Many thing
Sep. 27th, 2019 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halojedhaI think I'm a bit depressed. Everything is just A Lot. I'm at a really low ebb, both mood wise and energy wise.
I was chatting tojuliet yesterday, who validated the fact that everything is really quite hard right now. I mean having an 11 week old is always hard. But then there's been the broken washing machine and the backlog of laundry to catch up on.
There's Leo's hip, meaning they aren't able to offer me all of the physical support a partner might offer, like taking the baby out for a walk in the sling to give me a break, or loading and emptying the dishwasher. (They're doing as much as they can, more than they should to be honest, but their mobility is compromised. Stairs are hard, and so is bending over and standing, so all sorts of things are difficult including fetching and carrying, bouncing the baby, and several of the regular chores.)
There's Podling's ongoing refusal to take the bottle, meaning I can't get any respite. I'm on the hook day and night. I'm not tracking how long I'm spending breastfeeding per day but it feels like I'm glued to the sofa. I can barely take time for myself, have a nap, go for a walk on my own. The cluster feeding lasts for hours. I'll feed for an hour and ten minutes later they'll be hungry again and go back on the boob for another hour. It's midnight now and they've been feeding on and off since 7pm. I'm desperate to go to sleep.
Anything I do do on my own risks interruptions to feed at any point. I'm permanently on call.
There's the puking. E is losing 2-4 full belly loads of food a day. It might be reflux, pyloric stenosis, or an allergy. We're seeing the doctor and and I'm going to ask to be referred for tests. They still get really congested at night and often wake-up crying because they can't breathe, which makes me think allergies.
Meanwhile the feeding/puking/cleaning/feeding cycle is relentless. It's so dispiriting to finally finish a feed and have them lose it, and have to start again from scratch. It makes me feel so trapped. Plus every puke is two changes of clothes and it makes so much extra laundry.
On top of all that, my cat Niamh has been sick. She came home with fleas a few weeks ago so we treated her with flea treatment. Then she started looking increasingly haggard and straggly. It looked like she'd lost a lot of weight. She started hiding in my office - the least used room in the house - and there were straggly patches on her fur where she was biting herself. I thought it might be some sort of parasite. We found little wriggly things in the moses basket after she lay in it and I found more in her fur when I groomed her. Honestly, the way she was looking and acting I was worried she was dying. She's 15, but was perfectly healthy until a few weeks ago.
Leo took her to the vet this morning and she is lousy with fleas. The over the counter treatment just didn't work. She's crawling with them and that's why she's been sick. So she got sprayed down with flea spray and we got a prescription spot treatment to give her, which should kill them all in 24 hours. We also got a deworming tablet and an anti-inflammatory for her hip, which has been lame recently (an on/off problem which has been worse lately - probably arthritis or something, exacerbated by being run down.)
So I'm really hoping all that helps her and she doesn't need antibiotics or something - I know fleas carry diseases and she really has seemed awfully unwell. Today she's been hiding and grooming herself and running away from us. I'll try and give her another proper brush down tomorrow if she'll let me, to get all the (hopefully) dead fleas out of her fur.
Of course, there are now fleas in all our soft furnishings no doubt. We've changed the bedding, the cleaner came yesterday and hoovered and mopped everywhere, and we've washed (more laundry) the sheets on the moses basket and her cat blankets and all the other places we've seen her sleeping. But what about the rug and the sofas? We can't put pesticide down, not with an 11 week old baby.
I guess we just need to hoover everywhere every day. Once Niamh is poisonous to them they'll die out in due course. I've been bitten loads over the last few days but they can't live on human blood, so that's just annoying. Except the place is so cluttered and untidy with baby stuff and nappies and laundry despite constant work to try and tidy up, and I'm so tired, and we didn't hoover today. I feel itchy just thinking about it. I hope the horrible little things all die soon. Poor cat, and poor us!
It's autumn now: rainy and grey. I should probably be taking Vitamin D supplements. Also my GP told me that my iron levels are still low after the birth and I need to be on 200mg oral iron twice a day. Which is a lot of iron. So between that and waking to feed every 1-3 hours and having to sit up with E for an hour or so in the middle of the night to let them sleep on me because they can't breathe and only getting 6 hours a night and having my life essence sucked out of me by a tiny vampire, no wonder I'm tired.
I was chatting to
juliet yesterday, who validated the fact that everything is really quite hard right now. I mean having an 11 week old is always hard. But then there's been the broken washing machine and the backlog of laundry to catch up on.There's Leo's hip, meaning they aren't able to offer me all of the physical support a partner might offer, like taking the baby out for a walk in the sling to give me a break, or loading and emptying the dishwasher. (They're doing as much as they can, more than they should to be honest, but their mobility is compromised. Stairs are hard, and so is bending over and standing, so all sorts of things are difficult including fetching and carrying, bouncing the baby, and several of the regular chores.)
There's Podling's ongoing refusal to take the bottle, meaning I can't get any respite. I'm on the hook day and night. I'm not tracking how long I'm spending breastfeeding per day but it feels like I'm glued to the sofa. I can barely take time for myself, have a nap, go for a walk on my own. The cluster feeding lasts for hours. I'll feed for an hour and ten minutes later they'll be hungry again and go back on the boob for another hour. It's midnight now and they've been feeding on and off since 7pm. I'm desperate to go to sleep.
Anything I do do on my own risks interruptions to feed at any point. I'm permanently on call.
There's the puking. E is losing 2-4 full belly loads of food a day. It might be reflux, pyloric stenosis, or an allergy. We're seeing the doctor and and I'm going to ask to be referred for tests. They still get really congested at night and often wake-up crying because they can't breathe, which makes me think allergies.
Meanwhile the feeding/puking/cleaning/feeding cycle is relentless. It's so dispiriting to finally finish a feed and have them lose it, and have to start again from scratch. It makes me feel so trapped. Plus every puke is two changes of clothes and it makes so much extra laundry.
On top of all that, my cat Niamh has been sick. She came home with fleas a few weeks ago so we treated her with flea treatment. Then she started looking increasingly haggard and straggly. It looked like she'd lost a lot of weight. She started hiding in my office - the least used room in the house - and there were straggly patches on her fur where she was biting herself. I thought it might be some sort of parasite. We found little wriggly things in the moses basket after she lay in it and I found more in her fur when I groomed her. Honestly, the way she was looking and acting I was worried she was dying. She's 15, but was perfectly healthy until a few weeks ago.
Leo took her to the vet this morning and she is lousy with fleas. The over the counter treatment just didn't work. She's crawling with them and that's why she's been sick. So she got sprayed down with flea spray and we got a prescription spot treatment to give her, which should kill them all in 24 hours. We also got a deworming tablet and an anti-inflammatory for her hip, which has been lame recently (an on/off problem which has been worse lately - probably arthritis or something, exacerbated by being run down.)
So I'm really hoping all that helps her and she doesn't need antibiotics or something - I know fleas carry diseases and she really has seemed awfully unwell. Today she's been hiding and grooming herself and running away from us. I'll try and give her another proper brush down tomorrow if she'll let me, to get all the (hopefully) dead fleas out of her fur.
Of course, there are now fleas in all our soft furnishings no doubt. We've changed the bedding, the cleaner came yesterday and hoovered and mopped everywhere, and we've washed (more laundry) the sheets on the moses basket and her cat blankets and all the other places we've seen her sleeping. But what about the rug and the sofas? We can't put pesticide down, not with an 11 week old baby.
I guess we just need to hoover everywhere every day. Once Niamh is poisonous to them they'll die out in due course. I've been bitten loads over the last few days but they can't live on human blood, so that's just annoying. Except the place is so cluttered and untidy with baby stuff and nappies and laundry despite constant work to try and tidy up, and I'm so tired, and we didn't hoover today. I feel itchy just thinking about it. I hope the horrible little things all die soon. Poor cat, and poor us!
It's autumn now: rainy and grey. I should probably be taking Vitamin D supplements. Also my GP told me that my iron levels are still low after the birth and I need to be on 200mg oral iron twice a day. Which is a lot of iron. So between that and waking to feed every 1-3 hours and having to sit up with E for an hour or so in the middle of the night to let them sleep on me because they can't breathe and only getting 6 hours a night and having my life essence sucked out of me by a tiny vampire, no wonder I'm tired.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-01 01:34 pm (UTC)