March 9, 2008

So, further updates in the life of the new mother. Ready? Here we go.

Let's start with Mishka, this time. In the words of the immortal
black knight, she's not dead yet. Her weight has gone up and down
again twice since we were originally given the estimate of "weeks".
At one point she got all the way up to 13.6 pounds, but she's lost
weight again. Waxor and I give her all the meds she needs, and are
constantly tempting her to eat. Other than that we're just waiting to
see. She got sick the other night and I thought that might be it, but
it turned out her stomach was just upset, the next day she was
downright bouncy. At this point it's been three weeks, and she's still
with us, so who knows. Maybe US vets just don't understand how hearty
Nica dogs are. Also, not to neglect an update on the other dog, turns
out he's got Erlichia (which Mishka also had) and needs a round of
doxycycline. Other than that he's good, though.

Waxor's company has had good news. A HUGE company (owned by some oil
sheik) wants them to develop a new application for them, and if it
goes over well then this should mean that skyward is good to go for a
while. That's the good news for the company. The bad news is that
Waxor may be working nights and weekends for a while, and I'm not sure
what I'm going to do if he's never home. I get a regular shower, at
the moment, but I don't always get to brush my hair every day...
Momma's going to be in and out for the rest of this month, and I'm
going to try to totally take advantage of her and get some sleep while
she's here, in preparation for getting no rest once he's at work 70
hours a week. Grandmothers are great for so many things. :)

Elliot has stopped being willing to sleep during the day. It's kind
of killing me. It started about two weeks ago, he used to take 3 hour
naps during the day, and it seems like overnight he started waking up
after about 30 minutes. He still wants to sleep as much time, but I
have to keep putting him back to sleep. Josie (Waxor's co-workers
wife) suggested getting blackout curtains and a fan (to generate white
noise) for his room, and that that should help his day time sleep.
Personally I think he's just karmically punishing me for never taking
my afternoon naps as a child. His night time sleep HAD settled pretty
well - he'd sleep 2-3 hours at a time from 6:30-3:30, and then 45 min
to 1.5 hours from 3:30-6:30, and then his daytime sleep schedule would
start. Of course, now that daylight savings time has come he's still
on the same schedule and my clock keeps telling me he's off...

Last night I was really excited, I thought he'd slept five hours (what
joy was mine) except it turns out the clocks had turned over and he'd
really only slept four hours. Sigh. Still, a four hour chunk is
progress. According to medical professionals he ought to be able to go
6 hours without a feeding now (which means he ought to be able to
sleep from, say 10:30 to 4:30 every night, which would REALLY be great
for me and my sleep) but he doesn't, he wakes up to eat. According to
Josie I can train him out of waking up at 1:30 for that feeding if I
go in and let him suck on my finger and go back to sleep, then he will
stop waking up at that time slot. However, that's harder on me, so
I've been putting off starting it. Sigh.

And me? I'm dealing better with the lack of sleep at night, but I get
really tired if I have to rock Elliot half of the day. Waxor and I
spent a lot of this weekend talking about stuff, and that was good,
because we've now established that neither one of us wants to do the
dishes. We haven't figured out how the dishes are going to get done,
but we're both well aware that neither one of us wants to do them.
It's good to be on the same page with your spouse, isn't it? I've
stopped losing weight, and it's not making me happy. I'm about 10 lbs
heavier than I was before I got pregnant, and while about 5 of those
are in my chest (I swear, I am not making that up) that still leaves
me with 5 pounds of belly fat that seems to have become my new best
friend. Also, I'm starving ALL THE TIME, so it's hard to deny myself
the extra calories. Ah well. I suppose nursing mothers aren't
considered hot most of the time, anyway, are they? (This is where
everyone should assure me that they have always considered nursing
mothers EXTREMELY hot, especially when they have dried spit up in
their hair.)

Oh dear... time's up. Elliot needs to eat and I've got to finish a pie
for Waxor to take to work tomorrow.

As I look back on it this email seems terribly dry and uninteresting
(unless you are one of the grandparents, in which case you probably
liked the bit about the baby.) I'll try to be more entertaining next
time, so, if part II has bored you then my apologies, but don't give
up on part III! It could be like Ocean's 12 and 13!