Wednesday, February 9, 2005

The story of my night - not for the weak of stomach:

So the boys had a stomach bug on Monday, which was less than pleasant. Then last night Josh started puking and then a couple hours later I started (around 9pm). Then came the other end! Jocelyn was fussy and had been nursing since 7: 30pm, except when I had to detach her to use the bathroom (which was usually pretty traumatic because it snuck up on me so fast that I had to run for it). So then she'd scream while I was, well, you know, which was every 20 minutes. Josh couldn't help. He would try but she doesn't calm down for him and he had to be close to the downstairs bathroom because he was just as badly off as I was.

Finally at 1am I just couldn't nurse her any more - what baby feeds for over 5 hours? So I yelled for Josh to bring me a bottle. Jocelyn gulped it down (I remembered to stop and burp her in the middle) - took about 2 oz in a matter of minutes, I guess the well had been dry and she had worked up quite a thirst!

So she then slept for 6 hours, waking at 7am with quite a full diaper. I, of course, didn't barely get to sleep at all since I was still in the bathroom every 20 minutes until about 3am and after that I woke up every 30 minutes dying of thirst and had ice water and ice cubes (I wish I had an ice chip maker like the ones at the hospital). So while I considered waking her to nurse her so that I wouldn't engorge, I just didn't have the energy.

At 7 I grab a diaper and wipes and go about changing her and I am leaking everywhere! It's not painful, just a constant drip out of each side so then I can't decide which boob to put her on first and what to do with the other one and was wishing I had a manual pump because I haven't even put my electric pump together, much less figure out how to use it, and I can't seem to manually express more than a few drops at a time.

So I put her on what seems to be the bigger side and use a receiving blanket to plug up the other side, and then switch to the other side after only 5 minutes or so (she's gulping so much I'm not sure how long she'll nurse).

Everything worked out and I'm only in the bathroom every hour now, which is an improvement, and am able to get fluids and even toast to stay down today. Josh is still scared to eat.

Oh, and when I started puking it was only about 15 minutes after I had taken pain meds, so I was hurting pretty bad for a while. I eventually just took another Motrin, but my whole middle was so sore.

The boys went back to school today but then we got a call from the school - Morgan had the trots and needed to be picked up. No rest for the weary!