relentless

monday:

the unbearable heat.

another mostly peaceful night, almost-but-not ruined by my inappropriate tonality. jumping out of bed to pick up correctly sized diapers (whoops!) and breakfast (receiving compliments for airplane's shirt) before settling down to manage the tax office, health insurance and parental insurance. rushing out at lunchtime to print documents and return in time for a circumcision follow-up. walking past a stupid girl smoking in the entrance to the mall: "what do you want?! i'm outside!"
yes, but you're standing in the entrance and forcing everyone to walk through your clouds of smoke.

a long wait for a quick visit, hunger distress before we could leave leading to gd's first public feeding, post office mission followed by restless stress followed by an urgent food mission

an evening of lactation stress and potential post-partum depression and guilt and difficult bottle feeds and a taste of jericho

tuesday:

the even less bearable heat.

(perceived) 2am feed failure meltdown
a good morning and a late sleep, struggling to select formula powder (hint: don't use powder for at least the first six months, there's a high risk of contamination)

breastfeeding consulting: gd's doing okay, but we have some adjustments to make. our boy's not in trouble, but neither is he eating as much as he should be. this is surprisingly complicated stuff :(

a hungry baby with a dirty diaper and two taxis in a row whose UAS did't work correctly - it appears that the drivers modified their seats.

babies r us / purolator delivery fail: the second fail when we (thought we) needed the item the most.

feeding (all three of us) and resting and then the awful sensation of having to wake him up and then the worse sensation of waking up gd because i was feeding him wrong which turned into some deep unpleasantness

wednesday:

babies are remarkably inefficient. he keeps pooping right after we change his diaper or falling asleep on gd's breast or just as soon as his bottle's finally ready.

a horrific bout of rls that left me *trying* to sleep for four hours when i really needed to actually be sleeping...

another good morning, mr smear living up to his "poop grenade" onesie, a little bit of project progress, off to borrow an industrial (hospital-quality) breast pump

i made the mistake of walking through the perfume section at the bay. the assault on my nostrils was painful, and it never ceases to amaze me that women will actually pay to smell this bad. i can smell the faeces... can't anyone else?

subway run and arriving home to learn we had a surprise frenectomy surgery planned, would've been enough time for a power nap if rls and back spasms hadn't hit me

the procedure was definitely harder for us than for mr smear, he was bothered by the fingers in his mouth but we could see the scissors

a relentless evening of diaper change after feeding ad nauseum (he did spit up at one stage) with plenty of screaming in between (and a garbage day run, and no dinner), finally calming down when we'd had enough and started some raging of our own.

guilt is a fabulous way to get some rest, apparently.

thursday:

a better night with only one frustrating feeding, dreaming of:
my dog tells me we need to get to "happy place", and we go hunting through the suburb. it begins to rain, and we stumble across a house that appears to have been converted into a sleep lab only the lights are all off and the bodies on the beds lie at strange angles and seem distressed. someone exits the control room and attacks us, chasing us through a garden until we meet at a pool where we wrestle and i'm forced to crush his throat with all my power if i want to survive.

waking up to gd struggling to get the k'tan configured and learning that mr smear's too small for it
a calmer morning with some perspective and mr smear enjoying the cranberries with me

QPIP fails: gd's ROE's edge wasn't scanned correctly so even if it's obvious what the data is we need to rescan and send. this would be fine if the accountant would actually scan the original properly instead of send a scan of a bad print. just as i was losing my temper with that stupidity i received an email update informing me that i needed to resubmit my documents because one of my scans is unreadable (i looked at it again, it's absolutely clear) and because their questionnaire is so badly written i had to have an agent walk me through each question...

an afternoon that included a nap, fixing gd's stupid galaxy s4* and cleaning and feeding. if only mr smear had little bars indicating his hunger level and the amount of time remaining until the next poop drop we'd be way better at managing all this.

* and losing all her client contacts permanently. android is stupid, here's how to not repeat my mistake.

suddenly, 9pm feels like 1am.

friday:

finally, cooler weather and open windows.

and waking up to screaming after having missed a feeding alarm, a perpetual shitting machine and failing to feed

a painful 7am, he's started reacting badly to the formula. otherwise, sitting in the bed having coffee while listening to ac/dc and k's choice with mr smear lying next to me was awesome.

lessons in android shittiness (see above), a doctor visit and almost falling over from exhaustion. a rushed stop for lunch, a visit to the breastfeeding expert (our little poop grenade went off in her hands), a twenty-five minute wait for a taxi driver who then threatened to throw us out when we complained, a visit to the pharmacy for a little bureaucratic runaround, returning to a broken front door and a screaming baby after an hour of feeding who finally relaxed either on me or between my legs with me tapping on his feet along to jamiroquai and trying not to pass out myself in order to give gd a break... i didn't realize he was starving until afterwards because he wasn't making the mouth motions and was actively refusing the formula, but after he woke up he breathed in 140ml like it was nothing and i felt really bad. one of our neighbours popped in from upstairs to discuss our broken shared entrance door and we learned that the problem is really only one of them; we advised her and her ally to put their feet down or kick her out before we all pay for it.

yesterday:

gd's quote for the day: "we're like a ren and stimpy version of the addams family"

getting up at 4am feeling sick, cancelling my laser session and feeling blissful relief when my mother finally arrived.

definite sabbath vibe on my way to mail documents, awkwardly entertaining weird acquaintances of gd's, home improvement adventure, a couple of hours in granny-care feeling like a vacation but not actually sleeping because of my rls

a pharmacy visit via a crazy-beautiful dusk, sudden exhaustion, a solid dinner, just enough time for a shower before the night excitement began

projectile vomit soon after my mom left, just because nights have to be more interesting. a long hour or two sorting him out, then finally crashing.

today:

one not-so-bad midnight feed, then sleeping late while gd let her inspiration take her, feeding to foo fighters and getting sunday rolling.