A tooth!!!!

After all the chewing and drooling she's been doing, Rose's first tooth just popped through today!!! She may be a bit behind with the rolling, but she's definitely ahead of the curve with the teething! :)

She was not thrilled to have me trying to take a picture of it, so please just take my word for it that her lower left tooth made its appearance today!

pain, pain, go away!

Some of you may have heard me complaining about the intermittent ear pain I've been experiencing ever since I got sick in early August. Some nights it's been unbearable enough to wake me (as if my general lack of sleep hasn't been bad enough!), and the thought has crossed my mind several times in the middle of the nights that I would need to go to the ER if it wasn't better in the morning. But every morning it's been marginally improved enough that I've been able to avoid seeing a doctor. You see, I have this terrible fear that my pain threshold is just low and that they will laugh me out of the office and tell me it's just all in my head. (Unlikely, I know. But still technically a possibility!) So it was a huge deal when I got up the nerve to visit the Target Clinic on August 30 to actually see a nurse practitioner. Since I've been prone to ear infections my whole life, I was pretty convinced that I'd be sent home back to work with antibiotics. Alas, the good news (or the bad, depending on how you look at it) was that there was no sign of infection! The NP said she couldn't see any reason for my pain (ugh), so told me to just use warm compresses and take ibuprofen as needed. (The only other options were sudafed, which I'm allergic to, and a million other cold medications, all of which are contraindicated when breastfeeding.)  Fine.  I tried to convince myself that I was better, but I've still been in pain most of the last ten days. So last night, as I was lying awake in agony yet again, I knew I needed to do something. Thankfully Mike was able to work from home today, so I was off the hook for picking Rose up and I was able to go to Urgent Care instead. (FWIW, I tried to schedule something with a primary care doc, but no one at my clinic had any openings. Please don't judge me for using urgent care!) Once again, I was nervous that I would be ridiculed for having a low pain tolerance and/or for having psychosomatic pain (I'll never forget the time that I went to the ER after my second D&C and the nurse asked if I was just upset about the miscarriage, when it turned out that actually I had endometritis - aka "childbed fever" - aka the thing that used to kill women before antibiotics were invented!!! So maybe that should tell me something about the likelihood of me presenting to an urgent/emergency clinic for no good reason!). Anyway, I went to Urgent Care this afternoon and was eventually diagnosed with "eustachian tube dysfunction." So there's a reason I've been in pain! Basically, something is aggravating my eustachian tubes, causing them to close, which leads to fluid build-up and/or air pressure imbalances, thus leading to pain. This also explains why the pain has gone back and forth from ear to ear and not just stayed in one ear, as would be the case with an ear infection. Whew! I'm relieved to not only have a diagnosis, but also a plan of action: I have to take Nasonex nightly for 21 days, followed by a modified neti pot ritual. The doctor didn't explicitly state this, but I'm also going to prescribe myself plenty of rest. I don't think I'd still be fighting off a sickness from six weeks ago if I hadn't been so stressed and sleep deprived recently. I'm hoping Rose will continue to show improvements in her sleep (yay, Rose!), and that I will continue to show improvement in my ability to ask for help (yay, Steph!). Mike has been a tremendous husband and father these last few weeks, and I've appreciated so much the outpouring of support that I've received from friends and family. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, Marsha, Mitra, Jane, Sara, Natalie, and everyone else!) I'm trying hard to build up my "reserve" so minor set-backs don't continue to have such a disastrous impact on me. So here's to me healing up in the next few weeks, getting some good rest, and building up some mental reserves so I can cope with whatever comes my way in the future!

Here's a photo of Rose, to make up for all the "whining" I just did.  She fell into a milk coma in my arms on Sunday morning. Awww.... :)

Last night she woke up at 1am, and I was so groggy that I just stumbled in to feed her. But as soon as I opened the door I realized she was just "talking," not actually upset. But she lit up when she saw me!! So adorable (or at least as adorable as anything is at 1am.)  She wasn't really hungry, but she ate a bit then fell back asleep. But then she "talked" again at 2am, 3am, and 4am - I think she kept trying to get me to come back in and play with her. Kind of cute, right? She outsmarted me at 1am, but I'm hoping I outsmarted her the rest of the night and she won't try that again tonight. I need some sleep!  :)

Twenty weeks!

Rose is twenty weeks old!  She had 3 of the last 5 nights of sleeping through the night -  but unfortunately woke twice last night. Groan!

Anyway, here's the grown-up girl!

She is excited for the Vikings season opener today! (And for the Packers too, although we don't have a green-and-gold outfit for her.)

Right now Rose likes:
+ being outside (it's a magic "off switch" for fussiness)
+ spending time with her grandparents
+ watching mommy and daddy dance and do other funny movements

And she does not like:
- missing out on any excitement going on around her!
- milk from a bottle when she could be getting it fresh
- being alone in the back seat of the car

Labor Day

No time for a long post (I've got to get some sleep!), but I at least wanted to post a few photos from last weekend!

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

nineteen weeks!

Rose turned 19 weeks old on Sunday! Each week when we take her photos, I try to choose a setting or a facial expression that really captures her current personality. (For example, her mischievous grin that emerged around seven weeks, her new-found ability to sleep in her crib at ten weeks, and her open-handed thumb sucking at fifteen weeks.) I was trying to figure out what would capture her personality this week.

I tried giving her Sophie...

 I tried giving her the teething ring...

 I tried just letting her look cute... (she does that so well!)

 Then she started pulling on the blanket (please ignore Mike's hand popping in to this picture)...

That's it! Simultaneously kicking her legs and sucking on the blanket perfectly captures the essence of her this week!

Happy 19 weeks old, Rose! :)

thank you!

Thanks, loyal blog readers! I got an outpouring of support after my last post. It made me feel so much less isolated - I knew I wasn't actually alone before, but it was a nice reminder that I truly do have a lot more support that I tend to use. I'm really going to work hard on utilizing my support network more often, whether it's for help with Rose (thanks, Marsha!), help around the house (thanks for the offer, Mom and Dad!), or help at work (thanks, Mike, for letting me work late yesterday! thanks, Helene, for letting me vent!). I'm starting to surface again and it feels so much better.

falling behind

Everything seems worse when I'm sleep deprived. I already have a tendency to catastrophize, and this is only heightened when I'm running on fumes. As a result, I now feel like I'm falling behind in everything.

I'm falling behind at work. I'm in such a rush to leave by 3:30 every day to pick up Rose that I never get fully caught up. I brought home six reports to finalize this weekend (in an attempt to make progress on getting caught up) and I couldn't find the time to read them all over.

I'm falling behind at home. I haven't vacuumed in forever. I need to balance the checkbooks. I have piles of my laundry to put away. We end up eating frozen pizza more often than this girl who loves to cook and bake would like to admit.

I'm falling behind as a mom. Some days I get so resentful of the hours (literally hours) that it can take Rose to fall asleep. I love her soooo much, but I wish I could explain to her that I need just a little Steph time each day. I'm not asking for much! If she would actually go to bed at 7:30, I would have a whole 90 minutes to myself (and my to-do list) before I have to start my bedtime routine. I just need a little time to wind down each day, in order to be fully present and appreciative of the wonderful time I do have with her!

I'm falling behind as a wife. I'm snapping at Mike for things that aren't his fault. I don't do this (at least, not nearly as much) when I'm well rested. It's certainly not helping our relationship and then that just adds to my stress level.

I'm falling behind in self-care. I don't even want to tell you when I last flossed my teeth. If I didn't have to walk to pick up Rose from school, I basically wouldn't be getting any exercise at all. And when Rose takes forever to get to bed, I end up inhaling my dinner which certainly isn't good for my digestion or my general health.

I'm falling behind at blogging. This is such a release for me, and when I don't get time to write then things get bottled up and I go crazy (and get more likely to snap at Mike). I was hoping to post Rose's 19-week photos today, and I also want to post a summary of our Labor Day weekend. I know it's only Labor Day itself right now, but our weeks get so crazy that if I didn't do it by now that also contributed to me snapping at Mike earlier this evening.

I'm falling behind in relationships. I feel so rushed and so stressed all the time that I'm not calling the people I love (sorry, Mom and Dad, for not calling you back today!) or writing to the people I care about (sorry, Jane and Sara and Dotty and everyone else whose emails have gone unreturned!). Please believe me when I say I think of all of you often, even if my actions don't support that.

I'm falling behind at taking care of my emotional well-being. Maybe this is just part of self-care, but it seems a little different. In addition to blogging, I also need time to myself.  Pre-Rose, I read about one book per month. I knew the pace of my reading would change, but I didn't expect it to dwindle to less than a chapter per month now that I'm back at work. I need an escape! Reading rejuvenates me, just like blogging is cathartic.  I just don't know how to build that into my day, on top of everything else that I need to be doing. In the list of things that need to get done each day, making "Steph time" keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the list. But I know that doing this first would actually help out everything else that I'm feeling stressed about. (What's that I tell my patients? Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others? Hmmm.)  I signed up for a mindfulness meditation class on Tuesday evenings starting in a couple weeks, and I'm really, really looking forward to having that time to figure things out in my head. If that doesn't help and things don't start improving, I'm going to have to find a psychologist because I can't keep getting stressed and taking it out on Mike, and I certainly don't want to get to a point where I'm not able to enjoy my time with Rose.

Ahhhhhhh. I just re-read everything I wrote. Amazingly, I feel like I have just a bit of breathing room as a result. So with that breathing room, I'm going:  to let go of all the household chores that don't really need to be done, choose to put of blogging about this weekend until later this week or next weekend, get to work 5 minutes early tomorrow so I can figure out a plan for getting more caught up by the end of this (short) week, and now get ready for bed (including flossing!) and read for 15 minutes before going to bed 15 minutes early (in the hopes of catching a little more sleep). Sounds like a plan, Stan. Here's to greener pastures tomorrow.