warning: a little grumbling

Well I've been having more and more contractions (crampy feeling) and bad back pain. I feel them everyday and sometimes so bad that I can't do anything but deal with the pain. After some research on it however I'm probably only in pre-labor or false labor. Which absolutely sucks because it can last for weeks on end. It's really tiring to be in this much pain all the time but not really get anywhere with it. I don't necessarily want the baby to come this early. Some people have heard me say that I want a "fat baby". Meaning I want a chubby little boy! Right now if he was born he'd only be about 7 lbs and that isn't exactly plump. So if you can pray that either the pains lighten up or that I go into labor. I told Russell I don't know how much more I can stand of it.

In the mean time I have been thinking about all the stuff I want to get done before the baby comes. Here is list

1. pack hospital bag
2. buy candies/ cookies for the nurses at the hospital
3. buy MOPS stuff for craft in December
4. make sure all laundry is done
5. grocery shop and get quick meals in the freezer
6. Clean and reorganize bedroom closet, bathroom closet, and computer desk (bc I'm never going to have time to do it when the baby comes)
7. finish baby shower thank you cards
8. paint the white cord holder blue in the babies room

The problem with this to-do list is that I'm completely exhausted and can't get very far on one task to complete it. Plus Russ has been working 12 plus hour days, which means I have to take care of an interesting rambunctious 2 year old. Oh well....

I'm sooo, just, ready!

This is probably really bad of me, but I am sooo ready to be gone tomorrow. People who don't know, I'm going on a women's retreat with my church for the weekend, starting tomorrow. It's my first time that I have been really away from the baby since she has been born. And I'm totally acting bipolar about it. One second I can't wait to have the freedom, the release of having someone constantly dependent on you. If I hear quiet in the background I don't have to have a sunken feeling that something wrong happened. On the other hand I'm going to really miss Penelope. I know me. And I'm totally a sappy mom. By saturday morning I'll be crying on the phone as I hear her voice. (I'm still totally staying till Sunday, hey, with how I feel right now, I'm ready to leave now and not come back for a while!) I guess it's just the pressure of it all that gets to you after a while. The pressure of being a working mother, trying desperately to make sure you are stimulating your daughter enough, but also keeping her occupied so that you can get stuff done. And then the occasional quick nap because she is going to wake up from hers soon and it's your only chance. Russell sensing my attitude when he got home sent me upstairs to pack. But really right now I'm just decompressing on my blog. **Sigh**

Thank God for our women's director who must have truely heard from God. Because nothing sounds better than to just abide in Jesus. Nothing.

Although it's been said many times, many ways, "Merry Christmas to you"

I just want to wish Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope everyone has a memorable Christmas this year. I pray that your Christmas is filled with family, togetherness, joyfulness, blessedness, and remembrance of what this season is all about.

Russell and I will be leaving first thing in the morning to Nevada to visit my Grandparents for Christmas. It will be great visiting with them all again. My sister and her husband went out there today. Pray for a memorable Christmas time, safe journey, and a well behaved child.

I'll sum up my day today by this little story. I was at my wits end with Penelope. She has been unexplainable fussy all day long. By the time I made it home from finally getting out the door to do my last minute errands Russell was incharge of Penelope until she went to bed. Seeing how I got home at 6 pm and she is now going to bed at 7:30, it isn't too bad. After ten minutes of me being upstairs packing for the baby while he feed her dinner down stairs, Russell proceeded to tell me, "She is being incredibly annoying right now.".....Your telling me.

So pray for a well tempered baby tomorrow during a trek out of town.

foggy head

I have a headache and it's leaving me kinda bla and foggy headed. I don't like taking medicine for a headache I usually like to figure out what is causing it. Maybe I'm hungry. I just tried eating, with a less then fullfilling lunch, and that didn't help. Maybe I need sleep. Have I been drinking too much coffee lately? Am I going through coffee withdraws? I've been working on my christmas decorations since monday. And I really want to get it done so I can get 10 other things done off my list. Maybe it's that? Oh well.....maybe I should just take tylenol this time....

I'm totally decorating my house this year. At least I felt up to the challenge on Monday. Right now I still have to hang garland over the windows in the bedrooms. Get out the nativity scene and the little village. Get out some of the big figurines from underneath my mother-in-laws house. And geeze after all that is done. I seriously have to vaccuum my house. Then figure out what is for dinner. Here are glimpse of what I have so far...

The top of the Christmas tree.




the tree. I'll have to take another picture when night falls. You might be able to see all the details better. I'll be sure to take pictures of the whole house once it is all up. I do love Christmas, I just want my headache gone. Maybe chocolate would help?

the continued dilemma

Anyone who was around during my pregnancy and my work dilemma knows that I was very close to leaving UCLA. But I stayed because I had my health insurance through them. When I had the baby we took the opportunity and switched the health insurance to Russell's work, so that I could switch jobs if need. When I was on maternity leave I went back and forth on where I was going to go when I went back to work. (Previous to maternity leave I worked at UCLA and Torrance Memorial.) I liked Torrance Memorial but it just wasn't challenging at all. And I knew it would be a temporary job, not a job I would be happy at. But I was going to go there for my little baby. Torrance Memorial had previously stated that they were going to hire me on full-time after maternity leave. But after a rush of applications during my 5 month leave they didn't have a position open. So I went back to UCLA hoping that the same problems wouldn't happen as during my pregnancy. After about a month stuff started surfacing. But I have stated to everyone that I am staying here till I'm done breastfeeding.

Part of me about a month ago was happy about staying at UCLA. I didn't let having a family change my career. I am becoming a great seasoned nurse.

I felt and still feel that it would be too strong of odds against me to learn a new place and take 20 minute breaks every 3 hours. But a couple of things have happened, first leaving my daughter so darn early in the morning and not getting home till 9:30 at night is just not fun. Nursing is already a long day and I'm tacking on an additional 3 hours. I hold my daughter in my arms and wish I didn't have to let her go. Also I was reflecting to a friend-co worker the other day on all that has happened and went down and how they are regulating my breaks for breastfeeding. And how I had to come into work and fight for the little time I have and show them California laws. And just hear them respond, "you don't want to make yourself look different. People don't like that." It furiates me. (I just found out furiates isn't a word, but you get the point.) People that work the night shift don't have a problem. But they say it is because the unit is more busy during the day. Then slowly people have started coming back to work from maternity leave. (There was 9 of us pregnant.) And some come back on days but only work part-time and no one questions them about their time they take. Part of me wants to say "hey!" but I think that would just give them less time and more hardship pumping and that wouldn't be beneficial to anyone.

So here I am. I got another 6 months of breastfeeding, if I can in this environment. And Russell and I are planning vacations as late as October and if I switch jobs I might not get the time off for vacations. But October seems so far away. I don't want to stay at UCLA now let alone next October.

my eye.......ugh

Well here is a little update. By sunday it got worse so I went back to the doctors and they said I have subconjunctival hemorrhage and blepharitis. Which basically means I'm bleeding in my eye and my eyelids are inflammed because of infection. It's not contagious at all. I never had viral conjuctivitis, it was a misdiagnosis. But my eye still looks bad. It looks like someone hit me in my eye.

Keep me in prayer. I've looked it up and the blepharitis says it can recure. And the hemorrhage can take 2 weeks to clear up.....ugh!

I have the eye from the hunched back of Norte Dame

Yep. Yesterday I fouond out I have viral conguctivitis at the urgent care. And today despite introducing medication my eye looks like the eye of the hunched back of Norte Dame. I hope it gets better soon. My eye is almost completely swollen shut and i can't see that well out of it. I hope my alignment isn't off with only seeing through my right eye. It's contagious so I bought all sorts of purell and chlorox wipes yesterday....I can't give it to the baby. Which is pretty hard because my eye seems to tear every 5 minutes. So every 5 minutes I wipe it with a tissue and put on more purell.

So pray for my eye :( I don't want to feel like a freak very long.

Waaaaaaah!

I'm sad. I just had to dump almost 6 - 5 oz bottles of pumped breastmilk because I didn't bag it and freeze it quick enough. All that hard work.....

: (

Sleep and clean in the mommy world?

I'll be short and sweet on this thing. But I just want to say it, because I don't get it. In the book I'm reading it talks about "Mommy Guilt". It states you need to sleep when the baby sleeps--and that is okay. But then I also hear from people that you got to clean your house when the baby sleeps, because when else can you do it. If you don't vacuum when the babies awake and you don't vacuum when the babies asleep, when do you? I get it. I'm tired. I want to sleep. But I also want my house to be clean. And since I started working spending one night staying up to the crack of dawn isn't working. So when do I clean? When she is awake I want to spend time with her because I'm away from her for 3 full days a week. But I do vacuum when she's awake because it's easier to find time to just put her in the swing and vacuum real quick then to get her asleep enough and hope it doesn't wake her up.

So to all the mommy's out there. I don't want to hear both. I want to hear the answer--which one is it?

Booby in the lead :)

Well Penelope's thrush is not gone...nope it isn't gone after ALL that we have done and over a 7 day treatment with Nystatin. So Doctor mom is giving her Gentian Violet (an old remedy). So tonight (Thursday night) we are doing day 2 of treatment. I really hope it helps her. But I have been able to breast feed her again, a little. Today, however, she has been a little fussy. So pray that it gets better soon.

B & B continued...

In the previous post I mentioned that a side effect of the baby having thrush is that she has pain during latching on and can be rather fussy and pulls off frequently. The problem is that we haven't been able to do a single feeding today without having to end the feeding with just giving her my pumped breast milk in a bottle. I find it hard to give myself the excuse to cause her more pain just so that I can feed her by the breast instead of the bottle. So starting tonight I plan on giving her the bottle of my milk instead of the breast. I'm a little worried about that, first I am scared that it will be hard for me to feed her and pump to maintain my supply every three hours by myself. It was quiet hard when I was only doing it once a day to start my supply. So depending on how long this might have to go on I'm worried about drying out. The other problem is that she might have additional reasons for not wanting me. She might have nipple confusion--where they realize it is easier to feed off a bottle and don't want to work at expressing milk from the breast. If that is the case there isn't going to be any turning back. This will be the last time that I would have naturally breastfeed my little girl. I really tried to do everything right, at the right time, so it saddens me to think this--that she might not want mommy anymore.

In it all, I can't excuse myself to cause her pain because of my set backs. Her being feed is not about me; it's about her. She needs what is best for her, and she needs to be as comfortable as possible. She doesn't need me to give her more pain due to my insecurities. Plus I think of two very encouraging sayings. One: Worry is just a payment for a debt you do not owe. And the Second: The opposite of worry is prayer. So, God knows my heart. He knows what is best. I'll let Him handle it, because He surely can.

Just Say No

Well in the grand scheam of things I am really blessed to have such a great little daughter. However in looking back at everything I have had a little bit of a problem that seems to be coming up consistently. During my labor I had internal monitoring. Basically they attached a probe to her head to monitor her heart rate and my contractions. The reason they did this was that they were not getting accurate contractions on the monitor. Though it did help in looking closer at her because I had meconium in my water (when my water broke there was evidence that she pooped inside). She was born on a Thursday night and I was discharged on Saturday with her from the hospital. By Monday I had noticed a bump on the back side of her head, about the size of a big pimple on my face. And I scheduled a normal wellness doctors appointment for Wednesday. By Wednesday, right before the doctors appointment, I noticed the bump developed a white head. The doctor ruled that it was an abcess infection. And we started on 10 days of Keflex (Cephalosporin) antibiotics three times a day. We also had to apply hot compresses to the area for 10 minutes every 3-4 hours. This got a little tiring especially in the middle of the night. She did really well and the infection cleared up without her ever developing a fever, or getting really sick.

However, about two weeks after finishing the antibiotics I noticed she was getting white patches on the inside of her cheeks. This is thrush, kind of like a yeast infection that is inside the mouth from antibiotics that kill both the bad bacteria and the good bacteria. I called her Pediatrician and she recommended that I just keep an eye on it for a couple of days and see if it goes away on its own before we get started on more medicine. This is where I became a bad mom. : ( The thing is as a nurse, I should have known better. The white spots stayed the same. I looked at her tounge, her gums, the roof of her mouth. But I didn't see the same white spots. I did start noticing the roof of her mouth started getting generally whiter. She did seem gassier. And near the end she was starting to get really fussy nursing. Oh, and this whole time she has had a horrible diaper rash that dispite everything I could think of was not going away (bathing her almost every day, giving her naked time, putting tons of diaper cream on, changing diaper very frequently). However, I let it go for a whole week before a friend recommended I read a site called www.kellymom.com. Where I read the symptoms of thrush with a baby: diaper rash that does not respond to typical rash ointments; creamy white patches that cannot be wiped off on the inside of the mouth, along the inside of the gums, inside of the cheeks, roof of mouth, throat, or tongue; a shiny or "mother of pearl" look on the inside of the mouth
breast refusal, pulling off breast, or a reluctance to nurse due to mouth soreness
repeated clicking during nursing; excessive gassiness due to the yeast's invasion of the gut. She had all the symptoms except the clcking during nursing. At this point I looked at my daughter who was whimpering during her sleep due to the discomfort and felt horrible. She looked like such a pretty healthy little girl, I really didn't want to admit she was sick with yet something else.

So now we have 4 different treatments we are giving her bottom, have her in cloth diapers at night, and giving her hydrogen peroxide mixture and nystatin swabs in her mouth. Oh and plus I got to treat my nipples with cream, and steralize every thing that goes in her mouth every day to not spread the infection. Bottom line just say no to internal monitoring if it is not completely necessary. I know I am sure going to next time. Only 3-5% of the population develop an infection like Penelope did from the monitor, but this is way too frustrating. Don't do it unless it is required, ,just say no.

Farwell to Mini Club

Well I had to say farwell today. If anyone told me it was going to happen I probably wouldn't have believed them. A little bit of history for those who don't know. I owned a 2005 Mini Cooper S. I purchased it as a graduation present to myself for getting through nursing school. It was a great car, but it represented something greater. I had always tried to live life practical and this car stood for everything unpractical, it was just pure fun! I thought it was just practical enough to be able to get by.

But today I had a baby seat installation appointment at the local CHP office and when the baby seat was properly installed in the Mini Cooper it was a hazard to the child. Since it is two door, the front passanger seat had to be folded forward to install the seat. When the seat was properly installed, the passanger seat didn't have enough room to click back into place. And it wouldn't lock forward either. So it was there just to bouce back and forth depending if you hit the breaks or if you got into an accident. It would just fly into the baby seat and hit the baby if there were problems driving. Well we need both of our cars to be functional. So that means we had to get rid of the mini. :(

Russell and I left the CHP office and went looking for a car to get. I didn't really expect to get one today, but I knew we had to get one soon. The baby is coming anyday and it is only going to be harder when the baby is here to spend all day at a dealership. After a little bit of time we found a pretty nice car. (Completely practical, but cute.) We got a 2007 Toyota Prius. It's a soft green hybrid vehicle. It's really neat looking, gets great gas milage, is a four door with lots of room, and has lots of other cool functions.

So here I am saying, "so long" to my mini club and hello to a new me. I guess my new nitch. I am shaping to be a green San Pedrian mom driving a hybrid.

Things I would like

Things I would like to do but can't:

1. have a clean house automatically (man I miss Lindsay)
2. stand at the beach with my feet in the water and the ocean breeze through my hair
3. not have to worry about being on my feet for too long, and when I am have have my feet not feel like sausages
4. just go walking, to just walk, just because I can't right now
5. no more heartburn, man, what I would do for no more heartburn

Okay I'm over complaining now and feeling sorry for myself. Sorry you guys had to hear that. But I love my baby and I wouldn't want anything else as long as in the end I have her and she is full term, healthy little girl.