What a Life!

…by the flu. The kind where you’re in the bathroom every twenty minutes either with diarhea or vomiting. Fun.

Steve complained about not feeling well at halftime of the Nebraska game Monday (around noon). He said his first trip to the bathroom was during the last play of the game because he was still with it enough to turn on the radio in the bathroom so he could listen to the play. And no, he doesn’t normally get this upset over Nebraska losses so you can’t blame it on the game.

He spent the afternoon making trips to the bathroom while Ben and I messed around. Shortly before five o’clock, I decided to have mercy on him and go get him some Gatorade. When I got back, Ben was climbing the steps and leaving puddles of vomit on them.

I cleaned up his vomit and decided I’d better go get medicine before I got sick. The drugstore in town was closed so I headed into Lincoln. The roads were icy, and I ran a few stopsigns due to fear of getting stuck in corner-slush. I got some Pepto and Emetrol and headed home.

I had felt a bit nauseous when I had gotten up that morning, but had tried to ward it off by eating and such. But when I got home from the drugstore, I went to the bathroom and it was like the plug of an oil pan had been pulled – my insides just started draining out of me.

I started taking doses of Pepto in hopes of at least minimizing the agony. I called the doctor to see what I could give Ben (Pepto has all these warnings on the side of the bottle about Reyes syndrome in children under the age of twelve). He said it was some viral gastro-blah-blah-blah that was going around, but it hadn’t been in circulation long enough yet for him to have any idea how long it typically lasted. I told him Steve was trying to drink Gatorade but it was just coming right back up. He said to drink it in sips – a couple teaspoons every fifteen minutes – and he might have better luck.

He said not to give Ben anything unless he really needed it. Believe me, trying to get a three-year-old to throw up and not make a huge mess in doing it is enough to ask of a parent who is sick herself/himself. And a pan to vomit in? We couldn’t even get him to use that. I tried to get him to put his face in a towel, but that didn’t really work either. Eventually we just gave up and cleaned up after him. We did make him come upstairs where we have wood floors which are easier to clean.

I asked the doctor how it might affect our ten-week-old baby. He asked me if I was breastfeeding. I told him yes, and he said I was lucky. He said if Joey did get it, he would probably only throw up once. I told the doctor I was quite accustomed to being vomited on by an infant after our bout with pyloric stenosis three weeks ago. In retrospect, Joey has been spitting up, but I don’t think he ever threw up.

I took three doses of Pepto thirty minutes apart, and immediately after the third dose, I threw up. So Steve, Ben and I were all sick at the same time. We brought in the old crib mattress from the porch for Ben to lie down on and I brought a blanket up from downstairs. He laid down on that and went to sleep finally. I went to bed with Joey a short while later. Usually he nurses for a few minutes and falls asleep – this evening, he nursed for an hour and a half before he finally fell asleep.

I got up at eleven-something and watched Oklahoma get beat in overtime. Steve and I were sipping Gatorade and comparing notes on how many sips we’d had in how many minutes. I nursed a dose of Pepto (two tablespoons) over the course of a half hour. I went back to bed.

I was back up again at three. I managed to drink a glass of Gatorade over the course of an hour and keep it down. Ben was awake and desperately wanted to drink. Try explaining to a three-year-old that if he drinks too much too fast he will just throw up again. He cried for an hour while we tried to just give him a few sips at a time. Finally we all went back to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, we were out of Gatorade. I called Steve’s mom to see if she would bring us some and leave it on the porch. She only has a cell phone right now and she always turns it off. I left the message around 7:30 and she finally called back around 8:00. I told her we needed five 64-ounce bottles of Gatorade and some ice. I explained the situation and she asked if we needed posicles and other stuff. So she said she would go get us some things.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, just before ten o’clock, she arrived. She brought ice, one gallon of Gatorade, chicken broth, Ginger ale and popsicles.

Ben was feeling better – unfortunately. We knew he was feeling better because he was back to his evil self. I told Steve I almost wished he was still sick so he would just sleep. He had some diarhea during the day, but seems to be pretty much over it at this point.

My eyes felt like they had sand in them, and my entire body just ached like something awful. I wasn’t making those trips to the bathroom anymore, but I was just exhausted. We watched President Ford’s funeral, and when the airplane took off for Michigan, I took Joey and went to take a nap.

I woke up around 4:30 and felt a lot better. I made Chicken Noddle Soup for supper with the broth. Steve tried to eat some of it but wasn’t able to. He was still sipping Gatorade (which we were rationing since we only got half as much as I’d asked for) and nibbling on soda crackers. I think he got hit with it the worst. He just walked by as I was typing and said he’s still making trips to the bathroom, though he doesn’t seem to be throwing up anymore.

Obviously I’m feeling well enough to be typing in my blog. I haven’t done any knitting, though. I did shower yesterday morning, but I didn’t brush my teeth and I think that may be why my teeth – all of my teeth – are extremely sensitive…as in, it hurts to breathe. I should have brushed them after I threw up, but since I don’t throw up every day, I didn’t think about it. Hopefully this morning I can make a run for more Gatorade.

According to Steve’s mom, they had an article about this version of the flu in the paper yesterday. I looked for it online, but didn’t find it (some of the articles don’t make the online version of the paper).

We are not sure who brought it home. Obviously Steve came down with it first and has had it the worst. But none of us have been out of the house since Friday morning when Steve was at work and the boys and I went to playgroup and the grocery store. Steve didn’t get sick until Monday, but Ben and I had it within hours of his first symptoms. Apparently this one spreads to others before you even know you have it.

Hopefully it’s on its way out and we’ll be back to normal again. I so long for normal again. We haven’t had a week of normal since the holidays started. Ugh!

Ah, new year’s resolutions. Every year Steve stays up on New Year’s Eve and waits for the year to turn, and I set New Year’s resolutions (and go to bed when I’m tired, which happens before midnight). Last night was no exception.

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about my New Year’s resolutions over the past month. To me, it’s important not just to set a goal but to have some idea as to how I am going to accomplish the feat. Here are some of my specific goals for the new year:

Exercise. When I was pregnant with Joey, I did yoga and went for a walk five times a week and I felt great (until the third trimester when I had to quit due to my sciatica). I love doing both for the sake of my mental health and for how good they make me feel. I haven’t gotten back into it yet since Joey was born (he’s ten weeks old now).

Part of the problem has been the cold weather – I’m not sure how to dress the boys if I take them with me. Part of the problem is my lack of good workout clothes for cold weather – I just finished a pair of wool mittens for myself and am halfway through knitting a hat out of the same yarn. It’s also hard to leave a baby and not worry that he’ll start crying five minutes after you walk out the door and scream for thirty minutes until you get back regardless of what anyone does for him – we’ve done a couple of test runs and I’m pretty sure when he’ll sleep, so we’re getting past that obstacle too.

I’m thinking I’ll go for my walk in the morning before Steve leaves for work. Joey sleeps well in the morning, and even if he stirs, he usually goes back to sleep. Ben gets up whenever, and Steve can handle him while he gets ready for work. Otherwise I’ll be putting Joey in the sling and Ben in the stroller and going that way, though I doubt we’ll go as far with the added weight. Yesterday we got snow, which puts another wrench into the deal. Even if I walk, I will not be able to walk as quickly, but I shall venture out just the same.

Read good books. Before I had children, I was an avid reader. I still have many of the books I read and enjoyed as well as some I never got to. Since Ben was born, I have read perhaps one or two books. I simply never get around to reading like I used to. I’ve decided that I am going to discipline myself to read ten pages every day. That’s ten minutes every night before I go to bed. I’ve been reading about twenty pages a night five nights a week for the last two weeks, so I should be able to pull this one off. Most of the books I read are around three hundred pages. I have about seventy-five pages left in the book I’m reading, so I’m beginning to ponder which one I shall read next, which is rather exciting.

Take time for myself every day. Before I got pregnant with Joey, I was a member of the Five O’clock Club – meaning that I got up at 5:00 a.m. every morning every day of the week with rare exceptions. I so missed that while I was pregnant, but I was so tired I just physically couldn’t do it. I’ve been doing this again over the past couple of weeks, and it’s been such a pleasure. That’s my quiet uninterrupted time when I can read inspirational/motivational books, plan my life, and think while knitting (I do my best thinking while I’m knitting or exercising). If I had to pick one thing to do for my mental health, it would be getting an hour of personal time every day.

Those are my specific personal goals for the new year. I also have Mary Kay goals, though I won’t bore you with them here. Then I have my theme for the new year – my vague goals which everything else falls under. Here it is:

Work like a dog. Play like a dog. Spend time with my favorite people. That is what I am writing on my goal poster (a mark and wipe board that hangs above my desk).

By the way, I got that motto from Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. Highly recommended. I read it earlier in 2006 and keep it by my knitting because I refer back to it a lot. Another book I’m crazy about right now is Your Best Year Yet which as ten questions that you should ask yourself when evaluating where you have been and where you want to go. I find that it has applications outside of simply life-goal setting as well – I have adapted the questions for use in evaluating personal relationships with a high rate of success. If you are serious about making any personal changes to your life, I highly recommend both of these books.

Cheers!

Yesterday Joey hit the six week milepost. I weighed him last night – he was 11 lb. 11 oz. He was 8 lb. even at birth and they are supposed to double their weight by six months. I think he’s well on his way…

Six weeks is when many women return to work. All I have to say is that in order to do that, you would have to have a completely different mindframe. To be quite honest, I couldn’t even fathom it. He’s so little yet. We haven’t even fallen into a routine yet (though I’ve decided to start writing down when he eats, sleeps and is awake to see if there is any pattern to it yet). And a bottle? I haven’t even tried that yet, though I do want him to take a bottle at some point so I can leave him occasionally for three or four hours. Right now he is sitting on my lap grunting as I type.

I did get some knitting done yesterday, though I cannot say what it is because it was an item on my Christmas gift list. Joey took a four-hour nap in the afternoon, after taking a few short naps in the morning. I’m thinking the afternoons are going to be my time for rest and reflection and knitting. In the morning I will be busy accomplishing as many things as I can. Then I will rest in the afternoon and then be busy in the evening again, if I can.

I went to Milkworks breastfeeding support group last night and Joey was perfectly behaved the entire time. No colic, no crying. Then I got home and took my coat off and the screaming began. Swaddling doesn’t even help. I just hold him and rock him. He’ll scream for two minutes and sleep for one…over and over and over again. Finally we went to bed around 10:00. I always have to swaddle him to get him to go to sleep at night. Swaddling and the darkness and being half-held as he lays beside me seems to be enough to calm him down so he can sleep.

I’d like to start going back to “work” myself and do some Mary Kay. But I don’t feel comfortable leaving Joey in the evenings yet considering all the crying. And I’m not sure that taking him along, even if I wear him in the sling, is the answer either. I think we’ll do some dry runs by going to my weekly Mary Kay meeting and such so I can see how he does. I also need to find someone to give him a bottle for me. Babies don’t generally take a bottle from mommy because they prefer the real thing fresh from the source. Steve wasn’t able to get Ben to take a bottle so I don’t think he’s the person to do the bottle thing this time either. Once Ben had accepted a bottle, Steve was okay. It was just the first time that didn’t work. Steve’s graduate classes will resume in mid-January so he won’t have time necessarily to deal with a newborn either. So I don’t know what I’m going to do except that I will not be sitting home in the evenings holding a baby on my lap.

Now that I’ve reached the six-week milepost I will be requiring certain things of myself every day rather than just doing what I can, as I have done for the past six weeks. I do feel pretty good, so I should be able to pull it off. I also plan to ease back into a routine with my goal being to have it well established by three months postpartum. The holidays are here. I need to put up the Christmas tree, finish getting Christmas gifts gathered and distributed, and I need to make some cookies. Oh, and I tried working with Ben on potty-training yesterday. More of the same today, I think. It’s supposed to be 50 degrees today and 25 tomorrow so we may be running some errands which will put a hamper on that. I am dressed and I do have makeup on. We’ll see where the day goes from here.

Every good contract has an escape clause – you know, where they agree on what will happen if one of them turns out to not like the deal they’ve just signed. They hire the coach and if he goes 3-9 instead of 9-3, it’s how much money he gets if he gets fired. Or something like that.

So yesterday I had my postpartum appointment with my midwife. One of the questions she asked me was if I was getting enough rest. Well, Joey only gets up once or twice every night – once in the middle of the night and once early in the morning when I usually just give up and stay up, which is why I can say he only gets me up once. I told them that second time may be 5:24 a.m. or something, but that’s okay because I am known to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. or 8:17 p.m. or even earlier than that sometimes.

“So it sounds like you’re getting enough rest,” she said.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“And how’s your mental health?” she asked.

Let me tell you… My mother has always wanted to ride those donkeys that go down those trails on those narrow ledges of the Grand Canyon (something that the mere thought of scares me to death). We’ll just say that I am as close to the edge of my sanity without falling over the ledge into insanity. Really.

I mean, I may seem like I’m doing okay. And no, I’m not in crisis mode. But I feel like I’m an inch from it. I have a newborn who insists on being held whenever he is awake and will cry as though no one ever feeds him, changes his diaper or much less ever holds him if I put him down for one second, even if I just changed and fed him and now I need to go to the bathroom so you’re just going to have to tough it out, little one. Add to that a three-year-old who loves doing his version of “circuit training” – that is, he goes around the house doing thing after thing after thing that he knows he isn’t supposed to do, but you can never give him a warning and then follow through because he discontinues the bad behavior you’re currently warning him about and starts up with another one.

I haven’t cooked a single evening meal yet.

The house is not tidy when Steve comes home from work.

Even if I cleaned the house a bit earlier before he came home, it would just be untidy again by the time he got here.

I put Joey down when he finally goes to sleep, and I’m tired. I need to rest. And Ben is getting into things so I can’t really rest. I do little things, like a load of laundry or carry the mail downstairs or something like that. So I can list things that I’ve actually accomplished during the day. But it is never enough.

And knitting? Knitting is where I maintain my mental health. Mindless forming the stitches on my needles gives my brain a chance to wander and think and solve all those problems I would never otherwise have time to think about. Knitting is how I maintain my sanity. But every time I try to sit down and relax and knit a little, either a three-year-old misbehaves, a baby wakes up, or there’s something else that needs to be done…like putting the dishes in the dishwasher or trying to figure out what everyone is going to eat for supper. So I never get that down time that I so badly need. The little knitting I have done, I was constantly distracted so it didn’t really help.

I told my midwife that if I felt like I was actually about to lose it, I would call my doula. And I will do that if I need to. But after I got home, I decided that I would also go out and buy yarn for a big project like a cardigan for me. There’s a pattern on the cover of the latest issue of Interweave Knits that I’ve been drooling over. I would get yarn for that. I would pretty much follow the pattern and not drive myself crazy changing it to make it better (though I would lengthen the sleeves to go to my wrists instead of being 3/4 sleeves). And I would sit and knit for myself until I felt better. Which might be a few days.

Going to Oklahoma last weekend was good for my mental health. I had time to let my mind wander while I drove. I didn’t have a toddler to chase. And there were lots of eager hands willing to hold a baby who for some reason thinks the world revolves around him. So it gave me a boost that I really needed.

But I will say that I’m still riding the donkeys right next to the edge. I should be fine, but if anything major happens, I will fall over the edge. I’m just warning you.

Oh, and my mother-in-law will be spending the night at our house tonight. Today my objective is to tidy the house so it looks nice. Will I clean the house? Maybe. Maybe not. I am one of those who believes that a tidy dirty house looks much cleaner than a cluttered clean house. I will shine the sinks, and if my mother-in-law sees the dirt on the floor, she can just think it got tracked in after I finished cleaning. It really isn’t that bad.

And if she starts lecturing me or telling me how to do things or telling my husband that he made a terrible mistake in marrying me (something she said to Steve’s brother and his girlfriend’s faces…which is why she isn’t staying at their house), she will get one warning: if you say something like that again or if I hear through the grapevine that you complained to others about how we do things at our house, you will never be welcome to stay with us again. If we move to some far away place and you come to visit us, you will have to stay in a motel. Is there any part of what I just said that you do not understand?

I’m not going to get upset over little things. I am not going to be self-conscious about how we operate in our own home. I will not allow her to push me over the edge. If I wasn’t so close to the edge, I might give her two warnings…like three strikes you’re out.

You can tell me I’m being defensive. Maybe I am. But I am simply protecting my turf and my dignity. Thank you very much.

And if I need to, I’ll go buy that yarn and start knitting that cardigan for myself. That’s my Escape Clause. We’ll see if I’ll be needing it anytime soon.

And by the way, donations to be used toward buying the yarn are welcome. Just leave a comment and I’ll email you and tell you where to send the money. Cheers!

This morning while I was heating the water for my chai, Steve started laughing at me and said I was pacing the kitchen with an odd smile on my face. Goodness gracious! Am I not allowed to smile? He wanted to know what I was thinking about and I told him “knitting.” I deserve to smile about something, don’t I?

I have a handful of blogs that I love to read every day, and most of them belong to knitwear designers who talk about their designs and so forth. I must confess, since I’ve started doing my own designing, I’ve become quite a snob about various designs knitters come up with. Basically, most knitters out there, it seems, want basic (aka boring) patterns that spell out exactly how to do a garment so they just have to follow the stitch by stitch directions. That makes for a lot of boring designs. My favorite designers are the ones who come up with innovative designs for things that normal people would still wear (as in, not Vogue).

I’ve done technical editing on a number of patterns for a published designer, so it’s not that I don’t understand what goes into designing a pattern to sell and trying to avoid a raft of questions from knitters who need things spelled out stitch by stitch. I don’t particularly like knitting from patterns designed for those types of knitters because I am more interested in the idea behind what you’re being told to do stitch by stitch. I actually prefer knitting from European patterns because they spell things out less and only tell you what you really need to know.

I’ve considered writing patterns for my own designs, but it’s the though of the spelling out stitch by stitch kind of writing that makes my eyes glaze over and my hands pick up another item to knit rather than going to the keyboard to write out what I did. But I decided sometime between yesterday and this morning that if I self-published my patterns (as some of my favorite designers do), I could write them any way I want…and maybe people would be so inspired by how I wrote my patterns that the whole knitting pattern industry here in the U.S. would change to do things as I do. Well, maybe not quite.

I mean, if people are looking for patterns that will allow them mindless knitting, explaining a stitch pattern according to how it appears as you knit it rather than stitch by stitch is actually a lot more “mindless” than having to follow a pattern stitch by stitch. And I can’t be the only one who prefers patterns that are written for people who actually understand what they’re doing before they see the final result. So why not write my own patterns in a style that I prefer? If I want to publish any of them, I can edit them for the publication in which they will appear.

Once I reached that conclusion, the ideas started rolling for how I would write patterns for designs I have already done. And it was that flood of ideas that put the odd smile on my face and made me pace the kitchen to burn off the energy the ideas were creating. So go ahead and laugh at me! At least I am having fun!

Ah, the joys of caring for a newborn! When Ben was born, within his first week of life, he started the unconsolable crying thing and I had to learn how to swaddle him and do everything they talk about in the Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp…which worked splendidly, by the way. Dr. Sears describes colic as unconsolable crying that starts in the first three weeks of life, lasts for three or more hours (unless you use Dr. Karp’s tricks, of course), and happens during the first three months of life outside the womb (which Dr. Karp calls the “fourth trimester”) – all of this in an otherwise completely healthy baby.

When Joey came along, I was prepared to go through all of this with him as we had with Ben. But the first week went by…no unconsolable crying. Second week…no fussy baby in the evenings like Ben. The day before we reached three weeks…Joey officially joined the Fussy Baby Club. I had to swaddle him and really work with him to finally get him to go to sleep. The next night…more of the same. Third night…even more of the same with an additional episode during the middle of the night. [insert Deep Sigh here]

I got out my Dr. Sears Baby Book again and read up on fussy babies. I looked for my Happiest Baby book but it was no where to be found (perhaps I loaned it to a friend and they forgot to return it?). One of the things Dr. Sears recommends is carrying your baby in a sling during the later part of the day. Supposedly, in Africa, where babies are always carried, they don’t even have a word for colic because their babies never cry in the evening like our babies do. I decided to give that a try, and as it turns out, if I start carrying Joey in the sling around 3 p.m., we are able to avoid having the daily “happy hour” as some call it.

Mind you, the rules are very strict – Joey must be carried or held for the entire time and cannot be put down for even 15 minutes while he is asleep or we get to have a taste of “happy hour.” That may sound like a long time to carry a baby, but I would much rather carry him in a sling and organize my day around it than to have to swaddle him and do the special bounce walk for a half hour when I’m exhausted and just want to go to bed. And that Moby Wrap I have makes it to easy to carry him – the weight is evenly distributed and I really am not bothered by it. It’s the best exercise I seem to be able to get right now anyway, so I am not complaining.

Really, it isn’t that bad now that I’ve figured out how to deal with it. The most disappointing part to me is that I may have to adjust my plans to start working my Mary Kay business again once Joey was six weeks old. Steve was never able to keep Ben happy when he cried like this, even if I swaddled him myself and then handed him over. Besides, he is studying in the evenings and doesn’t necessarily have time to care for a fussy baby. I could find someone else to watch Joey while I hold Mary Kay appointments, but it’s one thing to ask someone to watch a happy baby, it’s quite another to hand over a colicky baby. I’m thinking Joey will just have to come with me and I will have to limit my schedule to appointments where that is appropriate. Things are a bit different during the Holiday Season anyway, so that may just be my best option, especially if he is happy while I wear him in the sling.

Like I said, ah, the joys of caring for a newborn!