Looking Back on Pregnancy...

Now that the pregnancy is over I feel more safe sharing some things with you. Namely, the funny quotes and moments courtesy of maternal-minded Anna.

Sept - Anna grips the car armrest as we drive over a speed bump because she doesn't want to shake the baby too much.

Sept - "Do you remember the woman that you don't remember?"

Oct 13 - Anna cries for no reason during dinner. She admits that she even has no idea why.

Nov - I kiss anna as I tell her I love her. She runs to bathroom throwing up. When she's done I still love her anyway, she starts to throw up again.

Dec 4 - Anna first feels baby flutter in the womb. She isn't sure if its really baby moving or not. "Maybe I'm feeling things that I'm not feeling."

Jan 2010 - Anna to Jared: "You're funny, but not your sense of humor."

Jan 13 - Anna announces that she can no longer reach her toes, and therefore, need not clip her nails. (They are starting to shred our sheets.)

Feb 6 - Anna's belly is so big I have to push her up out of bed. She says she feels so large that she has a gravitaional pull. "When I move I can feel the universe moving with me."

Mar 3 - "How will I know when my water breaks?"

Apr 6 - When watching a breast feeding instructional video, "This is making me hungry."

I'm happy to report that postpartum Anna should be just as good a source of material. If she lets me live from this post, I'll give you more...

World, Meet Maia Lani Bodine...

Well, the waiting is over. The Stork has come at last. And according to Anna, at looong last.

The first thing I did is take copious amounts of pictures of Maia and send them to people via email, Twitter and Facebook using my cell phone. In my haste, I neglected to tell anyone the stats. Likewise you, my faithful reader, will have to read all the way through if you want that oddly gratifying sensation of hearing details of weight and labor time...

A lot has happened since my last post, obviously. Anna had a second baby shower at a friend's house. Good times.



After the two baby showers we had plenty of girl clothes. The baby had no choice at that point, she had to be a girl...or a boy that liked pink, to the point of nausea.

After these showers Anna went into "nesting mode" over time. She had washed all of Maia's clothes a few times just to make sure. The crib was up and decorated a few times over. Anna wanted to go all out and turn my manly cave/computer room to the baby room. I won that argument for the time being. I don't know how I managed to get the edge over a pregnant nesting woman, so I quietly walked out of the room backwards allowing anything else Anna wanted. I didn't want to stir the hornet's nest, as I'd pushed my fate and came out on top.

Anna's mom came on May 2 at 4am. She was stuck in customs for over an hour. My mother-in-law took English classes and learned how to fill out the customs forms. But when she was on the plane, they gave her a Japanese form. So, she sat with her luggage in Customs holding her illegible Japanese form just waiting for someone to figure out that she was lost. Had she been discarded luggage she would have been noticed and escorted out of the facility in 2 minutes flat. Perhaps next time we should have a sticker on her forehead that reads "Fragile" as she navigates the airport.



Since Anna's mom speaks no English, can't drive, and is staying with us in Yigo where there is nowhere to walk to, Anna had to take off work to babysit her mother until she could babysit the baby. A few days into her stay she noted that she'd been in Guam for some time and never seen the ocean. I took a day off to show her around.











The week of Anna's due date was hectic for me. I had Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles come to my office. We had a new chapel open up in Chuuk. I had to do some big annual fleet work. We had district conference which my calling of District Executive Secretary keep me involved. And I had to get everything ready for the baby.



Anna's due date came and went like passing gas in the wind. You think you catch a hint of something, but then it's gone.

We waited until Anna was 6 days overdue and scheduled induction for the 9th day past the due date (Monday, May 24). But late night May 23, Maia started to make her move. By midnight Anna was feeling intense contractions. They were still 10 or so minutes apart, so we just tried to sleep it off, which resulted in being waken up every 10 minutes. It's like sleeping with an alarm clock in snooze mode all night long. Only this alarm wakes you by noise and squeezing your hand so tight that your fingernails turn blue.

The morning finally came. We were planing on using a birthing center, but getting induced at the hospital. After calling both facilities we decided to skip induction and go natural. By noon the contractions were close enough and intense enough that we were admitted to the birthing center.

As soon as we checked in I plugged in my laptop, camera battery charger, set up my tripods and spare memory cards...oh, and I think Anna was around there somewhere. One strong contraction later there was no doubt that Anna was in the room.

We tried everything to get through the contractions. Bouncing on big exercise balls, leaning and swaying, walking, sitting, focal points, counting, and the obligatory "who who who heeee" thing.

By 3pm, Anna was about 5cm and her water broke. The baby was super low, so that pushing urge was strong. Anna had to fight it with every contraction. It got to the point where no one in the room could speak, move or even think too loudly. She needed total quiet and concentration just to keep from pushing. A warm bath helped to keep her calm while we waited for that darn cervix to open up. I recommended the jaws of life. No one seemed to get my joke. Note to self, birthing mothers and analytical midwives make a tough audience.

By 5pm her cervix was firmly planted at 8-9cm, which is at least one shy of where she should be. But with each contraction, Anna couldn't help but push a bit, and that was starting to cause swelling. After an hour of no improvement, the doctor decided to do something I didn't know was possible. She was going to allow Anna to push, and as the baby came, she would help tuck the cervix behind the head. I'm sure that was less than pleasant for Anna, the baby and the doctor. But it worked.

For half an hour Anna pushed with a fire and fury that I've only seen when I forget to leave the toilet seat down before I go to bed at night. I have to admit that I am very proud of Anna. The strength and control that she exhibited that night was like I've never seen before. You'd never know it to look at her, but she is a woman that can really take on any challenge and come out victorious.

After some tearing, blood and some other gross stuff I won't describe in detail, the baby, now to be known as Maia Lani Bodine, appeared at 6:43pm on the nose. This birthing center is big on the "golden hour" where baby goes straight to mom's chest and does not leave until the first feeding is complete.

I've seen plenty of birthing footage in biology class, Lamaze®, Discovery Chanel, and even my sisters' home videos. The blood and gross factor of what was happening really didn't phase me at all. And once the baby was out, and I looked at her, and my wife holding her, I was overcome with emotions. Visiting my sisters at the hospital a number of times before don't compare. It was truly a surreal moment for me. It's not often that I'm at a loss of words, but I really have no way to express the moment. I suppose it's one of those things that you can only know when you have been there yourself. And now I have.

I had some challenges calling both her family and mine due to a telecom fiasco (a whole 'nother story there). But after a quick call to my parents using a borrowed cell phone and uploading some quick cell phone pics, I got us all some food.

By the time I returned we had the stats that everybody wants to hear. She was a hefty 8.5 pounds and 21 inches long. That's big for a regular woman, but for someone with a frame like Anna that's like pulling an orange through a straw, only harder.



Before I knew it, it was after 11pm. Anna, my mother-in-law and I were all exhausted. We all slept at some point, but the details are as foggy as back stage at a Bob Marley festival.

The next morning I had to literally carry Anna to the bathroom. Use of her limbs is still slowly coming back. Mom and Baby had to continue to work out the breast feeding mechanics. This is something that you think of as natural and therefore, simple to do. We've perfected planes refueling in the air at hundreds of miles an hour, certainly breast feeding would be child's play in comparison. I've seen monkeys hurl dung at zoo patrons with more precision than Anna and Maia have been able to manage. Apparently, it's not always as simple as it would seem. I'm sure they will improve with practice.

After about 24 hours from birth, we washed up Anna, put a giant size diaper on her, bundled our Bundle of Joy into her car seat and headed to our happy home that was now truly housing a family.

First Baby Shower...

Do you think that in the preexistence spirits that are about to be sent to Earth are thrown a “Parent Shower”?

Anyway, a few weeks back I got a very odd FaceBook message from someone I didn’t know named Debbie. I often immediately disregard random FB messages or friend requests. But, I figured there’d be no harm in at least seeing what medication they were trying to sell me just so I wouldn’t end up buying it later in a store by accident (that’ll show them). It turned out to be a friend of Anna’s from work. They wanted to throw her a surprise baby shower. I was the inside man.

So behind Anna’s back I have been secretly planning a baby shower with Anna’s co-workers. Well, to be fair, I wasn’t all that involved. I just fed the info about which weekends would work, the baby’s gender and other basics. The hard part of my share was getting a very skeptical person like Anna there without suspicion. Anna’s also very frugal. Talking her into going into a restaurant where she pays the bill is tricky. I may have had the harder part, actually.

It just so happened that I had a work visitor from Salt Lake visiting this weekend as well. I was planning on going Scuba Diving with him but the baby shower took priority. I sent him out with another co-worker. Then I told Anna that I forgot to give our guest the key to the company car. So we had to go to the office to drop off the car for him. While we were there, about lunch time, we’d just join them for lunch. Not the best cover, but I think it was believable enough to fly. We show up as they guests hide. And then, surprise!

Anna of course says nothing. She’s not very comfortable being the center of attention. Rather than make her say a speech, we hit the buffet.

Following the dinner came the games. We had people take strings and see if they could guess Anna’s current girth. Despite how large Anna looks now, she’s still pretty small over all. Almost everyone was way over.

We also played “hot potato” with a dirty diaper. Ick. And another icky game was to follow. There were four diapers on the table, each with a candy bar of some kind smooched into it, thus making every person in the room involuntarily thinks of feces. The object was to see who could guess which brand names they were. I suggested whoever wins get to keep the candy in the diapers.

Anna never did think of a speech. I offered a half one and then embarrassed her by saying she had something to say to everybody. She froze. It was fun.

We took our party favors and baby gifts home. The next morning, Anna went fully into nesting mode. Clothes and been pre-washed, sorted and folded into cute piles. Anna wants to dedicate a baby room immediately. The crib now has to be put up yesterday. It’s sort of like when you have a Christmas party a few days before Christmas. It looks like a good idea on the calendar, but all you end up doing is making yourself crave the actual occasion that much more. As of now, Anna has had her first baby shower. And every day since then, it’s been showering babies in her head...

A Brand New Year...

So after Saipan and Tinian we had a couple days left to enjoy home with my parents. We spent a lot of time working on the house as well. The yard looks a bit like jungles of the Amazon. With my parents help, it’s become a bit more like the Serengeti. I hope to make it somewhere safe enough to let little Maia run around back there safely. It’s surprising that a small yard can have so many hidden dangers. Holes, rocks, block, bricks, pipes and even a door to two. Every time I clean up I find a new item. Yesterday I found a dog bowl. I wonder how long before I find the remains of said dog...

My parents last night in Guam was Dec 31. My district was having a big New Year’s Eve bash which I was asked to DJ. So, I had to be there for sure. The party ran through midnight and ended shortly thereafter. My parents had to be at the airport at 5am. Yeah, we were anticipating to be tired.

The party was fun. I think that despite the lack of sleep the party went well and it was fun to DJ again. I used to DJ parties for a living back in Arizona, so it was like riding a bike...but to new and less enjoyable music.

Rather than drive all the way back to my house only to sleep for a couple hours and then take my parents back down to the airport we just stayed a bit late at the chapel for cleanup and then made our way to the airport. They were able to access the President’s Club and rest there for a few hours until the flight out.

So, our great big holiday season wound down very nonchalantly. My parents are back home, I’m back to the daily grind as is Anna. We are both returning to our routines with the knowledge and in a very short time from now, it’ll all be changed again with the arrival of our first child. And hopefully by then I’ll be more vigilant about documenting it all. Oh, sure, there’ll be plenty of pictures and video clips of Maia (or maybe Benji). But, somehow, I have a feeling that blogging about life will take a back seat to living it. Here's to a brand new year.

Touring Tinian...

Although I'd been to Saipan a number of times, I'd never been to Tinian. I've tried once before, but the ferry is a bit sporadic. This time, I took no chances. I called, emailed and asked everybody who'd know about the ferry. We checkout out of our hotel and did make it on.

This map isn't remotely to scale, but the layout is vaguely close...

Despite Anna getting sick on the boat (and missing the puke bag...) we got across safely. However, the boat was late by about an hour. So, even though we only had time for a 4 hour tour, it now had to be crammed into 3 or less hours. It's a small island, but that still cuts it close.

We had a tour bus lined up and after an unexpected stop off at their convenience store, we were off.



The famous See Bees did a bear share of development back in war time. That includes the layout of the streets which they patterned after Manhattan New York. Even the names are the same.

This bronze cast "map" is hard to see, but if you enlarge it, you will see a road map that you could almost overlay on Manhattan.

The first stop we made on the tour were the Taga Latte Stones. Latte Stones are believed to be used by the ancient Chomorro as housing foundations. These at the House of Taga are the largest known in existence.




For most people, however, they come to Tinian for the war history. That was certainly the case with my father. There are plenty of pieces of the war lying around. In most cases, there's no need to make anything nationally protected, the locals have seen it all and not enough people go there.

Blown out Japanese Bunker

This is the inside of the bunker. It must have been a pretty hot inferno.

The Japanese left this to honor the many that died there.

If someone from the the Mainland US knows about Tinian, then they know it because it is the island from which the Anola Gay took off to strike Hiroshima with the A-Bomb.

This is runway the plane took off from. We drove down the runway, but alas did not take off...

The plane was too low to the ground to load the a-bomb into the plane. So they had to dig pits to house the bomb, drive the plane over pit, and then raise it into the open belly. From hearing the story I expected to see a mild mannered dirt hole. Instead, I found this...

You have to hand it to the military, they don't do anything temporarily, even digging pits.

And before we knew it, our time was up. By the time we made it back to the ferry, we were the last ones there. The boat was waiting for us. Our tour guide handed us food and we had to take it on the boat with us. We got back to Saipan, ate the food and were very tired.

We had a bit of time to visit some friends I have that live there and then we were on a plane back to Guam.