Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Chickens, babies and a cameo by my cat

    The other day, I got excited because I finally thought I’d found where my Araucana hen was laying her eggs, and that she’d gone broody to boot. Unfortunately, a couple of hours later, I spotted her off the nest – only to discover she was actually pretending to sit on duck eggs and nary an egg of hers in sight. Which is a shame, as Araucanas lay blue eggs and a) I wanted to show the kidlets and b) I want Araucana x Pekin babies.

    lavender araucana hen

    She’s not the brightest chicken in the shed and every day since I thought she’d gone broody, I’ve discovered her in the duck’s nest, pretending to lay eggs and pretending to be briefly broody. Hopefully she’s just practising for when she does finally come onto the lay. (More cracked corn!)

    In other news, my favourite hen:

    blue red pekin chicken hen

    gave me very pretty Pekin babies.

    blue red pekin bantam chicken babies

    Lavender Pekin chick

    Blue Red Pekin and chicks

    blue red Pekin and chicks

    The father is this guy, looking very alert and upright because I had the dog with me:

    Black Pekin Rooster

    And while I’d hoped for either blue or lavender babies, and expected black chicks – I didn’t expect to get two white babies! Either way, I’m pretty pleased and hopefully I’ll get another clutch out of her this season.

    tabby tom cat

    And this guy that I found rolling around in the driveway. Sure, he’s not a chicken, but he’s lovely in any case.

  • Making myself accountable to you.

    Wow, that sounds like a heavy title, doesn’t it? But it’s true – I am here today, making myself accountable to you.

    Yes, you.

    In a moment of insanity, I signed up to do NaNoWriMo. This is despite my crazy older children and the medical mystery baby –

    [Who continues to not-seize and has added a whole range of new uncontrollable movements to her repertoire, leaving me thinking that “movement disorder” like the Neuro possibly thought, might just be on the money. Her hearing also appears to be sporadic now, and just, I don’t even KNOW with this baby.]

    – and the wrapping up of the school year, and the beginning of spring and really, I have a million excuses as to why writing a novel right now is a terrible idea.

    But I’ll always be able to find a million excuses for why sitting down Right Now is a bad idea, and instead, I’m not doing that. I’m looking at the one big reason that writing a novel Right Now is a great idea, and that’s because I’ll be joining an awful lot of other people trying to write 50k words in 30 days and we’ll all be insane together.

    One of the ways that someone suggested to not fail, is to tell everyone that you’re doing it. Apparently, nothing will keep you writing faster than a fear of failing and everyone knowing about it. So in case you haven’t noticed, over there in my sidebar is a link to my page on the NaNoWriMo site, along with a wordcount widget.

    Nothing appeals more to my obsessive nature than a wordcount widget telling the Universe how much I’ve written.

    That’s it, really. I have a plan written, and an outline and I had a minor panic attack making my synopsis public (because people could be judging meeeeeeee).

    If you’re joining in, let me know in the comments? Otherwise, feel free to tell me how insane I am.

  • Neurologists and “not-seizures”.

    I had a witty title for this post in my head last night as I fell asleep. Obviously it slipped out somewhere between my dreams of Evie twitching and my dreams of researching ever-weirder syndromes on the Internet. I think it’s a little exhausting that I continue to try and work out what is wrong with my baby, despite being fast asleep. Also, I’m pretty sure Wikipedia doesn’t normally have purple elephants and unicorns with sparkles.

    We saw Evie’s Neurologist yesterday for the first time. They’d squeezed us in – creating an entirely new appointment at the end of the day, and Nathan and I sat in the waiting room while the receptionists clocked off for the night and a lone cleaner roamed the halls of the Paediatric Outpatient unit.

    The Neurologist took a full history, watched videos of Evelyn twitching, referred to her EEG that he’d read earlier and told us that he’s pretty sure that these aren’t seizures that she is having.

    What are they? No one knows. But they’re “not-seizures” and I spent an awful lot of time last night watching her “not-seize” while she slept.

    On the upside, the Neuro seemed like a doctor who loves a good medical mystery. On the downside, that medical mystery is my tiny 13 week old baby, and we’re no closer to knowing what is wrong with her.

    Her muscle tone is low and “concerning”. Her lack of any limb control, the same. She’s not hitting any milestones and we’ve just got to do the dreaded “wait and see”.

    He spoke briefly of the possibility of a movement disorder, but again, we won’t know anything until she gets older and misses more milestones (or catches up – whatever the case may be).

    Evelyn is an interesting case, and unfortunately, that’s not something you ever want your baby to be. Medically interesting is not a good thing, sadly.

    Her feeding is starting to suffer as well, she’s having trouble staying latched as she sucks and her weight gain is slowing down. I’ll discuss that with her clinic nurse and with her Paediatrician when we see them next.

    I just don’t know what is up with this baby of mine. They don’t think that she’s having seizures, but they don’t know what her weird movements are.

    And horribly, they probably want to do another lumbar puncture. Her doctors will ring around the pathology labs to see if certain tests have been done, and/or if there is more spinal fluid of Evie’s available for testing – but there’s some tests that the Neurologist would like run, including gene testing, and that will involve another lumbar puncture.

    I can’t even tell you how sick that makes me feel. One lumbar puncture is bad, two is fucking awful – but three?

    Sick.

    So, that’s that. In the meantime, I try and feed her as much as possible, and we wait for her to do something that will point us all in the right direction.

     

  • Tummy time and milestones

    Evie was 12 weeks old yesterday chronologically, and around 8-10 weeks old corrected.

    This is her doing her very best attempt at lifting her head during tummy time.

    At 12 weeks:

    – Her head control is poor, especially when she’s tired.

    – She rarely unclenches her fists and hasn’t yet discovered her hands. Nor does she put them in her mouth. They’re still wildly waving appendages that smack her in the face often.

    – She light gazes intently, but isn’t interested in faces, people, or toys. Probably because she can’t see them properly.

    – Feels floppy a lot of the time. Her Paed says that her muscle tone isn’t bad, but she still slumps in my arms and needs holding/cradling like a newborn when she’s being held.

    – Sleeps most of the day and all of the night. She will have a 6-8 hour stretch overnight without needing a feed, and then another 3-4 hour stretch after that.

    – Rarely cries. Actually, only cries if she is cold, uncomfortable, or wants to go back to sleep. Will whimper sadly when she’s hungry.

    – Still seizes regularly and has only intermittent sight. Her peripheral vision is better than her central vision and she sees movement a bit.

    – Looks like this:

    So basically, she hasn’t hit any developmental milestones, her seizures continue and she is divinely edible. She likes music and will keep her head resting against my mouth while I talk or sing to her. She is terribly difficult to entertain, because of the sight issues, and if you don’t speak to her for a minute, she forgets you’re there, gets really sad and then jumps when you speak to her again. She recognises my voice and will settle when I pick her up – provided I speak at the same time, otherwise she gets terrified with her magical ascent into the air.

    Also, this –

    I am so in love with this photo.

  • Red and yellow paint, and stolen seedlings.

    Today I painted our kitchen cupboards.

    Tomorrow I will do a final coat, before I paint the trim red.

    The lady at K&D yesterday looked at me a touch strangely as I bought red and yellow paint together, remarking to Nathan “but it’s what she wants and what she wants, she gets!” She was joking, but I didn’t feel like explaining that my choice of new paint was steered by colours my baby daughter is likely to be able to see. That rather than painting the kitchen black and white, I was going for red and yellow. High contrast colours, you know? And if Evie’s sight improves, well then, at least I’ll have a bright and cheery kitchen.

    Mock me all you like, but I’m rather a fan of the yellow at the moment.

    This morning I discovered that one of my children had drowned the new seedlings that I was trying to start in the greenhouse, and that rats (I think) had stolen the seeds and seedlings out of some pots and grow bags. It seemed like a particularly cruel thing, especially as I’d already had to replant everything twice after the chooks got in and ate them the first time. Nathan fixed the door after the chook debacle, and yet, here we are again, seedling-less.

    I’m tempted to lock a cat in the greenhouse over night and just deal with them plotting my demise. I mean, I’m pretty sure the tom-cat is plotting my death anyway, locking him up for a night can’t make him any more likely to kill me, right? Plus, this is why we have cats, so that they can do their jobs and de-rodent our paddock.

    Aside from that, everything continues on as normal. Evie is still seizing, sleeping all day and not hitting any milestones or seeing very much.

    How are you Internet? Have I missed anything major in your life?