Monday, August 23, 2010
Monday
act: Having to get up in the night ten plus times (I lost count) makes you feel like you never slept.
Between Chase and the baby, last night was officially a disaster. I should have known it would be when the melatonin I give Chase nightly didn’t seem to have any effect when I put him to bed. Bedtime used to be a nightmare and then I was introduced to a natural supplement called melatonin. I used to have to literally restrain Chase for hours in the dark in his bed before he would finally relax and go to sleep. This whole brain-muscle disorder thing has way more far reaching effects than you might anticipate. His muscles just would not relax and let him sleep. So after years of misery and begging for anything that would help him sleep, someone finally suggested melatonin. It has been a godsend. After last night, Spence is telling me we need something more serious now…he might be right, it seems like it hasn’t been working as well for about a week now. I hope not.
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Saturday, August 21, 2010
Saturday
“Na-el-la” Noodles? “Na El-la” What? “Na…El-lla-o” Ah… “No Yellow.” Chase wants eggs for breakfast and even before I can get the pan hot he is informing me that he doesn’t want any yellow…aka yolks. He tells me this about 10 more times before I get them on the plate. I heat up some left over French toast to go with his fried eggs. I sit up to the counter with him and help him eat. As I cut a piece of French toast to put with each bite of egg, he reminds me each time, no yellow. He even goes as far as to inspect each bite and even to turn the fork around to make sure there is no yellow on the back side or sides of the bite I’m feeding him. I’ve come up with inventive ways to sneak a little yolk in now and again. Sometimes he catches me and sometimes he doesn’t. I’ve learned to rotate the fork in the opposite direction as he inspects so he doesn’t see the yellow on the backside. I’ve learned to cook the eggs so that most of the yellow hides inside the white, but it gets tricky when you cut it. Ridiculous I know, but when you have a kid whose well being depends on eating every one to two hours, you do what you have to do. Especially in the mornings. If Chase doesn’t eat first thing in the morning, he starts to lose his balance and fall a lot. He also starts to have seizures. So you can guess what a good portion of my day entails….feeding Chase. Drinks are a whole other issue….I’ll save that for another day.
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Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday
Last night I put Chase to bed. I swear he was asleep. Thirty minutes later, he comes sauntering into the living room (more of a herky jerky swagger) and announces, “diaper change”. (dipe-da dane) He lays down for me to change him and I ask him, “Chase, are you just tricking me?” “Yes,” he immediately answers and gives me a huge grin. Sure enough…his diaper was perfectly clean. Anything to get out of bedtime.
Today, the fifth day of school, we were late getting him ready and the bus was early. It showed up while I was still trying to get his shoes on and his mop of hair combed. He needs a haircut badly, but it’s something that Daddy Pants and I haven’t been able to bring ourselves to do. There is something about forty-five minutes of screaming (on Chase’s part) and cussing (DP) that is just not that appealing. I did an OK job on the hair and started dragging him outside while he started crying. I put him on the bus with huge alligator tears streaming down his face. I could hear him crying/whaling as the bus roared away.
Oh, Saturday.
We were very naïve. We were nervous when we had Ree (because of Chase) but when everything turned out perfectly, we decided it was now or never to finish up our family and not leave Ree as the lone caboose eight years after Chase. We found out we were pregnant with a baby girl and due at the very end of August. Everything was going along smoothly and the baby was right on track when we had our 20 week ultrasound. I however, was not feeling good. I chalked it up to my age, swelling veins, headaches, and general pregnancy, but by about 30 weeks, my blood pressure had skyrocketed and I had to go on medication. I still felt like crap, but everything seemed to be going well with the baby and I was measuring my regular 2 weeks behind schedule (my babies are always small… 5lbs and 10, 12 and 13oz were the weights of Hayes, Chase, and Ree full term. One night in my 37th week (really not that early, but early for me) I woke up in the night with what felt like a contraction. I laid there for about 5 minutes wondering if this could really be happening when another one came. I jumped out of bed and started packing a bag…I wasn’t prepared in the least. About 10 minutes later I woke up Spence and told him we had to get to the hospital because we live an hour away and Ree came pretty fast. We left the kids asleep for my Dad to come and watch and headed out. This was around 3:30am. We pulled up to the hospital and Dr. Coss was waiting out front. We headed up to the 4th floor and by 6:00 am, Kate was born. Except she was tiny. 3lbs, 14 oz tiny. When she came out, I was watching the faces of Spence, my mom, and the nurses, and it seemed as though all of their jaws dropped. I looked down at this teeny little baby and wondered what in the world was wrong. But she was strong. Her Apgar was great and she was breastfeeding within the hour. But her white blood count came back low and they had to admit her to the NICU to give her antibiotics as a precaution. I had no idea what the NICU was going to entail…if I had known I would have grabbed the baby and ran. I fed her one last time and had to hand her over to the nurses…it makes me nervous just thinking about it. 
