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2005-06-11 - 5.01pm previous entry next entry
Poor Arthur (and 7 months old!)
Urgh. Diaryland has just been total crap for 24 hours. I had to post this entry (that I wrote last night) into my pregnancy journal (still have Gold there) just to get it posted! But now I can update here I am moving the entry. So here it is:
Phew. A moment to write! Sorry I have been a few days. I will fill you in shortly, but first�.
Oh my goodness, you guys are so nice to me! I know I do not suck :) And thank you for your supportive words and messages. I am so rubbish at replying to messages � still have several notes left for me that I STILL mean to reply to, I�m so sorry if this is you! Thank you for the advice in my guestbook (and notes) about sleep issues. Eiluned, thanks for taking the time to outline a routine for me, that was so helpful. Heather thanks for telling me about the magazine with the freebie in it. I will try to remember to buy it before it disappears off the shelves! Polly thank you for the wise words and for signing my guestbook after all this time (!!) � congrats on your little boy! And yes, I did watch �Why Don�t You?� when I was young � thanks for the good advice in a useful context, hehe! Heather, thanks for your wise wise words. My, there are so many wiiiiise mothers out there! I�m so glad they think to share their wisdom with me! Thanks Laura for the notes about slings and night diapers � very helpful sites! And thank you Michelle for the kind offer of sending me a Baby Safe Feeder from the US � thankfully Polly just pointed out that I can buy them in the UK at www.thebabycatalogue.com so I will order one there! I know we must email. We are going through toooo much of the same thing to sit here NOT emailing! ;) Also thank you to Julie and Nicola for the lovely lovely emails. You see?! You guys are just the nicest people. I am so blessed to have such friends here online :) I hope I did not miss anybody out! I don�t normally make such specific references to people for their notes or messages, but this time I really wanted to. I was so blessed by you all.
Ohhhhh-kay.
Well I have various things to write about, but it�s late (surprise, surprise) and I�m tired (well well!) so we�ll see how much I get done. If I have to stop this short and post it tonight just so I get this much out there for now, then I will. But I hope I can write about everything first. Wait, I need a glass of water. Then I will be back for the long haul (I hope!)!!!
Waaater. Sooo thirsty tonight!
Well Arthur is seven months old!!! My big boy!! His Uncle Ian (Neil�s older brother) came to see him on Monday evening (he was 7 months on Thursday), and guess what he got for his 7 month birthday?! His first cold :( Poor, poor Boo. On Wednesday I had an osteopath appt in the morning which went well (though I still need a lot more treatment for a while) and I learnt some new exercises which should help my back get stronger in the right places. I had a bad headache all day that day. Arthur was going to have a walk with Daddy while I had my appt but he was so tired that morning and his naps did not work well around my appt time, so he ended up falling into a deeeep sleep in his car seat just as we arrived to meet Neil for the �handover� (!!). So Neil got in the driver�s seat and drove him to the park and looked at the ducks on the lake while Arthur slept for about 45 minutes! Then they came back to meet me, and Arthur woke as I arrived :) So he napped, which was good. In the afternoon, Arthur was a bit cranky and not that well settled for sleep, and he wasn�t happy for long with any activity. It was a nice sunny day with a cool breeze so we went out for a walk round the local small park, which is actually quite nice, though I don�t feel that safe there as it�s not the nicest area. Ugh. Anyway, I was careful to use his sunshade and walk in the shade with him, or if I was in the sun then I walked with the sun behind us.
I did notice around this time that he was sneezing more than usual and coughing a little more than his usual occasional splutters! I started to worry that he was developing hayfever because it seemed to have coincided with our walk. How awful that would be, to have allergies like hayfever at such a young age! But he did not have red or watery eyes, and he wasn�t clawing at his nose or anything so I figured probably not. I couldn�t believe he might be getting sick, because I don�t know� he has never been unwell before. He DID get exposed to the nasty flu that we had over Christmas, and he got a fever but it never seemed to develop. I am thinking that was to do with my milk, since I had the flu badly and would have been churning out some serious anti-viral agents around then! But mostly I praise God that I asked him to protect Arthur and somehow Arthur never got really sick. I am so grateful.
So he has never been unwell. Also it is June. He has been fine this whoooole long winter with bugs left, right, and centre!! Why now, in JUNE?!! But by Wednesday evening he had a runny nose and was sneezing even more, and he was restless in the evening, coughing in his sleep and waking himself up, and then sneezing a lot when he woke. It did seem mild at the time, and I thought well at least he has my milk to help him fight it.
But my poor baby, Thursday was a little worse, he was snotty and exceptionally sneezy � he sneezed and sneezed all day, like sometimes 20 times in ten minutes!! He had so much mucus and goo going down to his tummy that he was sick after his feed in bed mid-morning. I am proud that this didn�t send me into a huge panic attack, but then I knew it was to do with his poor cold, and not a tummy bug. Also some weird �mother button� clicked in, a very similar feeling to the �nurse button� I used to have when I was doing my midwifery and nursing training, and looking after Cameron in hospital. I love those buttons. They enable me to be cool as a cucumber over things that would normally freak/gross me out if I didn�t have that button pressed. I am lucky also, in that I don�t usually have to think about pressing the button. It seems to be automatic. So I am delighted to discover that I have a �mother button�!! It made the difference between panicking, and sitting calmly with Arthur on my lap, catching big slaps of sick in a towel (well, missing most of it!) and reassuring him with soothing words and kisses on his soft fuzzy head all the while. Poor Arthur. He did not seem distressed at all, which probably helped me enormously. He seemed so happy after he was sick, like his tummy must have been feeling yucky till it emptied. The cot-bed came into marvellous use as I laid him in there with a toy while he watched me take my sicky clothes off and change, take the sicky sheets off the bed and put fresh ones on, and finally take his sicky sleepsuit off and clean him up and dress him. It took me a while to figure out what order to do the cleaning in! I figured it should be me first so that I didn�t re-sickify everything I touched. Then the bed so I would have somewhere clean to lay Arthur when he was changed. Then the pukey boy himself! He seemed quite contented to watch me, much better for less goo in his tummy. I put everything straight in the machine and it was clean and dry again before the end of the afternoon!
But Arthur has been so poorly since then. Last night was his first bad bad bad sick night. He couldn�t sleep for longer than 10 minutes all night, until around 4am when he suddenly fell into a rattly-breathing exhausted sleep and I collapsed on the spare bed to lose consciousness till he woke again at 5.50. I had not been able to doze between his wakings, and he was so distressed whenever he was awake, crying and sobbing inconsolably, and unable to breathe or swallow past the goo in his throat. He rubbed and rubbed his nose and eyes so hard, they must have been so irritating. To make matters worse, he is suddenly teething really badly, and seems to have teething pain like never before. His cheeks are red and puffy again and he is clawing at his ears and moaning like he does when his teething gets super-bad. We have given him teething powder but it never does work so well when he�s particularly bad. He has had quite a few doses of Calpol these last few days. It�s hard getting it into him because he cries and doesn�t want to swallow it, and there seems SO much of the darn stuff for him to have to ingest! It�s just so sickly and syrupy, and I don�t blame him for not wanting all that in his tummy when it�s already full of goop and feeling yucky. I try to keep him calm when he has just had Calpol so that he won�t throw up from coughing or sobbing, and then hopefully it will stay down. He sometimes acts like he needs to be sick after he has Calpol, when he already has goop in his tummy. Poor boy.
So today has been worse. He is still sneezing aplenty, and his cough has become quite bad and rattly. Today he had a fit of coughing on his side in bed just after nursing almost to sleep, and that made him be sick a bit too. Then he was awake and crying because he couldn�t breathe or get comfy. My heart HURTS for him to see him this unhappy and uncomfortable. I wish with all my being that I could make him feel better or take away the things that are nasty. I wish I could do more than soothe him. I know my presence and soothing actions make a world of difference for him, but it just never feels like enough when he is suffering, you know? When he breathes, the sound of gunk ratching and scrunching back and forth in his nose and throat makes ME want to gag. It�s so loud and horrible. I can�t remove it for him. How I wish he could blow into a hanky! I have one of those nose-clear suction thingies for sucking mucus out of a baby�s nose, and I have been using it a lot today when I see goo visible in his nose. He HATES it when I use it, though I am as gentle as I can possibly be, and it must feel better to him when I get stuff out. But he just hates it and fights me doing it and cries. I rubbed Vick on his chest today, just a little, because the instructions said from 6 months onwards. He did seem a little clearer for it, and he napped better in the afternoon than in the morning. This morning (all day really) he has been so exhausted. I guess his night was so awful and he is sick so extra tired. He could not sleep this morning for more than 10 minutes, more often it was just 2 or 3 minutes before he turned restlessly and woke from coughing or choking on goo, then he would cry and cry so he wouldn�t be able to get back to sleep after that. This afternoon after some Calpol and mucho back-breaking rocking and Vick on his chest, he did nap for an hour, and then after 40 very upset minutes of more rocking and nursing and nose-suctioning, he crashed out with tears still on his poor red cheeks for almost 2 hours.
He has cried soooo much these last couple of days. I just know he feels soooo unwell. My poor darling love. It has been a different perspective for me. Since he got sick, I don�t give a monkeys about how long he is sleeping or whether I get mine. All I care about is being absolutely THERE for him 24 hours a day the moment he needs me, and making sure I do everything I can to ease his suffering to the best of my ability. My back injury (this might not have been wise) could take a running jump for all I care. I will just have to get extra treatment on it and put up with extra pain in the meantime. My little love needed to be HELD all day today. He cried like his heart was breaking if I put him down, although I did have to anyway a couple of times to get food for me to eat or to go to the loo. He was okay after the initial few moments once he found a toy next to him to play with. I can see he is trying to be in his normal happy mood, but he just feels too bad. If I do things that normally make him laugh and giggle, he doesn�t giggle, which is so sad! But he does smile, a funny weak sort of smile that almost tells me he is smiling because he knows I am trying to cheer him up and he appreciates it. Bless his heart. Today I held him clasped to my front with both arms, and danced him to a CD of Christian music for an hour. An HOUR!! My back hurt so much I can�t tell you. But Arthur could breathe better that way, and the rocking and motion lulled him, and I sang along quietly with the music which also soothed him, and his eyelids got heavier and heavier, and eventually he went to sleep against me. It was his first easy sleep all day so I wanted to keep going as long as I could. I danced him in front of the big mirror so that I could see him clearly, and he kept opening his eyes to look into mine in the mirror, like he was checking I was still there or something, and then they would droop shut again and he�d be off. Eventually the CD ended and my arms hurt more than my back even, so I slowwwly sat down, but he woke when I sat, and cried :(
He had a bath with Daddy tonight, and I made the bath with baby breathe-easy bubble bath. He seemed happier after his bath. He had so much snot in his hair! Poor thing. I felt like a �real� mother today! My t-shirt is covered in snot, tears, milk, sick and drool. Covered. I am still wearing it. Gross, you might think? I know I need to take it off and put something clean on, but it�s dry and not as stinky as it sounds, and somehow when I look down at my chest and see dry snot (!!) I feel my heart go tender because it makes me think of my poor baby boy who needs to be close to me so much at the moment. His various bits of goo are on my t-shirt because of how close he needed to be to me at his sickest moments today, and actually this makes me feel like the most blessed, privileged person alive right now. I Am Mummy! I belong to the most precious little boy, and he belongs to me. I am Mummy. I am his. He is mine.
D�you know what else I remembered today, on that line of thought? I am God�s. He is mine. My struggles and falls and mistakes and so on are similar to the various stains on my t-shirt, as God holds me through my ups and downs. He holds me as I have held Arthur today, because he loves me like I love Arthur � MORE so even! My brain boggles at such a concept. How could ANYONE love anyone more than I love my precious boy? But God does love me more. Thank you Julie for reminding me of this today with the various things you said to me and just your own heart for God.
Well, my baby Boo stirs, so I may have to stop in a moment. He took a long time to go to sleep tonight and cried till he started gagging. He coughed such a lot too. Every time he would start to settle his little head into the bed and close his eyes for sleep, his nose would stifle his breathing, and his mouth would pop open to gasp, and then after a breath or two, would close again, and I�d hear his breathing stifle in his nose again till his mouth popped open again. After a few times of this he would toss and turn to try and find a way out of it, and then finally open his eyes and cry his poor little heart out, sobbing and coughing and �Oh-yo-yo-yohh�ing. It just about broke my heart. In the end, Neil went out to by some stuff called Karvol, which is a capsule of stinky head-clearing stuff that you break onto a tissue near a little-one�s head so they can breathe more clearly during sleep. While he was gone, I held Arthur, who retched hugely but wasn�t sick, rocked and sang to him, and finally he went to sleep upright on my front. My bac hurt so much, so I eased myself down on the bed and sat against the pillows with some sort of superhuman strength in my left arm taking Arthur�s full unconscious weight! I sang Enigma Variations to him tonight, well, hummed and laahed them! I just love that music. I find it so beautiful and soothing, and I didn�t have a CD player to hand or a spare arm to fetch one, so I hummed it, hoping Arthur would find it soothing too. He did seem to, and I kept on singing it after he fell asleep, till Neil got home about 10 minutes later. Arthur was so unconscious by this point that he didn�t even stir as I got up and turned him around in my arms, and laid him down on the bed. Once he was down on his back, his breathing sounded so clattery and awful that I turned him onto his side so he wouldn�t have so much going down his throat. He didn�t even stir. Neil put the stinky stuff near him (but out of reach) and we retreated. He has coughed and stirred and even started to cry several times this evening since, but each time we get to him and he�s already asleep again. I think he is just so exhausted, the poor thing. It�s now 11.23pm and he has been asleep since about 7.40.
Here are a couple of photos of my poor boy, the first one taken yesterday and the second one this morning. He is so much worse this evening, and I guess tomorrow could be a pretty gunky day too, but after that I hope he will at least start to FEEL better, even if his gunk levels stay high for a while yet. Colds are so horrid. Arthur is so precious. It just feels so awful to see him unwell. Here is my poorly boy:
I think that is basically all that has happened since I last wrote. Everything has been dominated by Arthur being unwell, and having no sleep and how I feel about my little one. Neil has been home this afternoon as we were going to go up to Yorkshire to see his parents over the weekend (spur of the moment) because it is his mum�s 60th birthday on Sunday. But we can�t go with Arthur ill, so he worked half the day and came home the other half to help with Arthur. He is wonderful. There is noooo way that either of us has escaped being exposed to this cold. I see now why it�s almost impossible for parents to miss bugs and colds when they have tiny ones who are sick with them! If they are sick, it goes everywhere. If they have colds, every five minutes you are bathed in a fine mist spray of viral particles! I have felt under the weather yesterday and part of today, just yucky with an odd throat, and like I am coming down with something. But I have prayed about it, and taken extra vitamin C, and just kept going really. This morning my yucky feelings started to fade out, and I haven�t felt unwell since, so hopefully I have fought it off.
One thing I feel blessed about through this is my milk. For Arthur, these last couple of days, my milk has been nourishment, extra fluids, comfort, throat soother, gunk diluter, and most importantly, anti-viral medicine specific to Arthur�s cold. I love this about breastfeeding. I hope that it means Arthur has suffered less than if I had not been nursing him, although he has suffered quite badly anyway, and I hope that he will recover quickly now. Either way he has been getting �medicine milk�, and I am especially glad that I have been fighting the virus myself because I�ll be making a good bug-buster to go in his snacks and meals! When I wish I could do more than just soothe him, this comes the closest to that, but it still doesn�t feel like enough. Still, I am so grateful for breastfeeding. Once or twice I found it difficult that my milk came down so fast and free, because he had such a full tummy and only wanted to suck for comfort, but down came lots of milk and he had to take it into his poor tummy if he wanted to stay sucking for comfort, which I was kind of irked about. I get a second heavy let-down after each 5 or 10 minutes that he is nursing so when he wants to suck for say 30 minutes just for comfort till he is asleep, it means he has 3 occasions or so where he is forced to gulp down milk that he doesn�t want or need. I thought about taking him off the breast to let that milk go in a towel or something, but he was unhappy to come off the breast so I let him stay. I guess in hindsight, because it did stay down, he probably did better for the extra milk, with it being fluids and immune boosters, etc. But other than that one quirk, all the milk is a wonderful blessing that I am thankful for!
Arthur is still asleep, though he has been coughing a few minutes ago, and I think I will finish this up and join him. I have been sleeping next to him. He likes to be physically in contact with me the moment he needs to be, so if I�m right there, he can choose to roll away and sleep as normal, or roll into my body and have his mummy-contact that he needs right now. I cherish it. It takes the edge off the awful feelings that I can�t do much for him like I wish I could, while he�s ill. But I don�t get much sleep!
Okay, I�ll write again soon, I hope! Thank you for wishing Arthur a happy 7-month birthday! And I am not an auntie yet, Jemma - it is driving me crazy with anticipation!! I know it must be soon. Rosemary�s due date is today! I will let you know as soon as I find out, of course! :) Thanks again everyone, for the lovely support you gave me! xxx
Aaaaaaaaargh, darn stupid Diaryland is busy all the time and won�t let me update!!!! But I have to go to bed. What will I do? I really want to post this tonight. I think I will leave the computer on till Arthur�s nappy change in the middle of the night, and see if I can just click a button and copy/paste it in to post it then. I don�t really want to wait till tomorrow. Tsk. And I have gold membership still at alicesbaby! How frustrating! I could update there if it was the right diary. Stoopid darn Diaryland!! Hope you are reading this shortly after I write it, and not the next day!
Well, obviously this IS the next day! Just wanted to add that Arthur slept SIX HOURS from 7.40pm to 1.40am last night!! He stirred and coughed a lot in his sleep but never actually woke properly or needed our help to resettle. I don�t know if this is just because he�s ill though, and thus zonked. Around 2am we changed his nappy, and I fed him. He was super-hungry. My breasts were like rocks too! The milk came down so fast and he drank so much that he seemed uncomfortable after that. We put new Karvol on his tissue thingy but he was so thick and snotty in his nose that he couldn�t breathe or swallow or sleep. Poor love, he tried and tried to sleep, putting his little body in all his favourite sleepy positions. He seemed more and more uncomfortable until finally he threw up hugely, real vomiting. He was face down on the bed when it started, and I picked him up quick (I was sitting there right next to him with my hand on him) and sat him up on my lap. Neil was there with a big towel and managed to catch the rest of the puke in it. He really did puke. I never saw so much come out of him before! I felt so bad for him, because he must have been feeling sick before that happened. He was happier and clearer in his nose afterwards though. I think he had a tummy half-full of goo and then overstuffed with milk. I�m glad he got rid of the mucusy yuck though. It took us a while to clean up and change the bed again. He went back to sleep around 4am and then woke at 5.50am, when I fed him again and he coughed till he threw up on the bed once more. Not a lot this time though, but enough to need to change everything again. His cough is quite bad now.
This morning he looks poorly with puffy eyes and like he�s been unwell for a few days. He has a snotty nose but it�s better than during the night. He is much more smiley this morning than he has been for a few days, so I�m presuming he feels a little better today. I was hoping he would start feeling less ill soon, so that�s good! He is napping at the moment, his second morning nap so far. He seems to need extra sleep while he�s sick. My poor baby. I just hope he is better soon.
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