It's Feeling a Bit 2012

Tiny Boy is home sick.

I benadryled him.  He's now napping next to me.

I tried napping.  No dice.

I also googled some stuff which led me to discover an article about sleep of children who were growth restricted in utero.

Neurological delays and all that.  Yeah.

And then one about maternal sleep deprivation and IUGR.

A vicious circle of bad sleep.

But at least the NP at his visit today said she'd fix the referral because, well, duh, he doesn't need to see a psychologist.

Random Bullets of Sleep Deprivation

• I am afraid that Something Remarkable might turn into one of those mommy blogs I generally don't read.  But it is 11:46 and I am in my pajamas while Tiny Boy sleeps (thank goodness) in his swing and I don't have much else to say.
• Can I say my neighbors rock?  They volunteered to walk LG to the bus stop when they walk their dog, which keeps me from needing to (a) get dressed and (b) have a 5 lb baby outside in 20 degree weather.
• Said neighbors also sent their 9-year-old over to shovel my driveway and between her and LG, they got most of it done passably well.  (And we're not going to talk about the fact that I actually tried doing some of it myself, which I'm sure is not on my approved list of activities until at least 6 weeks post-surgery.)
• Although I have not talked much about her lately, LG dotes on her brother.  She reads to him, holds him every day, and tries to teach him his letters and shapes (I did explain that he's, umm, still learning English, but perhaps he'll end up being the smartest kid in his infant daycare, if I ever enroll him in daycare).
• When I told A about Tiny Boy's stop breathing episode, her reply was, has he not read your chart?  And apparently he still hasn't gotten the memo, as last night he spewed milk out his nose a good hour after nursing and then screamed so much he exhausted himself and fell limply back to sleep.  Little boy, you have to stop freaking your mother the fuck out.
• Yes, folks, Tiny Boy appears to have reflux.  Been there, done that, had Kid #1 on zantac at 9 weeks.  But the milk out the nose thing was new.  The result was I spent about 75% of last night sleeping with him on my chest, which is certainly not the safest thing to do, but it's really the only way he rests comfortably after nursing.  Have I mentioned I'm exhausted?
• InB, thank you for insisting that I put an auto-reply on my email.  Now I just need to remember not to check it anyway.  It only brings guilt.

40 weeks or 15 days

So today's my due date.  If things had gone swimmingly well, I would have hopefully had a VBAC in the past week, or a scheduled c-section tomorrow or Tuesday (my birthday!).  Instead, I have a 15-day-old sleeping in a crib.  Although he still looks like a baby with IUGR (comparatively large head, skinny belly, scrawny limbs, and even more wrinkly skin than your average newborn), I can tell he's plumped up since his last doctor visit, and just in the past few days,as predicted, he's started acting more like a baby and less like a fetus (he has eyes!  he especially loves looking at his sister!).

Tiny Boy is clearly doing better in the world than in my body, which is both a marvelous thing and another reproductive strike against me.  Both my "full term" pregancies have been cut short for medical reasons, and I miss that intrauterine time, just as I miss the miscarried embryos who never had a chance to become a child.  It's hard for me to get my head around the fact that I will, in all likelihood, not be pregnant again.  Because for all its complications, I like the experience of pregnancy.

But having two extra weeks of babyness?  Right now, that seems like a damn good trade-off.