Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Dirty Nappies and Cheese

    When Amy was a baby she screamed.

    and screamed

    and screamed

    andscreamedandscreamedandscreamed.

    She wanted to be UP! And DOING! and being HELD! while SCREAMING!

    It was hard. It was so very very hard to get through her first 6 months. Because yes, she screamed to be UP and DOING until she was able to crawl and make mischief on her own.

    It was colic, it was a tummy ache, it was general grumpiness, it was a high maintenance baby, needing to be held.

    Until she started solids though, I didn’t notice that she was allergic to milk protein. Actually, I didn’t notice for a while after she started solids. For a new mother who had been told ‘introduce foods one at a time and wait for any reactions’ I was remarkably blind to the fact that SHE WAS ALLERGIC TO MILK. Her allergy wasn’t severe, just diarrhoea and eczema. She was breastfed though, so I didn’t expect her poo to be any different and eczema? Well that runs in the family. Hereditary. Nothing to worry about.

    However, one day it clicked. ‘Wait! Her diarrhoea went away when I forgot to buy yogurt! Geez, has she had any dairy this week? Hmmm, didn’t a friend have a boy with a milk allergy? Well shit, maybe I am just the worst mother in the world.’

    Once we cut out dairy, she was pretty okay. Her skin cleared up mostly and her diarrhoea went away. Because she was breastfed, it wasn’t hard to keep dairy out of her diet. She didn’t react badly when I had dairy, so I never bothered going dairy free myself. After her second birthday, we started letting her have a little bit of

    milk with cereal, etc etc. We lightened up on the whole dairy-free thing and generally stopped thinking about it.

    Enter Isaac.

    Isaac doesn’t scream. He also doesn’t sleep, but he doesn’t scream.

    However.

    At nine weeks old, he is still pooey at every nappy change and I am needing to change his bum once an hour. Dude? That’s not completely normal.

    Then, his bum breaks out in a rash. Sure we’ve got/had the whole thrush thing happening, but I’ve got that mostly under control, so blisters? bleeding? Not in my current repertoire.

    Also, his gas smells BAD. His poo smells like normal breastfed poo, but this boy could out fart my brother. True.

    So, I drew some conclusions (and some cats and dogs and a plane, because Amy had the paper) and decided that maybe, just maybe, he might be allergic to milk protein too.

    Cue me going dairy free.

    And whinging about it every step of the way.

    I like dairy. I like dairy A LOT. A  freaking lot, okay?

    I supermarketed today and didn’t buy any yogurt. No cream. No bocconcini.

    I figure Amy has been looking a little blotchy lately and Nathan tells me her nappies have been bad, a little dairy free won’t hurt her either.

    Still.

    I’m not looking forward to this.

    [Isaac’s bum has cleared up now, thanks to a nearly nappy free day yesterday and a good dose of zinc cream. Thank goodness!]

    Sunset

    Our sunset this evening.

    Isaac - 9w3d

    9 weeks and 3 days.

  • Free to good home

    Free to good home: My sanity. Would prefer to give it away before it dribbles away entirely.

    ***

    At 3am this morning you would have found me wandering around the house, trying to find every single dummy that may have been hidden in the hope that Isaac would just suck on one of them for just a minute fortheloveofgod.

    Instead, I ended up cold, with a crying baby who flat down refused to suck on ANYTHING that wasn’t me. My nose? Good. My little finger? Good. My nipple? FANFREAKINGTASTIC! A dummy? What the fuck MUM?

    I ended up with a screaming gagging baby frantically hunting for my nipples, three rejected dummies and milk to my waist. Not a good night. It was however, a normal night.

    ***

    I had planned to go along to my mothers group tomorrow. All this not sleeping is seriously killing my sanity and I think I need to just talk to women who are dealing with the same things right now. Also, the coffee and the chocolate biscuits don’t hurt either. Plus? I like the women at my mothers group. I have missed it desperately since I stopped going over 12 months ago. I need to go along and let Amy play with the kids again.

    Best laid plans of mice and men though, today the car started playing up. Until we get it booked in to be fixed (it needs routine work we were putting off because we were broke), we aren’t going anywhere.

    Which would be FINE, were we not living on rice and beans and was I not slowly losing my sanity. Whatever.

    ***

    -Consistently runny poo
    -Gas that smells BAD
    -Red rashy bum

    Wait wait, I know this one. I’ve done thing one before!

    I suspect Isaac has the same milk protein allergy that Amy did. The difference this time? Hardly any screaming, which WAIT! That would be because I eat very little dairy at the moment anyway. Where’s that elimination diet sheet? SIGN ME UP!

    Sigh.

    ***

    Nathan slipped his arm around my waist today and pulled me closer and OH FUCK! One of my ribs moved under his hand and went all out of place. Can ribs dislocate? God knows my side still hurts. I’m falling apart.

    ***

    Another post about sleep. Sigh. Even I’m sick of me.

  • Not Sleepingness

    It seems to be a theme around here, I don’t sleep and at the pinnacle of my not sleepingness, I blog.

    When I’m not getting any sleep, sleep seems to be all I can think about. Will I get enough in order to cope through tomorrow? Will Isaac go down before midnight? If I make sure there is no butter/zinc cream/crackers/vegemite/water/scissors in Amy’s reach, can I stay in bed dozing while she destroys the house? How hard will I have to kick Nathan to make him get up in the morning and leave me blissfully alone?

    On and on it goes. Circles, all made up of the same questions.

    ***

    Yesterday:

    Nathan: ‘So, what do I do with it?’

    Veronica: ‘It’s pouches. Just get one out and pop it up into the ceiling.’

    N: ‘How?’

    V:’Well open the pac….’

    He looked at me oddly.

    N: ‘Not like that! How do I get it into the ceiling?’

    V: ‘Oh. Those gaps in the dining room roof will work.’

    N: ‘Of course.’

    You know it’s bad when neither of you bats an eyelid when you talk about the gaps in your ceiling. Or the throwing of poison pouches up into the ceiling to kill the fucking mice. Or the fact that I checked the poison placement to make sure that it wasn’t going to fall back out of a gap.

    More to the point, you know the mouse infestation is bad when you can smell them. Or when it sounds like mice wearing football boots and pushing shopping trolleys are living in the ceiling. Needless to say, they are noisy and if I see them I will stomp on their furry little heads.

    ****

    Dear Isaac,

    Did you know that breast milk has a sleep inducing hormone in it? You did? Wait, so that would be why you are refusing to both feed and sleep right now? Surely there is room enough in your stomach for just a tiny little sleep inducing feed? Please?

    Well you know if I have to keep jiggling you to stop the crying, I am likely to jiggle an entire feed out of you. Wait, you knew that too?

    Heh.

    Good thing I love you so much.

    Mummy.

    ***

    Dear Amy,

    You are much bigger than a moth. Please stop waking screaming because you are having nightmares about them. Tomorrow I am going to teach you how to stomp up and down on their little moth heads. Again. I know that we’d just about gotten you over your moth phobia when you got scared of a moth the other day. Everything would have been fine had Daddy not tried to show you the dead moth so you wouldn’t be scared, when suddenly the moth came to life.

    I know you were terrified, it showed in how white you went and how quickly you threw yourself under as much of me as you could find while screaming your little heart out. I’m sorry the moth came back to life.

    I’m sorry I laughed so hard I cried. Tomorrow we will stomp on moth heads. Together.

    I love you.

    Mummy.

    ***

    Gosh I’m tired.

  • Solidarity

    There comes a time in a new baby’s life, when they stop sleeping all day and start having some wakeful periods.

    Then, a few more weeks into the new motherhood gig, you will find your baby starts sleeping even less and wants to become more part of the family, rather than just a cute blob parked in the corner.

    And if that baby is one of my children, there comes a time when they stop fucking sleeping altogether.

    Two hour naps turn into 30 minute-and-fuss sessions. You will find yourself looking at your cute little blob while saying under your breath ‘I just got you to freaking sleep, 30 minutes is not enough sleep, go back to SLEEP. SLEEP SLEEP SLEEPSLEEPSllleeeppslepepepslsls….’ Conversation at this point becomes useless, because your adorable blob is looking at you with very SAD eyes [Can you see my sad eyes mum? Pick me UP! Or else, I will have to drop my bottom lip and piiiick meeeee uppppppp] and wanting to feed, a-freaking-gain.

    No matter that the last feed was barely 45 minutes ago, your baby is HUNGRY and needs you NOW WOMAN, where are MY BOOBS?

    At which point, you will feed him again, because dude, it’s easier than looking at that wobbly bottom lip and if you’re lucky he will go back to sleep.

    If you’re lucky. Apparently, not if you’re me.

    Sure, he goes back to sleep, just so long as I don’t move my nipple away from his mouth. So what if he isn’t actually feeding anymore, that nipple is like a comforter and removing it will cause DEATH DESTRUCTION AND MAYHEM. Or you know, your baby to wake back up.

    Same difference.

    Once the baby wakes up, he isn’t really awake. He has realised however, that your nipple is no longer in his mouth and he will thrash and flail like a hooked fish in order to try and find that nipple again. He won’t however, open his mouth at all which would allow you to shove your tit back in there and shut him up.

    All this causes passive aggression.

    Like wandering around the house with a baby in your arms, muttering stupid things like: ‘Am I the only one with working boobs in this house?!’ [Answer: Yes] ‘Am I the only one able to settle a crying baby?’ [Answer: Yes. Not the only one available, but the one one able.].

    Sleeplessness makes you a little silly.

    Because as horrible as the first 3 weeks are when your newborn has no idea what sleep is and how to achieve it, sleeplessness is accumulative. And your 8 week old baby? Knows exactly what sleep is and knows he doesn’t want to be doing it.

    [And let’s not get into sleep and toddlers and nightmares and did you know Amy pulled all the carpet up in her bedroom tonight in order to not fall asleep? Tonight I have discovered that Amy’s bedroom carpet is actually a large mat and isn’t actually nailed down. But, whatever.]

    Your toddler knows when things are particularly bad too. This is when she chooses to be naughty. Like, finger painting the walls with Isaac’s zinc cream. Like unfolding every single bit of unfolded washing. Hey, but I bet if you ask Amy, sleeplessness and mummy distraction/inability to get up due to baby on boob makes for lots of fun. Or maybe complete boredom. Something.

    Sleeplessness also makes you slightly less nice to the people around you. Someone says ‘I’m tired’ and I have to resist the urge to laugh maniacally and yell ‘SUCK IT UP SWEETHEART!’ Because you know, you might get to sleep tomorrow. I probably will not.

    I do not need to resist the urge to laugh and yell if the person complaining about tiredness also has a baby or a sleepless toddler. Then it’s all about solidarity in sleeplessness and circle hugs and chocolate and comatose like zen states.

    So in short, I am fucking tired and it doesn’t make me a nice person [actually, some people would call me downright bitchy. whatever though]. This child of mine will sleep one day, right?

    Heh. Someday.

  • And POP! my head exploded.

    There is something about seeing a mouse and not being able to schwack it that makes my head explode. So, when I heard a scritch scritch sound and finally tracked it down to a mouse underneath the fridge, I may possibly have started to froth at the mouth.

    ‘Argghh! There is a mouse! Look! A MOUSE AND IT IS LOOKING AT ME.’

    [I may have possibly have been shining a torch at the mouse, hoping that the torch beam would magically turn into a laser and burn the little fucker to death.]

    Nathan:’Well? Not much I can do about it.’

    ‘It is looking at me! WITH BEADY EYES!’

    ‘Sigh’

    Nathan might get a little sick of how I overreact when I see a mouse and can’t kill it instantly by mind power alone.

    ‘ARGHHHH! It is running up my FRIDGE! IT RAN UP THE BACK OF MY GODDAMN FRIDGE! AND ONTO THE FUCKING SINK! Kill it! kill kill kill the goddamn thing!’

    This is where I’d like to point out that a torch is fucking useless as a schwacker. Especially if you are trying to schwack around the dirty dishes. Even more so if there is a nice little mouse hole at the back of the sink for the mouse to disappear into.

    Fucker.

    I have now moved the mousetrap. Nothing would make me happier than to dance around gleefully over the body of a dead mouse.

    ***

    In other news, I am 6 comments off having 10000 comments on this blog. Will *YOU* be the ten thousandth commenter? No, you don’t win anything except my everlasting love and devotion. Sorry about that.