mydarlingcurse.com

if there are any responsible insomniacs out there who would like a bbsitting job between the hours of one AM and four AM, drop me a line.

boo has been a terror lately it’s like a hour to get her to bed and then three hours in the middle of the night. i’m ready to put her on the stoop and let the gypsy’s have her.

needless to say, all of this awake time is not good for me, or bunny. wednesday night i started having mild contractions (between 5AM and 6AM). this made me panic.

not so much that i thought the baby was coming, i knew the contractions were from stress and not enough sleep. but panic in the sense that yet again i am feeling orphaned and completely alone in the world since the death of my mom.

she’s the one that i would call in the middle of the night if i need to go in to PETU. right now, i don’t know who to call. sadly, i don’t trust anyone in my family and hubbin’s family is so put upon these days that i absolutely don’t have the heart to involved them.

i hate to think that the only solution is wrapping up boo and taking her with us if i need to go in at 3AM. but wait….she’s up anyway, so what am i’m worried about?

can we just stop? please? can it be just before christmas for another week?
it’s not that i’m not ready, i don’t really care if i’m ready.
but for everyone else….can we just stop?

much to the dismay of my family, my dad’s other son decided he will be joining us. and he wants to participate. this throws a monkey wrench into the whole deal. so i spent an hour on the phone with my dad working it all out and explaining again what the deal was with christmas. and because my dad’s other son is such an asshole, he won’t buy stocking stuff for anyone but my dad, and no one wants him to. it’s bad enough the ape is going to be there, no one wants him buying gifts.

and….my dad’s family wants to do brunch on christmas day. like out. so i spent much of the morning calling places to see if they were open christmas day. and guess what. the only place that’s open is denny’s. so fuck that.

christmas eve is shaping up nicely, i think. i am glad to hear that aunt iowa is coming early, so she can help get things together for my dad. but as of today, we are 22 for dinner. no way can he pull that off, no fucking way!

hubbin’s family has not given us any information about christmas day dinner. things are very much up in the air with all that, naturally. more on that later though.

boo is feeling much better but still has a cough. hopefully a few more days on the antibiotics will clear that up. but don’t think i don’t notice.

so can we just stop? can we postpone and reschedule? i’m so not up for it.

so boo has had herself a hefty cough for about a week. it’s tough and keeps her up at night. after about four days of 2 hour bedtime routines and her sneaking in our bed several times a night, i called her doctor. basically, the nurse told me that you can’t, CANNOT give any cold medicine to a 2 year old.

with all the bullshit floating around about recalled meds and overdosing i bowed to the nurse line and basically resigned myself to let the illness run its course knowing, KNOWING deep down it was the wrong thing to do. i wanted to grab my car keys and head to Walgreen’s (or as my Aunt Dot would call it Wallgrins) and read every label of every cough syrup made for kids until i found one suitable to give my daughter. but no, against my instincts, i did nothing. why? because i don’t want a lot of additives and preservatives in my child. nine times out of ten anything you give your kid is only designed to take your money and make you feel better. it does nothing to alleviate your child’s symptoms.

but my god, that cough! it wakes her up. she wakes us up. and in the end we are all miserable. but still, i buy the hype.

yesterday, knowing she wasn’t 100% (but with no runny nose or fever) i took her to daycare. they called around 4PM for me to come get her - they said her temp was 101.4. i vow to take her to minute clinic and get her something ANYTHING to help her feel better. her cough was so bad though that the good people at minute clinic kicked us out. with no lab and no x-ray, they felt she would be better off being treated at urgent care. then they gave me my money back. but the medical person there (who isn’t a doctor) told me that she might need a chest x-ray, that it might be pneumonia. or it could be RSV.

WHAT???!!!

how the fuck could my daughter have pneumonia? it doesn’t make sense. oh wait…her daycare told me it had been going around. they tell me this as i pick her up - that pneumonia and croup and pink-eye are all going around. now i get that kids are filthy little monsters, but shouldn’t daycare tell you if kids have been hospitalized because of the flu? i think so. hell yes i think so.

the good doctor (yes a real doctor) at urgent care confirms an ear infection. boo complained the other night that her ear hurt, but that’s the first we’d heard about that. and he’ll give her antibiotics to treat the ear infection. what about her lungs, i ask. what about her chest congestion and cough. well, he says, we could do a chest x-ray, but with the antibiotic, if it is pneumonia - the antibiotic will clear that up too.

so i don’t know if she has pneumonia or not. either way, her illness is being treated. and i’m thankful for that. but i can’t help thinking that if i had given her some robitussen a week ago, would this have happened?

if i had given her a little bit of cold medicine, keeping my eye on the dosage and watching her reaction, could that little bit have saved her from a ten day load of antibiotics? what’s better and what’s worse? i don’t want her taking antibiotics every time she gets sick because society says you can’t give kids cold medicine. i don’t want to wait a week and let things get so bad and so out of hand that hubbin and i practically sleepwalking and she’s hanging by a thread.

but i know i should trust my instincts, no matter if they go against what the nurse line or society tells me. my daughter means the world to me, why should i trust what other people (other than her father) tell me how i should care for her? that’s crazy!

still, i feel like i failed. i feel like i didn’t do what i knew to be best for her. that kills me. never again. i don’t care. i know i know what’s best for her.

wednesday night hubbin and i went out to a holiday party. grandma came over to babysit and i got all dolled up. i never get to dress up anymore, so any opportunity i get i tend to jump at. i bought a pretty pink top that’s ample in the front, and i specifically bought it for the holidays. but wednesday night was the first time i’d gotten to wear it. i even put some make-up on!

i came downstairs and boo is eating dinner with grandma. she looks up at me and takes in all the glamour and then says, “Mommy, you-you-you-you look like a, like a, like a PRINCESS!” and she has this big smile on her face and i just melt and swell with pride all at the same time. i’m so glad that grandma and hubbin were there to witness my beauty and her magic.

then today, as i’m getting dressed, while i was putting my bra on, she says, “Mommy, are you dressing up?”

“No, I’m just getting dressed.”

“Oh,” she says, “because you have really big boobs.”

NICE!

just wait i thought, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. but instead i just laughed, because she’s totally right. then she laughed and i congratulated her on her astute powers of observation.

in a previous post i said that all this family stuff isn’t keeping me up at night.

that’s a lie.

it is. and i’m sick with it.

there is a level that i can function at, and i’m past that. so what usually happens now is that i go to a dark corner, lick my wounds, and growl and snarl at anyone who comes near me.

you’ve been warned. not my fault if you aren’t up to date on your rabies vaccination.

it has not been so long and so forgotten that i don’t feel actual pain for those people i know trying so hard to conceive. they are on a lonely trail, one that has been trodden many times, but in every different way. my heart breaks truly and tentatively for two very special people indeed.

got great news on the down-low yesterday and was elated. heard the worst today and my throat is tight.

i remember that day.

that day when perseverance prevailed! you beat the odds, you gave mother nature the middle finger, albeit respectfully. you were normal. then spots. then cramps, worse cramps. a painful *plop*, a violent gush of blood and then nothing. a void. you had been blessed with a visitor and then beyond your will vacated. cruel doesn’t even cover it.

so with love and affection my thoughts and prayers go out for those i know - and those i don’t. and again i am crippled by the desire to help and being totally helpless.

so i have been purposefully not talking about baby A on here since i got back from arizona. i think i’ve been pretty clear about how conflicted i am about the whole thing. and i’ve tried really hard to balance that with care and the love that i have for all involved. especially baby A.

while i was in arizona i came to the realization that it’s probably best for everyone involved if i remove myself as much as possible from the entire situation. currently, i am further along in my pregnancy than Crazy SIL was when baby A was born. and i can’t help but think - when i remember looking at baby A in the isolette - that’s about the size of bunny. what’s out in the world working so hard and struggling so much is safe inside of me, protected and continuing to grow. baby A is being supported by artificial systems that are a poor substitute for the real deal and bunny is getting all the benefits of staying tucked inside. but it could be us. who knows what can happen.

now, i don’t keep myself up at nights thinking these things, so don’t worry. but those thoughts seem to have an effect on ALL of my dealings with the whole baby A situation. i ask too many questions, questions they don’t know or don’t want to know the answers to. all along i have been thinking the biggest challenge for this little guy is going to be lung development and respiratory issues. and guess what, it’s here. he has a Staph infection either from heart surgery or from being on the ventilator. and they diagnosed him with pneumonia.

we haven’t been to seen him since before we went to arizona. i am ok with that. i’d love to go and tell him that i love him and that it’s going to be ok. but i guess he’s really sensitive… touch, light, sound, everything. and with an infection and pneumonia, i don’t want to chance it. and i don’t know if i could go. it seemed easier when i was less pregnant.

so despite being absent from the Vodo’s class for no less than a month, i put on my big girl panties, cracked out 10 pages of not crap and went to class. and seriously, my stomach was in knots. i love being home with boo, but my total and complete lack of adult interaction, i feel, makes me come off as desperate and strange.

i long daily to talk to other adults - about meaningful topics - and use my brain. sure it’s fun and cute jotting down boo’s adventures, but i feel like i have nothing to contribute, nothing of value anyway.

when i walked into to Vodo’s class, two classmates said something to effect of “should you even be here?” granted they were kidding, but they were totally right. probably not. i can tell you that i’ve read all the stories that i’ve gotten while i’ve been gone, but i haven’t had time to make comments.

i’ve had friends blow me off because they’ve been “too busy”. and my reaction has always been yeah right, busy my ass. when i have the time to explain to people what the last month of my life has been like, they are silent. i don’t want to make excuses for myself, but i’ve honestly been out of town or deathly ill. being seriously sick is such a drain on your energy, and adding five months of pregnancy on top of it…well just typing it makes me tired.

so should i have been in class last night - probably not. i should have just accepted the fact that i’ve completely failed in my attempts at being a grown-up and doing grown-up things, things for myself. but i simply cannot resign myself to life as a housewife and full-time mom. it’s not in me.

i love my family more than anything, and i would give my life for all of them. but to give up my life? that’s a hard one.

so i try. maybe not well, but i am trying.

for the last few days, boo has been learning X-mas songs. she rocks “jingle bells” and is learning “santa claus is coming to town”. my dad has a dancing santa thing that sings SCICTT, and she kept pushing the button to make him sing and dance. she did this about twenty times the last time we were over there. and while we are in the car, she always wants to sing songs.

today, on our way to daycare, i had the X-mas station on the radio and Bruce Springsteen’s version of SCICTT came on the radio. i told her it was the “santa song” and she got a big smile on her face and listened to me and the Boss singing, i really hammed it up too - especially with clarence’s ho-ho-ho’s. she’s funny about new versions of things that she knows. it’s a riot to see recognition come over her face, but in a different way. when the song ended she giggled and wanted me to sing it again. i told her when i came to pick her up later, we’d sing it again, since i’m sure it will be on the radio once or twice before X-mas.

then she said, “mommy, you’re so silly” and i totally agree.

i’m not a huge Boss fan, never have been. but hearing him today, and sharing it with boo, well, i have to tell ya…it was like a slingshot into the holiday season. for too long it’s been a downer, and this year, while there are many people missing, there isn’t a sense of impending doom. just excitement of sharing the season with her and hubbin and family. it’s been far too long since i’ve allowed myself to get into X-mas.

good to be back.