a trip to the ER and the end of an era

So things took an unexpected turn shortly after my post last week.  Just before bed I began to have what doctors called Anaphylaxis as a result of an allergy to my antibiotic. Luckily it came on slowly and took me several hours to feel bad enough to call the doctor. In fact I called thinking that my staph infection was getting worse, not that I was starting to experience a life threatening emergency. The on-call doctor insisted that I visit the emergency room immediately and threatened that if I didn't go now on my own I'd most likely be taken there shortly afterward in an ambulance. I promised him I'd go and hung up the phone. Jeff and I then googled the antibiotic I was on and were somewhat shocked to see that my condition really was as bad as the doctor said ... Sorry Doc, it's not that we don't know your smart, it's that we just really wanted to go to bed.


Long story short, if you have to go to the ER, the best way to be seen right away is to list "difficulty breathing" as one of your symptoms. They do not mess around with that symptom. We were being attended to by three nurses and a doctor within four seconds of finishing the registration paperwork. And, happily, we were home within three hours. Of course it's been a long road to full strength and I'm rather shocked to sit here today and say that we've now finished breastfeeding. It's a day I knew was out there but thought was still about six weeks away. I guess maybe only other mom's can understand why it makes me a little sad, but it does. After all the pain, the leaking, the engorgement, the pumping, the hours sat by myself (and Asa) nursing in the dark hours of the night, listening to the party going on from other rooms while I pumped ... I've spent every day since November 2009 asking "Is this safe for the baby", not taking medicines when I was sick so that he wouldn't be exposed to too many chemicals, skipping the tylenol when my head ached, not drinking alcohol at all and then timing my alcohol so that it wouldn't be in the milk I'd be feeding him ... My entire life has revolved around protecting him from second-hand harm and now I'm free.

I can drink caffeine again if I want. I can drink and not worry that I'll get him drunk. But more than that, he doesn't need me anymore like he did. There's no more "I'm the only one can that can do it". I'm not. Anyone can. Anyone can feed him, change him, hold him, play with him, cuddle him, encourage him, dress him, bathe him. Anyone. It's liberating but part of me isn't ready to be liberated. It's been 24 hours and even though I'm relieved that he's no longer gnawing on me with his sharp little teeth, I feel a little lost.

Maybe a vodka redbull will help ease my pain ... It's been almost two years after all!

Sick, just sick

First let me apologize for my absence, it's been a while and my wonderful fans have been very patient with me but I can put you off no longer.

Asa has been sick since oh, I don't know ... FEBRUARY. After our millionth visit to the pediatrician it was decided the time to see a specialist had arrived and that our little dude's unending ear infections needed to be dealt with. This wasn't a shock to us, after all he has been sick for three months, but hearing a doctor say 'your son's hearing is in jeopardy' really shook me up. I had all these pangs of hurt imagining a world where my baby can't hear the song of the birds he loves so much or the barking dogs that crack him up, or to not know the sound of his own voice, or mine. It killed me. I cried on the way home from the pediatrician that afternoon, silently so he wouldn't know something was wrong. It's amazing how good I've become at crying without making any noise. Is this a skill that everyone cultivates or is it only me that is ashamed of tears?

At any rate, after several painful antibiotic shots and a visit to a pediatric ENT, I have come to terms with this surgery and am hopeful that it will put an end to the countless ear infections and painful ear tugging our little dude has tolerated these several months. And thank goodness I came to terms with it because within 4 hours of accepting that Asa will have surgery, I became very sick myself.

I have been on an adventure that many breast feeding mothers suffer called Mastitis. The gist of it is that I have managed to get (thanks to my cute baby) a bacterial infection in my breast which has caused my entire body to react as if I have the flu. Body aches, shakes, high fever (104.7 folks), nausea, dizziness, lightheaded ... My skin actually hurts. It's ridiculous. And after two days, my antibiotics haven't improved my situation so I headed to the doctor thinking in my mind "I've got a staph infection". And sure enough, the doctor tells me I've got a staph infection. So new antibiotic, painkillers (which aren't really working) and if I'm not improved by tomorrow morning I'm headed in for an appointment with radiology and then a consultation with the doctors again.

So I guess this has been a medical blog today but since it's honestly all I've had on my mind the last few days, this is the best I could do. To all the moms who've suffered through clogged ducts and mastitis and thrush and pushed through the pain and kept nursing, hats off to you. I'm still trying but this is really pushing me to my absolute limit. Will keep you posted and may actually have a funny story to tell as well so stay tuned!

goodbyes and hello's

It's been 10 months and one day since Asa was born ... my how time has flown. It's amazing and little terrifying to see how quickly he's growing up. What a transformation from a tiny little guy who just laid around to our solid little guy who crawls, climbs and cruises around the house. Another amazing transformation that deserves some recognition would be me & my body. Hot damn, how things have changed!

Here is a quick run-down of things I've said goodbye in the last 10 months:

Goodbye: 40 lbs of baby weight, all you can eat buffets, midnight feedings (for me, not the baby), Häagen-Dazs caramel cone ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, McDonalds, maternity clothes, cute shoes my feet are too wide for now, extreme emotional mood swings, size 12, 10 and 8 jeans, engorgement, breast pads, conspicuous wet spots on my shirt, multiple mid-night feedings (for the baby this time).

Now a few things I've recently said hello to after so long of being apart:

Hello! pre-pregnancy jeans (size 2, I'm sorry, I'm giving you away this weekend, we shall never meet again), high heels, sleeping through the night, my sense of humor, clavicles, calf muscles, abs, a sincere desire to look hot, baby-fever.

As you can see, the list of goodbyes primarily revolves around food, and oh, I miss the eating! But every little bit of ab that over takes the flab makes it worth the heartache of missing my old preggo foods. And hey, as my final "hello" item reminds me, I'll have my shot at pigging out with reckless abandon again someday!

sleep like a baby

The idea that someone would want to "sleep like a baby" seems totally ridiculous during the first few months of a newborns life. They sleep off and on all day and night with little regard for daylight or schedule and make functioning through exhaustion an art form that new parents must learn quickly if they want to remain at all sane.

Of course time marches on and they sleep longer stretches and then you start to think that maybe to "sleep like a baby" implies that you have the ability to fall asleep anywhere, anytime and to sleep through all sorts of noises and location changes. I mean, Asa can fall asleep in my arms and stay asleep through transfers to his crib to his carseat and even into daycare. It's impressive what a baby will sleep through. But still is this really the goal? To be able to fall asleep on your couch and wake up in the backseat of your car? Or fall asleep in your bed and then wake up an hour later in a grocery cart at Harris Teeter? Seems a little freaky to me.

Last night, I think we finally stumbled upon what "sleeping like a baby" truly means. At 7:30, just minutes after Asa went to bed, Jeff and I laid down in our bed, headsie-toesies, fully dressed, and fell asleep. We woke up hours later, staggered around the house, locking the front door, closing windows, putting on pj's and were fast sleep again within 20 minutes. Next thing we knew, it was 4:30am and we were doing the quick early-early morning feeding with Asa and again, within 20 minutes, we were all sound asleep until a respectable 6am. For anyone too tired or lazy to do the math, we all slept 10.5 hours last night and we feel fantastic.

I have to say that going to bed before sundown and waking up just after sunrise has got to be as close to heaven as possible and truly I can say that last night, we all slept like babies and we loved it!

feed me ... no wait, don't

Meal time with a baby is sort of like what I imagine kite-surfing to be like, just a whole lotta crazy.

Asa, like me, goes from happy to hungry and irritable in 3 seconds flat. The only thing that makes this okay is that he is hungry at the same times every day so we can anticipate, prepare and try to prevent the meltdowns. What's nutty is, he can be done eating after just a few bites of food. I mean like 5 bites and he's suddenly not interested in anymore. And it isn't just food, he'll do this with nursing as well, which let me tell you, is incredibly annoying and painful.

Here's an example of a typical morning meal with Asa. It's 6am, we've been up for a few minutes and made it downstairs. He's playing on the floor while I'm sipping a hot chai and Jeff is starting to make breakfast for Asa. All the sudden I have a tiny person trying to climb my legs, whining and crying and basically begging to be fed. We plunk him in the highchair and toss some cheerios at him while the oatmeal and apple sauce warms in the microwave. The cheerios do the trick (he's had like 10 individual o's), and after maybe 4 bites of applesauce he's through and now he's twisting his body around trying to see what I'm doing and wanting to get down and play.

Around 7:30 I start offering him bites of food on the go. A spoonful of breakfast in between toys, another on the stairs, more while we sit on the floor and watch the morning news. By 8:15 he's either eaten all of it or left over half of it, I can never predict how it will play out. By 8:17 he's ready to nurse because apparently, he's starved. So we nurse and he either is totally focused and nurses for 10 minutes or totally distracted and spends 3 minutes just licking/poking/gnawing on me until I throw in the towel and decide the nutritional benefit for Asa isn't worth the risk to my abused body.

Either way the story ends with Asa happily snoozing before daycare and me scrambling around, starved, trying to pull myself together to get out the door, usually forgetting to feed myself anything besides that hot chai (that is no ice cold and only half drank) three hours earlier. Kite surfing and feeding a baby, both physically challenging and never exactly the same from one day to the next.

best day ever

I somehow totally lucked out in life. Not only was Mother's Day the best day ever (thanks again Jeff for treating me like a queen), but yesterday was another best day ever! Asa and I spent the entire day together doing all sorts of random, normally dull things. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond, we went to Starbucks, we went to Rite Aid, we went for a walk ... Nothing out of the ordinary there. But what made it so great was that Asa is really fun, happy person and that makes him a joy to be around.

He may not smile at every stranger or wave bye-bye on command, but the kid has got a sense of humor to rival any one! I sneeze and suddenly he's in fits of laughter that melt my heart and make me laugh too. We dance-walk our way through a shopping plaza singing a song about (you guessed it ...) dance-walking and we're laughing and giggling and I eventually noticed, attracting a lot of attention from strangers, all of them smiling right along with us. We play with blocks, me stacking them, Asa destroying the towers and it's hilarious. He knocks over a book, I read it, he kisses the pages that have fur sewn into them, I laugh, he smiles and tosses another book at me to read.

Everything he does, he does with joy. Maybe babies should tag along to big international meetings to help bring everyone back down to earth and remind us why we're all here. I'm no expert but I think babies could teach most of us a lot about what's important. For Asa it seems to be that love, cuddles, applesauce, sneezes, birds, dogs, music, tickles and toys are the secrets to a happy life. I would think most of that could translate for adults as well.

Anyway, thanks Asa for a perfect Monday.

mother's day

I'd like to wish all the other mother's out there a happy mother's day, I hope yours was as great as mine! Today was the day that I let go of the guilt, for the very first time since Asa was born and it was liberating.

When Asa woke up at 5am and I couldn't nurse him back to sleep, I didn't feel guilty when Jeff got up with him and let me sleep (okay, I felt guilty but I successfully ignored and went back to sleep). When I rolled over nearly two hours later and realized I'd been snoozing all that time, my first instinct wasn't to jump out of bed in a tizzy but instead to roll over, stretch and take in the beautiful day outside the window.

Later, when Asa has pooped his diaper for probably the fifth time today, I didn't feel guilty when Jeff offered to change it yet again. I let him and he didn't give me any crap about it ... please tell me you got that (hit the like button if you did).

Long story short, today was a perfect day. We all took two naps, ate a smoothie, played outside, ate a delicious Indian dinner and I felt like a pampered princess. Thanks Jeff for taking such great care of me, I'm sure I'll be wracked with guilt about it all tomorrow!!