Category: Motherhood and Pregnancy

Hardly anyone called Blythe a boy today.  Might it have been the pink bow in her hair, the dainty pearl earrings in her ears, or the pink flowers on her clothes?  Perhaps.

As of today she weighs 21 pounds and is in excellent health.  We’ve had Kaiser since a few months before she was born, and we just FINALLY switched back to our regular (awesome, terrific, insert all similar words here) doctor.  He is being PROACTIVE about the allergic-to-her-own-poo problem that the Kaiser doctors chose to ignore.  Not only does he support my decision to postpone any more immunizations (whereas Kaiser was up my butt constantly trying to get me to let them poke her again) he REFUSES to vaccinate, until she sees a pediatric allergist.  This is the kind of care everyone deserves, people.  I stopped short of kissing his feet, but barely.

I was doing so well there for a bit, updating my blog every few days.  And then every person in this house got sick (and possibly even the cats, they do seem to have left a few more vomit piles for me to step in lately). 

How many illnesses can co-exist in the same household at the same time?  I don’t know the answer to that, but it seems to be quite a few.  Luckily there has been no FLU, and no VOMIT (other than the cats) and for that I am grateful. 

Although, Alison is still keeping me informed about the consistency of her poo (“not wet” for a few days, hooray).  But oh, to have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.  It makes me pine for the days when Blythe predictably woke to nurse 2-3 times per night, and then immediately returned to sleep.  Rather than wake up coughing, and decide that it’s time to PLAY for 2 HOURS and scream BLOODY MURDER if I leave the room. 

But, to her credit, in the past few weeks she has been plagued by one ailment after another.  First, she caught a cold from her sister.  No surprise there, Alison is in preschool where snot abounds, and she has no concept of “personal space” when it comes to Blythe.  That turned into bronchitis, which was accompanied by an ear infection.  Shortly thereafter came a horrible cold (which I’m pretty sure we all caught from someone claiming “allergies”) followed by some nasty cough, much worse than the bronchitis, followed by 4 teeth in 3 days, which coincided with a NEW COLD, which apparently involved a really ITCHY nose, which caused her to rub SNOT INTO HER EYES which caused her to have conjunctivitis (fancy word, meaning: pink eye). 

The cure for the pink eye was special antibiotic eye drops, and here are the instructions:
Two drops in each eye, four times per day, for seven days.   For best results, place one drop in each eye, wait a moment, and repeat.

What, an infant is going to allow you to drip things into her eyes and then let you wait a moment, and repeat?  Four times a day, for seven days?  I can’t even get her to stay on her back long enough to wipe her butt, much less put a bunch of drops in her eyes.  She has become such a pro at squeezing her eyes shut, she’s started doing it for fun throughout the day.

                                                            
Blythe loves food.  Not in a “Sure, I’ll have some of that” way, but in a “Gimme that now, or the monkey gets it” sort of way.  For a while she was satisfied with pureed vegetables, beans or whatever.  As long as she got to have something put in her mouth with a spoon, like the rest of us, she was happy.  But now she’s had a taste of the good stuff, grown folks food.  Little pieces of what we’re having can’t be eaten fast enough, so these days I just put it in the food mill for a minute and plop it on her tray.  Her eyes get big, her hands shake, and she shoves as many handfuls into her mouth as possible.  When finished, she leans back in her chair, covered in slop, and has a look on her face that can only say, “Mmmmm, gooooooood.  Me want more.”    Her favorite, so far, is chicken and dumplings followed closely by last night’s dinner, fettuccine primavera.  Alison prefers hers without sauce, but Blythe is all about the creamy tastiness.  And yes, she actually sneezed fettuccine later.

Blythe is a nipple biter.  Not just an occasional biter, but an all the time, every time biter.  She’ll bite till I bleed.  She’ll bite so that I have to ram a finger into her mouth to pry her jaws apart.  Telling her “no” (like the books say) just makes her laugh and do it again.
It was getting painful, so for the past couple of months I’ve been pumping every 3 hours and giving her a bottle.  I’ve learned how to do just about everything while pumping.  In fact, I’m pumping right now!  It’s going really well, although she does wake to nurse at least once in the night.  Half-asleep Blythe bites less often than fully-alert Blythe, apparently.
But oh, my poor nipples.  The pump sucks them out so far, so often, that they are starting to stay that way.  Formula is a lost cause (she can detect even a sprinkle of it in her food), so I’ve got at least another 4 months of this battery-operated suction action.  Here I am with these big ol’ stretched out, scabby nips.  Maybe band-aids will push them back in?