Barren Mare

Project Runway

Can you stand another post about sleep?  It is, after all, my favourite subject at the moment.

The other night, Botany rolled twice sometime between 11pm and 4am- both times she managed to get her arm stuck out through the cot bar, whereupon she woke up freaked out and yelling. I ran down and scooped her up; poor baby, it did look like she gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. As I sat in the chair nursing her back to sleep for the second time, I had one of those 3am-type epiphanies. Probably because it was, in fact, 3am.

I had earlier noted that Botany only ever rolls to the left. It occured to me that she's getting her arm stuck in the bars every time because when she goes to sleep, I'm putting her down smack in the middle of the cot. Essentially, she doesn't have enough clearance to get herself over without coming up against the side of the cot. Since it is a given that at some point in the night she will roll, it dawned on me that what she needs is a bit more mattress runway to get over- but to stay clear of the bars.  Well, duh, I thought. So obvious, but so hard to see when one is accustomed to doing the exact same routine night after night.

The following night, I laid her down carefully, carefully; strategically positioning her little body for optimum rollage room. And hey presto! About 1am, she rolled and stayed asleep in a happy bundle in the middle of the cot, whereupon she slept until 5.30am. In fact, I wouldn't have even known she was on her tummy except that E. peeked in on her en route while letting the dog out.

"She's on her tummy!" he announced to me when he got back upstairs.

"Is she asleep?" I muttered from somewhere under the duvet.

"Yes. But she's on her tummy!," he reiterated.

"Good," I said, ready to go back to sleep myself.

"Are you sure it's OK?! On her tummy?!" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, it's all good," I said as the dog fixed his nest at the back of my knees.

The next morning I congratulated myself for being so clever clever clever.  Problem sorted, I thought, a trifle smugly. Thus bringing down the wrath of the sleep furies, who smote me with three middle-of- the night wake ups for two days thereafter, the cause of which seemed to be totally unrelated to rolling. (I think teething is becoming an issue.) Ugh. Ugh and bleeech.

The good news is that in the last couple days, Botany has now learned how to get herself back over; this seems to result in some very strange cot perambulations, such that I sometimes come in to answer her cry to find her bewildered and turned 360 degrees from where I put her down. She's so determined to wriggle around that it would almost be amusing (if it weren't so damned exhausting).

You know, prior to Botany's birth, I always treated talk of "sleepless nights" as one of those trite cliches of parenting- right up there with "your life will never be the same". The sort of thing that washes over you as something to be expected when you have a baby but which is quite meaningless until you come to discover exactly how sleepless "sleepless" can be, and that it really is nights. As in plural. 

Something which I have come to find soothing is that it's happening to so many other people at the same time. Often I'll sit there in the dimly lit room at two in the morning, nursing and rocking; enjoying holding the baby while also desperately wishing I could just go back to sleep. I think about how many others are up right then, doing exactly the same thing. It's sort of nice knowing someone else is out there, awake in the dark with a child in their arms, parenting as best they can.

There were four in the bed and the little one said...

My prediction was correct- Botany learning how to roll over was the start of some dreadful sleepless nights. To be clear, it's not the risk of SIDS that I was/am concerned about. Rather, the problem is that Botany, having rolled herself over, can't figure out how to get back again. That would fine if she were quite happy to sleep on her tummy, but evidently, that is not so. The night after I wrote that last post, Botany repeatedly rolled in her sleep, in her cot, in her sleeping bag. Every time she woke up to find herself on her tummy, she would freak out and start shrieking.  And then I'd have to nurse back down for a half hour before she would go back to sleep. Rinse, lather, repeat. 

I don't know if it's because she has hit a key developmental milestone or what, but in general, sleep has gone to hell in a handcart around here. I rather blithely assumed we'd gotten over the hump of the four month sleep regression relatively intact and were in the clear for a while. Oh ha ha ha. No. All of a sudden, she's fighting to go down at her normal 7pm bedtime, she's waking up before the dreamfeed at 10.30/11pm, she's refusing to go back to sleep after the dreamfeed, she's awake at 1am and 3am and 4am.

As always, I resort to bringing her upstairs to bed with us for a couple of hours in the morning but it's a little crowded, and I have to shove the dog down to the foot of the bed where he promptly nestles himself on top of my legs, while my right arm is pinioned above my head, curled around Botany as she clamps on to my boob for dear life. It is decidedly uncomfy.

I think I could live with all that, but the early evening sleep battles are particularly wearing. Having come to really rely and depend on the 7-11pm slot for some much needed recharging of the batteries (not to mention eating/showering/blogging/cleaning the house/etc.) I am feeling exhausted and frustrated by turns.  Things would be more bearable if I had a rested, refreshed happy baby in the morning, but au contraire. It's fussyville around here much of the time- I think she is bored and frustrated that she is not able to do things yet. Even though I am pretty hard core about getting out no matter what the weather, conditions have been so horrendous that even I must concede defeat, and we've been stuck in the house a lot. A recipe for a fairly miserable time to be had by all.

So, yeah, I know it will pass, but while it's happening, it basically sucks ass.

It's hard, in the face of all the above, not to feel a little burnt out some days. I think it's part of the ongoing legacy of infertility that, having gotten to the other side, you feel like you're never allowed to complain for a single second about any aspect of parenting. Indeed, I am conscious that I am so lucky to have this time with Botany-so lucky to have her at all.  But I'm only human, too, and I came to the conclusion the other night that I've got to start to give myself a bit of a break in terms of blowing off steam once in awhile. That it's OK to alternately savour her delicious babyness and to long for things to get a little easier. Of course, I realise that "easier" is all relative- that the current challenges are likely to be replaced with other dilemmas and problems- but hopefully ones involving something other than the torture of broken sleep.

Mastitis minor

After that last post- later that evening- my condition of "all overish and yucky" turned into "hmmm, and perhaps just a little warm, too."  E. concurred that I did feel just a tad toasty, so I casually dug out the digital thermometer and popped it into in my mouth. Oh, how that familiar beep beep beeping takes me back to my bygone fertility monitoring days. And...oooh, yikes. The reading was 102.1! 

That can't be right, I told myself. I don't feel nearly crappy enough to warrant a fever that high. I took it again and it came back reading 101.6.  Well, oookay. That's a fever, then. Taking a quick peek at the afflicted boob, I also noticed a rather worrying pink patch, which hadn't been there a couple of hours ago.  Whereupon I immediately launched into Mastitis Alert Code Red. I fired off a text to my doctor friend (who incidentally had suffered through a bout of mastitis herself in the early days of nursing), asking her if I should commence taking the antibiotics which were left over from my recent ear infection. I had never finished the course, you see, as I suspected it was contributing to Botany's sudden nasty nappy rash, and also because I felt so much better.    

My doctor friend called me back straight away to say, yes, start taking the drug ASAP- she reckoned I might still need a different type of antibiotic more closely tailored to the type of infection but in the meantime it could do no harm to use what I had to hand. So I did, together with some paracetemol. And you know, I felt fine, really. So much so that I got up the next day and went out to my mother-baby group as usual, which generally entails a long chilly walk through the park in pram convoy. That evening, the redness looked a bit worse but the fever was gone. Another day on the antibiotics, lots of nursing on that side, and whew- crisis apparently nipped in the, er, bud.

Anyway- although I do think it was probably the onset of masitis, it was such a minor incident that it almost doesn't bear repeating. However, I relay it partly because I deem it yet another valuable reminder of what I am coming to consider the overriding principle of parenting: namely, "be ye not complacent about anything- because as soon as you do, that very thing (feeding, sleep, health, etc.) will go horribly wrong and bite you in the ass." Or in this case, in the boob.    

In other news, Botany has learned to roll over. Such an exciting milestone- at least for her, since now all she wants to do all the time is roll, roll, roll.  However, she is not terribly proficient at rolling back (from her tummy to back) yet, so there is a fair bit of stranded bleating going on. She hasn't quite figured out how to roll at night in her cot- I think because she is hampered by her sleeping bag- but I can tell it's coming. In which case I predict the already erratic sleep is going to go completely to hell.  Watch this space...

Blebbity bleb bleb

I've had a whole bunch of posts rattling around in my noggin and no time to write anything, since at present it seems all my spare baby-free hours are spent searching for a place to go on holiday in February.  The requirements have become increasingly complex almost to the point of ridiculousness: must be dog and baby friendly, someplace pretty but not tooo far away, somewhere with stylish decor and good heating (essential in the raw damp old Scottish weather). DVD player and wi-fi desirable. Hot tub, aromatherapy and spa treatments aspirational. 

Unfortunately, the first item on the list (that being "dog") already limits things quite considerably. That and the fact that as usual, we have left it too late and most of the good places are booked up. We could compromise but frankly, I have stayed in enough chilly wee hovels up the side of a damp glen to last a lifetime. There is one house we really like the look of, but it is miles and miles away in the arse end of Arse-na-Nog. Even if Botany is willing to put up with the journey, it just feels kind of...remote.

Anyway, much as I want to get around to writing about all those other fascinating topics (weight loss! my loathing of public transport! dreams about losing the baby in the bed!) what I really want to do right now do is throw myself at the mercy of the wise old internets and talk about the thing on my left boob. (If you're in the middle of eating your breakfast, now might be a good time to look away). I think it may be a milk blister, also charmingly known as a bleb. See how educational blogging is? I had no idea what a bleb was before yesterday and now I get to share it with the entire world.

The thing looks blebbish, and has been hanging around for about a week now. I've tried applying warm compresses and nursing more frequently on that side. But no joy. It remains, bleb-like as ever. If I may get a bit graphic- it's not really all that raised as such, and when prodded, it does appear that milk comes out of that duct so I am not convinced that it is, in fact, a bleb. In which case I am not sure what the hell it is. I don't self-diagnose thrush, because it is only one wee white spot and I can't see any corresponding spots in Botany's mouth.

Is it possible to have a bleb where it's just kind of a bit covered over rather than actually plugged?  Where milk still comes out? I've tried scratching away the top surface with a (clean!) fingernail but much as I am keen to wheak out the offending material, I don't see anything really in there to grab onto (sorry- personally, I am a bit ghoulish and love this stuff). Then a few hours later the white coating is back and we start over.

I am beginning to get worried because it's now actually becoming a bit sore- waking me up at 2am in discomfort. But that could be from all the poking around I have been doing, rather than from the alleged bleb itself. Unfortunately, even though I am trying to get her to nurse more often on that side, Botany's new favourite trick is to vigorously yank her head away to look at something else with my beleagured nipple still in her mouth- causing to me yelp in pain.  No doubt this is not helping either.

I am living in mortal dread of mastitis setting in, especially as I am starting to feel a bit "all overish" and yucky. The solution is probably to trot myself down to the GP and whip out the (theoretical) offending bleb for a proper analysis- but I do like to go armed with as much googled factoids and anecdotal evidence as possible, if only because I can see it annoys the doctors in my practice that somebody is thinking for themselves.

Now, I am off to seek out holiday cottages that also accept blebs. 

All things about her are worth remembering

Saddened by the recent events at Flotsam-please stop by and give Alexa a hug.

I know things have changed a lot in the world of parenting since my mother's day, but all the same, I am continually curious to know she managed her own adventures in childrearing. Perhaps, as I dither over every choice- (which nappies to use! when to start solids! is the nursery too hot or cold! should I buy a jumperoo thingie!-)it comforts me to hear that my mother apparently used an entirely different approach and yet I still turned out to be a relatively healthy, well-adjusted individual. That is, at least so far.

Unfortunately, it would also appear that she has blocked out a lot of what went on, since a number of my queries were met with a bemused shrug and a simple response of "I can't remember."  I gather the years of coping with two children born eighteen months apart was not exactly a terribly happy time for my mother. At first I felt a tiny bit aggrieved by the idea that the moments of my precious infancy were not forever emblazoned into my parents' memory banks. So what if it was nearly forty years ago! So what if my mom was so busy and overwhelmed it made her head spin! Surely it was too good- or at least too important- to forget?   

Then I started to think about how much of Botany's first weeks are already a fuzzy blur. The newborn amnesia seems to be taking hold. And while it may be part of nature's plan to numb the rough edges of the experience that as a species we willingly go through it again, I realised that even though a lot of it wasn't exactly what I'd call fun, I want to be able to tell my daughter everything.

So before the shutters of my memory go down completely over that crazy, chaotic, miraculous time here is some of what I remember:

I remember Botany had been home for about three days when E. got food poisoning and lay on the sofa all night and wouldn't go near the baby because he was afraid he was somehow contagious. Botany screamed her head off until about midnight and I sat on the floor of the nursery, changing her for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, crying hysterically. I finally put her in her cradle and pulled the covers over my exhausted head, deciding I would let her cry on her own for just five minutes so I could get a moment's rest. The next thing I knew it was 2am, and all was quiet. 

I remember the first time she smiled at me. It was my birthday and she had been typically crankypants all day and then, when I finished feeding her she looked up at me and gave me a big happy look. Best birthday present ever.   

I remember how much she cried day in, day out.

I remember the exquisite pain of the first couple weeks of breastfeeding, the muffled squeak of agony from my throat every time she latched on. I remember having to endure the red hot poker pain every other hour.

I remember my dad sitting holding Botany in the rocking chair every day for an hour and half while she slept.

I remember the day the health visitor came to the house to weigh Botany. I got the baby undressed and just as we were about to put her on the scales, Botany pooped all over me.

I remember the house being swamped with cards and baby presents. I was stunned and gladdened by the incredible kindness of friends and neighbours.

I remember how we had so much stuff to pack when we went on holiday that we had to hire a bigger car. I was so worried about how she would be on the long drive and then she slept like an angel the whole way.

I remember going to bed, exhausted, wondering how I was going to find the energy to get up and do it all over again tomorrow- bearing in mind that tomorrow started in about two hours.

I remember staggering out of bed in the middle of the night, over and over again to feed her. When she would finally drop off, I would sit and hold her for an extra minute, transfixed by the sight of a sleeping baby in my arms.

I remember, after one particularly horrendous day crying as we sat nursing for hours and hours. Finally I blew my nose one of those damn ubiquitous muslin squares, held the baby a little closer and resolved to embrace all parts of the experience, good and bad- because after all, she was only going to be three weeks old for this small small space of time. Then it would be gone, in the blink of an eye- except for whatever memories I can manage to carefully store up- for years to come, for later, for when she needs them herself.

Up and down the stairs

I'm feeling much better now. Having struggled on for a few more days with the cold, I ended up speaking to one of my new fellow pram pushing friends, who happens to also be a ear nose and throat surgeon (a handy person to know.) I mentioned that the pharmacist had recommended, um, nothing. My friend rolled her eyes and told me that certain topical decongestents were OK, and to toodle myself forthwith to get a nasal spray. Which I duly did and pretty much immediately felt a lot better.

The recovery comes in the nick of time because the ongoing sleep weirdness combined with illness was becoming a complete ass-kicker. Last night went like this:

• 10pm- Botany grizzles herself half awake. I go ahead and dreamfeed her.
• 1am- Botany grizzling over the monitor. I leave her for 10 minutes, then go downstairs to try to settle her. She thrashes around while nursing, so I pick her up and she belches hugely. Back to sleep.
• 1.30 am.  Or not asleep. Grizzle grizzle wail wail. I wait it out for a bit. Silence.
• 2 am. Awake. Griiiiiizzzzle. I go down and feed her, again. Back to bed for me, finally, at 2.30 am.
• 5 am. Awake! Hi, Mummy. Chat, chat, chat and coo. I take her upstairs to bed with us to cadge an extra hour or so of sleep and mercifully she goes back down until 7am. 

In a previous post on the travails of Botany's sleeping, a couple of people mentioned the possible approach of turning off the baby monitor/earplugs. An attractive notion, to be sure. The problem is that we live in a townhouse-type arrangement, with the nursery down on the floor below. For the first couple months, the baby slept in our room for at least part of the night in the hanging cradle but eventually I concluded that we were simply waking each other up, so I transitioned her to her cot for the whole night. We need to keep our bedroom door shut so the dog doesn't go wandering around, and we also keep the nursery door shut to muffle out any random nighttime barking by Little Guy (which happens from time to time). So I am not completely certain that I would hear her if she was really in distress.

Actually, I confess that a couple of weeks ago, I accidentally turned the monitor off when I went to bed and didn't realise until I woke up at quarter past five wondering why it had been such a quiet night. When I turned it on, sure enough she was awake and "eh-eh-ehing" away, although not howling her head off. I've since been wondering (and feeling rather guilty) about how long she might have been lying there while I slept on oblivous.

I suppose part of the problem is that I don't have the will to leave her to grizzle for more than ten minutes or so. Part of me reasons that if she's not actually crying and if the noise is not escalating as such, then there is no pressing need for me to go pick her up, and eventually she will go back to sleep. This happens frequently. Sometimes I get all the way down the stairs to the nursery door and just as I am about to go in, she goes quiet.

So I don't rush in. But after a certain amount of time elapses, the more primal part of me goes into mothering autopilot: the baby needs me! She is all tiny and lonely in her cot and is calling out for me in the only way she knows how! "Eh-eh-eh-EH!"  Also, I tend to the view that if she hasn't managed to fall back asleep within ten minutes or so, it's better to just go down and get her settled as opposed to me lying there awake listening to her gurn for who knows how long. Even if that means getting up out of my cosy pit three or more times. And while I am away, Little Guy commandeers my warm spot.

Ach. I am sure this too will...yawn...pass. 

 

Happy Steaming New Year

I have a terrible cold. It started out by setting up base camp in my lungs, then making a summit bid to my right middle ear before a disastrous avalance of mucus blocked off the escape route in my Eustachian tube. Having toodled my hacking and spluttering self down to the local pharmacy on Boxing Day to see what over the counter relief might be available to a breastfeeding mother, I was somewhat nonplussed to discover the answer is: none. No cough syrup, no decongestant. Nada.

You could try steam, the pharmicist advised merrily. Lots of steam! Happy holidays!

Great. Steam. So I gamely spent a day or so with my head over a pot of water on the hob, but with the ear pain getting steadily worse. Finally I made an appointment to see my GP, with my mother's dire mutterings of words like "bronchitis" and "pnuemonia" literally ringing in my ears. The doctor's view was: lungs not so bad, ear not so good. And while the relative severity could "go either way", he went ahead and prescribed antibiotics.

"You can hold off on taking these," he suggested, "to see if it gets worse. And try steam!"

Great. Steam. The pot of water technique was wearing a bit thin by this point, so I dispatched E. to buy a facial sauna, figuring I might be gacking up lurgy but I might as well have good skin while we're at it. Meanwhile, I decided that the whole "wait to see if it gets a lot worse" approach was sort of dumb, and started taking the antibiotics at once. Which is good because the alternate escape route in my left middle ear then suffered a similar landslide, making my whole head feel like an overstuffed sausage. What's worse is the nasty phlegmy cough- aside from the fact I can tell my hacking drives E. nuts, it is veritable torture trying to nurse down the baby for the night- and just as she has fallen asleep, having the sensation of having my lungs tickle tickle tickled with a feather duster and being unable to suppress the explosion. 

I need to go to bed for about a week and do nothing but lie in my jimjams, eating mangos and reading trashy magazines. But obviously, that is not going to happen. I'd settle at this point for a couple of nights of four hours of unbroken sleep but that's not looking like it's on the cards either. Botany's nap routine has mercifully settled back down (at least insofar as she has a nap albeit still only 45 minutes at a time). I guess it might have something to do with the fact that we don't really leave the house much at the moment. However, her night time sleep is still a little bit all over the place- usually waking up at 3 am, feed for half an hour and then awake again at 4.30 or 5am. Any nights of halfway decent sleep don't begin to make up for the exhaustion of the rest- and the result is I feel like I can't shake this cold monkey off my back.

Anyway. A year ago today I was puking my innards up on a ferry en route to France, so I suppose ringing in the new year with some sort of physical discomfort might just be an ongoing tradition. At least I am on solid ground this time, with a surfeit of holiday telly to numb the brain if not the pain.   

Happy 2008 everyone!

Stringing up the Christmas lights

The title of this post comes from E., who just now ordered me to "stop what I am doing immediately" and help him string up a set of lights over the window sill. Heh.

It's a last minute attempt to inject some festive cheer in an otherwise a slightly toned-down Christmas. There are some presents in the living room, but no tree. There are stockings but not all that much to fill them. Thanks to E., there is a ginormous organic turkey and some other nice food; however, the meal is scheduled for late afternoon which at the moment is prime baby meltdown time and I've cautioned everyone that the shoogling tasks will need to be divided equally amongst all the adults.  But the grinch in me predicts somehow it is still going to be yours truly sitting up in the nursery with my dinner half eaten, trying to calm her down, since after all I am the one with the milky boobs.

I don't know if it's the ongoing tribulations of the sleep regression or just the excitement of having different people around to coo over her every day, but Botany's naps (or lack thereof) have gone from bad to worse.  Now she will only nap for a short time in the pram on a walk, or fitfully in my lap, nursing, after working herself into a lather.  The lying down nap-nursing is totally failing now- all she wants to do is kickykickykicky and make this very annoying "eh-eh-eh" sound, while I long to doze off. It is most frustrating. I feel like a magician who has looked into the bag of tricks to discover the rabbit is missing.

The lack of decent nappage means that by mid to late afternoon, she is generally a screamy mess. This is not much fun for anyone. I'm not quite sure how to "'fix" it, either. Unlike the night time routine, leaving her to cry for just a wee bit in the cot only results in escalating meltdown- a furious, wailing, teary baby. My mother keeps trying techniques that work on another baby in the family- for example, standing next to the cot, laying hands on her tummy. Botany just lies there looking up at her, making the "eh-eh-eh" sound.  Eventually we just give up and then inevitably she is so overtired. I'm feeling fairly rundown with a looming chest cold and reverting back to constant daily crying of the first three months is not exactly filling me with the joys.

But I don't wish this post to sound completely negative and humbuggy. I'm sure tomorrow will bring happy moments, too. It's really just another reminder to myself that parenting, like Christmas, is in reality usually not a Hallmark card, and quite often comes as a mixed bag of highs and lows.

To all of you- and to families built in whatever way you can and in whatever shape and size- I wish a very happy, safe and peaceful holiday.

Four month sleep weirdness

While it's been fairly smooth sailing on the nightime sleep front around here, I'd been eyeing the calendar with increasing wariness the last couple weeks, as the timeframe for the dreaded four month sleep regression drew near.  Part of me hoped it wasn't going to happen to us, and the other part was slapping myself around the head to get real, since of course it was going to happen- if not now, at some point. 

And then, like a summer squall appearing out of nowhere, it is upon us- or at least I think so, because that is the only way I can explain the relative weirdness of Botany's nighttime sleeping the last couple of days. 

Sunday night looked like this:

• 11pm dreamfeed. Feed for half an hour, straight back down. I get to bed by midnight and to sleep by 12.30.         
• 2 am- Botany wakes up. Down the stairs to nursery. Feed for half an hour, back down but not sound asleep. Low grade grizzle on and off emits over the monitor for the next hour.
• 3 am- I finally get back to sleep when the dog wakes me up, scratching at the bedroom door. E. takes him out.
• 4.20 am- After five minutes of grizzle, I ascertain the baby is in fact, fully awake, and head down the stairs again. Whereupon she eats for another 45 MINUTES before going back down. I finally get back to bed at 5.15 am.
• 6.20 am- Awake! Awake! As usual, I bring her up the stairs to bed for an hour, in hopes she might sleep after nursing lying down with me. But not today!  Wiiiide awake. Looking all around, on and off the boob, yanking head away with nipple still attached. Let's get UP UP UP mummy and PLAY.

Naps sparse all day- a set of catnaps of about 30 minutes each. This is a great disappointment to me as I am hoping to catch a few zzs when she falls asleep. I prop my eyelids open with toothpicks and stagger through the hours until 5.30 pm, by which point she is SO tired that I get her ready for bed.  She is out for the count by 6pm.  The dog goes to stay with my parents for the night. Then, in contrast-

Last night:

• 11pm dreamfeed for half an hour. Straight back down. I collapse into bed and am catatonic by 11.30.
• 5AM. I sit bolt upright. I am leaking milk and my left side is painfully engorged. Holy crap. It's 5AM and she has not made a peep all night. Cue slightly panicked dash down the stairs to stick my head in the nursery door. Botany grunts and sighs, but does not rouse. I go back to bed and waste a precious hour of sleep wondering when she is going to wake up.
• 6.30am. Botany finally wakes up. Again, I bring her upstairs, whereupon she falls asleep on the boob until 8 am!!! 

While last night's sequence of events is infinitely preferable, I doubt it's going to become a regular occurence any time soon.  At the very least I hope we can avoid a wide penduluming between the no-sleep nights and the long peaceful stretches- because even though I try to be very go-with-the-flow, it's can be a little nervewracking going to bed every night not knowing if I'll be up three or four times or not at all.

Also, I really must do something about the burgeoning case of insomnia. I suddenly seem to be having increasing trouble falling asleep myself, even though I am extremely tired most nights.  I find myself lying there, watching the clock tick over, knowing I probably have to get up to feed the baby in a few hours or even less or maybe not at all- and totally unable to sleep. This is more than a little soul-destroying. Going to bed early myself and setting the alarm just so I can get up for the dreamfeed is an obvious solution- but given that I get absolutely zero opportunity during the daytime hours to get anything done around here, not to mention have any personal relaxation or "me-time", it's incredibly hard to switch off in that way. 

Anyway. There are halls to deck and I still haven't managed to do more than get the Christmas box out of the garage and string a few ornaments on the little silver decorative tree. It looks pretty weak all around; I give it a C- minus for effort, really.

Hopefully a call I won't have to make again any time soon

Way back when Botany was still about five weeks old, my postnatal group covered 'baby first aid'. At the start of the session, the nurse stood up and asked if any of us had been to the sick kids' hospital yet. No one raised their hands. She smiled knowingly and said, "Well, if you get through five years without a visit there, you'll be doing well. Post the number on the fridge in case you ever need it."  And everybody looked at each other with raised eyebrows, giggling nervously.

Early Saturday morning, E. departed for his business trip- slamming out of the door in a huff  after an argument with me about why he hadn't managed to let the dog out before it was time to leave. I was a little hysterical and a lot weepy- even more so as I stood in the freezing rain, watching his taxi drive off as the dog performed the poo dance- and still more so as I sprinted back into the house to pick up the baby, who was just waking up with her usual sets of squeaks.

I cried off and on for the better part of the morning, even after E. phoned from the airport to make up.  A week just feels like a long time to be completely on my own with the baby, I said. Even if I do 99% of the childcare most of the time. A whole week, with E. far away overseas, feels scary. Then he had to go as his flight was boarding.

I tried to buck up and put a brave face on things for Botany, seeing how she was in quite a happy mood and I didn't want to spoil it for her (or for me). We were stuck indoors all day with the rain rain rain so we played and danced and nursed and napped together and read stories. Then about 2pm I went to change her and disaster struck.

She had a little oobleck in the corner of her eye and I tried to wipe it away with the (clean! it was clean!) muslin cloth. And then she turned her head to the wall, face crumped up in an angry red grimace and she HOWLED. Howled and screamed and howled and clawed at her face and would NOT open her eyes. I grabbed her up, thinking oh my god what have I done, I have BLINDED the baby!  And she carried on wailing at the top of her lungs, inconsolable (despite rocking and nursing and cuddling) for about twenty minutes, with increasing intensity- while I, already a tad frayed from the morning, came unraveled.

Some key lessons were then learned. All of which of course seem like common sense in hindsight.

Lesson One: Figure out in advance who to call in an emergency. When I realised Botany was not going to stop crying in the near future, I realised I needed some back up, stat.  But then I sat there with the phone in my hand, baby shrieking and writhing, trying to process what to do and unable to hear myself think. In the end, I called one of our uber reliable friends- someone with a car and no children (since I reasoned that anyone with kids was apt to be busy and not able to drop everything to run to my rescue).

Unfortunately the friend in question was shopping on the absolute other side of town and it was going to take her at least half an hour to get there. And as the screaming continued, it dawned on me that a trip to the sick kids' hospital was a very real possibility.

Lesson Number Two: They weren't kidding about having the hospital phone number on the fridge. I had to look it up- it is actually a very easy number to remember and is now engraved on my brain but flailing around the kitchen looking for the phone book was not exactly helpful.

Lesson Three: Don't fuck around trying to explain the problem in great detail to the person who answers the main phone line- just ask to be put through to A&E.

Lesson Four: Hard as it may be, put the hysterical baby down someplace safe and go in the other room during the call. Because otherwise you won't be able to hear a thing and any vital advice and information you receive will be drowned out.

In this case, the advice from the nice lady in A & E was this: try bathing her eye in lukewarm water and then nurse her and if that doesn't calm her down, give her some Calp*l (baby ibuprofen) and see if she will go to sleep. If that doesn't work, bring her in to the hospital. I hung up, took a deep breath, and thought- for fucks sake! Why is the answer always "Give the baby Calp*l?!"  But, having nothing else at my disposal, I decided to try doing what the nice lady said.

Having attempted the nursing part first, Botany immediately latched on like a frantic barracuda and promptly fell asleep. She woke up when my friend arrived, opened both big beautiful eyes and gave the friend a wide gummy grin as if nothing had happened. I of course then felt like a complete goober for having overreacted, dragged friend away from shopping and making gibbering calls to the hospital.

"Listen," said the friend, bringing me a soothing cup of tea (even though at that point I would have prefered a triple whisky). "How many babies have you had? Just one? Yes. So you're learning. There will no doubt be other alarms in the future, but you're learning. It's OK."

And she's right. Even though I don't like the words "other" and "alarms" in the same sentence as "future". But at least now I am just a little of a good Girl Scout than I was a few days ago. I am a little more prepared.