Babycakes

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070328/ap_on_re_us/abandoned_babies

I can't even form a functional sentence describing my emotions about this. Read it for yourself.

Sometimes the busiest times are the ones when I don't have much to say. It's been a busy, stressful few weeks. I've met with 3 different midwives and one ob/gyn (for a VBAC consult), have attempted to contact 2 different hospitals about our wishes about Savannah's birth, and have beaten myself up over my body's inability to birth Emma in a way which would allow me to birth Savannah at home with no extra risk.

The rest of this entry is going to be a very angry, venting one. Just so you know.

Our desires for this birth are as follows:

*To birth Savannah at home (which is not going to happen, as midwives aren't "allowed" to attend homebirths in NY). Also, the risk of uterine rupture due to my cesarean with Emma has made both Jared and I uneasy, despite our great desire to birth this little girl in the safety and privacy of our own home.

*To labor at home with Emma here with us as long as possible, then drive to the hospital and finish laboring naturally there.

*For the idiotic nurses and doctors to leave my baby girl ON MY CHEST after the birth, allowing only Jared and I to touch, clean, and attend to her. I will enforce this.

*For the sonsofbitches nurses to NOT put blinding ointment in my daughter's eyes (because I do NOT have STDs, dammnit!), or inject her with Vit K or Hep B. She will not be at risk of excessive bleeding and my breastmilk will give her all the Vit K she needs once it comes in. Also, I'm not going to let any IV drug users or whores near my child, so the Hep B is useless.

We are in the process of seeking legal counsel from a very good high school buddy of mine regarding these things. It's been very stressful and at times I just want to kill someone. Savannah and Emma are our children, not the hospital's or the government's. We have every right not to accept these invasive, unnecessary things without having to jump through legal hoops! We are angry, we are frustrated, and we are growing more and more pissed with each passing day.

I emailed the hospital I gave birth to Emma to about all of this and instead of contacting me they called our pediatrician! She called us and attempted to "teach" us about the necessity of the newborn screenings and injections. We basically told her that we know everything and that it is OUR choice, not up to NYS or any meddling nurses.

*sigh*

I'm getting really upset talking about this. That's the summary of what's been going on. We're fighting with outsiders about the wellbeing of our children, and it doesn't feel good to have to explain myself all the time. I do the very best to keep my daughter healthy and happy and safe. And I will not be convinced to do things that I am opposed to.

We've been busy, so no posting. Here's a rundown, bullet form, of what's been keeping me away from the computer:

*Family
*Friends
*Life

:)

I attended a MOP event at a local church (mothers of preschoolers, I believe it stands for) and had a very nice time. I went with a friend from high school and saw a few other people I knew. I think I might branch out and join, actually. My faith could use it.

Emma and I recovered from the flu and have been busy playing with our friends and going to swim classes twice a week. She LOVES the water and had a blast tonight at our first evening class. It's run by an elderly woman named Grandma Bea, who sings with the children and does all sorts of neat activities to get them water acclimated. Our friends Tyler (with his mom Stefanie and dad Chad), Josh (with mom Kelly), Mirium (with mom Debbie and dad Jim) and Haley (with mom Rachel and dad Matt) were all there tonight and we had a blast! I'm obsessed with being in the water because it's the only place where my joints don't ache and I feel light and free of this ever-growing body of mine.

Speaking of this body...

I saw a midwife today to see if she was the right fit for me, and she 1,000,000% ISNT. She had me in tears with all of her VBAC warnings, and then when she went to do a pelvic exam she was too busy talking and chatting about nothing that she didn't even tell me when she was going to begin. I have never had such a painful exam ever! She literally thrust the darn speculum in with no warning and then muttered a pathetic "oh, sorry if that hurt" a few minutes later. (Gee, perhaps it was my gasp of pain that tipped her off?). She was just unprofessional and a bit creepy, so I'll be seeing new midwives next week and in the meantime I'll get some blood drawn and talk to my Nina about what on earth to do.

My nephew has dental surgery tomorrow and I'm a mess about it. I'm just praying it goes quickly and smoothly and my poor little monsteroni makes it out okay.

Debbie, Lisa and I will probably go to a "natural baby/birth" store tomorrow to look at slings and other products, and I'll get some info on their hypnobirthing classes (yay!). My parenting philosophies are beginning to affect my life philosophies and for that I'm very glad. I'll go into more detail about this at another time, but for now I have to get to bed.

Yesterday I was hit by the same virus that Emma had. I spent the entire night hanging over the toilet or crouched on it moaning, praying that Em would just GO TO SLEEP! To top it off our neighbors were extremely rude and loud, so at one point I ended up shouting "Will you people shut up already?!?!" at the top of my lungs and then collapsing into sobs on the couch. It wasn't pretty, but hey - I was a mess of puke and other stuff and my babe would just not sleep (thanks to the loud old ladies downstairs who are both deaf and watch TV on the highest volume every night from 8-10pm, keeping Emma awake).

Anyway, last night was misreble. I got up about twice an hour, every hour, until 7am to go to the bathroom and spent most of my time in there quietly crying. Yes, it was one of those horrible stomach viruses, the kind that leave you huddled up and wanting your mommy. Jared finally returned from work at 1:15am and tried to take care of me, but I was so misreble I couldn't even respond to him. Emma woke up at 7 am and I had only gotten about 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I watched Buffy (a guity pleasure!) and it put me back to sleep until almost 10am. The rest of the day was spent in agony because for some reason every time I get a stomach virus/flu I shake uncontrollably and my back/spine/ribs hurt like madness the next day. I'm not sure if that's actually the reason why they hurt, but I have no clue what else could be causing this! I had to sit up straight to not be in pain, and even now I'm avoiding laying down in bed because it just hurts too much.

Okay, I'm going to be creative and prop myself up with pillows because I can't stay awake any longer. Cross your fingers I never get sick like this again.

I think I mentioned that our college buddy Pat came to visit on Saturday. Here are some pictures of our visit:

Emma grabbed Pat's glasses and he was able to catch her in mid-nerd pose. My cousin Erin calls it the "I'm allergic to peanuts!" pose. She's very mean about the whole allergy thing, my cousin (but in a joking way). She swears that our child will be taunted in school for having a peanut allergy. (I think she's nuts).


Emma and I rocking in the 18 year old glider. My butt falls through the bottom sometimes.


Erin and I were told to pose for the camera; I was being her, she was being me. Hmm...not too flattering to me, huh?

(continued from below)

After she threw up curdled milk onto my lap Emma put her little head down on me and just looked up at us with dazed, tired little eyes. She finally seemed comfortable, and Jared grabbed clothes, diapers, wipes, a musty sleeping bag, and the sort of clean comforter in the back of the linen closet. Somehow we managed to change her, bundle up the blankets, re-make the bed with the sleeping bag on the bottom to act as a waterproof barrier against any other mishaps. All the while Emma was just lying on my chest in a deep sleep.

It didn't last long.

She couldn't sleep laying down (it seemed to make her tummy hurt worse) so I had her propped up on my pillows...but since my belly takes up much more room and my back kills me every night, that position didn't last long. Jared sat up and tried to hold her but had to move into the living room. Actually, I told him to get out because I had to get some sleep so that we could switch later on, but didn't end up falling asleep until 6-ish. Meanwhile, Jared got Emma to sleep in her crib and he fell asleep in his boxers on the couch with no blankets. Freezing cold and exhausted.

I woke up around 9 to a screaming Emma, thinking "Why the hell isn't he getting her?". I just thought he was still holding her, so I was pretty surprised to see her in her crib, tossing and turning and misreble. We went into the living room, woke Daddy up and sent him to bed (after getting diaper changed/an apple and toast/tylenol). Jared slept until almost 1pm and I actually got Emma to sleep on her little Elmo couch while I devoured a bowl of raisin bran and watched the MTV marathon of America's Next Top Model. I hate that show. I think my brain was temporarily comatose.

I had to call for Jared to wake up a little later because Emma was starving and burning up but wouldn't let me put her down or even move off the couch. Her temp was 102 under the arm and she had some white spots on the insides of her cheeks. Thankfully the doctor let us know that it was all okay and normal.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning and airing the place out, and when Emma woke up from a later nap she was suddenly back to her old self! JOY!!!! Our friend from college, Pat, was in town visiting my cousin Erin (they're buds but she swears nothing more, which is disappointing because they rock as a couple) and we decided to go ahead and have them over for pizza and the game. (The game being the Sabres, of course. What other game matters?). Emma burst into tears as soon as Pat stepped in the door (she is very afraid of strange men) but quickly warmed up to him when he showed her his softer side. We all played with her Dora ball and other toys and had a really lovely visit.

The best part of the night? SHE ACTUALLY SLEPT THROUGH IT! She's sleeping even now as I type this at 6:30am. Why am I up at this ungodly hour if my child is sleeping?

Because her stupid father woke me up and kept me up, like he does almost every night.

It's not really his fault, but when I turn over to ease my aching back and he's literally in my face and not waking up to move over, I'm awake. And when I have to nudge him three times to get him to put his apnea machine on so that he stops that insane snoring...well, then, I'm just plain awake. It's pregnancy insomnia at it's worst, and I'm ready to kill someone. Namely my husband.

Or at least put him out on the couch.

***
I still can't sleep, so this is edited in a bit later. La la la, here are some nifty things my daughter does/says now:

*Says "thank you", sometimes without prompting. Yesterday I was handing her her sippy cup and said "Here you go, sweetie", and she said thank you and signed it. Genius!

*Says "jump". And reeeeeaaallly jumps. Like, over and over and over until I'm pretty sure she's rattling her brain in her skull. Sometimes she even gets air.

*Climbs up on the couches by herself. This is not so amusing. Rather terrifying, actually.

*Seems to know the color blue. She has a blue ball, a yellow one and a red one, and when she's holding the blue one she'll occasionally say "boo!". Yesterday while she was still ill with fever we were chanting the pattern of flowers on her socks (anything to keep her from crying) and after I was done saying "white, blue, white, blue, white, blue", she suddenly pointed to a blue flower and said "boo". This was about 5 minutes after we were done looking at her socks. Really, people, my kid is a genius. (lol)

*Sings along with the Wiggles. All we have to do is start singing one line of a certain song that goes "And we're making some dough..." but leave out the "dough" and Emma chimes in with "do-do-do". She also sings to the other songs on the DVD and was humming with me two days ago (for the first time). She seemed to think that in order to hum you have to stick your neck out really far. :)

I know she's been saying a lot more lately but I think I'm going to head back to bed and see if I can get some sleep.

Ugh. That's how I feel at the moment. Trapped in a germy home that smells like poop and puke. (Okay, not really. It smells like vanilla cake thanks to a yummy candle and lots of airing out. But in my own warped mind I can still smell the various fluids that have been expelled by my lovely little girl in the past three days).

After Jae went to work last night Emma and I...um...hold on a minute. I can't even remember what the hell we did for three hours. Oh, right, we took a tubby and she fell asleep in my arms before 8pm. For the first. time. ever! I stupidly put some milk in a bottle just in case of an emergency (baby wakes up at 2 am wanting milk and I don't have the energy to rock her to sleep instead) and left it on her dresser instead of putting it in the kitchen. As soon as I wasdone filling up the bottle I said to myself "Idiot! You don't give a kid milk when she has the flu!" and put the bottle aside.

When Emma woke up at around 2:30am Jared went to get her back to sleep and he gave her the milk. The damn milk! No milk when the baby has the flu!!! He wasn't thinking; he'd only slept about three hours the night before. I bet you can guess what happened next:

3am, baby crying. I go to get her and she's tossing and turning and really agitated. We bring her to bed with us but she can't get comfy. Jared gets up to get some water and BLAAAAAAHHHH - curdled milk puke aaaaaaalllll over her, me, and the only clean and dry blankets left in the entire house. OH. MY. GOD.

And since I have no more energy to write....part II coming later.

Having slept for most of the day Emma decided that the perfect time to wake up was 1am, just before Daddy got home from work. She was in bed with me, and tossed and turned and seemed alright until Jared walked in the door, then she suddenly became a banshee. I noticed right away that she was burning up and had to send poor Daddy right back out in the cold because we were out of tylenol. Of course. When he returned she was wide awake and we all went into the living room and played for a bit. It's funny; we were both so ballistically happy that she wasn't throwing up anymore that we were actually joyful to be up at 2am playing with Em's Dora ball and farm set and watching The Wiggles' "Top of the Tots!".

The rest of the details of the night are a bit fuzzy, but I know that at some point we returned to bed only to have Em wake up screaming hysterically. Nothing would calm her down and I was feeling very worn out, so Jared stayed up and rocked, held, cuddled, sang to her. Nothing really worked so I popped in a Baby Einstein and turned the volume and brightness down. It soothed her enough for the screaming to go away (she had really horrible gas - a precurser to the lovely diarrhea gushers of today), and I was able to go back to sleep. I figured they'd be back in bed with me in a bit, and so I dragged my butt to bed and tried really hard to melt the number 5:45 off the clock. Stupid clock, laughing at me with its bright red stupid numbers!

I woke up at 6:25am and didn't hear the whizzing of Jared's apnea machine, didn't feel Emma's sweaty little head bashing into mine, and dragged myself up once again. And in the living room I saw the sweetest little sight: Emma sleeping peacefully on her fold-out Elmo couch with her Daddy sleeping right next to her, his arm draped over the side of her couch. Her little legs were falling off (she's a tosser/turner!) so I gently put them back on and blew them both kisses and headed back to bed.

It was a long day. She slept until 8:30 and I was up with them for awhile before I just couldn't stay awake any longer. I napped, she napped, Jared didn't. I don't know how he's making it at work right now but I just got off the phone with him and he seems to be doing fine. Chipper, actually.

So I'm off to bed. It's not even 9pm and I can't remember the last time Emma fell asleep at 8pm! I feel like the most spoiled Mommy in the world!!

Oh, except for the poop stain on my sock and the vomit smell lingering in the air. But besides that.... :)

Emma is sick. Reeeaaalllly sick. Throwing up, misreble sick. And we weren't there to help her through the first bouts of it.

Early this morning (around 5am) I heard her kind of cough-choking, and Jared jumped up to check on her. My definition of "check the baby" is to go into the room, hold my fingers near her nostrils to make sure she's breathing, cover her up again and blow her a kiss. Jae's definition is to peek in through the door and listen for crying. Neither way of checking the baby is better than the other...usually. Usually, no crying or rustling blankets means a peacefully sleeping Emma.

But not last night.

Last night warrented the Mommy Check, which didn't happen because Jared is too lovely to let his pregnant wife get out of bed, knowing full well that if and when I do get out of bed I cannot fall back asleep. I would give anything to have dragged my big butt out of bed last night because apparently, while we were all fast asleep, Emma vomited all over herself. Repeatedly. The second time I heard her cough-choking I told Jared to really check her, and he did Daddy Check again and declared her ok.

That was until she really woke up this morning and Jared told me to go back to sleep. 2 minutes later he opened the door and said, "Kier, she threw up all over" in this calm yet scared voice. I popped out of bed and she gave me a tired little smile, and immediately I smelled it. Puke city. Her crib, blankets, sheets, pj's, hair, arms, legs, everything covered in puke. I mean, it worked it's nasty way up her pant legs! And down her pj shirt! It was caked on her little face and in her hair, and immediately my stomach sank into my socks and I almost started crying at the sight of her. She didn't even cry while puking, that's what gets me. She just coughed and threw up and stayed asleep and rolled around in for 4 hours.

We immediately filled the tub and I stripped her down and wrapped her up in a towel while Jae got everything ready. While she soaked in the tub (actually smiling and giggling a little) I took all of the blankets and things outside to shake out the dried stuff, then ran into the laundry room to rinse all of the other stuff, then stuffed it all in the washer and ran back upstairs to see how she was doing. It was about 20 minutes later, and she was no longer giggling. Jared went to the store to pick up Pedialyte and other necessities (chocolate covered donut and Milky Way bar for me - really, truly a necessity at 24 weeks) and Emma and I snuggled on the couch and watched Big Big World and Sesame Street.

When Jae got back and Emma was settled I said to him, "I have never felt such deep guilt in my entire life", and he just nodding his sad head in agreement. Of course we didn't know that she was throwing up in there - from the peek in, everything seemed normal. She didn't whine or cry, just stayed asleep. But I can't help but kick myself at the idea of our sweet girl feeling so awful and being alone, rolling around in vomit.

Please tell me that this has happened to someone else.

Now, a few hours later, she's thrown up about 5 more times and has nothing left in her little belly. We tried a cracker before she started puking again but ruled that out as a bad idea for now. She won't take Pedialyte or water but we're trying anyway. Oh, and she got this bug from her cousin Joshie, who got it from his friend Charlotte. Char played at his house on Monday morning, then we went over Monday afternoon. Poor Josh spent the entire night and morning throwing up, so Emma's not alone in this. I had to cancel a playdate/dinner night with our friends Kelly and Joshua (Emma's other Josh) and feel bad about that, but I definitely wouldn't want them getting anything. Plus, I'm 100% sure Em will be on the couch watching Baby Einstein for the rest of the day. I hope she's okay by tonight because I tend to have a really sensitive gag reflex these days and with Jared gone to work at 4:20pm I don't want to be throwing up while Emma throws up through the evening. No matter what, though, she's sleeping in bed with us tonight. I just feel better that way. I regret not being the one to check on her this morning, and I really don't want that happening again.

One more regret? That I pushed the vegetable soup last night for snack. Looking back, the chicken noodle may not have left such stains.

Labels: Emma, illness, parent-guilt