First week home

Our first week as a family of 4 has been a little rocky.  Between me getting sick, Mark getting sick, Abbie going through an “adjustment phase” and Sadie (our Dachshund) losing function of her back legs again, it’s been a trying time.

I felt great on Friday and Saturday and even Sunday morning.  Friday we stopped by the commissary on our way home from the hospital and I ran into the flight doc there.  He was shocked to see me out and about, but I felt pretty good, considering I’d just pushed out an almost 9lb kid 26 hrs before.  Luckily he was there because I had a question for him about what to use on Ben, so I chased him down and he was kind enough to go to the medicine aisle with me and telling me exactly what to get.  Our first night at home, Ben slept from 2:30am to 8:30am.  What a tease…

Saturday we just hung out at the house all day, mainly trying to deal with Abbie.  She seemed to be fine with Ben – she loves to give him kisses and wants to hold him constantly – but she was having melt downs left and right.  Pretty much any time she was told no, it was a HUGE ordeal and she’d cry and throw a huge fit.  I was wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself in to.  She was very abstinent about EVERYTHING and she was more exhausting than Ben was.  Thank GOD Mark actually got paternity leave this time around and he was home to help me deal with her.  He’s been playing with her a lot and I’m a little lot worried about how she’ll deal with him going back to work, because I can’t play with her for 8 hours a day like he has been.

Sunday we got up and went to church and actually got there on time!  We dropped Abbie off in the nursery (which she LOVES) and took Ben to church with us.  We held him and he slept through it all and then the chaplain introduced him to the church, which was fun.  We sang “How Great is Our God” by Chris Tomlin, and I cried through the whole thing.  I just can’t believe how lucky we are to have two beautiful, healthy kids.

After we got home from church, I was pretty tired, and I started getting the chills.  I didn’t really think anything of it, I just piled on the blankets and put a space heater on in front of the chair I was sitting in and pretty soon I was sweating and taking my sweatshirt off.  A while later I started to get chilled again (the kind of chills that make you shaky), so I took my temp and it was 100.2.  So that freaked me out because it said in my discharge paperwork that if I got a temp over 100.4 that I needed to go to the ER and I REALLY didn’t want to go to the Pordenone hospital ER.  I progressively got worse and my fever got up to almost 103 and I decided to call the base to see what they said.  They told me to take Tylenol and call first thing in the morning for an appointment.

So Monday morning I went to the clinic on base and they diagnosed me with mastitis, but all along, I didn’t think I had mastitis.  They put me on a high dose of antibiotics and gave me Percocet and told me things would get much worse before they got better, but that never happened.  And the next day Mark got a fever, so I’m about 110% sure that whatever I had wasn’t mastitis.  We both felt better within 24 hours, just still really sleep deprived since Ben pretty much doesn’t sleep from about 11pm – 3am, and he’s almost inconsolable during that time also.  It’s completely exhausting and frustrating, but I keep telling myself that this phase doesn’t last long and I need to enjoy him being tiny while he is tiny.

Ben sleeps great from like 9am until almost 2pm.  He’ll wake up to eat and then usually goes right back to sleep.  He doesn’t sleep very well in the bassinet we got him, but he sleeps great in the swing and in this travel sling thing that was given to us.  I think because he’s not flat in the swing and the sling, but he is flat in the bed.  I tried to prop up the head end of his bassinet last night though, and he still didn’t sleep very well in it, so I’m not sure what that’s about or how to get him to sleep better in his bassinet.  I’m sure it’ll come with time, I’m just not very patient when I’ve been asleep for 15 mins and he’s up screaming for the next 3 hours.

Overall, though, things are going alright.  I’d forgotten how tough the newborn stage is, although Ben is a relatively easy baby, compared to Abbie.  I’m very nervous about Mark going back to work and me having to deal with both kids by myself after having not slept most of the night, but I guess that’s part of the rite of passage.  Luckily Mark won’t be going TDY until Ben’s over a month old, so hopefully I’ll have the hang of things by then.  He sure is a cute little thing!