fever

mom left monday, so tuesday was my Big First Day on my own with two kids. hazel hadn't slept well, and i woke up to find i still had the migraine that started the night before. then just before lunch, eva threw up and started having diarrhea. i actually thought, "oh great, can this day get any worse?"

never, never say that. because yes, it can get worse.

by nine that night, i was with my 18 day old baby, admitted to children's hospital. she had developed a fever high enough that we were instructed to take her to the ER, where she had fun new experiences like a spinal tap. we stayed there until this afternoon so that she could get IV antibiotics as a precaution while we waited for the results of the 48 hr cultures from her blood and urine tests.

larry, of course, was at home with our elder sick kid. i'm lucky to have such great friends, because within about 15 minutes of placing a call, i had company in the ER and throughout the evening, food, help the next day, someone to bring larry to the hospital since he had no car, etc. happily, by the next day, eva was well enough that she and larry could come visit us, and i even got a 20 minute nap. (hazel was not feeling at all well, and thus i had spent the whole first night holding and comforting her, and only slept maybe 2 hours broken into 20 minute chunks.) hazel's fever kept coming back, and i could tell she was unhappy since she was acting like an entirely different baby. at one point, a dose of tylenol kicked in and suddenly i saw her eyes looking at me and thought "oh, there you are." it was like she came back from somewhere else; i hadn't seen her eyes for a while, given she was either scrunched up screaming or eating or fitfully half-sleeping.

so today we're back home. well. if i thought i was starting to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of our doing this on our own as of tuesday... i'm trying to stay positive, but it's feeling pretty hard right now. we'll work it out, i'm sure, but it's not going to be pretty. as in, there will be a veneer of toys coating every surface of my living room for the foreseeable future, and we may or may not keep ourselves in clean cups and spit-up rags. i felt like i was going to hold it together despite the challenges early on tuesday, but now two short days and zero sleep later, it's feeling a bit more precarious. i've collected myself for the moment, but earlier eva was offering me her corn chips to make me feel better as i cried scrunched up sitting on the floor in the kitchen. (i'm writing all this not to sound overly whiny or desperate, but rather to be honest about the whole experience... and maybe someday hazel and eva can read this and maybe not feel like a total failure if they're not happy and perky the whole time as they welcome a new baby into their families.)

everything already feels like it happened a million years ago. was i really at the hospital just today? was mom really here holding my baby three days ago? did i really give birth less than three weeks ago? was i really ever pregnant?

off to feed a baby, then get some sleep. tomorrow is a new day!