The Adventures of Glorymouse

The last week has easily been the most traumatic of our little Gloria's life, all six-and-a-half weeks of it. Despite gorging ourselves on Gina Ford, all our attempts at establishing a routine failed miserably. Night after night, Glorymouse would sleep for 2 hours at a stretch - if we were lucky - and then scream and wail or feed until dawn. I was totally stumped as to what the matter was. Was she hungry? Was it colic? Was she too hot or too cold? She was overtired of course - she had to be with so little sleep. Was it my diet? Out went onions (boo!) and cabbage (whoppee!) and in came the wretched fennel tea (gaaah!) . She had a cold, we knew that, so out came the baby snotsucker. We elevated the cot. We gave her decongestant drops. No change. Nothing.

After 5 consecutive nights of this, I completely lost it. On Monday at 7am, having lain in bed holding a dummy in her mouth since exactly 4.33, I started sobbing and didn't stop all day. I was totally exhausted and convinced it was all my fault that she was like this. Thank God for my lovely friend Anna (the New Yorker) who came and took charge in the morning.

I made an appointment with the paediatrician for the afternoon. After leaving Emma napping with the neighbour - another blessing as it turned out - I stumbled down the hill with Gloria. I knew she had a cold, I knew we were doing everything we could already, I just wanted a calm, professional voice to say something reassuring and stop me going loopity loop.

We got there. I undressed her and sat weeping and mute in a chair while the dr examined her. "How long has she had this?" she said, pointing to a depression in her chest, moving up and down. I said I didn't know: I hadn't been looking. "She's hot," said the dr. I touched her skin: she was. Again, I hadn't noticed. I was so desperate for her (and me) to sleep, it hadn't occured to me she might actually be unwell.
"She might have a chest infection, I'd like her to go to the hospital straight away" said the doctor.
I blinked. "Can I go and get some things first? I only live 5 minutes up the road. And I've got to call my husband" I said.
"No, I'd rather you went immediately," she replied, trying to sound nonchalant. She was rubbish at sounding nonchalant. "You can call your husband from here."

We got to the hospital, where various doctors prodded and poked the Glorymouse, who responded by smiling at the handsome ones (not that sick, then.) Her condition wasn't as serious as we first thought. "She's very bunged up, and it could get nasty. Let's keep her in overnight and suction her, and you can probably go home tomorrow" said the handsome, young-looking doctor. (Everyone is young-looking these days, maybe because I feel so old and haggard.)

She has her own room at the hospital, and lots of nurses cooing over her. They also regularly suck out frightening amounts of mucus from my little girl, with their high-tech, electric snotsucker de luxe. No wonder she couldn't sleep.

But the best thing of all, is that last night, they suggested I go home and sleep while they look after her. I fretted for a moment; that meant giving her formula milk, right? I had a chat with a lady yesterday who warned me very strongly against it; that just one formula feed would be enough to start the breastmilk drying up. Rubbish, said the nurse. Just express tomorrow morning in case you have to stay another night.

So I went home, feeling guilty for about a nanosecond that I was leaving my baby. Then I slept FOR SEVEN HOURS. SE-VE-N. H-O-U-R-S. Do you have any idea how good that feels? They are keeping her in tonight as well, and today I've had lots of liberty to nip back home between feeds (we only live 5 minutes away) and why I am able to write a monster post. When I go to bed tonight, I won't feel guilty, just very, very grateful and very relieved that there was an identifiable cause at least to poor Gloria's misery. The only thing I do feel terrible about was losing my patience with her more than once in the night - telling her harshly to shut up, stuff like that. I said sorry to her, and she gave me a little gurgle before resuming her rather serious we-need-to-discuss-your-overdraft look. I hope that means she forgives me.

Emma, meanwhile, has been extremely cute, trying to kiss Gor-wee-ah better - then pinching her to see if that'll help. Last night she kept asking for mumm-ee which was rather gratifying, and we had a good game of hide and seek in the park this morning. Things are getting back to normal.

My chirpy happiness has evaporated. We have been trying hard to get GM into a routine, but in short, despite getting 5 good feeds during the day she rarely sleeps at night for longer than 2 hour stretches and it is beginning to take its toll. I am starting to wonder how I long I can carry on breastfeeding.

She is putting on weight, so I know I am producing enough milk, but I am at a real loss as to why she won't sleep very long. I am pretty certain that it's hunger waking her up, because the dummy just seems to upset her more, and to be honest I don't feel like persevering with it much as I know the breast is guarenteed to at least calm her down and then I can go back to bed. Each feed takes a good half hour, much of which is spent with me tickling her and taking layers of clothing off to encourage her to feed. I am trying to get in the habit of expressing a bottle in the mornings to top her up with at night, but I don't have much milk then as I've spent half the night feeding. This makes me feel very stressed, which doesn't help the milk supply either. So I've started on the fennel tea, which the Swiss are very keen on. (I got given a thermos of it every day I was in hospital.) As well as "promoting digestion" and "relieving colic" - they give colicy babies bottles of it - it's meant to stimulate the production of prolactin, the breastmilk hormone. I've been drinking it by the bucketload, it tastes filthy and I can't say I've (yet) been convinced by the results.

I am wondering whether to give her a bottle of formula at night, just to get her to sleep at bit more, but I don't know if that means I'll produce less milk and then I'll have no choice but to stop breastfeeding altogether. Or maybe I should start giving her fennel tea? She is quite gassy, which might be making her uncomfortable and waking her up. But the thought of boiling up tea in the middle of the night doesn't exactly do it for me, either.

Another concern is the neighbours. We live above the concierge whose ears can pick up frequencies usually only registered by dogs and bats, and have been told off so many times about noise ("Madame, on Sunday we were disturbed by a tapping sound") that having a baby whose screams could startle the deaf and wake the dead must be his worst nightmare. I suspect as much, after I met his daughter on the stairs and apologised to her about the disturbed nights: "Yes, thank you" she said, when written all over her face was "you and your screaming children are making my life hell." And I need to keep the concierge onside, because his wife is the Guardian of the (communal) Washing Machine and she has been very generous about how often we use it.

On the up side, the GM is so sweet, her sister is being totally adorable, and R took both of them to the shops this morning just so I could lie in bed and stare.

Here she is!

She's got bigger! Yesterday our Glorymouse weighed in at a respectable 3.8kg, so she's put on 1 whole kilo since she was born. Thank God the udders are working at least.

Now she's got another cold, which meant she woke every hour last night. You'll still have to wait for that jig (see below).

We think she looks a bit like a regional bank manager...an extremely cute one obviously.

Despite the lack of sleep, I am feeling extremely chirpy and happy. I love my girls. 

Mother plays hardball

Elephants fear them. So does the Gruffalo. It is because they understand the power of the mouse.

It is a power I have come to understand. Revere, even. But unlike the elephant and the gruffalo, I am not afraid.

Glorymouse, you are tough. But I have news for you: I am tougher.

You see, I have dusted off my copy of The Contented Little Baby Book* and there are going to be some changes around here. You are going to go a minimum of 3 hours between feeds. If you fall asleep on the job I will undress you and tickle your ears until you start sucking again.
You will have regular nap times in your cot, and if you don't settle you will be left to cry.** And Glorymouse, meet Dummy; Dummy, Glorymouse. You already know each other, but you are about to be best friends. And I have 80mls of lovely milk in the fridge which Daddy will give you at 10pm tonight, after which - please - sleep for a good four hours. If you can manage five, I will dance a jig, video it and post it on this blog.

OK? Love you, little girl.

*the parents' equivalent of the nuclear weapon
**I crack after 5 minutes.

Here we go again

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

won't she sleep at night?????

9.30pm.
11.30pm.
1.45am.
3am.
5.20am day begins.

L'elf avec les cheveux blonds

While the Glorymouse continues to stamp her authority over our family, I am now wondering if my Golden-Haired Snow Elf is actually a child of my loins. I am beginning to think she was swapped at birth with a little French baby. Let me present the evidence:

She speaks the lingo.
After despairing that she would ever say anything at all, she has started yabbering away in French. She calls me "maman". (I have never called myself "maman.") She says "encore" and "oui" and "manger" and "C'est quoi?". (But she won't say 'please' or 'thank you' or 'sorry' which I bark at her several billion times a day.)

She eats garlic.
And she takes the empty red wine bottles out of the recycling and swigs from them.

She can be very rude and stroppy.
Do you see where I'm going with this?

She goes on strike a lot.
"Shall we get dressed Emma?" No. "Shall we brush our teeth?" Don't be ridiculous. In fact I'm just going to sit in the middle of the floor and scream until you go away.

She does love Marmite, though, which may blow my theory out of the water...

An interested person enquires

So, what's happened to Switzerlady? It's been a while..
Thanks for asking. She's still around, but time on the computer has become a bit of a luxury since the arrival of Glorymouse 5 weeks ago.

Why's that?
Well, there's also the Golden-Haired Snow Elf to keep fed and watered for one thing and Glorymouse is hard as nails.

Hard as nails? Gosh!
Yup. She thinks sleep is for wimps. Why sleep when you can scream? She's on a 24 hour endurance wake-a-thon, man. If she could have chosen her own name it would have been

Andy McNab?
Exactly. (It makes no difference that she's a girl.)

Sounds exhausting.
Yes. It is. She hates the crib. She doesn't like to feed for very long. Last night she woke up at 4am and decided the day had to start. Nights are just borrrriinnnnng!

What effect is this having on Switzerlady's mental health?
She is unable to complete simple tasks. She is sort of at her wits end and has lost confidence in her mothering skills. She doesn't remember it being this hard with the GHSE, though wonders if this is because she has erased this period of her life from her memory.

* break as GM has started screaming. again. *

Lights on, but nobody home (still)

...* tinkly background music * Switzerlady thanks you for your patience. She is still recovering the power of speech and how to write in sentences. In the meantime she will keep your attention by posting cute photos of her children. Talk soon!

Switzerlady thanks you for your patience. She is still recovering the power of speech and how to write in sentences etc etc 

back in a mo 

Glorymouse..

..is quite a lot better, but she still has a bad cough which makes her throw up her milk a lot. She is more or less permanently attached to my bosom, and I am more or less permanently attached to the washing machine. Now she's having a nap, R and E are at the market buying brussels sprouts and I can enjoy the sweet, sweet peace of the blogosphere. Ahhhhhh.

Nerdy things now. As my eagle-eyed regulars may have noticed, I removed my photo from my profile a few weeks back in order to replace it with a more up-to-date one. Many times now I have followed Blogger's instructions about how to do it, but when I put the photo's URL in the box, it rejects it saying "this URL contains illegal characters." What on earth does that mean? I wrote an email to the support team (support, my fat arse!) who sent me an automated response directing me to do everything I've already done.

Any ideas out there, fellow Bloggers or general teccie folk?

Over the worst?

Another atrocious night. Glorymouse's snuffling has migrated to her throat, making her cough and choke constantly. She threw up all her feeds between 9pm and 10am which was a) messy b) smelly and c) scary. I phoned up the paediatrician first thing, very worried. But since mid-morning, thank God, she seems to be keeping her milk down. The heavy-breathing is still present but she looks perkier and isn't febrile.

At least R has the day off today and the GHSE is at nursery, so I have lots of opportunity to stare into space and dribble onto my clothes. Like mother, like daughter.

The vale of tears

After 3 virtually sleepless nights, Glorymouse's cold shows no signs of easing up, and though the paediatrician reassured me that it was not in her chest, the horrible rattling sound she makes when she breathes is enough to send me to the funny farm with worry.

For 3 nights she has been awake for hours at a time. She suckles for a few seconds at a time then starts retching up phlegm. Then she falls asleep because she's so exhausted. Then she wakes up because she's finding it hard to breathe. So I try and comfort her with a feed - repeat cycle. I've used the snotsucker a lot, but the mucus she is producing is very thick and sticky and isn't easily budged. I worry about giving her a nosebleed if I try and suck too hard, and she hates the whole business enough as it is. We've tried putting menthol-soaked tissues close by, but they are not making much difference. The night before last I put a bowl full of Vicks-laced hot water next to her crib which I then knocked all over R's work trousers.

The good news is she doesn't have a temperature, and it really is just a bad cold - nothing more sinister. At least for now. But I am in pieces, emotionally and through sleep deprivation. I also feel guilty because I haven't cuddled and kissed my beautiful big girl enough.

I will do ANYTHING to get G to breathe easier.