In the past when I was raiding, I met people who had children and still managed to play their online games.  There were even people who had newborns and infants who managed to successfully game and raid on a regular basis.  I never gave it a second thought.  But now I find myself pondering their ability to game, especially those people who gamed with babies.

How do people go back to their old gaming ways after the birth of their child?  How do some people manage to do it so quickly?  Are they just turning the responsibility over to their spouses?  What is the secret that I am missing?

I’ve tried to play Slainte and Bansidhe, but I felt so out of the loop when I played them.  It’s as if I have forgotten everything.  I guess it’s not like riding a bike.  I haven’t even managed to get myself to the new zone.  One of these days, I’ll get there.  I’m thinking I’ll probably be there in time for the next expansion.

Sigs have also been non-existent.  I do have one in the works for Ratshag because he is super patient and never complains when I take weeks on end to complete his.  After that, I’ll be working on one for Moohealz who has also been very understanding.  I’m looking forward to knocking out a few sigs here and there.  Although it has been so long that I feel a little rusty.

Despite saying I wouldn’t get it, I’ve decided to give WotLK a try. Although my time is limited now that my son is home, I still want to check out the recent expansion and do the holiday events.  Maybe it will spark my interest in gaming again.

I’m also open to sig requests on a limited basis.

Normally I don’t delve into my personal life within this gaming blog.  That’s what my personal blog is for and never shall the two meet.  However, I feel the need to explain my absence and sudden reappearance.

As most of you know, I’m pregnant.  What you don’t know is that it’s been a long road due to complications (an apple-sized fibroid, a transverse baby, and my “advanced maternal age”).  Two weeks ago, it became more complicated.

Essentially, I went to see my doctor two weeks ago due to some concerns and was admitted to Labor and Delivery within the hour.  I was dilated to 5 cm; 10 cm is when you push to deliver.  I am one of the lucky women who have contractions without feeling them, and thus there was concern about me being in early labor since I was only 31 weeks along.

I was put on an IV, hooked up to monitors, given magnesium to stop labor, and injected with a steroid to help my son develop his lungs in case he appeared early.  Within the span of an hour, I lost count of how many doctors and residents I saw.  All I know is seeing the NICU doctor made me realize the urgency and the risk of our situation.

Luckily, they managed to stop labor.  Unfortunately, due to another complication that I won’t share (detailed female thing), I cannot leave the med center.  Due to this complication, there is a fear that if I were to go home and my water broke, there would not be enough time for me to reach any hospital safely.

I’ve been here a total of 15 days, and it looks like I will be here until the end of November.  My doctor wants me to get to 36 weeks before they induce to insure lung maturity.

Being here makes for long days.  Now that I have a new laptop (thanks to my husband) and internet connection,  I can game and make sigs while I wait for my little guy to finish baking.

It’s nothing major. Just a quick little sig I whipped up for Ilere. I’ve got to get some better screenshots of her before I can make a really nice sig, but this will do for now.

I did end up PvPing with her, and I remember my first true PvP experience like it was yesterday.  A guildmate of  mine had managed to unlock his jedi pretty early on in the game, and one of us would always go with him in case a bounty hunter showed up while he was working on his career tree.  Unfortunately, he was stuck with me since no one else was online.

We had been out killing creatures for an about an hour when a bounty hunter showed up out of nowhere and proceeded to attack my guildmate.  Instinctively, I ran into the fray, but players don’t react like NPCs.  I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but I attempted to knock the stuffing out of the bounty hunter.

My guildmate was cheering me on in Vent, and I was so nervous that I was yelling, which brought my husband over to my computer.  So there I was in my first PvP fight with my guildmate hollering for me to get the BH on Vent, my husband telling me to repeatedly do a Knockdown on the BH, and my hands were shaking so much I could barely hit the keys on my keyboard.

I finally managed to kill the bounty hunter to much cheers from my guild mate and my husband.  I was so overcome with adrenaline from PvPing that I couldn’t stop shaking and my heart felt like it was going to rip through my chest.  Until that moment I had never understood the draw of PvP.

Unfortunately, I never got that feeling while PvPing in World of Warcraft.  Trust me, I tried AB, AV, WSG, and even arenas.  They just didn’t do it for me, and I’ve never captured that rush again.  That is until tonight.

Tonight, I took Ilere out with the guild to play in the Tier 2 battlegrounds.  The guild formed two warbands and attacked some keeps within the battlegrounds.  It was a lot of fun taking the keeps from the Destruction side, but we weren’t meeting a lot of resistance.  That is until the last hour I did PvP/RvR (realm versus realm).

Since another guild was there with us, we left them to defend the keep while we pushed down the beach to meet the Destruction masses.  Our guild formed a pretty massive line, and the Destruction members were smart enough to stay out of range of our casters.  We were at a bit of an impasse, so our warband leader told warband one to follow him.

We cut back through the trees, skirted the edge of the beach, and came up behind the Destruction forces.  In front of us stood all the Destruction healers facing the opposite way like proverbial lambs for the slaughter, and slaughter them we did.  The best part was hearing our warband leader giggle with glee.  It was a well executed plan.

We fought like that for the next hour, and I can honestly say I’ve recaptured that PvP rush that I felt so long ago.  This is definitely Waaagh!

This morning as I crawled out of bed and spied my hair sticking up everywhere, I realized that Ilere looks an awful lot like me. I’m just missing the scar and the nasty looking eye. This is probably the look I give my students when they tell me that they forgot their homework.

Although, I think my husband would probably say this is my preggo look of death.

Palintera, a druid, is a member of Team Ratshag.  Ratshag, my favorite dworc, has been incredibly patient while I napped and avoided working on Palintera’s avatar.  I even sent him all my Entrecard credits out of guilt.  (That and I just can’t keep up with it these days.  All that clicking puts me to sleep.)

The other day I felt the urge to make something, so Pali became my victim.  Thank you, Ratshag, for being so patient and for accepting my purple phase.

I guess my title is actually a little bogus because she’s not really improved nor is she named Bansidhe.  In fact, she’s not even Forsaken.  I know, I know, complete heresy.  She’s actually on the Order side of things in Warhammer, and she’s of the human race.  As much as I love Bansidhe and Slainte, it’s nice to play a regular old human.

Tenryuu has been bugging me to update my sig for my Warhammer character since she’s a completely different race than the one I posted earlier.  We have yet to run into one another in game; I blame it all on him since he prefers the company of high elves over us Empire folk.  I guess that is what happens when the history of your people spans a massive amount of time; you’re too good to slum.  Ten, you snob!  ;)