Teeny-Tiny Pieces

Taryn had a rough night.

Which means I had a rough night too.

She was pretty pissy when I got home from waork yesterday evening. Her temperature un-medicated was hovering around 102F and I know that by the time it gets that high, you're just miserable. Her skin probably hurt from the roughness of her well-washed short-set, her nose was dripping, and here is Evil Mama trying to force her to eat. I chopped up some avocado, gave her cooked onion, rice, whole wheat pasta, and finally broke down and thawed a few fruit cubes, mashed them up with some plain whole fat yogurt and satisfied myself that she had ingested at least 4 ounces of food.

Then Papa gave her a bath, which was perfect since I was cooking dinner (potatoe and leek soup) and as soon as I finished, she was freshly washed a dried, so I slathered some lotion on her which pissed her off even more than the food. I was hoping she was just tired, nursed her for the third time (in three hours) and put her to sleep. I was hoping the Tylenol would keep her temperature low enough to let her rest a bit, but sure enough at 3 am, after a night of tossing and turning that kept me only half-awake (since I was listening on the monitor to make sure she was breathing okay and didn't have any seizures from her temperature) she was up and hysterical.

So we nursed, and I know it's not the best habit to get into but I can't stand to see my baby suffer and I know the boob has magical soothing qualities. And when she finished she rolled over, scooted up, and slept with the top half of her body on my pillow, her little forehead pressed against mine, and her arm draped around my neck.

About 40 minutes later, I still hadn't drifted off and my leg started to cramp. I slowly tried to reposition my body without moving anything from the neck up. But of course, the sweaty Angel draped across my top eighth woke up and was at the hysterical crying again. I decided to take her temperature and she was at 102.1F so I gave her some Tylenol, nursed her for a few minutes, and tried to flip her on her back to sleep between P and I.

That didn't work.

She dragged her limp, damp body across mine, until her head rested on my heart, one arm on each side of my body in a little baby-hug, and her knees on my bed, as if she were in prayer. She made it like that for another hour or so, woke up again, repositioned herself in a similar stance and fell back asleep. When my alarm went off at 5:20 she woke up, yet again, wailed, nursed, and then I stuck her in her crib since she refused to let P touch her, and by this time it was after 6am and I had to get ready for work.

And of course she woke up right as I'm leaving the house, nobody could calm her down so I had to stay, rock, soothe, and trick her into going to Johana so I could leave for work at 7.

So you see, I've pretty much been up since 3am. That's going on 5 hours already. My brain is dead, my vision is foggy, and I'm a tad irked that P was able to sleep though most of it. Kind of like the night before when he went to sleep downstairs just before she woke up crying, vomiting, and inconsolable by anyone but me.

*sigh*

My heart is breaking thinking about how much she's suffering right now. Because of some damn shots. I spoke to a decent Kaiser nurse today though who suggested I try baby Motrin instead of Tylenol, so we'll see how that works at lunch today. And all of this piled onto my sinus infection.... But I can't complain. At least I know what to do to help myslef. This poor kid can't even tell us what's hurting.