Sleepless Nights

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  • Wakeful Baby

    Wakeful baby. Is wakeful.

    It’s 11.35pm and I am awake with Isaac.

    [Updated: it is now 12.09am and he has successfully nommed himself to sleep. Think of me as I move us both from the loungeroom to bed]

    Now if I was more together, this post would be coupled with a photo, but cut me some slack. I just went to change Isaac’s nappy and I am so tired I forgot HOW to change him, half way through the change. In fact, I think I may have forgotten that I was changing him at all. I don’t quite remember now. I know that I eventually remembered what I was doing and his little bum is now all parceled back up.

    And boobs! He wants BOOBS, RIGHT NOW plskthnx.

    Couple this with the flailing and the om nom nomming and the wiggling and the snuffling and oh god did I mention the flailing?

    He’s a good baby though, especially of a daytime when other people can see him. He naps like a champion – in my arms – my naked boob right in front of his mouth just in case he needs a little more. He is content for whole minutes at a time, so long as he is Up! And looking about! And being talked to! Less content if he is down in his bouncer at ankle level. I can only imagine that the fun things to look at do not reside at ankle level.

    He doesn’t cry much either, but then he is only 3 weeks old and if I recall, it took Amy about 5 weeks to find her voice. Some days I wish she would lose it again.

    And the best bit? He stays mostly asleep overnight, waking only to feed. He is however, the noisiest, fussiest sleeper I have ever seen. He snores, he fusses, he snuffles and growls. He also seems to need the tip of my little finger in his mouth all night.

    I am still trying to work out what is better; a pink and wrinkled little finger that has been sucked on for hours, or a soggy nipple that has had the same thing happen to it.

    Needless to say, I’m not exactly sleeping lately.

    To be honest, it’s not exactly the easiest time to be dealing with constant breastfeeding and entirely sleepless nights (although, it does mean my blog name is good for a little while yet). Nan’s tumour has grown. Lots. And faster than we expected too. After the great news in November that it had shrunk so much, it’s now back and spreading.

    Not content to do what most cancer does though, her cancer has spread to her heart. Not something we were expecting. If it had of spread, the liver ‘should’ have been it’s next port of call. Funnily enough, her liver is clear and healthy. Heh.

    The crappiest bit though? Yeah, there isn’t anything left that they can do. Chemotherapy will just make her sicker – and the radiation that she had before isn’t an option anymore. (She developed Radiation Pneumonitis from the last lot, therefore, no more.)

    It’s shit. Actually, it fucking sucks. It all fucking sucks.

    The doctors are saying three to six months. Knowing Nan, we are counting on twelve. Still not enough. No where near enough.

    It’s not meant to be like this.

    ***

    Also, does anyone know how to get lanolin based nappy cream out of toddler hair? I have shampoo’d it once, but then Amy tipped the entire bottle of shampoo into the bath water and etc etc, so I didn’t get around to shampooing it a second time. She had a severe case of naughty today. Sigh.

    Will try and shampoo it again in the morning.

    ***

    Finally, remember that Nan reads my blog, so keep that in mind when you are commenting. She might just decide to growl at anyone that gets too morbid.

  • No Faith

    When we fell pregnant with Isaac, I had no faith that we would be bringing home a baby at the end of it. We’d been trying to conceive for over 12 months and unlike what I had anticipated, that kind of thing doesn’t just wash away when you see the 2 lines on a pregnancy test.

    There was bleeding. Oh god there was lots of bleeding. I remember standing – bleeding – in the shower at 10 weeks pregnant sobbing because I knew that I couldn’t go back to trying to conceive again without going insane. There was the thought of just so much time wasted to be thrown right back into where we started.

    Luckily the pregnancy was stronger than my faith in it and it continued on.

    At every single antenatal appointment I braced myself to be told ‘no heartbeat’. When I started to feel him kick I would wake up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep until I felt a movement. I had no faith.

    When we found out we were having a boy, suddenly he was much more real to me. I felt him kick and breathed the words ‘my son’ to no one, but I still wasn’t making plans based around the birth of this baby.

    This baby that we were oh so lucky to be pregnant with.

    Knowing that he was a boy didn’t make me feel any better either. Caucasian boys don’t do as well as girls statistically.

    At 24 weeks when I started to bleed I shut off my emotions, made myself cold and just powered through it. At 25 weeks when I was admitted to hospital because I had been spotting and losing my mucus plug, I didn’t think about what it might mean long term. I kept myself switched off, all the way through a diagnosis of infection and a positive fetal fibronectin test (meaning that there was a chance I would go into labour in the next 14 days).

    I thought about it, but I was cold; reserved. I weighed odds and chances with no emotion attached.

    Because at that point, my baby wasn’t real yet. Sure he was kicking me and I wanted him badly to stay in there and be okay, but he wasn’t real to me yet.

    I still had no faith. No faith that I would actually get the happy ending I had fantasised about. No faith in his health and safe arrival.

    And still, our baby was stronger than that and we were discharged on antibiotics.

    I made it through the horrible 25-34 week period and started to actually believe that we might not go into preterm labour. I started to make plans for the actual birthing of this little one, I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t afraid to make sure Nathan knew it (basically, only Nathan in delivery with me, no one waiting in the waiting rooms etc).

    Until I birthed Isaac into my hands and heard his cry, I didn’t believe that we would get there. Holding him was simply a relief, listening to him breathe was a balm for all my worries.

    It took a long time for us to get our happy ending and until I held our little boy, I truly believed that it wouldn’t happen. Spending an entire pregnancy waiting for the other shoe to drop is not something I ever want to do again.

    And now, he is here and he is real. I have the gnawed on nipples and bags under my eyes to prove it.

    But however hard it was, I wouldn’t trade this; my journey, for the world, because in the end, our son was stronger than anything else.

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  • Isaac

    Because I have been accused of being ‘stingy’ with the photos.

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    Breastfeeding: AKA: Drink or drown.

    I have an over-active let down. Every time my milk lets down, I end up trying to drown or bathe him in it. Poor kid.

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    Asleep on the couch with Daddy. They were asleep in almost identical postitions, however Nathan would prefer I not post photos of his nipples on my blog.

    Spoilsport.

  • Whoring again

    It’s the last chance to vote for me in the Bloggies if you are that way inclined…

  • Pooofball

    Remember how the day before I had Isaac, the cat managed to get herself UNpregnant? To the tune of 5 kittens?

    Yes. Well. I would like to retract the statement that we have five kittens. Instead, we seem to have four (4) kittens and one (1) pooofball.

    I mean this kitten? It’s so fluffy that you could tie it into a ball and use it for a pom pom on top of your hat.

    You can lick your fingers and give it a mohawk. Not a very good mohawk mind you, because it’s head is JUST TOO FLUFFY.

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    It isn’t a kitten, it is just a ball of fluff with eyes and feet.

    Pom Pom

    It looks three times the size of it’s siblings, simply because of it’s fur. It is a pooofball.It is so fluffy that my photos don’t do it justice. I can just imagine it complaining to it’s mother about backyard teasing.

    ‘I’m not fat! I just have BIG FUR!’

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    So the big question is, does anyone want a kitten that you could use for a mop? Free to a good home…