Virgo and Aries Life Journeys

This morning was an interesting start. Isabella had a really nice night and didn’t get up til Alice started walking around in the late morning. Our floors creak real bad so its hard not to tippy toe anywhere. I get up much later and take Momo out. I walk around the back and pass the pool. Momo was first to see and perked like those hunting dogs. I get closer and see that there is this duck with her ducklings. At first I see the mom get out of the pool thinking that its trying to move away from me. But to my surprise, none of the ducklings could get out. I couldn’t figure why would the duck lead the ducklings to somewhere it couldn’t get out of. I go finish walking Momo and came back an hour later thinking they must have gotten out by now. Nope, they were still stuck.
I went back to the garage and pulled out some left over baseboard that I had from the reno of the townehouse. At first I put it next to the shallow end thinking it would only be logical. Nope, mama duck gets out from the middle and the ducklings were again stranded. I placed the baseboard on the other side thinking it was a safer edge to come out from. I walked around the pool and led them there but to my surprise the ducklings kept going under the board. Finally I turned the board so that it was in their path and what do you know, they walked up right out of the pool. I was feeling proud of myself for saving ducklings but guess what? They started heading toward the street.
So we live fairly close to a 6 lane road (plus turn lanes). So I totally felt responsible because I got them out of the pool from one danger heading into another. So I put the baseboard back and followed them about a block behind. When they got to the intersection I quickly hit the crosswalk signal and proceeded to stop traffic on their behalf. I’m sure the far side of the traffic would have never seen them and inevitably run over them. 45 MPH doesn’t give you ample time to brake if other cars block your view. In any case. they safely crossed and I turned around so that I could get back to work. Hope those ducks make it ok.

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Ok, we now know this was NOT a fluke. Isabella did a whole 180 degree in her crib overnight. It must have been right before morning because I usually glance at the monitor some time around 4AM just to make sure she isn’t out of her SwaddleMe, which has by the way been futile. The first time it happened, Alice had picked her up and thought I had put her in her crib that way… which I didn’t but then thought, I must have been really tired… I couldn’t have been that sleepy?

It’s interesting how she’s growing up and doing unexpected things. For right now we are just waiting for her to turn over on her own. She somewhat did it with us inciting her. But now she just doesn’t want to do anything but lay on her back.

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Man… We had told each other that we wouldn’t be caught up on milestones but how can you not get excited when your baby rolls over the first time? Actually I felt proud and worried at the same time. We can put her on her stomach at night but now we can’t leave her for a few seconds to – grab a diaper, to brush your teeth, grab a snack… or anything! Well, for the most part she’s on the floor but still, once she crawls it’s all over. Time to baby proof the house. Yeah, yeah, I was suppose to do that 6 months ago.

Another thing is that about a week ago we noticed she could sleep without ANY of her night feedings. She woke up around midnight a couple of times but quickly feel asleep until 4am. Now, she’s been waking up between 4 and 6. Luck for us that she likes sleeping (just like dad).

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I don’t know if its just habit for parents to take funny pictures now days but I try and snap away as much as I can. Alice loves to play dress up and take pictures of her in her new outfits. I try to take the journalistic photos… live action. So ironically I was just standing above her taking some shots as she was squirming around and found a couple of shots where it looks like she’s doing jumping jacks or snow angels while laying down. Kinda funny when you flip back and forth real fast. Yeah, we had a good chuckle at the expense of Isabella’s pride. I’m sure she’ll hate us later if this is still around.

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Oh man, Isabella when in for her checkup and shots. We talked to our doc about her reflux and while I thought it was an improvement, we couldn’t definitively determine if the Zantac or Colic Calm or just getting use to strange people was causing her to fuss so much. Seriously, I think it was the Zantac that helped because I occasionally gave the Colic Calm. I also gradually reduced the dose because by now, any damage to her esophagus would have been healed by now. So she’s at quarter dose and doing fine. Hopefully
she can be completely off by next week.
She was doing extremely well because she was past due for a nap and coming close to her afternoon feed. So when she got the shots, we were happy that she quickly calmed down after we soothed her. Probably the drowsiness was kicking in because she was knocked out as soon as we were driving away.

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Well, we are quickly realizing that our own birthdays are starting to fade away and all the focus is turning to Isabella’s milestones. “Oh, what? its your birthday today?” Actually Alice made sure her birthday was coming up almost 2 weeks ago. I would say that she would mention it almost every other day. “You know a very important day is coming up, right?” I would respond, “Yeah, Isabella is gonna be 4 months!” or “That’s right our taxes are due and we need to send them away” or “That’s right, we have to lead bible study this week”. Of course she looked at me like daggers were coming out. Well, I managed to scramble around to get a cupcake theme birthday. Flowers in a shape of cupcake and actual cupcake. Couldn’t get the cupcake charm because I didn’t have time but I did get her LV which I somehow managed to screw up (sort of).

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Isabella actually held her bottle for the first time. Granted it wasn’t for the whole feeding but for most of it. Her attention shifted to other bodily functions and of course the bottle drifted right off. Oh well, not quite there yet.

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So I didn’t realize there was this thing called silent reflux until after we tried the CIO. There was NO way that Isabella would cry for over 3 hours each night. I also noticed a few things like little milk curdles after she eats, or her getting really fussy after she eats or crying the instant you put her on her back. Other things like drooling until the whole bib was like it came out of the wash or hiccups almost everyday or having a difficult time burping or giving wet burps or being colicky was something “common” in babies. Well, it seems more and more that those poor babies that were diagnosed as colicky may in fact had some form of reflux. Isabella was no exception. She seemed to be a lot happier when we had her upright the whole time. What was interesting is that we gave her gripe water which helps with upset stomach and gas. It did help but not very effective because Isabella hates the taste and spat most of it out.
I wonder if there is anything like Maalox that can coat the esophagus so that if there was reflux it wouldn’t be so painful.

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Well this will be our second attempt at doing “cry it out”. The first time we just didn’t have the heart to continue past an hour and she had to be changed. Ironically after the change she fell asleep. Apparently the method was to put the baby down when (s)he is drowsy or just fell asleep. When they cry, come in after 5 mins and soothe them to sleep without picking them up and not lingering around for more than a minute. Then come back 10 mins later after which her cry is an angry one. Soothe no more than a minute and not picking them up. Come back again 15 mins later when they are hysterically crying their lungs out, soothe no more than a minute and come back every 15 mins until they self-soothe. Uh… we had the hysterical cry throughout the whole process. Of course we had to finally pick her up because her diaper needed changing. We learned our lesson not to let the baby sit in their own poo. As soon as you hear it, change it. Otherwise you have diaper rash and that is another spell of hysterical crying all night. Anyways, we tried this for 3 nights with no luck and the weekend is gone. No more nights to CIO any more.

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Ok, its almost a week after my recovery and I’m not feeling great but definitely nothing like before the appendicitis. Apparently my fall had aggravated my appendix and I didn’t take it easy the following day. I worked, washed Momo, did grocery shopping, some house stuff, all the while my stomach was feeling sore as the day progressed. That night I took the horse pill of Ibuprofen and thought that should take the edge off. Well a couple of hours later, I was having a fever and shaking like I was in my birthday suit in Maine in the middle of winter. It was those shakes that you couldn’t hold a cup of water without spilling every last drop out of the cup. It was that bad. Scared me enough thinking, this isn’t right. I NEED TO GO TO THE ER! Of course at 2AM, telling Alice while she was half asleep, gave me a puzzled look as if she thought I was talking in my sleep. I think it took her a full minute to realize I was actually serious. Luckily Alice’s mom is here and was able to care for Isabella while Alice took me to the ER. I think I was there for an hour before a doctor actually saw me. Of course the whole time I’m grunting on the gurney and people walking by thought I was either constipated or delivering a baby. After a doctor saw me, they finally pumped some drugs into me… enough for me to relax. I even kick Alice out and told her to go home so she can care for Isabella. Funny thing was I texted her a couple hours later saying that I’m going into surgery. She responded – WHAT?!?
They rolled me into the OR later that afternoon because there were no slots in the morning. All I remember was a guy telling me to scoot over. I didn’t even make it to the count down part. Pathetic I know but hey, I don’t want to feel ANYTHING. Of course I was paying for it later because I was groggy as all hell and people where trying to wake me up. I wanted to sit up only to cough but apparently they took that as a bed that could be free. I REALLY wanted to lay back down because I was really nauseous. They gave me more drugs and kicked me out of the hospital. Uh, ok, really?
Well guess what, my liver was not happy at all with all those drugs and I had a fever/chills/night sweats from it. I’m gonna get blood drawn again to see what the liver enzymes levels are. Hopefully they are going to normal. We’ll see. Fun week eh?

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