The Sitter Situation

It has been a little over a year since my husband got stationed in Norfolk, VA and we decided not to go with him. We live in MD about four hours from his base. After deciding he would do this tour as geo-bachelor we bought a house and laid down some roots. This decision has had mixed results, but we are all surviving. One of the big challenges for me is finding help. I'm very fortunate that my group of friends is understanding of our situation and helps me out A LOT. This was also one of the many reasons I decided to stay put instead of following him to Norfolk. Not having family or a spouse to rely on is very draining. I am never relieved of my parental duties which produces more grey hair than I care to have. I have hired sitters and even a helper this summer, but it's always so tricky to find someone who you can really trust. I was so happy to come across the website, sittercity.com. I haven't used a sitter from this site YET, but I was so excited to see that it is another free resource provided by the DOD. I'm in the process of hiring a sitter from the site and I'm relieved that most sitters have been background checked and they will provide references if asked. The sitters also provide pictures of themselves, a range of what they charge, and a summary of their availability. So if you are in the predicament so many military spouses are in - holding down the fort ALONE - check out this site.

For the Record

One of the biggest determining factors to how your life in the military will pan out is your spouse's job/community. Pilot families stick together, submarine families stick together, etc. The job determines your duty station and therefore what base you are attached to. My husband is in the Information Warfare (IW) community. Due to the size and scope of their work, IW officers can be sent anywhere and, so far, we have not had to be attached to any particular base. This means we've had lots of options when it comes to housing, schools, medical care, etc. Health care being such an important issue these days, I wanted to address one very specific issue I recently had to deal with: transfer of medical records upon change of duty station.

If your family lives on or close to a base you usually will be treated at the medical treatment facility (MTF) on base. I assume your records follow you to the next duty station. Our case is different since we were able to enroll in a special Johns Hopkins medical coverage (a Tricare plan though) that allows us to see JH doctors and have more options with regards to specialists and hospitals. Before this plan we had Tricare remote which is similar in nature, just not attached to a particular health care system like Hopkins. We got to pick a primary care physician (PCP) that accepted Tricare and could pick out a specialist, get a referral and be treated without problems. Military families are lucky when it comes to our healthcare and insurance options. But alas, I found a small hiccup in this system if your records are not put all together in a nice military file.

When transfering from one staion to the next, be sure to review your records, gather all important medical history and documents and be sure they travel with you. When we first arrived in MD from TX I took the kids for their annual check ups and had their vaccination records transferred so I could show my son's pre-school he was up to date. This was a year and a half ago. Last month the school's director noticed my son was missing some very important shots, MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) and Varicella (chicken pox). I thought it was just a clerical error because I was sure at his last wellness check up his records were reviewed. I called his pediatrician's office, the nurse looked over their records, and she verified he had not had those shots. I made the appointment to bring him in ASAP. Just as a precaution I looked on the CDC (Center for Disease Contorl) website to go over vaccination schedules since I've heard so much about  the link between current schedules and autism. In my search I noticed my son was supposed to have had a MMR and Varicella shot before the age of 2. I was perplexed. I am diligent about keeping up with doctor and dental appointments so how did I miss this? I decided to call my son's first pediatrician who's offices are located in Austin, our previous duty station (my husband did the STA-21 program at UT-Austin). The nurse who answered the call was incredibly gracious and handled my request immediately. She verified that my son had, in fact, received his shots a few weeks after he turned one! I was floored. The nurse kindly faxed over the records to our doc here and I called the office to cancel the appointment for the shots. I was very concerned that our doc's office did such a poor job transfering his vaccination records and almost gave him a double dose of inocculations. I'm not a doctor and have no idea about the potential side effects of such an act, but I was disturbed by the posibilities. What if I was not a vigilant parent with a little extra time on my hands to go through that process? What would've been the outcome? I'm glad I did not have to find out.

Military families move around A LOT and our familiy's medical history is just one of the many things we have to juggle every time that moving van pulls up to our homes. If you are ever in doubt about a medical question, whether you receive treatment at MTF's or not, you should trust yourself enough to follow through on that feeling.

Moving Resources

I'm in the midst of waiting for orders for our next duty station. As many of you know, it's not official until it's on paper! Trying to plan and look forward to your new life when you don't have paper orders can be difficult if there is more than one potential duty station. I try to plan as much as we possibly can. I have an 11 year old step-daughter who has lived with us full-time since our marriage 6 years ago. Everytime we move, our highest priority is finding the best possible school for her. Sometimes this can be difficult because you have to consider housing costs, as high performing schools are normally located in more expensive areas and are not close to base, which can make the spouse's commute a little longer. In any case, a great school is always what guides our final decision on where we live.

I use two great tools to help me in this process:
http://www.greatschools.org/
http://www.schooldigger.com/
You can get a decent sense of the quality of a school from these websites.

I then go to the local school district website to see if it has a way to check your school assignment according to your potential address. This is an example of such a site:
http://gis.mcpsmd.org/gis/PublicLocator.asp

If you are looking for off-base housing, I like to use http://www.militarybyowner.com/ to get a  feel for the housing options near the base to include prices (rent or buying), schools, and distance from your particular base. It helps me narrow down my options. I found our current rental home through Craigslist though. Ultimately, it takes a lot of footwork to get what you need for your family.

Intro

When I first got serious with my now husband, he was a Petty Officer in the Navy with an ex-wife, a child, and no college education. I had graduated from a private university in MA, traveled the world, and had serious professional ambitions. Fast forward to 2010 and I am a stay-at-home mom, military spouse, stepmother, who sometimes struggles to balance this life with the one she wanted all her pre-Navy life. Along the way, my husband earned his BA, became an Officer while I got my Master's and became a mom. The Navy is providing a good life for us, but it's not without its challenges for me and my family.

I've met many wonderful spouses who in some way or another do not fit the typical military spouse mold, whatever interpretation that may have for you. For me, that means a young woman who marries her recently enlisted sweetheart right out of high school and starts a family right away. She then gets swept up in the military life of raising a family by herself, possibly working, while her husband is deployed. After a few years she may look into getting a college education, but finds that balancing this military life a little overwhelming.

I do not fit that mold. During the early stages of my relationship with my husband, none of his colleagues or superiors thought it possible that a "college girl" would want to be with an enlisted man. One Captain even told my husband he "married above his pay grade". Having a degree never gave me sense of superiority amongst the wives since I knew a few others like me and, most importantly, because all the wives I've ever met are strong, courageous, dedicated mothers and partners.

After my husband became an Officer, I earned my MA, and we moved out East, I thought I was going to start a fabulous career in DC and put my son in childcare, like everyone else does. The reality was that competition in the area is fierce, childcare expensive, and my conscience was making me feel guilty about leaving my son in someone else's care for most of the day. Eventually, I found part-time work that was both professionally and personally rewarding but my husband was being deployed at the same time. So it began, the single mom life of a working military spouse. In this respect we are all the same.

It's alway comforting to receive support form other spouses, especially if they are more familiar with your particular set of challenges. I hope that this blog will help spouses like me get some insight and advice about this crazy life we have chosen to live. Even if you are not a spouse that shares my history, I know there will be information on this blog to help us all, as mothers, as partners, as members of the service ourselves.

Please join me in contributing your knowledge to this forum and making our military life all the more enriched.