Update

Haven't felt like blogging much but I should probably do an update.

(No need for sympathy, we are over that but any ideas on how to seek revenge on the GSO or if anyone knows some good voodoo spells I'm all ears.)

On Thursday I was having fantastic contractions, regular, strong and the good ones that start in your back and move forward. These were getting closer and stronger and I was packed and ready to go for when they were 5 minutes apart. They continued throughout the night and Friday morning which is when Kris and I decided to take the kids to the playground so I could walk through the contractions while the kids got the wiggles out.

As I was putting sunscreen on, Kris got a phone call from the RSO (regional security officer at the embassy). He said "Hi David" which stopped me mid-sunscreen slather and my first thought was "Why the heck is David calling us? Crap, someone broke into our house!" I listened to Kris' side of the conversation which wasn't much and tried to read his face. .Kris said "how much water damage?" and I knew it wasn't going to be good. When he hung up he told me that our house flooded, top and bottom floors, and that David said it didn't look good. I started giggling and then laughing really hard which turned into sobbing. At this point I realized that the contractions had completely stopped but to be honest I was more intent on getting the whole story.

He told me that our maid had arrived at the house (she works Mondays and Fridays) and when she came in there were several inches of water as she walked in. She ran over to David's house (he lives 3 houses down) where her brother works as their family's driver and told David what was going on. David ran back over to our house with her and they walked through trying to figure out what was going on. The ceiling in the office had fallen in from saturated plaster so the water was coming from the bodega on the roof.



A bodega in Mexico is a storage room (as opposed to a little store in other Latin countries). Ours is located on the roof over the office and doubles as another bedroom and bathroom (the owner of the home had his driver living up there). You access it by a ladder attached to the side of the house. Ours also houses the emergency water tanks...yes the ones they were working on previously when we had no water for a week.



These are pictures I took when they were working on them when we had no water.



The work wasn't done properly we don't know where things went wrong because we are getting several different stories (is there anyone out there who can give us an honest answer?) Whatever happened, the water didn't shut off (I get it, either we don't have any water or we get too much water, no in between) and kept running enough to flood the house wall to wall except for the Master bedroom. From what David said, several inches upstairs and downstairs and deeper in some areas where it was contained like in the bathrooms downstairs. David told Kris it didn't look good and we've lost all of our furniture where it flooded because of the amount of water it had been sitting in.

The worst of it was in the office directly below the bodega and in the boys' room directly below the office.



The laminate flooring downstairs in the bedrooms is peeling up and needs to be replaced. Of course, like the last time when the downstairs flooded with sewage tainted water, they didn't allow the sub-floor to completely dry so it's not like they will do it right this time either.



This is the base of the table where the wet plaster came down on. This was the first piece of furniture Kris and I bought together after we got married. I guess it has seen better days. I was sure one of the kids would break it, not wet plaster.

GSO sent a crew right over to start pumping the water out. They were able to pump quite a bit of water out while our maid worked on getting the plaster that had fallen. Our maid said the cats looked like 2 drowned rats so she cleaned them up and put them in our Master bedroom, the only room where there was no water.



Kris called his office to have someone go over to the house and they were able to get over there in the afternoon to take pictures. He took pictures of the damage to the house but a good friend of ours, Noelle, was able to go over on Saturday to take pictures of our stuff that got damaged since we could really care less about the damage to that stupid home.


There was so much water that it completely stripped the finish off the wood floors.





Our computer is toast (no worries since we have Carbonite so everything on the hard drive is safe)



This is my photo/slide/negative scanner that I have relied on for all the photo archiving I have been working on. It's completely toast...I needed a new one anyway I guess.

The only things I cared about were the bins of family pictures, our albums, family history stuff I was working on, DVDs of family movies I burned from VHS tapes, and the archived slides and negatives that were on DVDs. The cats were second (mostly because cats are smart and can fend for themselves). Everything else could be replaced. It's not the stuff I'm worried about, we have excellent insurance that covers all of this. I'm worried about the nightmare that is going to follow dealing with the GSO.

Yes, we are expected to move back into it. Kris told his boss under no circumstances are we moving back in. GSO said we can go through the appeal process (which takes months..."it would take 7 months" was what we were told after our neighbor pulled the gun on me). We hope Kris' boss can make some magic happen and get us bumped up to a priority list if there is one. OR we could just get Denver which would be a fantastic thing right now...problem solved!



Back to the contractions. I was kind of ticked off about the sudden stop to the contractions with how much I was dilated and effaced already. I went into the hospital on Saturday with some other concerns (I hadn't felt the baby move at all even while laying on my left side and counting movement several times during the day). When I was hooked up to the monitor my mom and I heard the heartbeat and it was so wonderful to hear.

The doctor monitored me for an hour and during this hour we got to talking. I told her about the contractions suddenly stopping and she asked what I was doing when this happened. I told her I wasn't doing anything, I was just sitting down while my husband was telling me about our house in Mexico flooding. She told me that intense stress can easily stop labor and it won't start again until the environment is more birth friendly. GREAT! I guess the only way to ease that stress would be to have the GSO tell Kris and I "Don't worry, we will be sure to have another house ready for you by the time you are ready to return with that new baby!" Is that too much to ask for?

The silver lining...There are still a couple of weeks before her due date (my babies have all been at least 2 weeks early) so she will continue to grow and get stronger which is a good thing and was originally what we needed to happen because of health concerns when we returned to Mexico. Also, each day I am getting per diem payments (about $150 a day) from Kris' office so that adds up nicely. They pay out up to 45 days before she is born and once she is born they continue for 45 days after. If she comes early they cut off and the 45 days after begins.