it for about 3 years. It was a hodge-podge of a lot of things but quite a bit of it was taken over my our fertility issues. Thankfully God answered our prayers & allowed me to carry a pregnancy to term & gave us our precious Shaylin. There's probably about 50 posts that have to do with my pregnancy. My last post was at 36 weeks. I forgot to post one for 37 weeks & then 6 days later Shaylin came. Through the hectic transition of having a newborn at home I never got a chance to get back on & post about Shaylin's birth or those first few weeks of her life. So I figured I just wouldn't blog anymore.

Well, I've been itching to blog again so here I am. But since this is a new chapter of my life, I decided that called for a new blog.

Coming up with a title was not easy. I was going to have it do with running, since I'm back at that again & am training for a marathon in October. But nothing sounded right. So I left it to just say where I am now: I'm a momma.

But you'll see in the address the number 262. That's not two hundred sixty-two. That's supposed to be 26.2, as in 26.2 miles, as in a marathon. Blogger didn't allow the "dot".

So here I am. I'm a runner. And I'm a momma.