Random Mumbling

It's 6:27 AM and Bailey is barely asleep. This is okay, given that she slept for 9 hours last night, uninterrupted. Another good thing, because yesterday was tough.

We had switched Bailey's formula to AR Lipil because she has been spitting up. A lot. Like she'll drink 6 ounces and then spit up 3 of them. All over me. Which I find highly disgusting. And because I can't shower and change my clothes after each gurgly vomit session, I sought out a solution.

And it worked. The AR Lipil is made of an easy to digest rice starch that slightly expands in her belly, preventing it from coming up every time she hiccups, burps or gets upset. Groovy.

The problem is that after two days, the poor girl still hadn't pooped. She's a regular girl. Usually regular to the hour (every day at around 3 PM, right after her bottle). She produced one little hard pebble yesterday morning, after lots of straining. Then all day yesterday, in between long bouts of crying, she would strain and get the poop look, but nothing would happen. *sigh*

I played the press the legs back game and encouraged her while she was pushing. I even took her diaper off at one point to allow for a more natural exit if she could make it happen. No dice.

So, instead of a happy baby who didn't spit up on herself, I had a constipated baby who was (pardon the language) fucking miserable all day long and who wouldn't sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time. She only got about 2 hours of broken sleep the entire day (from 8 AM until she went to bed at 7 PM). Any mother in the world will tell you that is NOT ENOUGH for an infant.

All was good in the morning. It wasn't until the afternoon, and the building exhaustion took over, that things really fell apart. We walked. We bounced. We sang. We played. We had alone time. We rode in the carrier. We went outside. We looked at the pictures on the wall. We did everything. Tried everything. As it turns out, Bailey was just tired and was in too much pain to sleep. She did end up crashing out for about a half hour when Kelly got home. But it was a tentative sleep at best and she ended up falling apart just as I served dinner (a delicious meal of BBQ'd corn, garlic potatos, asparagus and tofu). I tried the usual tricks that generally allow me to eat dinner - 10 minutes is all I need to get it all down. Didn't work.

I ended up having to set my food aside three bites into it and bring Bailey upstairs to do her nighttime routine. As I showed you yesterday, this usually calms her right down. Not yesterday. She cried the entire way through naked girl time - breaking for one split second to smile at me while I took her diaper off. She sobbed through bath time. She screamed while I put lotion on her and while Kelly got her into her pajamas.

Finally, the bottle hit her lips and we calmed down. We switched her back to her Gentleese formula in hopes of producing a poop. We figured that if one of us has to suffer (me withe the vomit or her with constipation) that the suffering should be mine. Seems like that is what parents do. She sucked down 8 ounces while we read to her and then she cried when I took the bottle away and burped her. She cried while I laid her down and spit out the binky when I gave it to her. She cried herself to sleep, which mercifully only took about 10 minutes. She didn't wake up again for 9 hours, and when she did, we discovered that at some point in the night, the formula had done the trick and she had pooped. It was hard and pebbly, but at least it was out. I suspect that her poop today will be better.

Meanwhile, I sat outside on the front porch and cried about what a horrible mother I was for feeling like this was a horrible job and for secretly wishing I could give her back...or at least trade her in for a less broken model.

Lordy. This is the hardest job I've ever done.