Check up

I can't tell you how much I love it that Jake sleeps through the night most nights now. I have gotten used to it and now when he has a bad night it kicks my ass. He slept so well Friday after his shots. He did well on Saturday. Sunday he was cranky and Sunday night was awful. He was sleeping and making this pathetic little cries. I went in to check on him and he was actually asleep. He was making sobbing noises in his sleep. I shut the door and the latch clicked. Damn. The screaming started and I don't know how long it took for me to get it to stop. If I held him and bounced him he would stop. I put him in bed and back to screaming full force. I rock him to sleep and I am falling asleep. I put him to bed and I crawl in bed. Twenty minutes later. Back to screaming. Longest damn night ever!! I think I got a total of maybe three hours of sleep. I brought Jake to be with me and if I didn't have him wrapped in my arms it didn't help. Mike had gone out to the living room to sleep and I got him to take Jake at 315 so I could get 1 hour of sleep before getting up. Mike feed him and got him dressed and kept him happy and let me sleep until 445. That meant he even took dogs out for me. He was able to go back to sleep when we left, but I was so grateful for that extra bit of sleep. Last night was a different story however. Jake woke up every hour and I had to go in and give him his pacifier or rub his tummy and get him back to sleep. I got up six times. I had to go to a meeting this morning but I didn't actually start work until 1000. I was going to take Jake with me this morning except he was screaming. Mike had to get up and take care of him and Mike threw a fit! He carried on about getting his sleep. Hello?? He went back to sleep yesterday and again today after I took the baby to daycare. He could have taken the baby to daycare. He could have kept the baby home! I had to help the new girl at daycare yesterday give a breathing treatment on someone else's baby and today I found out that another baby there was admitted with RSV. Jake has a cough now too! It is a dry cough, but a cough that could go somewhere. It would have been nice to have him not be in daycare when possible. Anyway, mommy is tired and going to bed in a few minutes.

Jake weighed in at 16 pounds 10 ounces and is just a touch under 27 inches long. He fits into the long and lean category. I am supposed to try to feed him more. He is doing a bit better with eating cereal and baby food. He won't eat any of the fruits yet. He does not seem to like juice at all and it is watered down of course. I talked to the doctor about weaning him and she discouraged me. What she did encourage me to do is pump and give him a bottle, you know so someone else can help me. I'm sick of pumping! She is encouraging me to do this so we know how much milk he is getting and then let him nurse to comfort suck. Mommy is starting to want to be done with it period. I have been taking steroids for a week and a half and my milk has dramatically decreased. I don't know if it will pick back up. I don't know if I want it to. For the first time this past weekend I couldn't produce enough milk to keep the baby happy. It was more emotional than I anticipated. I figured at some point it would happen, but I didn't realize how much it would hurt my feelings. The only thing that softened the blow was that I just had to open the freezer and grab breast milk. I think if I would have had to mix up formula it would have done me in as a failure as a mother. Do I believe that to be true? No, but my feelings were still hurt none the less. I was surprised. I mean I made six months right? That was my goal. To add insult to injury, two of the only three nursing bras I wear had wires pop out this week! Is that my sign??? I haven't decided yet.

TGIF

Well, its almost Friday. We have our six month check up tomorrow. TGIF! I can't wait to hold my baby this weekend.

So Monday morning I went in and for the first time ever someone else was there as early as I was to drop off her children too. I was trying to be calm because I was so angry and I didn't want to look or act like an idiot. I just wanted to make sure my son was being taken care of as I instructed. It was the regular person that is in charge of the room and I told her that I asked on Friday that Jake not receive formula and that then he did get formula. Like I said, I was trying to be calm because I didn't want to get irate. She said she would make sure he didn't get any more formula. Almost all of the times he got formula were when she was off duty. When I went in to pick up Jake I was armed to head to the director's office. I had all the papers on myself. As soon as I walked into to room the person I talked to on Friday came over and apologized. She claimed that Jake did not receive any formula on Friday. She said she was the one that wrote it as formula and she was the one that got his bottles. She said that she made a mistake because she marks formula down so many times a day. I didn't go to the director's office., for now. Things have gone very well this week, as far as daycare.

I did something to my back and I am in so much pain. It hurts to do anything. I am starting to get sick too and I am pissed about it. I went to the ENT because I am having problems with my face still. I am having new problems and she put me on steroids. A pretty high dose and now it has knocked my immune system down and I am getting the crap that have been coughed all over me for the past month. I was so hoping I wouldn't get the full blown deal just the little mini cough and congestion that I had recovered from. Anyway, many of the people have had severe back or neck pain associated with the onset of the illness. Damn.

A very good friend of my FIL's passed away on Valentine's Day and his funeral was this week. It was hard. I couldn't get Mike to go with me. His dad thinks his grandpa's funeral traumatized him when he was a little guy. I went though and it was very nice. Sad and hard, but nice as far as funerals go. It has been very hard for my FIL. He has lost a couple of his peers now and I know that can't feel good. You suddenly realize that your turn in line is coming up a lot closer than it used to be. It has made me think about a lot of things and I know Mike and I have a lot of things we need to do and take care of now not later because you never know.

It amazes me how much I still see this face. But I get to see the face in the next picture much much more. I have already forgotten how much hair he had when he was born! My how he has changed! I do think that I am going to have to have the hair around his ears trimmed before we get his six month pictures taken. It isn't horrible, but it bothers me. I like neat hair lines on guys, even little ones.

I am a bit less angry today. I decided that I would wait until Monday to talk to the director. I decided I can call her in the morning and show her the papers when I go to pick Jake up. I gathered the papers we got for the week, minus Monday's. They were too busy to get us his paper Monday and at the time it wasn't a big deal. Now I really wonder what it said. I thought they would put it in our box and I could get it Tuesday, but apparently they just threw it away. On the four papers I had it said he was given formula 12 times! That is laziness! I will not tolerate this. Even though I am going to talk to the director I am still going to explore some other options. I just know their aren't many and this was the best. I will be ranting about this to my best friend (she hasn't been at work because she had surgery and I haven't bothered her with this). I know she will tell her mom and her mom was one of the founders and is very good friends with a couple of the ladies on the board. This woman has very strong feelings about breast feeding and tells me how proud she is that I am still breast feeding every time she sees me. She also stops by at least once a week to check on Jake.

Jake seems to be growing and advancing by leaps and bounds right now. As soon as he started feeling better we could tell. We could also tell that being sick kind of stalled his teething. He turned into a major crank again and popped that 6th tooth in and now the center top teeth are right under the gum. He is so much stronger. He wants to jump up and down all the time now while you are supporting him. He loves it. It wears me out. He cracked my nose this past week with his head. My eyes are a bit blackened. It just looks like I have really bad dark circles under my eyes. Maybe it was like that before but I don't think so. He is sleeping a ton right now, which I think is part of the growing and not getting sick. He is working on his sitting. He certainly can't sit up on his own yet, but he has figured out how to not fall face first like he always used to if you let him. He is just so strong!

We do have a major problem though. He doesn't want to eat any baby food, but he IS hungry. I have tried everything I can thing of to try to get him to eat. I give him a break with baby food and try again a couple days later. We have been through all the 1 veggies and sweet potatoes were the only ones he seemed to like. I have tried adding juice to his cereal and I have even given up and added fruit to the cereal. I am still trying get him to eat veggies before I start giving him the fruit alone though. I just don't know what to do. He seems to like the cereal with milk better than juice. We have only tried rice so far and I think maybe I should try changing that. He just seems really hungry and is moving his feedings closer together! I take his hunger to be another sign he is going through a growth spirt.

So is the spell check working for everyone else? Am I suddenly doing something wrong to make it stop working? I am a terrible speller and I just hate not being able to click the spell check. I know there are mistakes and it embarrasses me that I can't fix them. I keep finding myself editing my word choices just because I can't spell a word!

hopping mad!

I don't have a choice but to work. I take my son to what happens to be one of the more expensive daycares around our community. It is also considered to be one of the best. I know that it is unavoidable for kids to get sick when they are around other kids. I'm not happy about how sick Jake was in January, but there isn't much I can do. But I am ticked now. I'm not even sure I can make it through the weekend without calling the director of the daycare.

When Jake started I took about a million things there for him right? Extra clothes, diapers, wipes, bottles, tylenol, disposable camera, pacifiers, and a few other things. I took lots of breast milk. I didn't know how much to take and how it would all work out. I also took a can of powdered formula JUST IN CASE. Just in case what? Well, I get Jake there at 6am when they open and then I go to work and get there right when I need to. I don't have time that I could drive home and back to daycare and then to work. I just don't want to find out the freezer on went out and Jake has no milk for the day. I can't just dash out of work. So JUST IN CASE we have this formula. I took cereal in for him and told them I would like him to get it once a day and that they can mix it to the consistency of baby food with formula. I know it will be much easier for them to use the formula than messing with the breast milk. I always use fresh milk so I don't have to worry about it being seperated and so forth. Jake was given formula 4 out of the five days this week. Yesterday he was given 4 formula bottles. His belly hurt last night and he cried and cried. I hadn't looked at his sheet from daycare since Mike picked him up. Mike got me the sheet because I wanted to see if he had been constipated and how he had eatten. 4 formula bottles is what I see! When I dropped him off this morning I VERY SPECIFICALLY said I DO not want him to have bottles of formula. He has breast milk. I asked why and was given the answer that he was very hungry and it takes so much longer to get the breast milk ready than it takes to get formula. The person that took him wrote it on his paper for the day. What do I find when I pick up Jake from daycare? He had 3 formula bottles today!!! I am pissed.

There are two things here that greatly anger me. The first is that I was clear about it. I said no bottles of formula, only mix it up and SPOON him cereal. I don't want him to have cereal in his bottles either. The second is that I am going to a lot of work to get this milk for him. It sucks. I pump three times a day and it is a pain in the ass. Jake still bites some. Mostly, if I watch and pay attention I can figure out when he is about to bite and end things first. I do still enjoy the closeness of it, but it is a lot of work. At this point, the main reason I am still doing it is because it is very clear he has allergies already and I don't want to go through a million formulas. I know it can upset their tummies to get both formula and breast milk - that it can take a bit for him to get used to it. I also know that he could be intolerant to this particular formula. It was a free can for God's sake. We were using Gentlease(?) when I stopped giving it to him when he was brand new but I we of course got rid of the open can. It makes me feel like I am going to all this work for nothing and more importantly the people I am handing over my child's life to are NOT listening to me. Grrr!

Yikes!

I picked Jake up from daycare today. I brought him home and I checked his diaper right away like I always do when I bring him home. He was clean and dry for once. I didn't open his one piece outfit up all the way. I just looked enough to see a clean and dry diaper. Then I took Jake out to the living room to play for a bit and then I fed him. I could see that his poor little chin was red and rashy and that his neck was a bit red, but it looked like someone with perfume or lotion or something that irritates his skin had been holding him. But when I was almost finished nursing him I noticed his shoulder looked red in the gappy neck of his shirt. I pulled the neck back and everything I saw was fire red. I pulled him back and I yanked open his snaps and his entire chest and back look like the worst sunburn ever! It goes down to part of his bottom his genitals are mostly spared. His thighs are splotchy. I snatched him up quick and took him to the urgent care. He is allergic to penicillin and its derivatives, which Jake had been taking. He was laughing and flirting with the girls in the office, but as soon as we got home he crashed and did not feel good. His skin was so hot! Poor boy. They said we just need to let the drugs work out of his system and not do anything else for him. We gave him a bath and I slathered him up with lotion and I blew on it while it was still drying. He loved that. He would giggle while I did it and scream when I stopped. I feel so bad for him. It scared me though.

Last day

Today is the last day of Mike's vacation and it has gone much better than I expected. I asked him to do two things for me while he was off and neither has been completed. The odometer in my car is reading error and we need to put something different down than what we have between the carpet of the hallway and the linoleum of the bathroom floor. He is working on putting the automatic starter in my car right now and he did get a tire fixed that had a leak. He also gave my car a much needed tune up. By the way, I want a different car, but I know I am not going to get one. He also changed the oil and while he was doing that he discovered I have a CV joint going out. That is something he does not have the tools to fix. Crap. I don't like having issues with my vehicle. I don't like waiting to see if it does this or that because it means whatever. I want to know that I am safe and it will take me where ever I need to go. I am suggesting that we get rid of both our "big" vehicles and one something different that I drive. Remember, he got that car that is so much more gas efficient to drive around, right? Only one big car payment instead of two moderately large. Only one costly vehicle to insure. Only one gas hog. Hopefully, I could still get something larger that could still be better on fuel that what I am driving. (my gas mileage should get better now, I am told).

We have made it without me once having wanted to kill my husband, for the most part. We did have a HUGE fight where he brought up divorce and threatened to leave. We are pasted that now. I didn't get it when it happened. He was really flying off. Now I do get it. He is really upset about his pay. He sees me worrying about money and he feels like he isn't a good enough husband. He knows I want nothing more than to stay home with Jake and he wishes he could do more so that I can. I told him I know it isn't going to happen. He feels bad too that Jake is going to a germ factory. He wishes Jake had a grandma or aunt that could take care of him. (I don't think he knows that my sister has said if we move down by her she would take care of Jake.)

I know he couldn't get done what he wanted this week because he was watching Jake, but that was fine. He could have done more last week because he got almost nothing done then. I understand though that sometimes you need some down time. I also know that he gets more down time than just about anyone. Oddly, it still isn't a big deal to me! Maybe he is slipping me some valium or something. He did let his mom watch Jake on Friday instead of sending him back to daycare of watching him himself. (that is when my car did finally get worked on) Then he kicked himself and was mad that he didn't watch Jake himself. Poor little Jakey's bottom got burned. He is on antibiotics, of course (again!), and Grandma and Grandpa let him sit in a dirty diaper for awhile before they figured out why he was so upset. Mike thinks at least half an hour because he spent part of the time on the phone with his dad and was the one that told them to check his diaper. Well, he screamed so much that grandma stopped cleaning him up!?! His little bottom was clean, but his other parts still had that acidic pooh on them when Mike we got home. He picked Jake up before he picked me up from work. Jake screamed and I cried as we tried to clean him up. Mike was just furious. He was mad at his mom and mad at himself for not taking care of his son himself that day. Poor baby had blisters. It is finally doing better today. It just takes minutes for his sensitive little skin to get sore. Mike calmed down and explained to her to use a washclothe and squeeze water over it or even rinse him in the sink or tub with tempid water, but for God sakes get it all off! Mike felt so bad. I'm sure his mom did too. He went outside for that phone conversation...

I have been wanting to put a weight loss counter up but I haven't yet, obviously. That means I am acknowledging I have a problem and am seriously taking steps to fix it. I am still dragging my feet and am just kind of trying to take off the extra butt and gut I am carrying around. I haven't stepped on the scale in awhile and I sucked it up today and did it. You see, that is another one of the reasons I dread Mike's vacation. I don't eat as well when he is home all the time as I do when he is gone. He is such a picky eater and we eat so much more junk when he is home. When he is gone, I eat a more like I know I need to. I only looked with one eye because I thought it might soften the blow. I couldn't belive what I saw! I usually weigh myself first thing in the morning before I eat or drink and that wasn't true today and I still saw a number that didn't ups
et me. I mean it was still terrible, but I thought it would be five pounds heavier! So, I don't have it in my today, but I will put up a counter. I have to. I need to be a healthier me for that little boy that sounds like he is waking up. I have someone I am responsible for now and I need to be there for him. I need to be able to do all the things he needs me to do. I need to be able to crawl around and play with him. I need to be able to chase after him. I don't want there to be a chance that he is embarrassed because he as a fat mom. I don't want him to think his mom is fat and I don't want him to be an unhealthy weight. I need to be an example of leading a healthy life, right?

For heaven's sake when will the spell check work!! It is well know that I am "a creative" speller!!!