2am?

It was 2am before Wren would do more than have a nap-nursing. Argh. I had to get up at 7.45 to make Frost a rushed breakfast and lunch. Now it is after 1pm and he has still not napped more than 30 minutes. Ie. not long enough for me to fall asleep. I know he will sleep longer o-n-e d-a-y.

The problem of being sluggish is not the problem of this day.

Meanwhile, besides weird sleep:

• Wren is starting to push and stand up on his feet when I hold him up.


• He almost smiles at us. Well, he smiles but I'm not sure if he is smiling at me or the middle distance.


• He has little rolls of fat on his thighs - first sign of the chubby baby stage.


• I weighed him in a cardboard box on the kitchen scale and he is over 5kg at 5 weeks which seems to be kind of on track.


• He makes little hoots and whistles occasionally - as well as the usual grunts and cries


• He holds his head up for a bit and looks around but then gets the wobbles

We are going to see Sari on Saturday so she can listen to Frost's chest. He still has a cough he started before Wren was born. Sari is also going to meet Wren for the first time.

Spoke with cardiology clinic nurse

I am a bit worried about Wren so I called the cardiology clinic and spoke to the nurse. The problem is not really that he wakes so often in the night but that he is so sluggish in the daytime. Its now 5pm and since I woke this morning he has had only one significant wakeful period (of 2 plus hours - quite a bit fussing). The rest of the time he naps, nurses for 5 minutes and sleeps deeply, then wakes to the grunting and looking around occasionally stage, then nurses for a short period (or a few short periods) and naps again, poops again and wakes for a short while etc. Other than diaper change and a few breaks of alert time of 10 minutes or so he has been asleep!

I asked the cardiology nurse about his behaviour and she feels there is nothing worrying enough to bring him in before his scheduled echo on Monday but that the frequency and short duration of his regular nursing is a concern. She had a few ideas - that he is tiring after a short period, that he is day-night reversed (apparently more common after long hospital stays), that he is disturbed by reflux so nurses till only a bit full or that he has colic (not). That he is not struggling to nurse, not sweating or doing anything else odd is a good sign but she wants to check his breathing as well as rapid breathing can be another sign of "working too hard".

She said that they will evaluate him after the echo but really want him to nurse in a more "normal" way. I am not so concerned about normal but I want a more alert baby. He worries me this way. His breathing has always been fast so I am not sure how they are going to make sense of that one.

Family photos

Here are all of us in a moment of calm. Frost after bath, Wren quiet-alert and Josh enjoying not having to be a boob to have quality time with Wren.


Playing with the Convert to BW button!

Getting out

This morning I reheated the dregs of yesterday's decaf coffee and the soy milk had bottom-of-the-carton curds. I think this is a sign I need to try going grocery shopping with Wren. We are also out of OJ (apparently necessary since I drank half of Laurie's and we also need lunch snacks for Frost if they ever get back to school after this snow.

Wren had a very good day yesterday. He was far less fussy when not nursing - slept a lot in the early part of the day and then had a very long wakeful and alert period in the evening during which we took some family photos on the bed. I shall post later.

Sleep last night was also better. He slept 2 hours and then in 90 minute increments which is far better than hourly. I felt quite refreshed when I woke this morning in time for a very "slow start".

I also had a dream about KapKa in which I had forgotten something very important involving a birthday cake and was feeling guilty. I think I need to get going again in general.

Oh, and we have joined a group called Listening Mothers which is an infant-mother support group. I have no idea whether it will be good but it sounded interesting and I would like to meet some other baby-families in our area.

More snow less sleep

Just when I thought this co-sleeping thing was the answer Wren managed to wake EVERY HOUR from 1am till 6am and then just grunted and grizzled in bed till I was forced to get up some time before 7am. Now its snowing again.

I am going to take him along to my naturopath/midwife/mother-of-5 for ideas because this is taking the glow off how well we/he is doing otherwise. I am really not fussy! I would settle for one stretch of 3 hours or a couple of 2 hour sleeps but I don't think my body can cope with a short series of catnaps for long.

It is hard not to think of this as a series of crimes and punishments. My crime yesterday was having it too easy (Sherie took Frost on a playdate for most of the day and Wren slept a lot) so the night had to be awful. Yesterday I managed to indulge by washing my hair and cleaning my teeth and finished the book I was reading about great white sharks off San Francisco (I picked it up off the New Book shelf at the library - there is no hidden significance to my reading about large lurking predators) so I should be denied the indulgence of personal time at night.

Actually, even last night could have been worse. Frost slept a lot like this (or didn't sleep a lot like this) but nursed for 30 minutes and cried torrents between his fitful episodes so I was actually sleeping even less and developed adrenaline induced insomnia. I can't even think of watching La Femme Nikita which was on reruns during the long wakeful nights with Frost. By contrast, Wren nurses for 10 minutes then falls asleep again leaving me lying crookedly half-asleep so as not to rouse him. Half is better than nothing.

My father emailed last night and said he believes that this wicked sleep behaviour is hereditary. My teenage brother and sister in South Africa apparently slept so badly as infants and toddlers that their exhausted mother took at least one of them to a pyschologist to help their sleep deviance. Ingrid (my non-wicked stepmother) has survived and is currently in Paris (there is hope!) while Ansellia and Orion are now sleeping a bit better despite the predations of World of Warcraft on Orion's biorhythms.

Now, I have written another whole update about sleeplessness. I hope this trend does not continue.

Snatches

I have become one of those new mother's who wants to talk only about how little sleep she is getting. I can't resist recounting in excruciating detail how he slept for one hour then woke for 20 minutes then slept another hour (to 2am) and then woke-slept fitfully for....

See, here I go again. I can't get an accurate count of how little sleep I am getting but the long nap this afternoon went a long way to helping reset the balance in my favor. Wren slept on the bed next to me and that worked well for both of us.

Now its another night and he is again resisting sleep or sleeping like you would if you were 30 feet up a tree without anything strapping you on.

Frost was a real darling this evening. His cough is worse (from a cough-cold 2 weeks ago) and I made him cough tea, some oil rub and a hot water bottle. He was so pathetically grateful for all this attention that he made these observations:

Mummy, I just want to say that I really appreciate you giving birth to Wren.

[After I replenished his cough tea on request] Mummy, I was thinking "why are you getting all these things for me?" and then I thought its because they are good things and I asked nicely!

[On various occasions] Aren't you glad you have a baby now after the other ones died?

[Earlier, after I denied desert] I hate everyone in this house except Wren.

[After a test cook in which he made rock hard muffins] I think Wren is so cyoot I just want to look at him all the time. I just want to touch him.

First bath

Wren's wound is healing so well that the Pediatrician said it no longer needs packing or even dressing. It is just a long thin line. So, we gave Wren his first bath.

I didn't want to soak him in water just yet so it was more a half-bath and half-sponge-bath but he was in the little tub. At first he yelled but then he started to relax. Here is the relaxed picture.

He's also relaxed in the next one. I am still a human pacifier - all that nice scheduling from the hospital has gone out the window although I shouldn't complain since we slept for three 2-hour+ stretches last night.

Paranoia?

The thing I am finding hard thesedays is knowing what behaviour may be due to Wren's heart defect and what is normal baby stuff. Josh says I am looking for something to worry about but its a hard habit to kick.

Last night Wren woke hourly from 3am onwards. I am not a great slave to Dr Sears but according to the learned pediatrician babies this age usually wake 2 to 3 times a night. Uh huh? Wren is waking at least 6 times between 10pm and 7am. He doesn't always wake fully - sometimes he is just grunting and groaning intermittently (like every 5 minutes for an hour). Nonetheless I can't sleep through it.

So, last night I worried that he couldn't poop because his bowel wasn't working. This was an early concern when he had the coarc because apparently the blood supply to the bowel can be compromised. Of course, this morning he has had plenty of "wet and soiled" diapers and seems happy so its probably another of my anxieties.

Add it to - are his hands and feet cool due to poor perfusion or normal infant circulation? Is he spitting up because of a dairy allergy or reflux that is more common in cardiac babies? Does he turn red when he cries because of hypertension? Argh.

Hospital Bill #1

This year we managed to hit the medical trifecta - Josh's appendictomy, my delivery and Wren's surgery - and will actually qualify to deduct medical expenses on our tax return for the first (and hopefully the last) time. We also get to pay the family out of pocket maximum which sounds like a real bargain at $6000.

The reason it sounds cheap is that we have received the first of the bills for Wren's hospitalization and surgery. The bill from Children's (not all inclusive yet) is $131,587.72. We have not yet seen the bill from Swedish for the 3 and a bit days in the NICU there or my my delivery. While the Children's bill is a ton of money its less than I expected based on other figures I have seen. Looking at the deail, the majority was for Wren's post-surgery and recovery care in "room / bed charges" which were $68,820. The other big charges were pharmacy and labs which totalled over $30K.

If the surgeon could perform in a vacuum heart surgery would be a real bargain!

Sleeping in short snatches

If anyone knows what gives babies gas, I am keen to know. Wren wants to nurse constantly. Half the time he wants to eat the rest of the time it is to help him pass gas. He latches on, gets an intent look, goes red with exertion and then makes the most godawful farting noise. Its like a jet engine. Then he goes back to sleep. Last night - another night of no more than (and often less than) 90 minutes of sleep in a row - I decided to investigate what was going on and noticed that he doesn't actually wake crying. He wakes grunting and writhing and working something out and for most of these wake-ups he just wants to latch on for a short while before passing out again.

So, I think that the tummy discomfit is waking him. Its certainly waking him from naps in the daytime too.

I have cut out a lot of dairy from my diet but still have been eating cheese (in particular goat cheese) so perhaps I should be more vigilant in that regard since Frost had a dairy allergy until he was 4 years old. Still, with Frost is showed up as eczema and diarrhea later on. Ho hum. Cheese is such a treat for me but so is sleep.

Frost wanted to sleep in the wedge today. I told him he was too big so he ran into the bedroom and fake cried into the baby monitor. He is very good natured about it but he clearly wants some of the baby-attention.

Now, with all my sleeplessness why am I awake? Its always a delicate balance between insanity from having no time to myself and insanity from sleep deprivation. I think the balance has been struck and I am off to bed.