oh puh-lease

Recently, I was on a friend of a friend's blog and she was ranting about people who liken having pets to having a child. Essentially, she was po'd that people did it and believes that there is no comparison. She's a new mom who I'm guessing has never had a pet. I don't really know this girl, so the subject is unlikely to ever come up in person, but I was offended by the post and felt like venting about it somewhere.

As a dog owner and recent parent, I think that's crap. Sure, there are pet owners and PET OWNERS. Of course, there are weirdos who dress their dogs up in children's clothing and carry them around in their purses and speak to them in baby talk. Can we just agree that those people are from another planet and leave them out of the discussion? And sure, I know that there are obvious differences. I didn't give birth to my dogs. I know that they're not physically a part of me the same way my baby is. And yeah, there's a life span difference, and I hope that my daughter will be around long after my dogs are.


But anyone who's ever spent a night at the emergency vet with their dog knows that in so many ways, the experience is almost exactly like being there with your child. G's had Bandit for over 15 years, longer than he's known me. He's spent money on vet bills when he could barely afford to eat (but always plenty in the budget for alcohol of course) in college. We've woken up with her every 2 hours in the middle of the night when she couldn't go any longer without having to be let out. We've watched her struggle now in her old age. A few weeks ago, when we thought her time had come, neither G nor I could bare to even think of it let alone say the words aloud. When the moment does really come, I know that I will feel like I've lost something precious. Maybe it won't be like losing a child, but honestly, I've never lost a child, so how would I know. Neither has this girl. So who is she to tell me that it's not every bit as heartbreaking.

When the vet told me that Mia had such severe hip dysplasia that she was amazed that my puppy could even walk, I sat in my car and cried. I used to watch G playing with Mia and that was probably the first time I realized that he'd make a pretty awesome dad. I know so many pet owners who invest their hearts into their pets, so on behalf of all of them, I'm offended. When we had the baby, of course I knew that life would change. But call me cheesy, I never saw our kid (no matter how much I instantly and intensely I fell in love with her) as a replacement for our dogs. Yes, they get less attention now. But when G and I combined households, Mia suddenly went from an only child to one of three. So having a baby, in some ways, I see as adding to the brood.

This week, as I sit at the hospital with all kinds of time on my hands, I'm struck more than ever of the similarities as well as the differences. Maybe it's different if you get your dog after you have a child. But for me, and for many others I'm sure, my pet was my baby for a long time. That doesn't change now that I have a "real baby."


This was the same girl, who a while back, blogged about how people who didn't have children had no right or excuse to be late. Really? I know we're biased, G and I have always had difficulties with time management. And sure, sometimes we were late for no reason, but other times, things came up that we hadn't foreseen. I would never tell a friend that her excuse for tardiness wasn't valid because she doesn't have a kid. I think mostly, I'm troubled by this, "having a child trumps everything" attitude. Oh puh-lease, you've had your kid for like a year, are you telling me you were never late before that? Or that people with kids get some sort of pass for being late? Sure, I'll grant that sometimes, when you're late and I've scheduled something around my child's nap or eating time, it's a bit of more of an inconvenience. But whatever, I'll deal with it the same as any other person deals with the inconvenience that tardiness brings (or if it keeps happening, stop hanging out with you just like you'd have the right to stop hanging out with me).


Seriously, it's not like our lives begin when we have kids or something. So get over it.

rewind repeat

I don't know about you but I love Tivo and DVR so that I can pause when I need to, replay parts that I want to see again, or skip the parts I'd rather miss.  I've also been known to find a good song and play it over and over on repeat, especially when I'm driving.  So don't get me wrong, I'm all about repetition sometimes.  

This week, though, I feel like I'm stuck on a holiday marathon of the Wizard of Oz without DVR or any way to change the channels or turn the damn tv off.  Because this week, we got to live last weekend all over again as if it hadn't been enough fun the first time around.  There have a few tweaks here and there as if the network has maybe cut a few of the worst commercials, but still, it's been pretty painful.  

Little did I know when I was chronicling my baby's crankiness on Fri that she was actually getting sick.  There may have been a few expletives thrown around under my breath that day, and OMG, for that, I'm so sorry, baby.  By Sat morning, there was no question that the kid was burning up.  We unearthed our thermometer finally from the moving boxes and checked her temp - 102.something.  So we started looking for a pediatrician open on Sat mornings.  I guess at least we are up in San Jose by this point, because the chances of finding that in Hollister would have been nil.  We're lucky, sometime during the move, I had found this list of San Jose peds offered by my OB, and for once I set something aside and actually managed to find it later fairly easily.  And the first pediatrician on the list had both good internet reviews (we like to shop for docs the same way we pick where we want to eat) and Sat morning hours AND had an opening.  

Took her in.  A blood test run at the doc office (yay, no waiting in line at the labs like I'd had to at the Hollister hospital) revealed another (or the same?) bacterial infection and likely a viral infection, as well.  If it had been just a viral thing, we'd have breathed a sigh of relief and gone home.  G's been sick with a cold/cough since mid-last week, so we figured it was only a matter of time before the kid and I picked it up also.  But instead, we received another antibiotic injection (poor kid STILL has the marks from last week, as well as a bruise from the failed IV site).  We were sent home but with orders to check in with the doctor at home that evening.  Yeah, the doc gave us her home number.  She also wrote us a prescription for another oral antibiotic and told us to give DZ both Advil and Tylenol that night.  Usually, they don't recommend Advil  for babies under 6 months, so between that, the home number, and the fact that the doc wanted to see us again Sun during her off hours had us pretty worried.  Are you sensing a trend here?  Maybe I should rename this blog something like, "Sunday s at the Doctor's Office with the W's".  Or "Meeting the Bay Area's doctors, one emergency at a time.'  Because you know, we've already exhausted the local vets.    

Anyway, one thing we've learned about our daughter now is that she does not like taking medications of any kind.  She usually promptly vomits them out, along with whatever else she may have in her stomach. So there were some fun cleanups that day.  But she seemed to improve a bit until we woke up around 9am on Sun morning and her temp was at 105!!!  We thought we were reading the thermometer wrong, so checked again about 10 minutes later, and it was still 104.5 or something.  So we called the doc and rushed her into the office.  And the doc admitted us to the hospital.  My face must have been pretty expressive because the first thing she said after that was that I shouldn't worry, that she wouldn't send me to anyone that didn't know what they were doing.  

So at the moment, we are again hanging out at the local hospital, this time,  probably for 3 nights.  I'm hoping we get to go home tomorrow morning, and so far, the only upside is that I've had lots of time to blog.  On top of whatever other bacterial infection she has, DZ has now picked up G's cold (as have I), so we both spend our days sniffling and sneezing.  She's been on IV antibiotics since Sun evening.  But guess what, the nurses here could actually insert the IV!!  Not only that, they did it in no time at all.  They only allowed one parent in the exam room while they were inserting it, and I couldn't do it.  G went in instead but I expected to hear prolonged screaming since the exam room was right across the hall from our room.  But to my surprise, they were out in less than 5 minutes, and G said most of that time was spent bandaging up the IV so that she wouldn't jar it loose.  In Hollister, the nurse must have spent more than 45 minutes just looking for a site and then messed up twice.  

 

They were also able to get a catheter in to collect urine from her.  I couldn't watch that either, but the screaming lasted much longer that time.  It took 10 minutes and I heard screaming the entire time.  These days, though, if we come anywhere near a doctor or nurse, the kid seems to know a poke or prod is coming, so she starts screams immediately, even if they're just checking her temp or listening to her heart beat.  But G said it had been painful to watch.  I guess the urethra is hard to find in babies, and they had to try several times with different sized needles before they were able to extract any urine out.  I'm kind of glad the Hollister nurse gave up after two tries, saying that "she thought she had the right spot but still nothing came out."  She was SO reassuring, let me tell you.  

Also, rather than asking me repeatedly whether I wanted to nurse my baby to calm her down, these nurses freely admitted that babies are quick to learn that nurses coming close to them = bad news.  I got that a lot in Hollister, and I wanted to tell them that if they didn't take so damn long to do everything wrong, she wouldn't be close to a feeding anyway.  

So anyway, I guess it's not an exact repeat.  It's like a new and improved Wizard of Oz or something though I  can't even imagine there being such a thing.  Maybe in HD?  We're at Good Samaritan in San Jose and they have an excellent pediatric unit here.  The nurses in our unit are actually experienced working with infants.  The doctors have inspired nothing but confidence so far.  And although there's been a lot of nurses barging in randomly still, they are on the whole a bit more respectful of letting DZ sleep.  The nurse last night almost drove me insane because she was clearly young and new and not inclined to bending the rules, "I have to check her vitals every four hours, I'm so sorry, but I'll be quiet, I promise."  This said in a loud voice right next to DZ's crib, of course.  The nurse the night before had let us get monitored at 2am when she absolutely had to deliver the IV antibiotics.  I mean, I don't want to be woken up at 2am either, but if we have to, let's at least get it all done then.  But no, the nurse promised, she could be quiet and wouldn't even need to disturb DZ at the 2am waking.  Sounded great in theory except that she forgot to do something with the IV monitor and two seconds after she left the room, it started blaring and flashing red.  So yeah, that plan didn't work so well.  Plus, my kid just doesn't sleep through anything now.  Partly it's the age, partly she's freaked out and wary of anyone coming in to poke her, and partly because it's just her.  But whatever, crap is still crap however you dress it up.  But I guess I'll still take this experience over last week's nightmare.  DZ was born at this hospital, and if there's one place trust, it's here.  

At the end of the day, though, the ending is still pretty unsatisfying, which is why I was never able to tolerate Wizard of Oz even once let alone multiple times.  They still have no idea what's wrong.  Just to be on the safe side, we're talking to an infectious disease doc before we're out of here.  But the  pediatrician here told us that fevers at this age often remain mysterious.  That's not what I want to here.  We're not in the middle of a House episode, I want answers dammit.  But the most he could offer was that he's confident that DZ will be just fine and that none of this is likely to be very serious.  So I guess we'll see.  

"What do you DO all day?"

I get asked a lot these days what I do with my spare time. You know, now that I have nothing to do but stay home all day. So just for kicks, I decided to document a random day and share. I tried to do this several times but started to lose track of the day by mid-morning. This just happens to be the first day where I plodded through for an entire 24-hour period (just this last Fri actually).

4:57 – I woke up, not intentionally but because DZ has decided that it's a nice time to wake up, at least for this morning. I was just glad that it wasn't 1 am like it had been the day before. But of course I would have preferred that it was closer to 7 or 8am like it used to be up until a few weeks ago when al hell broke loose and she stopped sleeping through the night.

6:00 – We went back to sleep, after feeding my darling child, changing her diaper (2x because she pooped after she ate), and letting the dogs out. G woke up momentarily when DZ started wailing, and grabbed her. I had to pee, you see, and was generally not letting her at my boobs fast enough, so the little drama queen wanted to let the whole world know how terrible I was. I doubt G even remembers all this happening because 5 minutes later, he was snoring away like nothing had happened.

6:15 – G's alarm went off; he snoozed and then it went off again. Since he was snoring like an elephant, I hadn't been able to sleep anyway, so until he finally hit the shower around 6:30, I stayed awake.

7:50 – Woke up again, this time to hear Bandit scrambling around trying to get up. She's been having difficulty getting herself up on the hardwood floors at the new place. I ignore her and try to keep sleeping, figuring that since I had just let her out less than 2 hours before, there's no way she should have to go out again. But she continued to scramble so I finally got up. She's already left several puddles of urine for us when she hasn't been able to get up (and then continued to sit in them so not only do we have to clean the floors but also her each time this happens). I looked over and saw that DZ has woken up also and is staring at me wide-eyed through the mesh of her bassinet. Figuring it's now a lost cause, I finally get up and help Bandit up and outside. She stared blankly for a bit before proceeding to just come back in without peeing.

8:05 – Nurse, change diaper (for the baby, not me).

8:50 – Feed the dogs. This is more of a project than one might think. For one, it takes Bandit forever now to get up and down the hallway. She also seems to get lost. I brought the baby with me and poked into her room to grab her bouncer so that I can set her down while going out to the back patio to feed the dogs. Bandit took this opportunity to go back to the bedroom and lay back down (meaning I again have to help her up and coax her down the hallway). Mia, meanwhile, started growling at Bandit pretty much right when we got up, so every time Bandit got up, Mia would try to rush her, I'd push her back and we'd go through this process over and over again. Also today, we were out of dry food, so I grabbed a can of wet dog food to mix in. Even Bandit kept trying to poke her head into her food before I was ready. Mia, on time out from her growling, was supposed to be laying down in the hallway but kept trying to rush out for the food, especially once she realized they were getting the good stuff for a change. So the whole thing was broken up with me rushing back inside to put Mia back to where I had left her in the hallway and then coming back to finish getting the food ready (as taught by our hundreds of dollars worth of training classes).

9:10 – Finished feeding dogs. Yes, it took me 20 minutes. Left Mia out with the empty dog food can (maybe I shouldn't tell you that I spent a good 2 minutes trying to shake the lid loose from the bottom of the can before realizing that I had already thrown the lid away anyway – the dogs can't have the lid because it's sharp).

9:15 – Hopped in shower, leaving DZ in her bouncer. Then came rushing out thinking she was falling asleep and god forbid she actually falls asleep in her bouncer because then what? Would I move her or keep her there? These types of decisions plague me daily: is she ready for a nap or isn't she? Crib or bassinet? Cloth diaper or disposable? Walk now or later? The best thing is to try to avoid pretty much any situation that might involve any conflict whatsoever. Turns out, though, that she's not sleeping anyway, so basically I'm still soapy for no reason. I'm just excited that I'll be able to knock shower off my list of things to do for the day. Yeah, showering is on my list, don't you dare judge me. Deciding to dress up for a change, not wanting to feel like an slob, because the pair of jeans I had worn a few days before was still laying around, I put on pair of jeans instead of my usual sweats.

9:50 – Start trying to put the baby down for a nap. We're working on taking away the swaddle these days so naps are more inconsistent than they used to be. The process has been more drawn out than I expected, largely because I am inconsistent about when I choose to wrap her up and when I don't. It used to be too that DZ would get wrapped up and then just doze off on her own, especially in the mornings. But without the comfort of her swaddle, she needs a little more help. So I walk around and rock and bounce her until my arm is about to fall off.

10:10 – She was asleep and swaddle-free, so I gently laid her down in her bassinet. She woke up but tossed for just a minute or so before falling back asleep.

10:11 – Mia, who is still outside, decided to bark at something or another. She was practically next to the bedroom window when she did it, so the baby woke up with a start and looked wide awake. I let Mia in, gave her a couple of good whacks, and started the napping process all over again. (I found out later that she had been barking because Jehovah's Witnesses had been outside our door. I felt bad then for whacking her).

10:30 – my arm is officially dead and I give up and lay DZ in her bassinet wide awake. She started yammering about something but isn't crying so I go make myself a bowl of spaghetti for breakfast (again, no judging). I came back every so often and she still looked wide awake and thrilled and smiley every time I walked in. I swear, the only reason the kid gets away with everything is because she's so darn cute.

10:50 – My noodles were done and I was just about to take my first bite when the kid decides to stop chatting to herself and decided to start crying instead. So I went back to the bedroom with my bowl and let her stare at me gulping down my spaghetti.

11:00 – Deciding it was pointless to continue trying to get her to nap, I picked her up, made myself a cup of chai (yes, some sort of caffeinated beverage is also on my to-do list and I was way over-due this particular morning). We grabbed my cup and started nursing because this whole process had taken so long that it was time to eat all over again. I drank my chai while nursing, usually not my preference since the whole point of a coffee break is to, you know, actually have a break. I also was so fed up this morning that I turned the tv on while nursing (usually a no-no these days because the kid decides that she'd rather watch tv than eat and nursing takes way longer than it should).

11:45 – Finished nursing, the kid promptly pooped. Oh, I should probably mention that there have been several diaper changes already this morning. But anyway, she pooped and looked like she was ready to nap again. So I changed her, wrapped her, and started the whole napping process all over again. This time, decided to just wrap her up in the damn swaddle and be done with it. Except that she fought me the whole time and had it off almost before I finished wrapping her up. So I wrapped her leaving one arm out, walked around and bounced.

12:00 – No sign of napping, so I did another no-no, brought her all wrapped up, laid her on my knees facing towards me, and turned the tv back on.

12:15 – She began to fuss and again looked tired, so decided it was time to go again. This all happened several times so I think I'll just leave it at that instead of telling you how many times I wrapped her, re-wrapped her, changed her diaper, rocked her, left her, etc etc. The problem is that once she doesn't nap once, she's super tired and cranky and it just gets harder and harder to get her to sleep.

1:15 – Napping at last, completely swaddled. All dogs kicked out. It had been close call there at least once because just as she was about to fall asleep, I heard Bandit struggling to get up in the living room and by the time I went to help her and came back, the kid would be wide awake all over again.

And after that, she slept for an unprecedented 4 hours!! So she must have needed it. I grabbed a rare 2^nd cup of chai and some lunch before beginning to attack the boxes still hanging around in the kitchen.

5:00 – Woke up. Changed and nursed. Dad came home at 5:30 (early for a change) and she briefly looked up before going back to my boob. Then promptly pooped.

6:30 – Bath!

7:30 – Nursed again while G went to go pick up dinner (sadly, we still have no food at the new house).

8:00 – G started walking around with her and rocking. Usually, this takes approximately 10-15 minutes. That night, we're at it for over three hours, with numerous moments when we think she's out but then she woke with a start and the process started all over again. I threw a fit because G started making “oh my back” motions within half hour or so. He didn't complain aloud, but I took it personally since I had been walking around all morning and how dare he start getting fed up almost immediately. So at least a half hour of this was spent with “No, I have here; here I got her” between us.

11:15 – Finally asleep, but not before we realized that she was awfully warm, so now we were concerned that she was getting sick AGAIN (or still?). So we finally went to bed, as well, but worried that it would be a fitful night.

11:15 – 8am ASLEEP

the girls behaving . . .

Bandit and Mia, temporarily united in their confusion at a new house:

The next morning, at the exact location, Mia decided to attack Bandit for no reason as she was trying to head out to the backyard. I was holding the baby, so had to set her down, and then break the two of them up. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get a shot of that interaction.

So much for the hundreds of dollars we spent on training this year.

Later in the day, at the exact same spot, Bandit left me a nice puddle of urine to clean up since she's been having difficulty getting up in the tile and hardwood floors. Somehow, I didn't think to get a picture of that either.

This little corner of the family room has seen a lot of action so far.

Scare

So it seems to be our month for scares (wait, was it actually last month that we had the whole eye emergency?), and apparently that's what it takes to get me back to blogging these days. I'm trying to get back into it, but man, it's been hard lately. Because well, I was husband-less and dealing with 3 dogs and a baby for the better part of Nov. G officially had to travel for work for one week, but the weeks leading up to that week kind of sucked too because he pretty much worked all the time. And because DZ (the baby -- I feel the need to remind you because it really has been that long since I've blogged) got a cold. Also she decided to suddenly stop sleeping thru the night for no reason. And because, oh yeah, by the way, we're moving! As much as we (especially me) loved that little town that we've called home, we've decided to make the haul to San Jose. Far south San Jose so that G doesn't have to fight a ton of traffic for work, but still, exciting big city nevertheless. I will be less than 20 minutes from work when I go back in Jan. But more on that in a different post, maybe next year.

The movers came on Fri. And G spent the day directing them. I would have loved to help but I apparently had more exciting plans. That involved DZ coming down with a fever on Thurs night, waking up her entire body burning, and then waking up every hour after that. And then throwing up in the morning. So I called her pediatrician and took her in. The doc wanted to run some blood tests, mostly because it was Fri and she was worried that we'd be stuck with everything getting worse over the weekend and having to rush off to the emergency room. Plus, when we were in there, my child was seriously the ghost of the kid that I usually know. Listless, barely even cried when she was getting examined, and just looked miserable. Man, the cold had been bad enough, but to see her feverish was terrible.

So the doc gave her an antibiotic shot, then sent us to the hospital across the street for a blood draw and chest x-ray. Also wanted us to do a urine test to rule out UTI. So I spent the better part of the early afternoon hanging out at the hospital. The blood draw was as much fun as the antibiotic shot, but it only got worse as the day progressed. Turns out it's not that easy to collect urine from an infant (somehow, she hasn't mastered the art of peeing on demand yet). So they stuck this bag in her diaper and waited for her to pee. But nothing happened. So eventually they sent me home and told me to come back with it.

G meanwhile had to head up to SJ with the movers. I stuck around waiting for my kid to pee. She did just about everything else - eat, wail, even poop, sleep, but no pee. I had to replace the bag because it had poop on the outside. And a couple of times, it looked like she may have peed around the bag but not in it. She even leaked through her diaper and onto her nursing pillow but nothing in the bag.

Finally, her doc called and said the blood work suggested a possible bacterial infection and just to be on the safe side, she wanted to admit DZ into the hospital for overnight observation!!! OK, I have to say this. I've been sick a lot over the years but it doesn't compare to seeing your kid sick. Before I was a parent, no one could have convinced me of this. I almost cried a couple of times while waiting at the hospital and seeing her sad little face. Anyway, the doc made sense. It was Fri afternoon by this point. There were still no urine results, but the kid wasn't showing any signs of feeling better. It wouldn't hurt to already be somewhere for observation in case things took a turn for the worse.

So rather than me heading up to SJ where all our things were, G came back down and we spent the night at the hospital. So I take it back. It CAN hurt to be at a hospital o/n, at least this one. Because this hospital sucks ass. OMG. So the first thing they did when we got there (aside from making us wait forever even though my doc had called ahead and asked them to get a room ready) was try to insert a catheter up my kid's hooha to try to collect urine. That was fun. I'd say that it must have hurt because DZ started crying but actually, I have no idea if it hurts or not because the kid pretty much cried from the moment I walked into the hospital room. But I don't know, it didn't look pleasant. The stupid nurse tried twice but nothing came out. I think she missed where she was supposed to go, but I don't know. So first thing my doc had wanted didn't happen. They put another bag in her and waited again for her to pee into it (something I could have done at home).

THEN, my doc had wanted them to start an IV to give her antibiotics. A different nurse spent almost 45 minutes just looking at DZ's arms to try to find a vein. But apparently, that wasn't enough time to find it (and she decided to just go ahead anyway) because the first needle she inserted was in the wrong place. Then she decided to try the back of the baby's hand. Also stuck the needle all the way in, caught the vein this time but couldn't flush our her needle so I guess that was a no go also. So by this point, my kid looks like a heroin addict (between these marks, the blood draw from earlier, the antibiotic shot at our doc's office, and vaccinations earlier in the week). UGH. I told the nurse she wasn't allowed to try again unless she could find some one else who was more experienced at inserting needles into baby's arms. Actually, I suggested that after the first attempt, but the 2nd, I said no more attempts period. So 2nd thing my doc had wanted also didn't happen. It was great too because all of this took over an hour and DZ was crying the ENTIRE time. Somewhere towards the end, G finally made it in, and it was a good thing, because just his presence kept me from attacking one of the nurses.

I was starting to wonder what the point of being in the hospital was anyway. It's a small town hospital, they don't really have an infant or pediatric ward or anything. I think for both nurses, they didn't really deal much with babies as young as 4-months. But still, they didn't have to suck. Oh, and all this crying, and the kid STILL didn't pee.

The rest of the night continued to be a disaster. The door to our room was LOUD. So every time some one came in, the kid would wake up. She spent all evening trying to sleep and getting rudely woken up and prodded. The night time seemed like it would pretty much be the same. We asked if they could do their monitoring when she was already awake to nurse, and they said yes, but then what do you know, a nurse that didn't get the memo came in anyway. The people in the next room were also loud. Somewhere in the hallway, some kid went running around looking for his "Papi." We had a private room with a bathroom but we were afraid to use it because the toilet flush sounded like elephants stampeding and actually freaked the kid out every time we flushed.

The nurses finally got their pee but what do you know, most of the pee had leaked out because they didn't stick the bag in correctly. Several nurses told me to give the baby water to help her pee which I think is completely medically wrong (since she was nursing just fine). And I don't know how many patients they had but everything took forever. Our kid could have died by the time they responded to anything. Actually what happened though was that she would have gone back to sleep and then woken up AGAIN when they finally burst in.

Overall, awesome night. If you're ever in the area and need a hospital recommendation, please let me know.

Fortunately, my doctor's partner checked on us in the morning and told us we could go. DZ's temp had dropped by this point all on its own. And she was looking better. He said he wanted to do one more antibiotic shot the next day but we could just do it in his office (even though it was Sun, somehow docs seem to love showing up on Sundays especially for us). I will say that if you're in the area and looking for family doc referrals, I know two awesome ones.

It's now Tues and DZ seems to be almost back to normal. We're still puzzled by what it was. Her preliminary urinalysis was negative but we'll see if the cultures reveal anything. I'm hoping it's not that because that would then require a bunch of tests to figure out why a 4mo would get a UTI. But I guess that's a bridge we'll cross if/when the time comes.

emergency

A while back, G went to the eye doc for a routine appointment and discovered that he had slightly elevated pressure in one eye. It wasn't a huge deal, but I guess it's not something that's typical in young people. And it can be a risk factor for glaucoma which kind of sucks. Since then he's had a number of eye appointments to monitor the situation. I'm ashamed to admit that I only sort of paid attention when he described the issue to me (but hey, at least I didn't start making old man jokes or anything, so I'm not completely heartless). And then at some point, we started getting all these bills for things that weren't covered by our insurance. That's a story for a different day, but you can bet that I did start paying attention then. Anyway, so it's been going on for a little while, and then a few months ago, he said that his pressure in one eye had almost doubled. The eye doc gave him some drops as a result, and he's been using them every day.

So then -- last week, his right eye started getting really red. He's been pretty stressed at work and not sleeping that well, so we figured it was related to that at first. But it got redder and redder, and finally over the weekend, I encouraged him to go get it looked at (well, "encouraged" is sort of a nice way of saying "pestered" but whatever). Cuz, dude, it was pretty bloodshot and gross looking. He went into urgent care on Sat afternoon, and came home a little later freaking out.

Apparently, the doctor in urgent care had refunded his co-pay and told him to GET TO AN ER IMMEDIATELY because it seemed like he was having a glaucoma crisis. And that it could be extremely serious, require surgery, and could potentially blind him if he didn't get it treated right away. My husband rarely freaks out so clearly the doc had made quite an impression.

So he headed up to the ER - we figured the one in town was too small and probably wouldn't have an emergency ophthalmologist on call, so he decided to head up to the one in Gilroy, about 20 minutes away. I was a bit dubious about even them having one because it's not like they're a state of the art medical facility or anything. So while he headed up there, I called them to see. Go figure, they didn't have an ophthalmologist either, and the ER doc gave me the name of a specialist in San Jose who was very good. She recommended that I contact him directly, which I did. The ER doc also told me how important the situation was and how vital it was that we see some one immediately.

The specialist called me back relatively quickly considering I had to leave a message with an answering service and it was Sat around 5pm, not exactly when I'd be answering my phone if I were an ophthalmologist. The Gilroy ER doc had told me though that he was very responsive and had always called them back whether it was during the day or at 3 am. I was actually curious as to what sorts of situation would require an eye doctor being called at 3 in the morning but figured it may not be the appropriate moment to ask. He asked me a few questions about what G's eye pressure actually was (and this is where me paying more attention would have helped a lot). I had to give him G's cell so he could get more information. G in the meantime had bypassed the Gilroy ER and was driving farther north to San Jose. It was pouring rain, he was freaking, and generally, a good time was had by all.

So THEN the specialist finally called G (after a couple of attempts, I think, because he had somehow noted the number wrong when I told him). G called me back a few minutes later to say that although he was pretty much in San Jose already, the doc told him to come back tomorrow and see him in his office. That his pressure was not that high, so there was no need for immediate concern. At least, that's what G gathered -- there was a bit of difficulty understanding the doc's strong Armenian(?) accent. The thing was though that the urgent care doc hadn't actually measured G's pressure that morning. I guess eye pressure is measured in mm HG (because while G was driving to San Jose, I didn't have much to do other than google all this on the internet). Normal pressure in the eye is 10-21 mm HG. When G had first gone to the eye doc, his pressure was 15 mm HG which I guess is high for some one of his age, but not totally abnormal. But then it had jumped in just a couple of months to 25 mm HG. That's when G's regular doc had gotten concerned and prescribed the eye drops.

The specialist told him that 25 still wasn't too concerning, at least not enough to warrant an emergency room trip. When G pointed out that the urgent hadn't actually measured him that morning and that his pressure had been jumping drastically, the doc remained unconcerned, saying that truly concerning numbers would be 50 mm HG or above. And that there was no way his pressure would have jumped that much in just a few months. Apparently he just kept repeating, "Come see me at 9 am tomorrow morning in my office." As for the redness and irritation, he attributed it to possibly the drops and stated that he could prescribe different drops "tomorrow morning in my office." G told him that he had actually stopped taking the drops once his eye started getting really red and there had been no improvement. Well, they would discuss that in "my office at 9 am tomorrow morning." G by this time was probably 5 minutes away from his office but turned around and came home.

Sun morning rolls around. I had been planning on going too, and as usual, it was a bit crazy getting out the door (with the baby in tow too). The kid chose that morning to wake up early early (like 3 am), so we were all a bit tired. She woke up again around 7:45 and decided that she didn't really feel like eating. We were trying to leave the house by 8:15 and her lack of cooperation was not helpful. G was anxious and wanted to be on time. I started ranting because goddammit, I was tired of being stuck at home all the time with a little baby and at this point, even a trip to the eye doctor seemed oh-so-exciting. Because I'm frickin' THAT bored. Oh, and I was worried about my husband, of course, and wanted to be around in case I needed to drive him home after an emergency eye surgery. Bandit chose that moment to randomly poop inside the house and basically everything and everyone went a little nuts.

We finally just bundled the kid up without feeding her, cleaned the poop, and rushed out the door. As soon as we walked into the eye doc's office, our little angel decided that THEN was the perfect time to eat, so I went back to the car to feed her. It was Sun morning, and the eye doc had come into his office specifically for us.

About 20 minutes later, G came back to the car. It was so quick that I wondered if the eye doc had wanted us to head over to the emergency room and wait for him there. Or had maybe told him that all hope was lost anyway, and that G might as well go home and enjoy his last few days of perfect vision. But no, apparently, the doc had taken one look at his eye and told him that he had, wait for it, "the pink eye." You know, that life threatening, possibly surgery-requiring, mad dash to the emergency-inducing, possibly cancer-causing pink eye.

The urgent care doc hadn't EVEN LOOKED AT HIS EYE BEFORE PUTTING HIM ON THE CRAZY BUS. G told me that the urgent care doc had him trying to look at an eye chart, but really? Some one comes in with a red eye and you want to test his vision first thing?? My guess is that G immediately launched into his eye history, and it sounds like you mention high pressure and eye in the same sentence within the medical community and they immediately thing "glaucoma crisis." Well, except for ophtalmologists who know better than to let it ruin their Sat night.

Oh, and FYI, the eye doc thought our kid had probably been the source of the pink eye, as babies get it all the time without really being too affected by it. Afterwards, I was talking to my parents and they reminded me of how my mom had also just gotten pink eye recently after we visited. And their eye doctor had also asked them if they'd been in contact with small children. My mom told me that she had been offended by the thought of her perfect grandchild giving her pink eye. HA. So the moral of the story is that if you happen to touch my kid, don't go touching your eye right after.

Anyway, we had an awesome weekend, how about you?

house guest

About a month ago, my brother moved down to the bay area. It's been about 15 years since I've lived close to family (mine anyway, G's family is all here in the bay), so I of course immediately thought about getting together on weekends, holiday visits, driving up to my parents together . .. Before he was even down here, my brother jumped on the other time honored benefit of having family close by: taking advantage of my presence to babysit his puppy for ten days. Being the masochist that I am (and thinking of how nice it would be to have my brother owe me big time), I said yes.

So meet our adorable but pesky house guest, Porter.

He's a total doll, but (and I say this with love), he's a puppy. And it's been a while since I've had a puppy. Actually, I've never quite had a puppy like this one. Mia, for all her faults, was never hyper. Tucker was in some ways but he was mostly G's problem for a long time, although I'd like to believe that I was the first to begin to calm him down (with lots of exercise, which I had all sorts of time for back in those days).

Porter on the other hand has lots of energy, and I definitely don't have the time that I used to. He plays like there's no tomorrow, particularly in the mornings. Our guys like to lay around for as long as possible, he's ready to go the moment G gets up for work. G lets him out but it's usually a while before I'm done nursing and getting the baby back to sleep. So he wanders around listlessly during that hour or so after G takes off for work and before I'm ready to give the dogs any attention. The first morning, G left him outside with the dog door open. When he was bored outside, I suddenly started hearing scratching and pawing at the glass door, with the evidence of paw prints found later that were much higher than any of our guys can jump. I was in the middle of nursing so had to just sit there and listen to him for another 20 minutes or so. When the pawing didn't work, he moved on to whimpering and barking. While he seems to be just fine using the dog door when he wants (like when all 4 dogs get crazy for something outside and rush out there like mad men, with the dog door clanging loudly behind each one -- that happens most often when the baby is asleep and I've forgotten to lock the door. That's been a fun one cuz it almost always wakes the DZ up, and I think it's happened at least once a day this week. To be fair, that happens when it's just our guys too, so that's not Porter's fault), when I can't get to the door is when he forgets how the dog door works, it seems.

Yesterday, G just left the back door open and he raced in and out every so often to see if any of us had changed our minds about going out. Plus, I think he managed to get Mia to finally play with him a bit, but of course they did it inside instead of out. So imagine two decent sized dogs running around, banging into the stereo system and coffee table with their tails. And of course me being in the bedroom feeding the kid, so I couldn't do any more than yell at them from a distance. Today, I thought went reasonably well as Porter mostly hung out either in one of the dog beds or on our bed all morning watching me nurse. I'm still not entirely sure when he found the time to get into our bathroom trash and leave pieces of tissue lying around all over the house. Since I've had a runny nose the last few days, there were lots of tissues in there and I'm not convinced I've found all the pieces he's left around yet.

And I guess that's the other thing I'm not used to anymore -- having to keep an eye on a dog. Our guys all take off now to their various corners and I see it as a blessing (because they can't fight). With Porter, it makes me nervous. Most of the time, when I go looking for him, he's perfectly fine: sleeping in the guest bed, his crate, the dog bed outside, our bed, or in one of the other dog beds strewn about the house. Another favorite spot seems to be just behind the living room couch in front of the entry way table. And several times, when I've called his name, he's jumped up and looked at me, standing on his back legs, his front paws on the back of the couch (TOTALLY cute, by the way). The problem is that the rest of the time, I find him quietly digging in our trash, stealing the baby's laundry (he seems to love her onesies and burp cloth), or chewing on G's wool sheepskin slippers. And since I never know when those times will be, I'm always trying to keep an eye out and trying to remember to make sure these items are out of reach, the bathroom doors closed, the laundry covered with an extra basket.

He's a barker. And he's a bit crazy when he plays. He's gotten me several times with his teeth when we've been tugging. He tries to jump all over me when I'm done. When I am finally ready in the morning, the other 3 are thinking of just one thing: food. But he's trying to run circles around the yard and jump on me because he's finally happy to be let out and surrounded by company.

But despite the fact that he's a little bit of a punk, he's also a doll. Mia loves playing with him (for about 5 minutes a stretch maybe 2-3 times a day) and seems pretty good at telling him when she's done. He's also pretty good at listening to her eventually, though he's not above some extra attempted persuasion. In this particular video, Mia was waiting for her food, so she was into it but keeping her eye on me to make sure I wasn't serving breakfast just yet. I had a better one I shot yesterday, but it must have been too big for Blogger because it wouldn't upload.

Plus, he's great around the baby. I try to keep him from getting too close and I know it kills him because he sits there staring and trying to inch closer. When he has been closer, all he's done is sniff. Which is awesome because several times when I've gone looking for him, I've also found him standing on our bed, peering over into the bassinet while the DZ is asleep. Now that I've realized he doesn't do much more than smell, I'm not freaked out about it. The first day, I wondered if he was scared by her crying because I'd keep finding him in his crate when she got too loud. But he must have gotten over that quickly because he comes running now whenever she fusses.

Here, he and Mia were guarding her while she napped in the bassinet in our room. Granted, Mia seems a bit more alert in her guarding than he does, but I'm sure he would have stepped up if necessary. :)

I think he's doing his job much better in this one.

Plus, he's a bit of a snuggle bunny which I can never resist. Though he's been banned from our bed when G's around due to his propensity to get right on G's pillow and fart (and his farts are particularly frequent and foul, coming from some one with 3 dogs who definitely don't smell like roses). He seems to know it too (about the banning, not sure he realizes how stinky he is) because this morning, he waited until G had hopped into the shower before jumping into bed with me.

So overall, although he's been a bit more work, he's mostly been a pretty good house guest. Our guys spent at least 90% of each day lazing around the house, and he's taken quite well to that though I imagine he'd prefer a bit more exercise if he could get it.

The only real complaint I've got, I must say, is that you guys, he EATS POOP!!!! I caught him taking a bite out of Mia's fresh turd this morning about 5 minutes after she laid it. Not cool. And totally disgusting. I'll keep my eyes peeled if I can, but that's going to be a hard one to monitor, especially with 4 dogs pooping in our yard 2x a day. EW.

Leaving the house with an infant (Part "I'm so done with this now")

So I had another post almost done about yet ANOTHER trip I had to take alone with the baby, and I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. Because honestly, that was weeks ago, and it seems like every day there are more and more trips. And each one offers its own challenges but it's really just more of the same. And each one seems to get slightly better than the last. Or not. It just depends. But I'm realizing that every single one so far has been an EVENT, and I just can't have this blog turn into a description of every random outing I take with the little sucker. Seeing as how most of my "trips" from here on out will be with the kid, and I'm guessing reading about how awesome it was to go to the store trying to get her baby tylenol while she was screaming her head off will get old awfully fast. And if I'm getting bored writing about it, you must be bored reading about it.

So to summarize, yes, I did have to take her to the store and they were all out of baby tylenol and I got to stand in line at the pharmacy counter while she wouldn't stop crying. That whole afternoon she wouldn't stop crying because she got her vaccines that day. And although she handled it like a champ during, she got up 3 hours later in what appeared to be utter agony, most probably a life or death situation even, the way she was carrying on. Yesterday, I got to take her to my doctor's appointment and although we had a great lunch beforehand (in which I got to eat a couple of bites even), she started screaming in the exam room just as my doctor walked in. So my doctor said she'd come back later and left me in the exam room to nurse her. That was exciting. And nursing seemed to help for a while, but somehow the thought of her mom getting a pap smear must have been so painful for her, poor thing. So she proceeded to cry again when the doc came back in and continued to for the duration of the exam.

My previous trip to the doctor's office resulted in me struggling to get her fed, cleaned, and out the door with all her gear only to have the office call me to ask if they could reschedule. That was the day I had a meltdown. Well, actually, I had a meltdown for about 2 weeks straight and I'm not entirely sure it's over yet. But that day it all came to a head. I got off the phone with the doctor's office, called G, and started crying. I was even practically crying on the phone with the receptionist. I had WOKEN the baby up dammit, and I'm already on my way. What do you mean she's running late???? The receptionist was remarkably calm and unhelpful. Well, you can still come in if you want, but you'll be waiting for an hour and a half. I had made plans for lunch after the appt and seeing as how it was my first interaction with adults in weeks, I was determined to keep it. AND I had even called the doctor's office earlier in the morning to see if I could postpone the appointment since the DZ had been sleeping and I didn't want to wake her. Not later in the day, they said, since the doc would be in surgery. And yet, when they called, they wanted to schedule me, guess when, a little later in the day, right when she was supposed to be in surgery.

I've had to nurse her now in the car again (because coming back from SF a couple of weeks ago, she started going crazy around Mountain View and I just couldn't deal with a wailing infant for another hour on the road). That lengthened our trip by another hour and resulted in more nursing discomfort for both of us but ended with me maybe finally starting to get the hang of it. Although she initially liked car rides, and still kind of does, the periods where we stop for lights or slow down have become harder to bear. Most rides lately have seemed like a crying fit just waiting to happen.

I wish I could say that I'm becoming a pro. The truth is that it stresses me out every time. There is nothing worse than sitting in the front seat driving when your baby is the back crying her heart out. Even sitting back there with her isn't much better, and actually might even be worse because still there's nothing to do. I found that out one day when I sat back there with her while G drove. She's a little too young still to be entertained by a song or story or even really stuffed animals or something like that. G is much calmer than I am about these kinds of things. I freak out when she starts crying while he seems better about accepting that no trip is bound to be without any incidents at all - it just comes with the territory now. And he points, correctly (or so I'll admit when I'm calm and rational) that we can't stop going anywhere because of her (although when I was being irrational and in meltdown mode, I said that yes, of course we can, I'm not taking her anywhere for at least another year or two).

So I guess all I can hope for is not that things will get better but that I'll get better about dealing with them. I must say that I was much calmer nursing my kid in the exam room yesterday (and having to still hear her crying after) than I would have been a few weeks ago. So I guess we'll see how that goes.

Leaving the house with an infant (Part II)

Random aside: does anyone else using blogger have issues with the font? I don't understand why my font's all over the place on some of my posts. It's not intentional, I promise. I didn't even touch the font the other day, so I have no idea why it fluctuated from old person's size to magnifying-glass-necessary size. Sorry, I'm not trying to make you question your vision. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, never mind. I caught it and reposted right away so you may or may not have seen the original post.

Second trip:

Two weeks ago. Had to go solo on this one but I figured with just the kid and one dog, it wouldn't be too bad. Bandit had a vet appointment in Santa Cruz, so I thought the DZ might enjoy a change of scenery. Afterwards, a friend and I made loose plans to possibly meet up for lunch. Right off the bad, I knew I was in trouble when after waking up by 5:30 - 6 every morning for weeks, the DZ decided to sleep in until 7. Usually, I'd love the extra sleep, but my plans had been centered around her waking up at her usual time. Because I figured she'd eat by 6 and then be ready for another meal by 9am or so. Giving me some time to get her fed and ready to go by 10. Which then gave me plenty of time to make the 11 am appointment. Sounds perfect right? Rookie Mistake # I have no idea: it never works that smoothly.

Some of you might be thinking, what's the big deal, so the kid decided to sleep in a little. And up until a few months ago, I probably would have agreed with you. Because honestly, who structures their plans around their kids' sleeping/eating schedule. If you gotta be somewhere, you gotta be there and the kid's going to have to deal. Well, I've been discovering these last few weeks what the big deal is. Because if she ate at 7, she's generally ready for her next meal right around 10, right when I'm supposed to be leaving for the vet's office. And I don't want a starving baby in the car.

I struggled with the decision of whether to wake her up. Because the other thing is that she loves car rides. If I could grab her still asleep and throw her into the car seat, there'd be a pretty good chance she'd stay asleep. If I chose to wake her up, I'd have to do it by about 9 or so to give me enough time to feed her and get her ready. But after waking up at 7, it was almost 8:30 by the time she went back to sleep. So, I went back and forth. There were probably a few emails to G in there wondering what I should do. Maybe some agonizing indecision expressed in a chat with a friend. You'd have thought I was debating a career path or a life or death situation the way I was agonizing.

Finally, I decided to let her sleep. Figured if I left right at 10, I'd be early for the vet anyway and could give her a quick bottle in the car just before the appointment. Except that she got up just as I was loading her in the carseat. And started wailing, but since I didn't have enough time to feed her before leaving, I figured I'd just throw her in the car and hoped for the best. The next big task was to get Bandit into the car. That was an even bigger chore, because these days, Bandit's pretty darn deaf and blind. She hides out under G's desk for much of the day, and convincing her to leave it even for fun stuff is a HUGE event. Because she has no idea what you're asking.

So I had the car seat in one hand and was trying to drag Bandit out from under the desk with another. The kid was bawling and Bandit was resisting so much that her collar almost came off in my hand. And I kept saying, "Come on, Bandit, let's go for a ride" because she likes rides. The problem with that though was that guess who else likes rides? Mia and Tucker who DID hear me just fine and were racing around the living room all ready to go. So then the trick became getting the DZ and Bandit out the door while keeping Mia and Tucker in. I can't express to you how much fun this all was. I finally went and got the kid's seat into the car and came back for Bandit. During which time I could hear the kid bawling in the garage all the way from the house.

Needless to say, I was NOT early for my vet appointment. The 45 minute drive over wasn't too bad except that every time I stopped for a light or gas or in any way slowed the car down, there'd be screaming from the backseat. I think the commotion made Bandit even more convinced that she was in for an ordeal. So then I was stuck instead trying to give the kid her bottle in the waiting room at the vet. By this point, the DZ had calmed down considerably and decided to sort of take her bottle but that she really preferred smiling and cooing at the vet's nurse instead. Which was great except that then she got hungry on our way back home and the car ride back was pretty much the same as the ride over. And I was so tired that I decided to just go home rather than meet my friend for lunch. Which was also great because I had left the house in such a rush that I hadn't eaten all morning. If there's one thing more fun than sitting in a car praying that the light would turn green so that the baby would stop crying, it's doing all of that starving. Just awesome.

Leaving the house with an infant (Part I)

First trip:

The little prima donna was about 5 weeks old. I needed to get out of the house, so G and I decided to take the baby and our 3 dogs to the beach. I guess most people start off with a trip to the local grocery store with JUST the baby or something like that. But where's the fun in that? And anyway, we had already done the obligatory trips to the pediatrician's office in town, so we figured we were ready for the big leagues. And it wasn't terrible. We fed the little DZ, changed her, burped her, and then got the car loaded up. It only took us about 45 minutes to get everything ready and in the car. Not bad, I thought, considering that getting ready included grabbing a bunch of stuff for the baby, trying to figure out how to fit everyone in my little car, and grabbing various throws, towels, and toys for the dogs. It wasn't until later that I found out that we had already been guilty of Rookie Mistake #1: Get every thing loaded up BEFORE the baby is fed and changed. Seeing as how she was eating every 3 hours at that point (or sooner), 45 minutes is just too much time to waste.

We were a bit worried about the dogs bugging the DZ in such close quarters, so G at the last minute found a torn down cardboard box in our garage to shield her a bit from their attention. Totally classy, right?

It seemed to do the trick though. Tucker was a bit curious at first but then he, like the others, settled down pretty quickly. Actually, they didn't seem to care about the baby much at all, even though she was impinging on their usual space, so I'm sure it would have been ok even without the box. And honestly, if they had wanted to get all up in her face, the cardboard wouldn't have done much good.

Once we got to the beach (45 minute drive), we realized that it might be a bit colder for the kid than we had realized (Rookie Mistake #2). Plus we still had her in a cloth diaper. We decided to change both her outfit and the diaper in the car before setting off, and I got the fun task of holding the dogs in check while G had the even more fun task of getting the baby ready AGAIN in the back of the car. She loved getting naked in the cold as you can probably imagine. The dogs had to be evacuated from the car in order for G to have enough room, and they were going nuts with the beach just across the street and having a really hard time understanding why they couldn't just go already, despite me trying to explain it to them a bunch of times. So another 20 minutes or so lost there.

We finally hit the beach. By this point, it was pretty late in the afternoon and we had maybe about an hour of sunlight left. But it all ended up ok and it didn't even matter that it was too cold to take the baby out of the carrier. She fussed a bit at first (by the way, Rookie Mistake #3 ended up not hurting us too badly -- waiting until we got there to try the baby carrier for the first time). I think she initially wasn't too sure if she liked the carrier or not but decided very quickly that it was a great way to nap and slobber all over mom's chest at the same time. So that worked out well too.

As it got colder, I just zipped up, so you couldn't even see here . . . notice the little feet dangling from my sweatshirt? That's her! :)

One lady thought I was pregnant, but really, come on? What pregnant woman have you seen that's that big pretty much from the chest area down to the belly? It was an awkward "belly" too, all elongated and weird looking, with little toes sticking out.

We stayed at the beach for about an hour and a good time was had by all, especially Mia.

And even the kid finally got to check out her surroundings for a bit at the end. We didn't realize it until we got there, but the back-up outfit we had taken for her said "I'm just beachy." This particular picture doesn't show the words, but they're there, I promise. How much do we rock as parents that we were able to clothe our kid in a perfectly themed outfit for the occasion?

So far, so good, right? If you've been paying close attention though so far, you'll have counted up the minutes and realize we're almost a good 2 hours away from a feeding. Plus, we actually didn't quite leave right after the DZ was fed anyway, so we're pretty darn close to when she gets hungry.

Anyway, so we get in the car, and everything's still great. It takes us a little while to get the dogs dried off and everyone back in the car, but it wasn't too bad. As we head home, we decide to pick up some Thai food on the way home. I make the call as G starts driving and put in our order. And then, that's when it happened, about 5 minutes or so after we've left. The kid starts wailing. And wailing. And wailing. She cried the whole way to the Thai place (about 15 minutes). I'm in the front seat and can't really move to the back because the dogs are taking over the whole space. So all we could really do is try to talk to her from the front, and that proved to be totally ineffective.

We don't really know what to do at this point. We're 45 minutes from home, with a planned stop for a food pick up. We have a bottle that we've brought but we put it in a little cooler and don't know how to warm it up for her. And even if we could, it's not like I could just go back there and try to feed her while we're moving. I guess Rookie Mistake # 4 would be the whole cold milk thing but since we still haven't figured out a way around that really, I'm not sure it qualifies as a mistake. On another trip, I tried to take it as is, and it was ok for a while, but then I forgot about it when I got home and it spoiled before I finally remembered to put the unused portion back in the fridge. So that wasn't really an option either for a long trip.

We finally got the Thai place and decided that I would try to nurse her in the car while G ran into get the food. He also figured he'd get some hot water from them while he was in there to warm the milk. I got started and it became quickly apparent that I had no idea how to nurse her in the car. That's not so much of a Rookie mistake either so much as HUGE rookie issue. I'm used to nursing at home with a big pillow (actually, it used to be a whole pillow set up and I slowly worked my way down to just a nursing pillow). So I struggled to get the DZ in the right position and hold her there. Fortunately, I guess she was starving so she didn't seem to care that she was uncomfortable and just went to town.

G came back with the warm water but we were kind of making a go of it already with nursing by that point so we just decided to stick with that. The other thing though is that often at home, the DZ can nurse for up to an hour! I didn't really want to be hanging out in some parking lot for that long, so we decided to let her go for about 15 minutes and then just get going. We figured that would just satisfy her long enough for us to get home. And it should have except that as soon as we got back in the car and started driving, the little prima donna started wailing again.

This time, we just decided to let it go. She cried it out for a good 15 minutes or so and finally wore herself out and fell asleep. Ugh, I swear those 15 minutes seemed to last forever too! G just turned up the radio to drown her out (!), but it was much harder for me to bear. When we got home, we realized she had taken a huge dump, probably right after I fed her, and that's probably what had her bawling. And when I say huge, I'm not kidding. It was all up her butt and in her folds and crevices along her legs, AND had even leaked onto her outfit. Poor thing, of course she was crying. She had been sitting in her own poop for more than half hour. I'm sure there's some rookie mistake in there somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is exactly . . . check your kid's diaper right after feeding her in the car??

Anyway, we all survived the trip unscathed and in one piece but feeling like we had a lot more to learn about taking the kid out of the house.

Routine

So I'm a big fan of routines, and it's exciting to realize that our kid has the same love for order and schedules. Her recent (well, the last 3 weeks or so) night time ritual has been particularly endearing and goes something like this:

7:30 pm -- nurse and start prepping for bed

8:30 pm -- finish nursing

8:30 - 9:30 pm -- several diapers and several attempts to go to bed. Sometimes fussing and crying the whole time, sometimes wide awake and cheerful (whether Mom and Dad get to eat/guzzle dinner depends on which)

9:30 pm -- sudden wailing, followed by yet another diaper change, followed by another hour of nursing

10:30 pm -- more attempts to go to bed, usually consisting of Mom and Dad taking turns carrying her around the room (or bouncing on the bed or swinging or anything else that works to stop the crying)

11:00 pm -- get a bottle of pumped milk since Mom is physically and emotionally unable to nurse anymore

12:00 am -- more attempts to go to bed

12:30 am -- finally, success! down for the night and Mom and Dad get to crawl into bed

12:40 am -- wailing, followed by Mom or Dad getting to pace the living room some more

12:50 am -- repeat

1:00 am -- BEDTIME!!

In fact, our little diva is so in love with this routine that she manages to stick to it whatever curve balls we throw her way. We decide to start getting her into bed sooner? No problem, she can manage to stay awake and fuss even longer. Get a bottle in there sooner so we don't waste all that time nursing? Awesome, more time to screw around and not go to bed. Up all day and exhausted? She can at least hang on til 11pm or midnight. Uncle J and Auntie M babysitting? Perfect, let's throw at least 2 good poops their way in a half hour period or so.

But like her mother, our girl seems to realize that routines aren't everything. It's important to be flexible. And she seems to have a knack for knowing when. So this morning, for example, when I needed her to wake up early so that we could fit 2 feedings in before going to the vet in Santa Cruz, she decided to sleep in. At the vet's office, when she had time to take down a full bottle, she opted to just drink just a little bit. That way, she had plenty of time to be pretty with the vet's nurse and then save her bawling for the ride home when she got hungry again. I mean, really, who wants to stick with the regular plan when you have the chance to give Mom a hard time? What's a routine if not meant to be broken, right?

Clearly, I'm loving this.

More gory details

All through my pregnancy, I worried about a long needle being inserted into my spine. Seemed scarier than actually even going into labor, right? And everyone told me that when you get to that point, the last thing you're worried about is a needle. Turns out they were right. They could have inserted the Space Needle up my back by that point and I wouldn't have cared. Anyway, the epidural came and I went through more contractions. I still felt like pooping but the pain was gone.

And around this time, just when I thought I was going to be a medical anomaly and remain at 4 and a half cm for 3 years, they checked me again, and I was at 8!! So finally, things were happening. Contractions had become more intense, and I was getting more and more dilated. I was almost ready to push and by this point, I was ready. An hour went by and I was 9 cm! Another hour went by and I was at 9.5.

Everything was moving nicely, except that they checked me again an hour later and I was still at 9.5. They waited a couple more hours, came back, and I still hadn't reached 10. The nurse said I was really really close but the last bit of my cervix did not want to open up. I don't know what time it was at this point, but it was probably about 1 or 2 in the morning. And if they came in and said I was still close but not there yet one more time, I was ready to get down there and rip the baby out myself. Well, no, but dude, there's nothing more discouraging than seeing the finish line but not being able to reach it.

Not to worry, the nurse said. A lot of times, you can just push your way past that last bit of closed cervix. So she had me start to push. And push. And push. A contraction would come and she'd tell me when/how to push. Basically they tell you to push like you're trying to get a turd out (a total AHA moment right there for me -- this is why so many women poop during labor I guess). I pushed for what seemed like forever. She kept checking my cervix and it still hadn't opened yet! I'm glad I got the epidural if for nothing more than the cervical checks, god they were excruciating before. And I got a whole lot of them.

And during this whole time, the nurse has been saying several things. One, that it seems to be a night for emergency issues and c-sections and she was not going to have me add to the trend. And two, although I would need to have a c-section if I couldn't dilate to 10 cm, she didn't anticipate it getting to that point. But then as I kept pushing and nothing kept happening, she stopped saying that. Finally, my doctor came and made the call, said that if I'd already been pushing for that long, there was really nothing else to do. If my cervix still wasn't opening up, that was a sign that the baby was probably too big.

The rest of the night was a blur. I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open. Once we made the decision to go for the c-section, everything happened quickly. I think they had us all prepped and the baby out in less than half an hour. They had G get scrubbed up and wheeled us into the operating room (him in a wheel chair, I think, just in case he fainted, though I'm not sure). And I guess they put a curtain up between my top half and bottom half and cut me up. Oh they gave me drugs, but later, the anesthesiologist told me that I had been snoring away even before he gave me anything. G hung out by my head so I'm not sure how much he could see. And then before I knew it, it was 3 am and they were telling me I had a girl! A girl! I'm still in shock by that, by the way. I had been so mentally prepared for a boy. But honestly, they showed her to me, and all I remember thinking is "cool" and drifting back to sleep.

I do remember though being with it enough to tell G to follow the baby. Cuz they took the baby away to wash her up while the doctors stayed to close me up. And G was too busy hanging out with me to pay attention to where the baby went. There was a flurry of activity too because there were all kinds of people in the operating room. Earlier in the evening, when my doctor had to break my water, they had found some meconium in my water (it's basically baby poop -- I guess sometimes it's common when babies are late for the poop to seep into the amniotic sac). And they were worried that the baby might swallow some on her way out. So there were doctors and nurses from the neonatal intensive care unit on stand by to clear out the baby's lungs in case that happened. Not a huge deal if they're prepared for it, but potentially scary if they're not. Plus there was my doctor and nurse, the c-section doctor, the anesthesiologist, and I don't know who else. There was a lot going on, and all I really remember is how sleepy I was and how quickly it all seemed to happen.

While they were closing me up, G went with the baby to watch them clean her up and give her initial shots and tests. They apparently told him that the baby's head had been rammed up against my cervix trying to push her way out but that her head had been too big for my cervix. So that's why I couldn't finish dilating. She might have been slightly out of position also, but they said it wouldn't have mattered anyway because I was just too small for her. Damn big husbands! G had told me what a huge baby he was, and I had been freaked out about this the entire pregnancy.

Knowing this kid like I do now, I also kind of wonder if she had been too lazy to push that hard. She doesn't seem like the type to go that extra mile if she doesn't have to. :) But who knows, I guess all that matters is that at the end of the day, we have this super adorable little girl. I may be biased but she didn't even look like a little alien when she was born. You know how a lot of newborns are kind of goopy and ET-looking? Not this one! I swear, she looked like a baby right from the start.

Anyway, I guess that's it for the gory labor details. All the nurses kept telling me that at least next time, I wouldn't have to go through labor at all. I could just schedule a c-section and be done with it. And I guess now that I've had to come to terms with having one at all, might as well. But good god, really, another one????

the gory details (Part I)

Aside from the cloth diapers and my brief foray into the idea of natural child birth, I wouldn't really call myself earth friendly (i.e. hippie). I mean, sure, I try to be environmentally conscious, eat healthy foods, get my pets at animal shelters, and try not to medicate too often. But for the most part I like modern conveniences. It used to be that I didn't even have a cell phone, but I live with Mr. Gadgets now and I've gotten used to the easy life. And one day soon, now that we have 3 dogs and a kid, I know that I'll have to break down and probably buy a car that gives less than 30 miles a gallon. I do what I can but have no problems giving up an ideal for convenience. Plus I'm a huge believer in science and modern medicine.

Despite all this, I had a vision of how my labor would go. When we were in our birthing classes, a lot of women said they're biggest fear was having a c-section. I had no such fear. Honestly, I felt that at the end of the day, I would do whatever needed to be done to get the baby out. And if my doctor felt that a c-section was necessary, then that's what would happen. I didn't WANT it per se. I didn't even want the doctor to make a slit to help the baby come out if it came down to it, let alone a c-section scar. Ideally, I decided I'd rather tear (I know it sounds terrible, and there are really no advantages to either, but see my previous post about the Kool-Aid) and heal naturally than with a cut and stitches. I didn't even want to be induced. So definitely a c-section is even more invasive and definitely not on my "must have" list, but I barely thought much about it.

But it was easy not to think about it because in my head, I always felt that it would never go there. I mean, how on earth could I possibly have issues delivering a kid? Child bearing runs in my family, and I always just figured I was built for it. I never really thought much about it but I think it was a source of pride. And when the moment came that the c-section became necessary, that was probably what stuck in my craw the most.

And the moment was a LONG time coming that day. Because I went into the hospital Monday morning at 7 am to be induced after being almost a week late. The baby apparently did not want to come out. Actually, we were supposed to go in Sunday night, but as we were walking out the door, the hospital called and said that they had no more beds, that it was a crazy night, did I want to come Monday morning instead. Sun, they were supposed to give me this drug to help my cervix dilate. By the end of labor, my cervix is to have dilated 10 cm, a lot of women start the process during the last weeks of their pregnancy. As of my last doc appointment, I was completely closed.

So all night, I was supposed to hang out while the meds did their thing, then, when it was time, they'd give me drugs to induce contractions. That was the plan. I could probably sleep while I was dilating and wake up ready to start feeling the pain. But everything got pushed out and we came in Mon morning armed with videos for entertainment. To my surprise, it turned out that I had started having contractions and was dilated already without knowing it. 3 cm, one third of the way there! So they decided to skip the drugs altogether to get my cervix dilating and went straight to the pitocin to induce contractions. A few hours went by, nothing happened. We watched videos, updated facebook every few minutes, caught up on emails. If you're planning on going to labor, a hospital with WI-FI is key.

A few more hours went by. The nurses would occasionally come and examine my cervix (OUCH, that was probably more painful than contractions). They kept upping my pitocin and I still felt nothing. They kept asking if I wanted an epidural. I said, very proudly, no.

At around 3 or 4 pm, I was still just at 4 cm. My doctor came and broke my bag of water around 4:30 or so, and they assured me that things would much more quickly after that. At the next cervix check a few hours later, the nurse said I was at 4 cm. Then she saw my disappointed face and said, "Well, maybe 4 and a half." Awesome, a whole half cm. And still I felt nothing. My doctor said that 4 cm was a good time to get the epidural, but I said no. Well, I still hadn't felt anything, so it seemed silly to get pain killers.

The timing starts to get a little fuzzy, but at some point, they inserted this wire up me to try to better monitor the strength of my contractions. That made it a bit harder to pee. Then suddenly, maybe around 9?, without any warning, I felt my first contraction and it was a doozy. I don't even know how to describe it except that it was pretty much hell AND I felt like pooping. Plus my lower back hurt which I don't think is normal or a good thing. There was no gradual easing into them either, one second I barely knew I was having a contraction and the next minute I couldn't miss 'em. All day, they had been occurring every 4-5 minutes (which is what you want), but all day, they'd been trying to increase the intensity and suddenly they succeeded.

So as I mentioned yesterday, I pretty much broke down right away and asked for the epidural. But it turned out that some one else was having an emergency and the anesthesiologist was busy with her and couldn't get to me for a while. So I ended up gritting my teeth through contractions every 5 minutes for over an hour before God came and inserted a long ass needle up my back.

To be continued . . .

evolution of an idea

So up until about the 37th week of my pregnancy (i.e. 3 weeks before my due date), I thought my birth plan was completely set in stone. And basically, it involved me asking for the epidural in the parking lot, or maybe even a couple of days before. Ideally, I would have preferred to be completely knocked out and maybe drunk the whole time, but I figured that probably wasn't an option. So I was ready the moment we got to the hospital to say the magic words: "Gimme drugs NOW." I don't deal with pain well. I start wincing and whining before it starts.

And I hate to say this, but my opinion of people who decided to give birth "naturally" was that they were utterly insane. You know, like the tree-hugger, don't want to shave my underarms, kind of insane. Or my mother. But she's from a one-road village in a developing country, of course she'd be for all natural childbirth. Women have been giving birth for thousands of years, she said. What did I need drugs for? Sure they have. And yeah, some women dropped their babies in the fields and kept right on working, but a lot of them also dropped dead. This is why we have modern conveniences now, like doctors and hospitals, and medicine. And I plan on using every single one of them.

Except . . . well, I made the mistake of going to a child birth class. You know, to be better informed about these things. And apparently, all these classes are taught by midwives and doulas (i.e. who needs drugs school?). And a lot of what they said made sense. You know, the part about women recovering from natural labor more quickly, and our bodies only producing a baby that we could deliver naturally, and the occasional side effects of various drugs. I can't remember exactly what all they said to convince me, but suddenly, I was drinking the Kool-Aid. Mostly, it just seemed empowering, like of course I could do this. Why not, after all, women have been doing this for thousands of years. . . .

So for about a month, I walked around thinking that I'd go for it, that'd I have an all natural child birth. And I did it without really telling anyone. Cuz I didn't want to sound like a nut. And I didn't want to go on about it and then not. And anyway, I wasn't a 100% sure what I wanted. Because there was just one problem with the whole plan, the whole pain thing. If only I could have a natural child birth without feeling any pain! But I thought that I'd give it a shot and just see what happened.

Anyway, the idea lasted well into my labor. All day, the nurses kept asking me if I wanted drugs, and I said no. Honestly, apparently I was having contractions but they didn't seem that bad. My doctor came late in the afternoon and said that it was a good time to get an epidural if I wanted one. I said no, I was doing great. Well, early that evening, the pain started. I felt my first real contraction, and I started to cave. The next one came around and my mind was pretty much made up. But just for kicks, I endured a few more and then rang the call button.

And that was that. I've decided now that natural child birth is WAY overrated. It turned out that I had to wait over an hour before they could actually give me my epidural, so I got a fairly good taste of what child birth was all about. And I gotta say, if you can do it, kudos to you, but I'm going back to my epidural in the parking lot next time around. Though actually, as it turns out, I'll have it easier than that even next time around, but I'll have to save that for my next post.