Waving, Not Drowning, at least not yet...

I'm so far behind in all of your lives since google reader went away. Anybody have any suggestions for a good blog reader?

I cannot believe it has been almost 2 months since my last post. It's been a rough summer, yo. I mean, I love my Wee Bit to death and wouldn't train her for the world, but she's had a rough go of it her first three months on this earth. Baby girl had been suffering with these horrible gas pains and digestive issues--she has GERD--gastro-esophogal reflux disorder and is on baby Zantac that she has to take 2x a day. She is also allergic to breast milk--She is actually allergic to the milk proteins. I don't consume any dairy at all, so it's the lactose in the breast milk. We've eliminated a lot of foods* from my diet to try to pin point the continuing gas issues for the poor girl, but not much makes a difference. We go to the pediatrician every week or two for weight checks because as much as she eats, she still isn't gaining weight as fast as the pediatrician wants her to. She consistently gains weight; she is just wee.

Baby girl also has eczema. And, she has several swollen lymph nodes, so Friday we had to have blood drawn. Unbeknownst to me, blood is taken from the veins in the head on infants. As awful as this sounds, and as absolutely horrible as it was for me to witness this, the J assured me that a) this is standard (we had the blood drawn in the NICU) and b) the BEST way to get lots of blood in the least traumatic way. Our nurse was amazing, and it was all over in less than 2 minutes. Poor girl passed out from the pain as soon as the needle came out and slept for a little over 3 hours in her carseat, but she's been such a trooper. So the last two months have been particularly rough for the baby.

My parents are here now for at least until February, which has been WONDERFUL. We are so lucky that they can do this for us and that they're not assholes. It's crowded in here, but this poor little girl really does need to have two people to watch her working in tandem until we get all her little issues figured out. So right now, as we continue to try to figure out what's going on with her and how severe the milk allergy is, we are to feed her only hypoallergenic formula (we're on our second type here), and I can't nurse her at all (this is heart breaking). I spend my days now pumping and storing the milk. The pediatrician is hoping that we don't have to permanently eliminate the boob, but depending on the level of the allergy, we're hoping that worst case scenario is boob time is limited so she can still benefit from the breast milk in a way that totally doesn't aggravate her little stomach. We've got a freezer full of breast milk right now. Pumping is totally exhausting, btw.

Because she's had so many issues, sleep has been a struggle, as well as her comfort--the reflux makes it hard for her to sleep flat (we have wedges for the crib and the co-sleeper for nighttime), but during the day, she would only sleep upright on me and we just took turns at night sleeping upright with her. So even with a bookstand for hands free reading, I've not been able to accomplish anything. I've missed 2 potential publication opportunities this summer because I just could not get the reading done for them, even just for the abstract. And it looks like I'll miss the opportunity for one at the end of this month because there is no time to do the extensive reading. It's not like I can stay up or go sequester myself somewhere. I regret not getting this done last year, but oh well. I knew it would be difficult to get stuff done with an infant, but I think it would have been easier without a sick child and just an infant who took naps, you know? I mean, I wasn't even able to eat let alone think about research.

I do have my course release this fall, so I do have to figure out how to negotiate research and a baby here. At least I have child care and can basically leave at any time (I can only pump every four hours--I don't make enough for every two hours, which has been part of her weight gain issue we think, but we've got plenty of formula and breast milk for my absence). I'm hoping that in the next week, I can figure something out and put some sort of plan together both in terms of keeping up with my schoolwork and research.

In other news, three weeks ago, when the parents got here, I was able to start working out again. The official first week of school was a bit rough with the workouts--I got two days in I think--but this last week has been good. All of us, the J, the parents, and myself, we are all participating in the Whole Life Challenge (as is our CF box). We are entering week 2 here, at it's really helped a lot in terms of making sure that we are taking care of ourselves. If I weren't so competitive, and we didn't have this, I would have been eating pizza all week and not working out and probably feeling a whole helluva a lot more miserable. But the parents have really embraced CrossFit; I'm especially proud of my dad. It's great seeing him trying to get healthy and really pushing himself (safely) in CrossFit and enjoying it. I have made some major gains in my strength just this week, which has been great given that I was stressed with school (already), stressed about the baby, and behind in my work, and worried about this new deadline, but seriously, realistically, I cannot read for nor pull a 20 page paper for a fancy journal out of my ass in the next 15 days. Maybe if I could work around the clock, but realistically I can't, so I may just have to let it go and figure something else out. If my parents weren't here though, I certainly wouldn't be able to cook healthy food or work out, so I think things would be a bit more dicey, maternity leave or not.

And that's the other thing. I was talking with my mom, and we decided that for our family (the immediate family on my side) that I didn't get the maternity leave for the fall has turned out to be positive because my dad would not be making these changes in his health right now (it might have happened in February, but he may have gained 30 more pounds by then!), and this is all very positive indeed. So if not having maternity leave means that we get to take care of my dad's health sooner, then I'm okay with that trade off. However, for the next kid though, I'm not attempting to go back to work until that kid is at least 6 months old, so we're planning for the next one to come at the beginning of Spring Quarter so there will be no question about my being able to take mat leave and then having the summer off, too.

I have missed this space. I need this space. I hope I'm able to be here more regularly.

*No soy, dairy, corn, gluten, grains, peanuts, beans. And now, no eggs, no nuts of any kind, no cabbage, no oranges. Ironically, the first month of her life when my diet was awful--Wendy's and donuts, fast food, pizza--she did much better from the gas standpoint for Magpie. I had eliminated caffeine, but now that school has started back up, the doctor said my half caff coffee is ok because I have, usually only one cup, sometimes two.