1 year

One year ago today I woke up with the terrible stiff neck because I thought I had slept funny. I never imagined when I got up that morning what was in store for me. The function hasn't returned completely, like they were just sure it would and I still have pain and spasticity. It is a lot better now that I am taking the medicine the Physiatrist prescribed. However, the medications (he gave me two) have a lot of side effects so far that I am not happy with.

The Physiatrist was very nice at least. He had a lot of answers for me. I didn't like them all and it has put me in my funk. The drugs he "gave" me make me sleepy, clumsy, crabby, make my vision blurry, make my ankles and feet swell, and I have trouble speaking sometimes. But the most common side effect is severe dizziness and I haven't had that. I was mildly dizzy a couple of times but not bad at all. Not what I was expecting. He told me a dozen times or more not to stop taking the drugs because the side effects will get better. I sure hope so because I am covered with bruises and there are times it is all I can do to get up out of a chair because I am so sleepy. Great for work and taking care of baby!!

My face probably won't get any better as far as strength and movement, but it isn't too bad actually. Most people wouldn't notice or they might just think I was a bit weird (so they would be right). My mouth still raises when I close my right eye or if I raise my left eyebrow. But I can raise my left eyebrow. Not independently of the right, but not everyone can do that anyway. The pain is not the same nerve that goes with the paralysis. The two nerves run parallel and most people don't have problems with the Trigeminal nerve when they have Bell's Palsy, but I get to be lucky. I ended up with Trigeminal Neuralgia. We don't know what will happen yet. We don't know how long I will need to take medication, but hopefully not forever. At least I can smile at my son. I'll just keep with it. What else can I do?

walk

I took Jake for a long walk today. The weather was nice at our house, a bit windy, but still 65 degrees. I took him to this really nice walking path we have that follows the river we have. It is about five miles, maybe, from our house. The wind was so horrible I could barely push the stroller. Jake was all snug and warm and thought it was a great trip.

There are so many geese right now and they are all nesting. I can't tell you how many places I saw just the head of a female sticking out of some brush or grass or something and ten or so feet away there was the male standing guard, protecting his family. I don't know why but it really struck me to see how protective the papas were of their mates and those little eggs.

I remember being taught that geese are monogamous and frequently don't even seek another mate if something happens to theirs. For some reason I find this to be terribly romantic. But I remember hearing some scientist say some time ago that they did DNA studies on different groups of geese and actually found that wasn't exactly true. He said that they found more than one father to the eggs under the females. He said promiscuity was rampant. I remember just hating that man and wanting to know why they felt the need to study this.

So now when I see the father standing guard over his mate, I still try to think of them as mates for life and that he would do anything for her. I like the romantic version so much better!

Pictures

I have been struggling a little bit. I just seem to be having a hard time with everything. Amazingly I just don't want to talk about it. Or maybe I just don't know what to say.

Jake's six month - turned into seven month - pictures are back already. I was thinking it was going to take extra time because she was unexpectedly gone a week and instead we had our slide show in 1 week. She tells you ten to fourteen days normally and I was thinking closer to three weeks this time, so I got a pleasant surprise today. I will share the pictures, but I wish I could edit them. I don't even recognized the person in those pictures. In most of them you can't really tell my face still has problems. I can of course, but I just can't believe that fat face is me. I guess I haven't gotten used to the person I have become. That means I need to change it right? I need to because I have gained ten pounds in the six weeks. I guess the pictures don't lie.

http://www.kellyhighbyphotography.com/slideshows/

The password is "jacobc"

I do like them though. Jake wasn't cooperative for long, but there are some that are still pretty cute.

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!

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!!!

bad call

Yesterday was rough. I felt horrible myself. Jake is still sick of course. I was on call yesterday and I worked a fifteen hour day when all was said and done. I got to come home and cuddle Jake and eat dinner. Then I had to go back. I got home just in time to nurse Jake and put him to bed. I was almost in bed myself when they called me back again. It was midnight before I got home and then I couldn't go right to sleep. It took a bit. I finally got to sleep and then Jake woke up. I went in and rolled him over and put his pacifier back in and he was sound asleep again. We did this three times in the mere 4 hours I had to sleep. Now I'm not sure if I feel awful because I'm sick or really exhausted.





Mike has now had to take care of Jake for two whole days. I was so worried yesterday because I was gone so long and it was their first day alone together for real. Mike even got some house work done yesterday and he was putting dinner in the oven when I got home. I was really impressed! I was expecting both of them to be screaming. Today, that is more like what happened and I got home early. I could have come home earlier and would have like to, but now with our recent changes in how they pay us, I would have taken a substancial hit if I didn't stay at work for more than half the day. Isn't that nice? You will all be glad to know that I was not providing direct patient care though. I was a "helper." That was good. I did help to. I stood there and listened while the nasty urologist vented his crazy perceptions of how we do things. I just got what he needed and did what was asked. I did run the board for awhile while the charge nurse was gone (that is always frightening to put me in charge!) I did a bit of computer work. The important thing is that I never sat around like some people do!





I suppose, I need to get help support one of my husband's addictions. Pop is on sale and he bought his maximum allowed amount for the day. I just go in buy it take it out to the car and go back in again. He won't do that. If they won't let him buy what he wants he pouts instead. Maybe he should just give it up. Did I say that? I guess of his two addictions this is the one I would rather he have.

5 months, 200 posts

My little Jacob is 5 months today and I have been blogged 200 rambly posts! It is starting to seem less like yesterday that we had him. Actually, I can hardly believe he is only 5 months because he feels like he has been a huge part of our life for so long. My poor baby is sick again. Mike took him to the doctor all by himself. Or at least Mike thought that was happening. Our doctor's office is in a building connected to the hospital by walk ways and I was able to get my lunch during the time I managed to get an appointment. I must say, I am really impressed with our doctor. I was before when she was just taking care of me, but now with Jake even more so. She obviously know the trouble we have had so far and wanted to see him about an hour after I finally got to talk to a person in their office. I hate leaving a voice mail at the doctor's office! Anyway, she saw him during her lunch break too. He has a terrible cough. It sounds so junky. We are now the proud owners of our own nebulizer. Jake has two cute little masks that go with it and the little bugger will hold them him self.

I cried for a good half hour today before I came home because I feel so bad about not being able to keep my baby protected from the big bad world. I am having some anger issues again. I can't help but wonder if Jacob had been born a week earlier (a week smaller) would be have had all these lung issues. No one can say that his lungs would be better if he hadn't aspirated the meconium for sure, but they do say he is at higher risk. I just feel so bad for him and I feel guilty like I could have/should have done something different. I love this little man more than I can ever begin to say. I wish I could be sick for him. The crappy thing is that I am now getting it too.

Another first

Tonight we went out to dinner, just the two of us, for the first time since before Jake was born. We have never been real big on going out to restaurants to eat. We are much more takeout people. But we did it. It was hard too. I also had a perfect margarita. It was really good. I just couldn't believe how many babies were at the restaurant that were about Jake's age. It was certainly distracting for me. I had to watch them all and criticize the girl behind me that was feeding her baby inappropriate foods. That poor little girl is going to be sick and I thought she was going to choke on some of the things her mom was feeding her. Anyway, we did it. Now I can only imagine what it will be like when it is a babysitter we leave him with not Grandma and Grandpa.

Poor Jakey is sick. He has the runny nose and cough that all the other little ones at daycare have. I feel so bad for him. I wish I could be sick for him. I'm already taking antibiotics but I'm sure what he has is a virus. I have had my closest near miss with mastitis yet. I have had eight plugged ducts now with six of them being in the exact same place. Obviously I have a problem there. I worked with my OB on Thursday and he gave me some antibiotics. I went and talked with the lactation consultants that afternoon too. I forgot how uncomfortable it is to basically bare myself and then be manhandled. It didn't really matter. They helped me. This was the longest I had gone without being able to get the duct to clear and I was in a lot of pain. I am all bruised now from all the rubbing I did. The main lactation consultant was worried about me too. She wanted me to go home and lay in bed for two days. Hello!!! Anyway, between the plugged ducts and the biting baby I would really like to stop breast feeding but I'm not going to just yet. I'm going to try and go to six months still and then re-evaluate. We are almost there. I can make it one more month right?

Melt down

I went to get Jake from daycare today and he was sleeping. It was about 3:20. They told me he had been sleeping since 11:45!!! WTF! I couldn't believe they let him sleep so long. I also know it isn't a good sign that he was sleeping so long. The "girl" also told me that he sounded very hoarse that morning when he cried. GREAT! So I woke my baby up. I changed his wet and dirty diaper and I bundled him up in his bunting. On the way home I had to pull over because I was sobbing. I talked to a couple of people at work this morning and one of them has a son that just turned a year old. He is in the same room at daycare as Jake some of the time. He woke up last night with a terrible Croupy cough, sore throat, and a fever. The other co worker's son has just now after six days started doing better with his Croupy cough. I just felt so horrible about having Jake in daycare, about exposing him to all these snotty nosed, coughing little kids.

When Jake sleeps he pretty much loses all color. He is so pale it scares me. I have to check to make sure he is breathing because he truly looks lifeless. I just had a freak out moment that my little boy could get sick and die. (a family member of someone at work had that happen recently. A baby two months younger than Jake passed away with a respiratory infections). I know this won't happen to us, but it occurred to me that it was possible and I take my baby to germapalooza every day. I know I have to work and I know I am taking him to one of the best daycares in town, but they are me. I just can't stand that something could happen to him and I'm not there. It took me a few minutes to pull myself together so that I could drive again.


(the first picture is when we gave Jake cereal when he was four months old and the other picture is of Jake smacking his lips because he figured out that he could while he was in the hospital. Sorry, both pictures are blurry because he was on the move).

Griping #700 or so it seems

I am all over the place these days. Jake has been a little bear, but at least he is better. These top teeth are a lot worse than the bottoms were for us. I can't wait for the rest of them! I doesn't seem there is anything that makes him happy for more than about two minutes.

Work has been awful. We got presented with our "raises" just after Christmas. Yes, the normal areas of the hospital are going to experience nice raises. They have made weekends and shift work much more tolerable to those areas. However, the two departments that bring the most revenue, surgery and radiology, have been dealt a big blow. We are getting pay cuts. They have cut our on call pay. The hours we worked after our regular shift were paid to us in double time and now it has gone to time and a half. This is a SERIOUS blow to us. It also makes having to work call much less attractive, not that it was wonderful before. At least we felt like we were getting compensated for some of the horrible things we have to do. We have the potential for earning a partial extra shift bonus if we work a ton when we are on call but there are so many stipulations that it is going to be extremely rare for us to qualify. So this has made morale that was just barely picking up from an all time low, plummet to a level never before imaginable. Most of us have swallowed this bitter pill and still have indigestion but there is one that spewing bile all over. (get the picture). This fellow (there are only two brave, or crazy, guys in our department) is being totally inappropriate and our boss is doing nothing. He is carrying on and on and on. At every available opportunity he spouts off - during surgeries to doctors, while you are trying to get cases going, while you are cleaning up. We have a book where we are supposed to write positive things and he has put things in there. We have a communication board and he has written things on it. He has put hostile comic strips in the break room. But Friday, he finally went too far I think. He messed with the charge nurse. It doesn't matter what the rest of us say. We have been told he just needs some time to cool off. But this time he "vandalized" a flier put up by the charge nurse from a committee she is on. I don't remember what it said exactly but it was about treating each other with courtesy. The whole point of this committee is to try and improve morale throughout the hospital and to encourage departments to get to know one another and work together better. It will be interesting to see what happens this week!

This week I did three tubals one day. The first one was only 21 years old. She has three children. The next one I did was literally two weeks younger than me. This was her ninth pregnancy and fifth baby. I had very mixed emotions. I felt great sadness for any one to suffer four miscarriages. I tried to imagine my life with five children and I just couldn't fathom it. The next patient was a few months younger than me and she had just given birth to her third child, but the first with her fiance. She said that between the two of them this is their fifth child. Yet another situation I just couldn't imagine myself in right now. Thank goodness I am not in these positions but it gets me thinking. What do I want? Do I want another baby? Yes and no. I love children and I think I want another one, but I am terrified of going through the whole process again. What will happen? How long will it take to get pregnant this time? What if I can't get pregnant? What horrible things will happen to me this time? How do I take care of Jake? When do we start? What about Jake? I already wish I could give him more time and attention. I want to give him everything I can and maybe that means he should be an only child. I always wished I had a sibling that was closer to my own age and thought I would do that for my own baby. How are we going to pay daycare for two???

On a good note, we still have a lot of details to work out, but it looks like we are going to have a different place to live soon. Someone I worked with has a house that is going to be up for sale soon. His youngest daughter graduates from high school this year and he has been working at a different hospital for about a year and a half I think. He bought another house there some time ago so his wife will finally get to join him at the end of the school year. The problem is we still haven't recovered financially from this past year. The solution, well, if we can come to an appropriate agreement, we will rent the house for one year and then buy it with the rent applying toward ownership. I imagine we will be able to come up with an agreement. The housing market isn't great in this area for sellers and he knows that. He knows we know that too. So hopefully we can work something out. It is a much nicer and a larger home than we are in.

Long week

This week has been terribly long. I have had three late shifts and I just hate late shifts. I did handle it better than the last time I had three in one week but it was still hard. I spend too little time with my little Peanut. However, my little Peanut has been a bear this week!! He is working on tooth number six and it has him just pissed off. Daycare has always said what a good baby he is, one of their best, but the last three days they have said his has been really fussy. These top teeth seem to be worse. I hope we get a break with them soon. What four and half month old needs six teeth???

I took Jake in yesterday for his follow up doctor appointment. She gave him the all clear. He still has a bit of an occasional cough, but he hasn't had to have a breathing treatment for a couple of days. I was excited because this was our fourth visit for Jake to our doctor, but it was going to be the very first time she wasn't going to treat mom or dad. Wrong!!! She was talking to me and asked me how long I had had pink eye. Pink eye? What are you talking about, I don't have pink eye. Look in the mirror over there. Oh, for God's sake I do have pink eye! Two hours earlier it had been fine. Daycare strikes again, except Jake hasn't gotten it. Oh well, at least I was getting it treated before I even knew I had it!

Mike is out right now and his vacation will start as soon as he gets back. I have been dreading this. He is so lazy when he is on vacation and he ends up driving me nuts. I hate to come home from work, after having to pick up the baby, and then clean up after him. I just hate it and he is a huge slob. He really is. He keeps throwing in coat in the middle of the dining room floor. We have a perfectly good coat closet not five steps from where he dropped his coat. Anyway, I don't want to get started on that because I will go on forever! Lets just say I am counting the days until his vacation is over already.

Back to work

We are all finally feeling better. Jake was the first one back to "normal." I have been doing much better since yesterday and Mike is finally doing better today. Last week was so long and now it is back to the salt mine. Oh well.

We had an interesting opportunity come up and we are doing a lot of thinking, negotiating (amongst ourselves), and planning. We need to do a bit of research too. The thing is we have hope. Hope of getting out of this house. I just don't know if it is going to work and Mike says we will make it work no matter what. It also means I am having to deal with some of my trust/control issues. But at least we have some hope. I want to get the baby out of here so badly.

Learn something new

I wish I had know it was De-lurking week sooner. Well, I guess I haven't been home much, or at all some days, this week. Who is out there lurking???

Not a good start!

Well, we debated and debate how much I should take out in my flex account this year because I was so far off last year. Looks like I was wrong again this year and it is only January 10th! Monday night, actually Tuesday morning, I woke up because Jake was coughing. I got up with him and fed him and he had this crappy cough. It was new, he hadn't had it before. I could hear secretions trying to clear when he coughed and then his little airway would plug. He couldn't do anything for a second or two or what felt like a million and then he broke it free. This happened a few times over the next few hours and I debated and debated taking him to the ER. I held him and he slept upright and was breathing fine. That is, when I wasn't having to put him down to run to the bathroom to get sick. Mike and I both got terribly sick within about 30 minutes of each other. We were violently ill for hours. I put Jake back in his bed when he was doing better and I was so exhausted I couldn't stay awake any longer and I slept for about an hour. Mike came and woke me up because he was so sick his muscles were starting to cramp. So I got up then and called in sick (I don't remember the last time I did that). I also told my boss I was going to the ER. So I get everyone ready and carried Jake out. Mike would have had me carry him out too if I could.

So it we were all patients. We were put in two different rooms, but at least my room had the bathroom and thank God for that! The doctor looked at Mike and then me and gave us the same thing and said we had a virus and we would get better in a few days. He acted like I was being a nervous nelly mom about Jake though. Well, his "just a little cough" turned out to be pneumonia and he ended up getting admitted for a couple of nights. It was so terrible. My poor baby was sick and he needed me and I was so sick and so tired that I could barely take care of him. He would want me to pick him up and I would lean into his crib and hold him because I was so weak I didn't think I could actually pick him up. Or I would be weak and so tired I thought I would fall asleep and drop him. My poor boy! I still feel really bad. I am still having to take zo.fran and lom.odil and they start wearing off before the next dose is due.

Jake acted like he felt the best of the three of us even when we went in. Now he is better and Mike and I are still sick. Poor baby though. He got three days of IV antibiotics and now we have a week of orals to give him. I have to give him breathing treatments and he is so good for that. He just loved all the women up there taking care of him. He flashed big old grins until he had them eating out of the palm of his little hand.

We got home this afternoon and Mike and were sitting trying to recover. The house looked like a bomb had gone off because Mike had been picking up after himself while I was staying in the hospital with Jake. I just kept smelling a fool smell. I asked Mike if he had gas and he said no. I asked him if he could smell it and he couldn't of course. Well I came down to the computer and I started a load of wash. Pretty soon after the wash started I could hear water hitting the floor. I could see it dripping off some plumbing. Great! Just what we need! Then I went up to the bathroom to see about the water up there. I found sewage had backed up in the bathtub and that is what I was smelling. Gross! We had to call a plumber and get them here to snake the line to the tank. Bring the baby home to this. I just wanted to cry yet again.

Hmm...

Last Friday I had an interesting experience that was a bit emotional for me. I dug around in a drawer in the bathroom that I haven't been into in a quite some time. It is where "feminine products" are kept. I haven't needed anything from this drawer because of the pill I take and the breast feeding. Well, I dug around in this drawer for something I just knew was there. I thought there was one, just one and I couldn't remember what the wrapper looked like, but I knew it when I saw it. It was an expensive, fancy HPT. My hands were shaking and I was sweating. I was incredibly nauseous. (there in lies the problem). I closed the door and looked at the package. Expiration date of 5/08. I laughed at the thought of having it "expire." I took the test and it took forever. I was scared. The hourglass just kept being on the screen. I put it in the cupboard and went and did a few of my normal just get home from work things. Then I went back in the bathroom and I closed the door. I opened the cupboard but I closed my eyes and pulled the test out. "Not Pregnant" is what it said. I felt relief. Then I cried. This was a totally different experience for me. I am used to looking at them and crying but for different reasons. I just went through about a million emotions and thoughts. I remembered how much it hurt to see this before and the laughed at the relief now.

I have been not feeling well. I have been nauseated quite a lot. I have had a bad back that is very familiar. My sense of smell has been hyperactive. All of these things and few others just feel so familiar. Especially the nausea. I haven't thrown up, but just barely. I don't know what is going on, but I was worried that one of those few times we have had "relations" since having Jake that something happened. I think I want another baby. I absolutely adore Jake, but I worry about having to share my time. I want to be able to give another baby the time I have given Jake, and that could never happen, and I want to be able to keep giving Jake every minute I can. I don't know. I am still mixed. I don't know how hard it would be for me to get pregnant again. I just know I don't want it to happen yet, for sure. I am still not quite completely healed from Jake. I know things won't ever be the way they were before, but I am sure that they aren't as good as they are going to get yet.

I am also concerned about my risk of a repeat of palsy. I am still not back to normal. Actually, it has been worse lately. A lot more painful and I have been having issues with spasticity. I called the doctor's office the day it was the worst and it took two weeks to actually get a message back from the doctor. I was in crying pain and it took TWO WEEKS. Well, I almost called the doctors directly, but I didn't want to abuse my position any more than I already have. They made me get an MRI since I didn't get one while I was pregnant. That was a week ago and I haven't heard anything yet. They are concerned because I am not better than this. They are concerned that I might have a "growth" that is causing compression of my facial nerve. Great! Or maybe it is worse because of stress. We are still struggling a bit. I am so glad Christmas is over and Mike has been working with regularity. I was hoping we would have ourselves pulled back together before our tax return but it looks like we will have to use our tax return to get ourselves back on track.

We have had wonderful new at work that has helped the stress level of us all. We were told we were getting a 3% raise, which is our normal cost of living raise and that there were a whole bunch of new things that were going to be great. Well, they may be great for normal units, but we took a devastating blow. They cut our pay. They are paying us differently now. They have increased shift differentials and added weekend pay and made holiday pay better, but they cut our call pay. We were getting double time when we got called in for emergencies and had to work on call, but now we only get 1.5 time. I know that is pretty common for most places, but it is going to mean a significant pay cut for all of the nurses in my department. What a great Christmas present! As you can imagine, things have gone from cranky to a battlefield. They know they have us in a bind. Most of us can't leave the area. There isn't another hospital to go to so we are getting screwed. And we were told that because "we" got all these other increases, we shouldn't expect a market raise this year. That is usually our big raise. They attempt to make our pay competitive or at least comparable to other hospitals we compete with. My department doesn't benefit from these other increases, call pay is cut, and most likely no market adjustment. Well happy f*ing New Year to us. Our moral has been struggling for so long and this just was more than we could handle. No one has quite, yet. People are openly looking for other jobs. Can you afford a $5000-$12000 pay cut (depending on how much call you take)? Neither can any of us! So that has helped the old stress level as well. I just wish I could get Mike to move away.

Time

Time. I never seem to have any of it. I have a few minutes now only because I am on call and I can't be alone with Jake. I have to wait until my in laws are home and then go pick him up so I have to be quick.

We had an interesting Christmas. It was wonderful to get to see my family for once. The last time I got to spend a Christmas with my sister was seven years ago. My aunt finally made it to see Jake. My sister's visit was too short and my aunt's and mother's were too long. My aunt isn't doing at all well and it is very hard to deal with, especially because we have tried and tried to get her to get help.
It was wonderful to have a little someone to celebrate our Christmas with. Santa brought Jake this Cookie monster that he is way too little to play with. I think Santa really wanted to play with it himself! Poor Jake was a little overwhelmed by all the people though. We have all been sick. Jake and I just got it first and are getting better where as Mike got it a bit later and his is dragging on.
My nephews got to meet their cousin for the very first time! I think all of their other cousins have graduated from college already. Jake didn't hold their attention very long though. The younger two didn't mind playing with some of his toys though.

I hardly even recognized my aunt when she burst though a door and almost knocked me over. She had eye surgery and lost her very thick glasses so that is great. I knew she had gained some weight since I saw her last year at my grandma's funeral. I just didn't realize how much. I was shocked.
Jakey got a jumper for Christmas and he loves it. He loves to stand without one of us helping him. We were going to get him a saucer until they told us how much he loves the jumper at daycare. He has some figuring out to do still but he sure talks to it a lot!
I have so much to type. There have been a lot of things not going very well and I need to vent, but I need to go get my boy. Hopefully soon I can write.

4 months

Today Jacob is four months old. I can't believe it has been 4 months! Jake is now 15 pounds 1 ounce and 25 1/2 inches long. His fourth tooth broke threw yesterday. He is a little stinker today because he isn't feeling all that well from getting shots yesterday. He doesn't want mommy to put him down, not even long enough to go to the bathroom. I got him to sleep in his crib for only about two and half hours last night and then he slept on me in the chair until about 4. I was so kinked up by then I just took him to bed with me. I had to wake Mike up so he knew Jake was there. Jake was nice enough to let me sleep until 730. By then he had turned sideways in the bed and Mike and I were each laying on our sides on the edges of the bed. Thank God it is a king sized bed! We try to keep Jake out of our bed but once and awhile he ends up there. Mostly when mom is desperate for sleep and he will calm down and go to sleep if he is in bed with me. It is awfully convenient for a night time snack to for the little guy.

Jake was doing great with his sleeping the week before Christmas, but this week has been awful. He has gotten up at least once and most nights twice. Too much going on in his house I think. He is still nursing but I am still reconsidering with a near amputation this week. My doctor really encouraged me to keep going or pumping and giving him a bottle because of his already obvious allergies. Now that makes me feel a bit guilty for wanting to stop. I had yet another plugged duct yesterday and I just don't know. We have about enough milk in the freezer to carry us two months... I'll keep trying. We were doing better with the biting. It gets a lot worse when he is teething and he just seems to have the urge to chew everything.

I still can't believe he is ours. Although I am having a difficult time getting anything done (he is actually sleeping in his swing right now) I do like that he wants to snuggle so much when he isn't feeling well. He wants to be right on my chest just like he did when he first came home. I just adore this little guy.

We finally got our three month pictures. They aren't quite what our newborn pictures were, but there are some cute ones. I'm not sure yet how I feel about the photographer. I do like a lot of what you see on her site and blog, but our pictures don't seem to be quite the same. I haven't decided yet about going back. www.shutterbeephotography.com/jacob The pictures will only be available until the 10th I think. I didn't like any of the pictures with me at all. I realize I have a lot of work to do. I really gained a lot of weight in my face during pregnancy and with all that I have lost it would seem like more would have come off my face than has. New Years resolution I guess.

Freedom!!

I has been nice having my family visit, but it went on a bit too long. We took Jake in for his four month check up today and we didn't come home until we knew for certain we would be the only ones there. I love my family, but we need our home and our space back. Mike can walk around in his underwear again. I can pee with the bathroom door open. I just hate feeling like a guest in your own house because someone else has taken over. I will write more tomorrow, I just needed to celebrate my freedom with a few words.

Picture

Just a quick second. I put Jake's little Santa hat picture on here for the week. It is what we ended up using for our Christmas card picture and not on of the three of us. I think it is kind of funny because Mike was taking the pictures with his big fancy camera and this I took with my much "lesser" digital. Anyway, vote for us please because we want to be popular. http://www.simplytoimpress.com/photo-contest/index.php

three and a half months

Things are hard right now. Jake and I have both been sick. Stuffy/runny noses coughs, fevers. Then Jake has been just a bundle of joy working on his third tooth. Poor guy is miserable. He keeps biting his Mommy though when she is trying to feed him. I don't know how much longer I am going to be able to nurse him if he keeps drawing blood. I had hoped I could go until at least six months but I won't have any nipples left if things continue. I don't know what to do. I continue to try the things I have read. I have given him a stern "no" and I have also put him down for awhile and then let him nurse a bit later. I don't know. I can see there is a pattern that it is when he is almost finished that he bites. I have been watching him and I have my hand near to pry myself free when I think he is close to being done. It just frustrates me. I don't want to have to mess with formula. Some how I think we will be the people having to through a dozen different formulas before we are on the most expensive one in the world. That would be my luck.

I could keep pumping and just give him breast milk. However, I hate pumping. It is so hard to try and do at work. I keep getting plugged ducts that I struggle to get cleared before I end up with mastitis. It is miserable to have to work and need to pump and not be able to do it soon enough. That is what I think is happening. I think I'm not able to pump when I need to and then I get stopped up. It hurts so bad. It happened again on Wednesday when I was on call. I had an area I couldn't clear that was the size of a grapefruit. I was on call and I was scared I wouldn't be able get it to drain and I would be stuck at work getting sicker and sicker. I was able to go home several hours later than usual and I put a heating pad on this boulder I now had sitting on my chest. I tried to nurse but the baby had just eaten of course and didn't help me out much. So I just pumped and pressed as hard as I could tolerate. It is surprising how painful that is. I got one area to clear and then the second. I kid you not, milk came out in a constant stream for ten minutes. I got sixteen ounces. No wonder it hurt so much!

So basically, if I can't nurse him I don't want to mess with pumping and giving him breast milk. But I don't want the torture of figuring out what formula he can tolerate. He just has to stop biting. I need help. Anyone know what I should do?

My family will be here in less than a week now and I am having trouble getting excited. I don't want to spend that much time with my mom. I want to see everyone but I don't want all the work of it. This year should be so great because we have the best present ever and some how it just feels more stressful than any previous year. I don't get it.

On a good note, Jake made it two nights last week where he slept from about 8:15pm to 4am! He made it close a third night where he slept until just about 3:30am. But there was the night we were up five times too. Still it is HUGE progress. It makes it easier for mommy to handle other things like her crazy job and the crappy snow.

Jake has grown so much we had to move into size three diapers this week. I just want him to slow down! Too many teeth and too big! If he got his teeth at a normal time like most babies we wouldn't be having so much trouble.

I'm just feeling really down right now. I feel like this year has aged me so much. I was looking at lines around my eyes this morning and it was making me sick. I just feel so tired and so old.

Big boy

I just can't believe how fast Jake is growing up! He has had a fever and been really cranky this weekend because he is getting MORE teeth! His gum is swollen on either side of the teeth he has and then in one place on the top. He is drooling buckets and wants to chew on anything he can get into his mouth. His poor skin is in bad shape still though. I have tried to get a doctor's appointment that works with my work schedule but I couldn't get one before his appointment on the 28th that I was sure we could make. His scalp and forehead just seem to be so itchy for him. I feel so bad. When he sleeps or gets tired he really scratches. I got him up Saturday and there was so much blood in one area on his scalp I was worried. When I got the blood cleaned off it wasn't as bad as I feared, but still. I am afraid he is going to give himself some terrible scars and he will have bald spots all over his head. The hair still isn't growing in very well on the back of his head where they tried to suck him out.

He is getting so big! He loves to try and sit up and he is getting so strong. He is going to have some impressive abs if he keeps it up. He also wants to stand up on you all the time. He is really working on getting his coordination to stand with you only holding his hands. He is also growing like a weed. His cheeks are really filling out and he finally has a tummy that is kind of round. We are really pushing it by finishing this mega pack of size 2 diapers we are on. I got peed on twice last week. I hope we can get all the diapers used up in time!

I had to work yesterday and be on call and it was hard. My mom was here. We had a bad storm but I only had to do one surgery related to a snow incident. That was pretty good. Actually it went well until I got called at about 5 am this morning. I was on call until 7 am. It was a hard case, a craniotomy and I haven't done one with this doctor before. The Sunday crew had to do most of the case but I was still there until almost 9. I just can't leave until everything is well under control. I wouldn't want someone to do that to me. There are some people I work with that aren't nice enough to stay and help get everything in order. Thankfully, all the people on my weekend aren't like that. Our house just isn't big enough to have my mom here for so long. She just drives us nuts. She did my laundry so that was nice, kind of. She just won't do things how you like them done, she will only do them her way. Like you have to refold everything so it fits in the drawers. It is just kind of one her passive aggressive things she does. It just gets hard to ignore all the little comments she makes and she makes so many now when she is having "conversations" with Jake. But it was helpful for Mike to have her here especially because Jake didn't feel good. I got home early Saturday and she literally shoved him at me less than two minutes after I got in the door. But then she was insulted when he was happy and smiled for his mom!