Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Last night, after her first bath and some serious trauma removing the oxygen tube circles from her cheeks, my home-from-the-hospital 3-week-old slept from 10:30 pm to 7:30 am.

Seriously.  That’s awesome, right?  I should have woken up amazed and shockingly well rested?

Oh, if only.  And in an exceptionally cruel twist, yes, my two-year-old was up briefly once, but it was my 8-year-old that was up multiple times, for who knows how long at a stretch.  (This sleep-deprived mommy wasn’t coherent enough to figure that out.)  She had woken up with ear pain at 9:30-ish, been given Ibuprofen, and gone back to sleep; apparently the medicine didn’t help nearly as much as one might hope.  At various times in the night she took a q-tip to her own ear (I only learned this in the morning), snuggled with Mommy on the couch, joined Mommy and Daddy in bed for a bit, tried laying down in the living room, and ultimately went back to bed.  This morning she came along with me and her baby sister to the follow-up RSV doctor’s appointment, where she handled getting her ears flushed out like the little trooper she is.  She had ear drops in the afternoon and they were painful; when I gave them to her at bedtime, however, it was a nightmare.  This is a BRAVE girl, mind you.  She handles pain and illness like a little Stoic, and yet these drops hurt her so badly she was sobbing in my arms.  And let me tell you, as I was holding her and trying to figure out what to do, it about killed me to hear her say “It helped when you sang, Mom.”  Because singing when you’re trying not to cry for your child is not so easy.

The good news is that after further perusal of the fine print on the pharmacy papers, I realized that she can sit upright and (presumably) let the drops drain out a bit after 60 seconds, which should help (as should a good night’s sleep).  The bad news is that we’ve got four more days of drops.

Here’s praying that she hurts less tomorrow.