The Beginning

January 2014, I started my full time student status at Hodges University in Naples FL. I was one month out of the military and ready to start my civilian life. I was ready to be “Free”. Since I have always been an over achiever or maybe just a busy bee. I decided to start off in full blast. Hodges University is not a traditional university, like I stated on my about me section. My life has not been so traditional,so Hodges University fit perfectly in my lifestyle. They have your traditional semesters, mini term accelerated courses, morning /evening classes as well as online. Let’s just say I maxed out my mini term accelerated courses and didn’t take a semester off.  That’s 4-5 classes in seven weeks.  Then a two week vacation and another 7 week semester. And if a class was not offered in that way, I would take that class for the full 3 or 4 months however long a normal semester is along with my mini terms. Let’s talk about organization and when and what class I was working on that day. I even managed to get all A’s and maybe two to three B’s. if that. Pretty impressive. Ok, so…. a month later on March 1st 2014 after two months of trying we got the two pink lines we were waiting for. We were pregnant! Were we crazy to plan a baby in the midst of recently applying for a great jog, applying for school ect.? Yes. But, I know we have all heard this before, ” You will never be ready”. Also true.

All of these events were planned in December of 2013. I applied for a job at the Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans clinic and interviewed with them in February.  Government jobs take a long time in processing the employment process. So I waited. I got the job offer in April and I emailed my now supervisor explaining that I was now pregnant and if the offer still stood. She said yes and I finally had a start date of June 15th 2014. That’s six months since I applied!

My pregnancy was not very nice. I had morning sickness ALL day long! I could not eat or smell any meat. I guess my son was a vegetarian.  I could only keep toast and some fruits down. I had ONE craving. It was a green mango with salt and cumin. I chowed it down and a second later threw it all out. Not fun. I lost about 20lbs. He was literally eating me alive. So I continued with school, of course puking and peeing every chance I got. I didn’t look pregnant so I kept getting those awkward looks.  I was the first one in and out of class. Yet Aced all my tests and exams.

June came and I started working. That meant waking up at 5am and commuting an hour from Naples to Cape Coral. Worked from 730 am to 4pm. Commuted another hour to an hour and a half back to Naples and went to school from 6pm-950pm.  Thus began my journey.