Over the Hump - I Hope!

Okay, here's the latest: The night before last I slept sitting up again, for the third night in a row. The Bug slept more fitfully than the previous night, and kept pushing away from me, probably because it's just too damned hot for both of us to sleep with her in the Bjorn! But she has needed me to hold her upright so she can breathe, and obviously I can't go to sleep holding her; she'd slide down and end up in my lap on her back or her face if I fell asleep that way. Thus, the Bjorn.

Yesterday morning Sweet Pea woke up and sat up at 4am. I kept telling her to lie back down and go back to sleep, it was the middle of the night, etc. She finally told me, "my ears hurt when I lie down." I had two conflicting thoughts: 1) she keeps waking up and seeing me holding the baby, so she just wants attention, and 2) if she's waking up at 4am and saying that her ears hurt, her ears probably hurt. She didn't get back to sleep until 6:30am, after a lot of pleading for me to lie down and cuddle with her. I knew she didn't feel good and besides that she has been becoming more frustrated and bummed by me carrying the baby around all the time and not holding her has much, so I felt pretty sad about not being able to lie down with her and comfort her, but... I just couldn't. The Bug had to be kept upright, and also needed to be kept asleep as much as possible.

After Sweet Pea went back to sleep I got up with The Bug to change her diaper and it was nearly dry. I went downstairs to tell Slipshod that something had to change. The Bug hadn't thrown up again, but just couldn't breathe and was getting more and more tired and not wanting to nurse or drink from a cup. I had stopped feeding her solid food two days prior both in order to get her to poop wet stuff again and stop with the tiny bricks, and also because feeding her seemed like too much to deal with when she didn't want to be set down. And dammit, I wanted some sleep.

The Bug's temperature had been slightly elevated (98.3 or so axillary, which means 99.3 oral or 100.3 rectal - and all four of us have a normal resting temperature of 97.9) for a couple days and she just didn't seem to be getting better, so Slipshod stayed home from work again yesterday and called the doctor's office as soon as it opened at 8am. They had some free appointment times, so Slipshod and I moved as fast as we could to both get showers before we had to leave. The appointments weren't for 3 hours, but we are still seeing our doctor in Los Gatos, and now that we've moved up here, that's an hour's drive. AND, there's always the possibility of traffic. So we managed to get ready in time to leave an hour and a half before the appointment time.

All morning before we left Sweet Pea was begging to be allowed to stay home. She didn't want to go see the doctor. She wanted us to call various family members and ask them to leave work and come stay with her, and wanted us to just take The Bug to the doctor. She insisted over and over again that her ears felt better. I asked her if she was lying to me in the middle of the night that they had hurt and she said, "no," then later said, "yes, I was lying to you - PLEASE let me stay home!" We told her that she must be lying to us one way or the other - either they hurt or they didn't, and that lying was not okay.

Turns out that she may have been telling the truth both times. When the doctor looked in her ears, he said she had a broken blood blister on one of her ear drums (!). He didn't seem too concerned about it, but said that she definitely has an ear infection in both ears. He said that the blister was probably full in the middle of the night and was causing pressure that would have hurt Sweet Pea, but that once it broke, she probably felt better.

The Bug's ears were getting red inside. She did not have an active infection yet, but the doctor said she was right on the verge. By bedtime she was batting at her ears and was miserable. I mean, she had already been miserable for three days, but it seemed markedly worse at bedtime last night. But with her, it's hard to tell... she plays with her ears when she's tired anyway.

So, they're both on antibiotics for ear infections in both ears. Sweet Pea says she feels fine, though; I think she only had any ear pain when she woke up the other night. The Bug is still miserable because of all the plegm, but last night she slept propped up (on the foam wedge we used for her to combat her reflux as a newborn, and a thin pillow under that) in her co-sleeper and I was finally able to lie down and sleep on my back. She woke up every hour except for the couple times that she slept for two hours, but that was WAY better than the three nights preceding. AND, she is nursing a lot more often now. WHEW! I fed her banana baby food for dinner last night and for breakfast this morning. Since she is finally pooping normally again (no more bricks! Yay!) I think I will give her some oatmeal baby cereal with her baby food tonight for dinner. She is definitely very interested in the milk and the solids now - even warm water from a cup! Wahoo! She is still clingy but is playing more and is able to be away from me (playing on the floor, or sitting with Daddy) for short periods of time before missing me. That is progress from a couple days ago when she only wanted me to hold her at all times.

As for the medicine - Sweet Pea says it tastes awful, but she takes hers just fine. I never appreciated how good she is at taking medicine until The Bug came along. She spits everything out, so we have to hold her almost on her back in order to get anything in. We have to hold her hands away from her mouth so she doesn't knock the dropper away or grab it, hold her head facing forward, and then we have to cram the dropper as far back in the side of her mouth as we can and give her small bits at a time so she has less chance of spitting out the medicine. Then we have to hold her there until she swallows, which usually occurs as part of a huge sobbing fit. Then repeat until the dropper is empty. It's just lovely. BUT, they've both had two doses now (our doctor gives us Zithromax for them so we mercifully only have to give them one dose per day), and there are only three doses left. Whew. It's good to be on this side of this crap.

As if all this with the girls weren't enough, yesterday evening Slipshod's mom called to tell me that her mother was in the hospital. She's out now - went home today at lunchtime - but she appears to have had two mini strokes over the weekend. She has had another mini stroke before. We're talking about the queen of the martyrs, as was demonstrated when she told her doctor, "I felt weird on Saturday but wasn't sure what was going on. Then Sunday night I felt awful and thought I may have had a mini stroke but I didn't want to call and bother anyone because it was 2:30am... so I waited until Monday morning." The doctor told her that time counts for everything after a stroke, and that if she can get to the hospital within three hours of a stroke, they can help minimize any damage that might occur as a result of the stroke. Grandma said, "Oh, that's okay, I'm DNR." (DNR = do not recussitate) The doctor said, "well, that's all well and good, but strokes don't usually kill you. They're much more likely to paralyze you." I really hope that she heard him on that and will be less martyrlike about this in the future if she has more of these. But she probably won't want to bother anyone... GAH!