Tag: sleep deprivation

Because this is too long for FB (and by default twitter). Parenting post alert.

I’m shamelessly crowd-sourcing advice.

Picture this: the girls were both coughing up a storm from early last week. By Thursday Mignon’s cough had cleared up, but Isabel’s got worse.

It’s that I’m-going-to-hack-up-a-lung cough. It is 24/7 and it is driving us insane. Well, more Etienne than me because he is a terribly light sleeper and I’m an insomniac that sleeps through almost everything once I’m actually asleep.

I took her to a GP we don’t normally see as ours wasn’t available on Saturday and SURPRIZE! left with a script for AB’s and some fancy cough medicine. It was one of those surreal conversations with the doctor:

Me: I’m worried about her chest and I had some Pulmicort, so I nebbed her last night
GP: ‘listens to chest’ Her chest is fine. (Said in that ‘you terrible Mother how dare you neb the child that clearly has nothing wrong with her chest’ voice)
Me: Er. She doesn’t feel warm, but she was looking pale and listless when I came home last night.
GP: ‘takes temperature’ She doesn’t have a temperature.
Me: I’m really worried about that cough, we’ve even tried a cough suppressant at night and that doesn’t seem to help
GP: At this point she is giving me the serious side-eye and takes out a picture of sinuses. When doctors start taking out pictures of body parts I tend to start rocking and humming in the corner. She launches into a long explanation about getting the phlegm loose and how terrible it is for them to have the cough suppressed. Which made perfect sense at the time, but all I could think of was how we (Etienne) were going to sleep until the child is better. I’m selfish that way you know, I enjoy sleeping on occasion.
Me: (yup, at this stage I was only opening my mouth to swap feet) It’s probably a good thing to dry things up too?
GP: (horror stricken) You do NOT want to dry the sinuses up! Otherwise the ‘insert big doctor words for snot here’ stays there and she doesn’t get better.

So, I did what any self-respecting Mother would do: I sucked it up and diligently bought the AB’s and fancy cough medicine.

That was on Saturday, 3 days ago. In my vast (!!) experience of dispensing AB’s I know that they tend to work between 24-48 hours. Which this hasn’t. At all. In fact, her cough is getting worse.

It has been suggested (by the ever-helpful folk on twitter) that children could cough like that because of, and brace yourself, worms. I’ll be buying the Vermox tomorrow, but I’m so over this now.

I’m not quite sure where to from here. Our regular GP? Stuff the other doctor and give the cough suppressant anyway?

What do you think?

Oh, and I nebbed her tonight. Just because I can. Judge me, I don’t care.

Bad dreams and play dates

I know.  If I was any kind of Mother by now I would have downloaded all  the pics from the girls’ party on Saturday and already posted them here, but I haven’t.  So there.

Their 5th birthday party was on Saturday morning and I literally woke up in a puddle of drool from a nap on Saturday afternoon, I was THAT tired.  What an epic nap that was after a party that I was very happy with. It wasn’t Pinterest Perfect*, but it was perfect for us and our kids had an absolute ball.

Sunday morning was brunch with the Whine Club girls and Sunday afternoon we went to see Koos Kombuis at Backsberg.  It was really cool to be somewhere without proper cellphone signal so I was forced to pack my phone away and it was so relaxing just lolling around on the grass with the kids. We could listen to music, drink some lovely wine and just “be” with the kids and the lovely family that went with us. No rush to finish supper, tidy a kitchen or worry about feet on the couch.

I had such an overwhelming sense of peace on Sunday evening.  You know those odd moments when you stand outside your life for a minute and realize OMG, this is it.  This is my life and it is just grand, I wouldn’t exchange it for anything else.  I love those moments, I live for those moments and try to replicate them as often as I can.

So imagine my surprise when I didn’t sleep much on Sunday night thanks to some dodgy sushi and battled to fall asleep last night again, only to wake up from a horrible dream that Daniel had died.  I swear I was crying in my sleep, it was really very upsetting.

I wonder where that came from?

Then I would like to ask: some of the lovely Moms (that we met for the first time on Saturday) want to do play dates with the girls, but offered to pick up the girls either from school or our house during  working hours.  I felt a little awkward as they are really lovely people and I initially didn’t get that they were inviting my children only, so I kept suggesting Saturday mornings until it dawned on me that the invite was for the girls only.  I’m just not comfortable sending my kids to people’s houses that I don’t know very well/I haven’t been to myself (that entire sentence should read “we” as Etienne agrees btw), but I also don’t want to seem ungracious and alienate the Moms as we will be together for the next 12 years.  I also don’t want to be labeled as “that difficult Mom”, but I’m just not comfortable and I may or may not have taken it just a tad personally that I wasn’t invited either because I’m of the “the-more-the-merrier” persuasion. As far as I’m concerned our house can always be filled with people.

What do you think?  How do I handle the situation with tact and grace?

ps: If I was under any illusion that I really wanted to have that last baby I keep begging Etienne for I changed my mind in the last 2 days as I DO NOT cope well without sleep. I a walking disaster breaking things and knocking my toes blue.

* Pinterest Perfect = those wonderful things you see on Pinterest that you so desperately want to copy but just never seem to get quite right.  I totally made that up.

In snot and sleep

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It might just be because it is September and our 12 year wedding anniversary is at the end of the month, but I’m feeling even more in love with Etienne than I normally do. He really is quite the keeper.

I also realized something yesterday that I have probably known all along, but just refused to accept because I somehow thought it would make me less of a Mother.

Picture this: Mignon wasn’t well over the weekend and I had my usual little anxiety attack about what we were going to do come Monday if she wasn’t well enough to go to school (this relates to a post about infertility and PND that’s been sitting in my drafts for a while, it might be time to publish that one)

The bottom line for me has always been that I, as the Mom, carry the burden of worry about sick children.

On Sunday night Etienne and I had our usual conversation about sick-child-care. We like to always have a plan (and sometimes a Plan B and C) upfront so that we have our heads around things should we need to and not be running around like decapitated chickens come Monday morning. Oh, who am I kidding, Mondays suck enough as it is.

We used to do this Plan A. B and C thing when the kids were small, a pre-arranged plan or plans especially for the nights we knew that little sleep was inevitable. And we stick to the plan, there is safety in the plan and safety of creating options for ourselves. I’m not sure if any of this makes sense?

Anyway, it finally dawned on me yesterday that I am not the only parent that worries when our babies are sick. There are TWO of us that worry and Etienne is more than capable of taking care of sick children and always has been.

How have I missed this for so long? Why did I think I had an exclusive right to being a worrier?

PS Isabel told Daniel she that was going to kill him with a fart yesterday morning. Aren’t our children just charming?

PPS Isabel is now also sick and we haven’t really slept since Friday. We are both feeling a little fragile.