The Nose Knows

A few weeks ago we officially moved Stella to her crib. She did wonderfully as we were strong at establishing a routine for bedtime when she was tiny, and holding true to the routine the little bean falls right to sleep.

Also after the stay in the hospital it all proved too stressful for me to produce milk and Stella wouldn’t even take my breast, so we moved to just formula about two weeks ago and this combined with sleeping in her own room helped mom and dad to alternate nights.

However, lately she’s started a new waking time, an extra one. She use to sleep from 7:00PM to about 3:30AM. We would get up with her, feed her and she would fall right back to sleep until 7:00AM. But for the past two weeks she’s been waking up about 11:00PM eating a little and falling back to sleep, or should I say struggling back to sleep. No we don’t stick a bottle in her right away. We’ve tried the patting, the soothing, the singing, the mobile, the white noise machine, the swaying, the binki, but all this only leads to her crying louder so we resort to a bottle.

On Wednesday of this week I tried the rice cereal for the first time, hoping it might fix the 11:00 waking. Well she woke up, I think out of habit, but I was able to rock her back to sleep. The only catch is I also wrapped her in the nighty shirt I was wearing before I laid her back to bed.

Now the thing I’m learning about this baby thing is to not try two things at once, in this case it was the rice cereal and the nighty shirt. Trying two things at the same time will only keep you guessing which one worked, as you don’t have a control group and are too scared to take one or the other away.

Last night we didn’t have time for rice cereal, and she work up at 11:00. It was Michael’s night for the early shift (as we take shifts, not nights now) and he tried to do all the soothing, nothing worked. Then made her a tiny 3oz bottle (she’s drinking 6oz at a time). She only drank 2oz and feel back to sleep. She struggled though, and I got up… I remembered the nighty shirt from the night before so I did the same thing and she snuggled right up to it.

She naps so well in my bed against my pillow, she's even able to "self-sooth" when she's in my bed. I have now made the connection it’s about the smells. My smell in particular.

I’m working on patenting an air freshener that you can load your mommy smell into…. :-)

You Are My Sunshine

When I was little my mom would give me a bath and afterwards pull me out of the tub wrap me in a big towel and rock my in her lap while singing:

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away

I have found myself singing that song obviously more often in the last four months than I ever have before, and for good reason, I have a sunshine to sing it to now. But the one line in the song I realized was false tonight. It says “you’ll never know dear, how much I love you” but as of today I realize I do know how much my mom loves me, because I know how much I love Stella.

I love that she laughs at me and that when I talk she looks in my direction.

I love that she goes to bed so well, but hate that it’s so early, because all I want to do is play with her.

I love that I felt guilty dropping you off at daycare on my day off, because I’ve never had a reason to feel that kind of guilt before.

I love that you have blue eyes like you daddy, and that your cheeks are wonderfully soft and chubby, and great for kissing.

I love that I spend my free time reading about how to make your life easier and how to play with you so that you’re smart.

I love that my prayers consist of asking God for your health, safety, and happiness.

I love that I now know how much my mom loves me because of how I love you.

I love knowing that someday you'll be able to realize how much I love you.

RSV becomes Pneumonia

Since Stella has been in daycare, I’ve only got two calls from them, but whatever the reason, when I see the name on the caller ID my heart takes a leap. The first time they called, it was because she was going through a growing sprit and they thought they might run out of milk before the end of the day, something that could easily be taken care of. The second time was much different.

On Monday I got a call from the lovely lady who watches the infants. She informed me Stella had a rough morning, as she was crying and coughing all morning and then proceeded to vomit all her morning bottle up over herself. Then she informed me she had a fever.

Stella had been sick for three weeks, with a cold. We were in the emergency room at the beginning of those three weeks because her fever got so high, but they said it was just a virus and sent us home with the “lots of fluid and plenty of rest” remedy.

I couldn’t get off work so Michael took this one and called the doc and picked her up from daycare. According to Michael her pulse-ox (amount of oxygen in her blood) upon arrival to the doc office was in the 80%. She was rapidly breathing and grunting to get a breath. They gave her a nebulizer treatment and pulse-ox went up. Michael called to tell me the prognoses:

“So . . . don’t be worried, but . . . the doctor told me I needed to go to the hospital and check Stella into the ER”. My heart sank, I couldn’t keep the tears from coming I took a breath and tried to think. I was going to finish out the day, grab some stuff at home and head over there… YEAH, RIGHT! There was no way I was going to be able to work the rest of the day. So the wonderful secretary called in a last minute sub for me and I left.

I went home and grab things that I thought I needed: pj’s, chap-stick, contacts, toothbrush, only really hoping it wasn’t bad enough to have to stay the night.

When I got to the hospital Michael and Stella were sitting in the rocking chair of the Peds ER and rocking and singing, my heart sank again as I was so thankful to have an amazing husband to be such an amazing daddy to this little sick baby of ours. Over the period of four hours they did chest x-rays, mucus suction, nebulizer treatments, RSV check, and then they came in with the news that our baby had RSV which developed into double pneumonia (both lungs).

I cried. I bawled.

I felt guilty. I sent my sick baby to daycare; I didn’t know she was that sick, I felt like a bad mom. I felt helpless, sick. I was scared.

I made a food run for Michael and when I got back they were doing her IV. I saw my baby strapped down, screaming, scared, Michael worried and trying to calm her while they got that tiny butterfly needle into her arm. They also had her wear the oxygen tubing around her ears with the two little pieces going into her nose.

Over the course of three days she got: nebulizer treatments every four hours, antibiotics every 8 hours, a constant IV drip of fluids, and every nurse who walked through her door to fall in love with her.

Through all this, she was truly stronger than I ever was. She smiled and cooed. She played and acted like she was just fine. Her red sleepy eyes would have told you otherwise, but her smile kept me going.