Right, Mom!

I made a bottle of formula for Jake this morning. It isn't the kind the doctor recommended, but it was one we had samples of at home. I had it ready when I went to get him out of bed. (it was my bed btw. He woke up in the night and was hungry so I just brought him to bed so I could sleep and he could eat and sleep to his heart's content). I got him up, checked the diaper and sat down to give him the bottle. He is very independent about the bottle for anyone else who gives him one so I handed it to him. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed it. Then he licked it. The promptly turned it over and handed it back to me. He was having none of it! I offered it to him two more times as I was getting ready and he refused in no uncertain terms. That made me feel better about trying to wean him!!!

I don't know what is wrong with me. This week was terrible and I just seem to be in a funk. Jake finally seems to be feeling better. He went back to daycare on Thursday. He still had diarhea, but he hadn't vomited since Tuesday I think. He ended up going to the doctor Monday and Tuesday. Three visits from Wednesday to the next Tuesday. That is worse than when we first brought him home! Oh well, you have to take care of your baby and if you think there is something wrong you take him back again and again. He is refluxing now which he has not had a problem with before now. Hopefully it will be better in the next few days.





I have had a lot of pain in my face and that doesn't really help. I have a doctor's appointment Tuesday to see if there is anything that can be done. I'm pretty sure whatever they want to do to me will have to wait until I am done breast feeding. So I think it is time to start weaning the baby, even though the doctor doesn't want me to. Mike and I talked about it as I was feeding Jake, of course, and I started bawling. He seemed to understand it better than I. I mean I guess once I stop that is it, we won't ever be doing that again. I was reading some information on some site about weaning and they said it could take many months!!! I don't think I can wait that long. I was hoping we could have it successfully completed in four weeks or less. Depending on what they do to me or give me, it just may not be a safe option. So I am having mixed emotions. I am planning on Wednesday being the day we start the process. Tuesday is when I have my appointment. I'm just not entirely sure how to start. I have read a few different approaches and I going to go talk to our lactation specialist on Monday to see what she has to say.





I have been so stinking tired. I think the headaches are making worse, that and the sick baby I have had to get up with many many times. Thursday night I fell asleep in the chair. I needed to nap for a few minutes before I got up and took care of all the things I needed to do still. Mike woke me up at midnight and told me to go to bed. I told him I couldn't because I didn't have my routine done and he did most of it for me so I could go to bed sooner. Bless him! Last night I laid down on the couch and was asleep within fifteen minutes of putting Jake to bed. Mike had pretty much everything done before he woke me up and walked me to bed. How wonderful!!! He has been home all week and he has just been great. He has managed with the sick baby even though he doesn't do well with that and was scared to take care of him. He has been cleaning the house up after himself so I didn't have to (well, not Monday and Tuesday when the boys were alone, but he has made up for it!)





I had a nightmare last night that the photographer's assisnt called again to tell us we wouldn't be able to get our pictures taken as scheduled. Only this time it was so the photographer could go on vacation. I was upset because I wouldn't have another day for a month that I could go and get them taken. She said not worry about not being able to get there for a month because they wouldn't be able to "fit us in" for three months! I then started sobbing about how now I wouldn't have six month pictures of my son because of them and they didn't need to worry about us coming in three months. I thought about checking the caller ID when I got up, however it was six and I am pretty sure they wouldn't be calling then.

Yesterday was fun. We cleaned and then my in laws came over. We got some different furniture and they came to see it. Jake was the center of attention of course, and in the middle of everyone watching him he threw up. A lot. Into Mom's hands. I don't do well with vomit, but I do better than my husband. This was just breast milk so it wasn't that bad. It scared him though. It is only the second time he ever vomited. The first time was because he was coughing so hard it made him sick. Grandma and Grandpa thought it was funny. They thought he gagged himself with a toy. Mommy didn't think it was funny and she didn't think it was a toy either. Mommy was right this time. He was so hungry and of course I feed him. Then he threw up about ten minutes later and about another ten minutes after I got him all cleaned up and changed. This time he really got me and my phone.

This morning he had a fever of 102. Poor little guy! He got to stay home with daddy. Daddy didn't do so well. Oh course he started getting sick from the other end too. He went to the doctor during my lunch break and he said it was his antibiotic and a virus making him sick. I can buy the virus. Give him lots of fluids. Great he won't take anything but breast milk. We got a couple of different flavors of pedialyte but it isn't happening. He won't take watered down juice when he isn't sick let alone when he is. Poor baby. He didn't throw up all day for dad, but he keeps spitting up now. That is not something he really has ever done. You can hear him refluxing. We are supposed to take him back to our regular doctor if it keeps up (her day off today). He also encouraged us not to take Jake to the urgent care we took him to last week - the one that is owned and operated by this doctor's office!!! What do you do??? He may have to stay home with daddy again tomorrow.

I had my ninth plugged duct. It started yesterday and finally resolved today. I think Jake wasn't nursing well enough yesterday because he didn't feel good. Poor baby, the kink almost always comes out while his is nursing and then I drowned him. He was making it worse by pushing my breast away from his facing which only made the stream come out stronger. I do like the closeness we have, but I can't wait to be done with this. I'm really hoping I won't be saying "just one more month" very soon!

Mom's wrong... yet again

We went to the urgent care place this morning because our doctor is sick. I felt entirely out of place there. I have never gone there in the middle of the day before. I am always at work then. First of all I am not racist. As a matter of fact, our family doctor is Hispanic. Anyway, I was definitely in the minority in waiting room. First of all Jake and I were the only blue eyed, fair skinned people. Second of all, we were the only people that had regular health insurance. You have to present your insurance card and from the time we sat down to the time we went back the only coverage I heard people say was not the blue cross like we have, if you get my drift. There were tons of other babies though and most of the mothers were babies themselves. This is a good look for Jake isn't it. His eye looks a ton better here than it did when he woke up. It hardly even opened at all this morning.
Anyway, I was sort of wrong, I guess. It isn't pink eye and he doesn't have a plugged duct. He does have a sinus infection and mucus is coming BACK OUT the nasal lacrimal duct. Poor baby! We got some antibiotics and then we went and ran errands. At least he doesn't have a highly infectious disease. He just feels like crap. He would have had lovely pictures today wouldn't he???
(I know the red eye is terrible, but I thought the picture was just so cute!) My pretty princess kitty loves to come and rub on Jake. She has very long, very silky fur and he loves to pet her. Usually, however, he is very gentle unlike this tail grab indicates. I haven't been able to snag a picture of her coming up and rubbing his nose with hers. I am always holding him when it happens. He just loves it! He giggles and giggles.

This FREAKING day!!!

Is it Friday yet??? I had to get up with Jake a couple of times last night and so this morning when I was oh so hoping I could sleep in a tiny bit it ticked me off that Mike got mad at me. I brought Jake to bed with me to feed him and hopefully, oh please God, get just another 30 minutes or so of sleep. Jake wasn't happy though and kept fussing. That irritated Mike and he yelled at me. Who is it that gets up every single time? Not him. Who is it that gets to continue to sleep after the baby and the dogs decide it is time to get up? Not me. So even if we get up at the same time, he still has more sleep because I was up an hour and a half in the night. Not to say he did get up. No, we got up and he stayed in bed until almost ten. If I'm lucky I can get daddy to dress the baby while I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off because things never go smoothly when I am a late shift. I still have to take the baby to daycare. Gee, where does daddy have to be...no where! He didn't go to work until 6pm. He took a damn nap after we left.

So that is how it goes. It makes me a tad bit cranky. That and the fact that I am congested and have a cough. When I got up to feed Jake in the night I noticed one of his eyes looked funny. I thought he had a black eye because it looked swollen. Mind you I don't have more than a 4 watt night lite with which to see. I took him in the bathroom and ticked him off royally. It looked like the nasty snot from his nose had run up his face and glued his eyelashes together and he couldn't open his eye fully. I cleaned him up and inspected his eye. It seemed to look fine. It looked fine later when we got up (since this originally occurred at about 3am).

One of my coworkers was so sweet to come in so I could go do my BLS. Thank God, because I don't think I could have done it Thursday night. Good day so far right? They went down hill rapidly. I had to be the afternoon charge nurse and there were issues. Unfortunately, I got practice that CPR I renewed today. A patient came into the OR in a full code. Not good. Not good at all! Thankfully we were able make things better. But as I am taking this patient to ICU I am handed a note about another patient that MAY need EMERGENCY surgery after the doctor goes to a meeting. Does that sound like an emergency to you??? As the charge person I would normally be talking to this doctor and finding out important things, but as I was already in a life and death situation he had to deal with someone else. Great. I had to figure it out later. So in the mean time I get a call from the ER. They have a bleeding patient that needs to come up right away. I chuckle and say of course you do, we will be right there to get them. We were. We are down to a skeleton crew now and we are gather supplies for the case we "might" do and the case we are going to do. The doctor calls back after his meeting and needs to do the emergency. I tell him we are setting up for a bleeding patient at the moment but we will get his case going as fast as we can. He tells me he is disappointed there is another case and needs to get his surgery started as soon as possible because it is going to take all night. Of course it is. So I am setting up for the bleeding patient and the doctor calls. She needs to deliver a baby first. Of course you do. I am having to call all sorts of people to keep them abreast of what is going on. A scrub and I say we will stay so that the "emergency" can get started in the other room and we will take care of the bleeding patient who is now on hold. I call my MIL and tell her I don't know when I will pick my baby up. She says no problem but did I notice something going on with Jake's eye? Great. I say well as a matter of fact I did and the phone rings and I have to hang up on her. The OB calls me and lets me know it might be awhile and did I know they think they have an appy in the ER and it might need to go before her bleeding patient?? Of course they do. So... I had a lovely day. We didn't have to do the appy. The doctor decided the patient wasn't as close to delivering as the nurse thought she might be and we got to take the patient back to the OR. I was there an extra two hours after the end of my shift.

I was so glad to get the hell out of work. I went and got my little darling and for crap sake it was the other eye!!! It is so swollen! I thought it was probably pink eye, but I am thinking not after seeing him. He might have a plugged tear duct or something else. His actual little eye did look pink at all. We were supposed to get our pictures taken in the morning, but the photographer had a death in her family and had to go to Texas. Sadly, that ended up working out well for us didn't it? I still have the day off so I can take the baby to the doctor. His poor little nose is so stuffy and snotty. I feel so bad for him. It still isn't natural for him to mouth breathe so it wakes him up and is kind of scary. Poor baby. More antibiotics and who knows what else. Did I say thank God this day is over yet???

Finally Saturday!

This week was so stinking long! After having to work over seventeen hours last Saturday and then being sick on Tuesday, I didn't know what day was what. Luckily it is over. Now I'm not entirely looking forward to next week either. I have three late shifts which I hate! But two good things though. I was supposed to take BLS (basic life support) on Thursday night - Thursday being the only regular day I work - but one of my coworkers took pity on me. She is part time and is going to come in for me on Tuesday afternoon so I can leave for a couple of hours and take the class then. I am so happy about that! That was so nice of her and I appreciate it so much. The other good thing is that I have Wednesday off so we can go get Jake's six month pictures taken by the really good, really expensive photographer. The week after that I don't think I have a single late shift. Yippee!!



My chest hurts and I have a terrible cough. It is different than I usually get though. I'm still a bit worried about it but I feel fine otherwise. I just feel like I am on the edge of an asthma attack, but none comes. I'm not complaining about that. It does seem to both irritate and concern Jake however. If he is eating than it disturbs him and he doesn't like that. If I am holding him or he is sitting near me he gives me or Mike a very concerned look.



Speaking of sitting, he is doing so well!!! You can see by the pictures. He is just beginning to fall in the picture with the fish in his mouth. His very favorite toy right now is his tongue. He loves to play with it. He sticks it out and rolls it up. He sprays spit or baby food every where with it. He just loves to see what he can do with it. He even licks you. I took him to a meeting at work with me on Friday and he was great entertainment with his tongue activities.



I am dreading the time change. I guess that is a good thing about having all the late shifts. I guess we can use them to ease ourselves in a bit more. It is just so hard for me to get up now in the mornings! Jake has been getting up a lot so that doesn't help but no matter how you look at it 415 is early.



This week I have toiled a lot over breast feeding. I have been having a lot of pain in my face around my left eye. I don't remember if I have posted this or not. The MRI that was done at the end of December showed that there was still an unusual amount of swelling on my facial nerve. I was put on a pretty good dose of steroids for fifteen days. That seemed to cut my milk supply in half. That was pretty emotional for me. I suddenly hardly had any milk to put in the freezer and I for the first time I didn't always have enough if I had Jake for the entire day. I would have to give him frozen milk. He still doesn't take a bottle from me very well. He has no problem if Mike gives him one and Mike never even has to touch it aside from hand it to him and take it when he is done. Not the case for Mommy however. Interesting... So a recommended treatment for the spasticity and pain I am having around my eye is to have bo.t.ox injected in my forehead and around my eye. Supposedly, my insurance will pay for it. So I said what about the the other side because I already know you look stupid with half your face paralyzed. Insurance won't pay for you to be symmetrical in this instance. But I can't get the injections and still nurse. Right now my doctor is supposed to be talking with a special pain doctor to see if there is something else that should be tried instead. I'm pretty sure I am just getting handed over to that practice, but I haven't officially been told that. So what do I do? Here I am struggling to try to increase my milk supply. I feel ready to stop, but the doctor wants me to keep going with Jake as long as I absolutely can. I decided I would try to make it through the end of the month. That will put Jake at seven months old. Hopefully he will continue to be doing better about eating baby food. I'm just not sure how to go about starting him on formula. I asked the doctor what formula she wanted me to start with when he did start needing formula and she wants us to go with soy. It upset his tummy before when we were doing soy and breast milk and we had to change. Of course his life was measured in days then. I don't want to have to mess with trying a dozen different kinds of formula! That is why I AM still breast feeding. The funny thing to me is that my husband seems to have strong feelings on the matter. Maybe it is just because he doesn't want to have to help with the bottles more, but he doesn't want me to stop. Maybe it is because I made such a stink about how important it was when we were struggling in the early days. He knew my goal was to make it six months though. I guess I will see what the doctors come up with for me and I will go from there, if I still have any milk left by then!

Yet again

Yesterday I was sick. I called in to work sick. I have now been sick twice this year!!! I don't remember when I called in sick to work and I have called in twice. My boss is going to think it is the baby and blame it on him. I woke up with a fever and I felt terrible. My temp was 102.5. I was freezing one minute and dripping with sweat the next. I tried to get up and get ready for work. I took the dogs out and I shook like a leaf when I was out. I also was praying not vomit while I was out. Oh how I hate nausea!!!

I came in and got back in bed. I was there a bit before the GI aspect kicked in. It was awful. I don't know how long I was in the bathroom. Thank God I still had meds left over from the last time we were sick. I kept trying to take tylenol for my fever and it wouldn't stay down. I gave up. Jake woke up at 6 and I nursed him. I barely had the strength to lift him! I took him to bed with me and he kept screaming. He is really in to screaming and playing with his tongue right now. It is cute when he plays with his tongue, but the screaming is obnoxious! I tried and tried to quiet him but it didn't work. I got up and put him in his swing and much to my amazement it worked! I got an extra two hours of sleep. Then I woke Mike up and I got Jake dressed and I had Mike take him to daycare so I could continue to sleep. I slept (off and on and fitfully) until noon. I got up for a bit and ate some broth and crackers and went back to bed. It was terrible.

I had to get myself up and about because Jake had his first hair cut yesterday. It was more of a trim around the ears but it was still important. He looks so cute. He wasn't as cooperative as I hoped he would be, but we still managed. She seemed pretty experienced at chasing the moving target with giant scissors. Now he won't have any hair hanging over his ears for his pictures next week!