So last night I went to hang out with friends of ours, Phil and Joy. They have a little baby girl that is exactly four months older than Bella. Every time they're together we all laugh at how brown Bella is. Seriously, she looks like she's Native. My mom says it's so Luc doesn't feel left out, being the only brown kid in the family. He went on and on this summer about how brown he is, and how white I am, cutest thing ever. Anyway, getting out of the house was what I needed. Today I felt better.
She's so much braver than me. True, she understands not one thing about what is at stake here, but that would make things more scary to me. Sometimes she wakes up from a dead sleep screaming in pain from her stomach. Sometimes when we go to give her medicine, she looks at us with her huge eyes and cries until she isn't even making a sound, just tears on her face and sobbing so hard it just breaks our hearts. My mom burst into tears the other day giving her medicine. I cried for about an hour afterward. She usually calms down right away after, and I hold her and apologize and we rock and cry.
But most of the time, she's brave. The other day she grinned at us the whole time we were shoving syringes in her mouth. Never made a peep. I can now give her medicine on my own. Probably 65-70% of the time she does okay. She gags on the anti-nauseant but I don't blame her. I make a point of tasting every medicine that I give her. Here's the break down.
Ranitadine - foul. I touched the end of a 1ML syringe to my tongue and seriously, my whole mouth tasted so bitter and alcoholic that I was shocked. Gross! She takes 0.6ML of this three times a day.
Propranolol - not bad. Texture is similar to hair gel, and we have to keep it cold, so she doesn't love that, but it has a mild flavor, so that's not too bad. She takes 1.75ML of this three times a day.
Prednisol- kind of citrus-y. Not terrible. Out of the three, she likes it best, which is lucky since at one point it was 20ML a day, broken into two doses. Now we're down to 7.5 in the morning, and 2.5 at night.
Fluconozol - creamy and thick, so texture sucks. But it tastes a little like ground up vitamin C tablets. Peter says it smells exactly like that orange industrial hand cleaner. I think it's fine, she's not a big fan at all. Gags on this one a lot too. But we only do 2MLs once in the afternoon, so she copes. And of course the Gripe Water, which tastes like dill and licorice. Weird.
I don't know why she's so sweet, and so happy. Honestly, if she isn't in pain, or super tired from being in so much pain, she's smiling. She talks away, and what's also cute, in a super sad way, is that she has learned how to complain without actually crying. She makes these mad yelling sounds, or sad yelling sounds and sometimes will do it until she's asleep on my chest, still yelling occasionally, but eyes closed, totally relaxed. It's like she just needs to tell us that she's having a hard day.
I think, as far as the crying and the pain she's in goes, I have reached a sort of break through. I do not try to get her to stop crying. I know, how very "zen" of me - but I just accept it. She's in pain. I cannot do one thing to stop that. I'm not going to ask her to not communicate with me about it. She communicates by crying, and so would I if I were in that much pain. So I talk to her. I rock her and tell her that she is allowed to cry, that I don't mind one bit, and that I'm so sorry it hurts and that I love her more than anything in the world. I don't know if it shortens the spells, but it helps me. To say out loud, "it's okay sweetheart. You go ahead and cry. I know you're sad. Tell mommy about it, I want to hear. It's okay." doesn't do a whole lot for her, but it calms me down. To hear my voice saying it makes the frantic "PLEASE stop crying!" panicked feeling go away. And when I relax, eventually, so will she.
In other news, I FINALLY found her the tiniest little pair of black shiney dress shoes for Shawn's wedding. She's wearing black and ivory, and I think she is going to look like a tiny little Audrey Hepburn. I'll take photos. We're going, we have to. I'm going to pray like crazy and stay the heck away from absolutely everyone. I don't know what else to do. The doctors aren't so terribly worried, they're not calling for her quarantine, but letting us know to be careful. The doctor did tell me that she gives the same medicine to babies who have siblings in school, and she's never seen one group of kids do better than others. She said I'm not to become house bound, that that's an over reaction. So we're going to try.
That's all I got. She's been crying with Peter the entire time I've been typing, so I'm going to go.
The title of the blog is actually a song title - by a group called Addison Road. Check them out. That song, and another, What Do I Know of Holy, are amazing. The rest of their album is unfortunately, a little blah. But those two are fantastic.
She's so much braver than me. True, she understands not one thing about what is at stake here, but that would make things more scary to me. Sometimes she wakes up from a dead sleep screaming in pain from her stomach. Sometimes when we go to give her medicine, she looks at us with her huge eyes and cries until she isn't even making a sound, just tears on her face and sobbing so hard it just breaks our hearts. My mom burst into tears the other day giving her medicine. I cried for about an hour afterward. She usually calms down right away after, and I hold her and apologize and we rock and cry.
But most of the time, she's brave. The other day she grinned at us the whole time we were shoving syringes in her mouth. Never made a peep. I can now give her medicine on my own. Probably 65-70% of the time she does okay. She gags on the anti-nauseant but I don't blame her. I make a point of tasting every medicine that I give her. Here's the break down.
Ranitadine - foul. I touched the end of a 1ML syringe to my tongue and seriously, my whole mouth tasted so bitter and alcoholic that I was shocked. Gross! She takes 0.6ML of this three times a day.
Propranolol - not bad. Texture is similar to hair gel, and we have to keep it cold, so she doesn't love that, but it has a mild flavor, so that's not too bad. She takes 1.75ML of this three times a day.
Prednisol- kind of citrus-y. Not terrible. Out of the three, she likes it best, which is lucky since at one point it was 20ML a day, broken into two doses. Now we're down to 7.5 in the morning, and 2.5 at night.
Fluconozol - creamy and thick, so texture sucks. But it tastes a little like ground up vitamin C tablets. Peter says it smells exactly like that orange industrial hand cleaner. I think it's fine, she's not a big fan at all. Gags on this one a lot too. But we only do 2MLs once in the afternoon, so she copes. And of course the Gripe Water, which tastes like dill and licorice. Weird.
I don't know why she's so sweet, and so happy. Honestly, if she isn't in pain, or super tired from being in so much pain, she's smiling. She talks away, and what's also cute, in a super sad way, is that she has learned how to complain without actually crying. She makes these mad yelling sounds, or sad yelling sounds and sometimes will do it until she's asleep on my chest, still yelling occasionally, but eyes closed, totally relaxed. It's like she just needs to tell us that she's having a hard day.
I think, as far as the crying and the pain she's in goes, I have reached a sort of break through. I do not try to get her to stop crying. I know, how very "zen" of me - but I just accept it. She's in pain. I cannot do one thing to stop that. I'm not going to ask her to not communicate with me about it. She communicates by crying, and so would I if I were in that much pain. So I talk to her. I rock her and tell her that she is allowed to cry, that I don't mind one bit, and that I'm so sorry it hurts and that I love her more than anything in the world. I don't know if it shortens the spells, but it helps me. To say out loud, "it's okay sweetheart. You go ahead and cry. I know you're sad. Tell mommy about it, I want to hear. It's okay." doesn't do a whole lot for her, but it calms me down. To hear my voice saying it makes the frantic "PLEASE stop crying!" panicked feeling go away. And when I relax, eventually, so will she.
In other news, I FINALLY found her the tiniest little pair of black shiney dress shoes for Shawn's wedding. She's wearing black and ivory, and I think she is going to look like a tiny little Audrey Hepburn. I'll take photos. We're going, we have to. I'm going to pray like crazy and stay the heck away from absolutely everyone. I don't know what else to do. The doctors aren't so terribly worried, they're not calling for her quarantine, but letting us know to be careful. The doctor did tell me that she gives the same medicine to babies who have siblings in school, and she's never seen one group of kids do better than others. She said I'm not to become house bound, that that's an over reaction. So we're going to try.
That's all I got. She's been crying with Peter the entire time I've been typing, so I'm going to go.
The title of the blog is actually a song title - by a group called Addison Road. Check them out. That song, and another, What Do I Know of Holy, are amazing. The rest of their album is unfortunately, a little blah. But those two are fantastic.
10:42 PM
Goodness- Carrie's got nothing on my own incoherant ramblings
11:27 PM
Haha, okay coming back to read your post later (especially looking forward to some incoherent ramblings!), but I thought you should know... I posted. Just barely made it!
10:39 AM
So glad you found black shoes!!!
By the way, Loren is here and is sick!!
6:58 PM
Awe. This made me cry. Give her a kiss from me please?
8:37 PM
with Becky on this one.
Although today is a crying day for me.
9:57 PM
Can't wait to see her little outfit at the wedding! I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys. I had no idea she had to take so many medications :( Poor little dear. Give her a little snuggle and kiss from her auntie. Love you!