yay, it's morning!!

"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." While not always literally true (sometimes weeping can last a lot longer than that!) it was true for us this past 24 hours. Here's the timeline:

Sunday night: Val sleeps 7 hours straight! Mom feels totally rested!
Monday night: Val wants to nurse every 2 hours - Mom feels completely sleep-deprived.
Tuesday all day: Val is fussy and congested, wakes herself up coughing every time she goes down for a nap. She doesn't want to lie on her back, preferring to be held upright. I think she can breathe better this way. She also seems to sleep better while nursing - at least while suckling, even if she's not actually eating much. I think it's because she can swallow the mucous that's draining from her sinuses.

So all this would not be a huge deal, except that at some point yesterday I did something funny to my right shoulder and now I can't lift that arm higher than horizontal. Hurts! My guess is I pulled something while lifting her from her bassinet. So this makes all manner of baby wrangling all that much harder.

And, sorry if this is too much information, but I've been dealing with a small sore spot that won't heal and sometimes bleeds, from nursing. I talked with a lactation consultant who said that it should heal if she is consistently latching on correctly, so I'm hoping... it seems a little better today but this is a constant challenge since ensuring correct latch-on means paying close attention while nursing her which is hard to do in public places when you're trying to be discreet.

Anyway. So last night I was exhausted and alone, dealing with a fussy baby and feeling crippled in my right arm. Somehow I managed to cook and eat supper and to give her a bath. Then I took her to bed to nurse her to sleep. She was nursing enthusiastically, and then sucking on a pacifier, and my finger, just as enthusiastically - and then she THREW UP. All over the bed. In wave after wave of sour white milk. Fortunately I had her lying on a towel, which got a lot of it. But it also got on the sheets, the mattress pad, my pajamas, her onesie, her hair (after the bath!!!), even in her ear.

She lay on the couch kicking happily and saying "aaaaAAAAaaaa" while I cleaned up.

Once we got re-settled, with clean sheets and a hot pad on my shoulder, the night went much better. I know the EMT who gave us the baby CPR training would have a cow, but we slept tummy-to-tummy all night. She nursed at midnight (when we went to be finally), at 3:30, at 6:00, at 8:00, and at 9:00, and we got up at 10. Each time she woke up coughing, but each time we both fell asleep and then slept well.

Poor baby. Poor me, too, I was feeling quite desperate at times and won't say there weren't tears on both sides. But there's no passing the buck, you just have to do the next thing that needs to be done. I think of all those times when I was little and sick and throwing up and I know my mom did the same for me. I'm sure she felt quite desperate at times, too, but here I am. We lived to tell the tale.