Sunday, December 13, 2009

Crappy Croup

So, Chuckles has not slept on the bathroom floor any more.

I did follow up with the morning nurse to make sure Chuckles was OK and didn't need to be seen (I'm still a little gun shy after the whole Bobo blood infection near-death thing). The daytime nurse knows our family and was very soothing. She gave me a list of 12 or so things to look out for with the croup. If any of these things came up, Chuckles would need to be seen by the ped.
  1. stridor
  2. blue lips
  3. speaking in tongues
  4. gasping for air
  5. irritability beyond being a 4-year old
  6. head spinning around
  7. retractions
  8. inability to catch breath
  9. not noticing that mom is eating ice cream and asking for some
  10. paranoia
  11. difficulty swallowing
  12. taking up with communists

So, all-in-all, Chuckles recovered nicely and here we are joyously awaiting the arrival of Santa Clause and all the oddly specific bounty he will bring unto us. And also, we are awaiting the Big Brown Truck (UPS) and the Amazon box that it will bring.

It's like the 12 days of Christmas around here. Every night at bedtime, I stick my hand up into the box on the closet shelf and pull out another Christmas/Winter book. Tonight featured a book I like to call "Broken Glass". It's a Snappy Sounds Holiday Pop-Up book whose idea of "twinkling" sounds like putting silverware in the garbage disposal or alternately, the sound a Christmas tree makes when it falls over during Festivus Feats of Strength.

Speaking of alternate holidays like Festivus, I take Christmas Cards very seriously. Very seriously. Once upon a time before I had kids, my cards were written, adressed, stamped, and waiting for the day after Thanksgiving to be mailed. Nowadays, I have to wait for the photos to come back before the cards go out, but I take them seriously nonetheless. There is a Newsletter which is called The SarcaSuffering Times (a combo of my last name and Mr. Long-Suffering's last name). It is not a special glow sheet, but more a take on our year, a listing of babies born, and a running tally of how my college's football team whomped on Mr. Long-Suffering's college football team and now we're going to a Bowl Game and you're not. Oh, right, where was I?

Anyway, I take my cards seriously. I send about 50 and I send for 3 years after I haven't heard from someone. Then, they are stricken from the list (unless they are super close family or friends, but old classmates and neighbors are stricken from the list. Stricken, I say.). This year, I got the BEST card I have ever gotten ever for any occasion. You may have heard me talk about my friend Carly before. Anyway, she's not usually much of a card sender, but this year, I got a little card with a sun on the front. Inside, it said: "Brighter Days Are Ahead. Celebrate Winter Solstice." I love this card. I love it more than the bunny with the hair dryer demanding the carrot nose from Frosty. I love it more than the female Frosties talking about the buxom Snowoman having falsies. I love it more than the card featuring Gristletoe that Mr. Long-Suffering gave me 12 years ago (which I still have somewhere but cannot find on the internet even though it was an e-card that I printed out...back when e-cards were novel). So, I love this card. It's from cafe press if you want some. I'm also a fan of Tiffany Ard's cards at omgseriously at etsy. Seriously. I would send them, but at a buck a card and the word motherfucking in them, I just don't think it's going to happen. But I do covet them. I guess I could have a subversive list where only certain people got them.

Moving on, someone asked about the weaning a couple of posts down. So, I have decided that I can either nurse 100% or not nurse at all, but I am no good at part-time nursing. I had wanted to stop pumping and then nurse while at home, and my supply dropped so much that I pretty much can't nurse at home unless I pump to keep it up, so we're almost done. I think I will keep the after work nursing and the middle of the night nursing, but the rest is bottle (either breastmilk from the freezer or formula). We're still pulling milk out of the freezer. You could say I was a little obsessed with having a good freezer stash. I think that doing that did two things for me. (1) It artificially inflated my milk supply so that when I went back to work, I was already used to making more than necessary so even though there was a supply drop, it was fine because it was still enough, and (B) Gave me the mental space not to freak out if I didn't pump enough one single day because heck, there are 8 gallons of milk in the deep freeze. Oh and (iii) It was just really cool having all the milk there. While I was pumping, I think I only used maybe 4 or 5 bags of milk. I can't believe it either, but I pumped 2x daily and took fenugreek sometimes and pumped on the occasional weekend and tried to conserve milk as much as possible. When I switched to 1x daily pumping, I still didn't use too much of the freezer stash because I switched Bobo from three 5-ounce bottles to two 6-ounce bottles, so a net decrease of 3 ounces daily.

Now, I'm trying to do some nursing, but I assume he gets little to nothing. But he's not a fan of food or the bottle so things here are rough with little sleep and a lot of crying (mostly not mine). Bottles of formula are given at bed time in the hope that he'll sleep. It's hard to tell what's what though because every day I look in his mouth and there's a new tooth (plus, I am pretty sure Bobo will be walking by Christmas...he's thisclose). Speaking of formula and sleeping at night, Have you seen the Enfamil RestFull formula that supposedly, I don't know, congeals in the baby's stomach for slower digestion? Does that work? It seems like a baby idea for a tiny baby, but I'd be willing to try it on an older kid like Bobo, who theoretically could be drinking cows' milk. So, anyway, congealing formula sounds gross and I don't think I'd try it on a baby, but you know, whatever, right?

So, in summation: Croup, Santanism, Santaism, Festivus, Solstice, Formula.

And Happy Hanukkah. My local TV station's pledge drive tells me it's the 3rd day (so is tonight the 4th night? I don't know), and our pledge prizes might make it in time for the 8th night, but if not, give them for Kwanzaa.

6 comments:

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