Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • Finality.

    Nathan had surgery on Friday to fix a hydrocele. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mind me talking about his testicles on my blog, but in case you’re worried, I did ask first.

    While he was in there, he had a vasectomy. It was a joint decision but…

    I wasn’t prepared for how sad this would make me feel.

    It’s a good thing; logically I know it’s a good thing. We have three beautiful children and this is our mental, physical and financial limit. Three children and we are so so lucky.

    And yet, the emotional side of my brain is still sad. No more tiny babies for me.

    Frankly, I would be happy to never be pregnant again. I found pregnancy utterly miserable, but never having a newborn again?

    Sad.

    In any case, it was the right decision, and I will get over it.

    It’s just so FINAL, you know?

    In other news, NaNoWriMo is going quite well, and once I press publish on this, I’m locking my children outside* and planning on writing lots more words. For those naysayers (yes, I’ve seen you out there) – yes, it’s 50k hurried words. No, each word that falls out of my fingers is not perfect. I know that there are holes in my plot and timeline that need clearing up later.

    But – it takes the pressure off. I’m not expecting myself to write fifty thousand perfect words this month. I don’t expect my end result to be an instantly publishable work, filled with great prose.

    What I do expect is that at the end of November, I will have a first draft. Messy and mistake filled, it will be the bare bones of SOMETHING. It will need editing and rewriting – but don’t we expect that in any case?

    The pressure of writing 50k words in 30 days stops my inner perfectionist in her tracks. It stops her shouting at me that I may as well give up now, that this is crap. Because I know it’s crap and I’m writing it anyway.

    The beginning of something does not need to be perfect. It just needs to BE.

    *I kid. Mostly. Unless they start fighting again. That said Amy is sulking because I growled at her and Isaac just tried to bash his two front teeth out. Blood. Everywhere. (He’s eating an ice cream now however.)

  • 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.