Borrowed Books

Who is still waiting for me to return things by post? Please comment so that I know what to look for.

Drugging up the baba

Emer is on antibiotics and an inhaler. This is because she coughed up lumps of green ick. This is the third antibiotic she's on. The first one was ok; 1.5ml three times a day, white, sweetish-smelling. Didn't quite kick the infection, so we got a larger dose of the same antibiotic - but we filled the prescription at a different pharmacy, so it was a different brand, and this was yellow, foul-smelling, 2.5ml three times a day.

Two days later I went back to the doctor and said "I can't get it in to her. She took the white one, won't take this one, and is now fighting anything we try to put in or near her mouth except me." So we were given a different one, 1.5ml twice a day.

Tomorrow morning is her very last dose of it. The infection appears to be gone. She's still lost trust in my ability ot put things in her mouth, though. That's gone for now.

Then there's the inhaler, for the bronchiolitis. It's a little canister in an l-shaped delivery spray thingie, like all the asthmatics I went to school had, either secretly or openly depending on social requirements at the time (get off dusting or hoovering the classroom - wave inhaler. Get invited to join the smokers behind the school - hide inhaler). Since she's an infant, she can't inhale the spray at the instant it's dispensed, so she needs a spacer, a little tube to hold the noxious fumes in while she breathes in and out a few times to absorb them.

A spacer and mask for an infant costs about 38 Euros. So the GP told me to use a paper cup wiv a hole in. So that's what we've been doing.

Emer loves to play with the paper cups; she chews them, looks through the hole, bashes them on things - and when we approach with the inhaler fitted in it, she fights. When it's clamped over her nose and mouth and squeezed to make it puff, she actually holds her breath. She goes red, inhales deeply, gets a lungful of atropine, cries, inhales some more - after three good inhales or twenty seconds we give up and comfort her.

Poor baba. To deliver this stuff we now have to pin both her arms down and immobilise her head, hold her nose to get her mouth open, and stroke her throat to get her to swallow, and clamp a cup over her face until she breathes enough. It's brutal.

After tomorrow, I'm going to try using the inhaler as-needed instead of regularly. Just to see how she is. At least there's no more liquid medicine to go in.

Poor, poor baba.

Do not feed the animals

I started yesterday around 8 am with six Weetabix, about 500ml of rice milk, and two mugs of tea. Shortly after noon I had lunch - a baked potato with chili con carne and a side order of coleslaw. About four I had a snack of a banana and some tea. And for dinner, around six, I had two helpings of mixed bean casserole with couscous. Before bed I had a hamburger, two apple fritter things, some biscuits, and a lot more tea. About typical for my appetite recently.

Today I had six Weetabix, bread and jam for lunch, crisps and biscuits for the afternoon snack, two helpings of the same bean thing for dinner, and I do not feel hungry. I'm kind of wondering what's happened. Have I finally made up for all I lost through illness? Is that it? Can I go back to eating about what Rob does again?

Or will I wake in the night and gnaw off his leg and finish it raw?

Side by side

The new double buggy is lovely; it's easy to push, easy to steer, has plenty of space for both children and all their bits and bobs, great raincover which is easy to get on and off, and it only just barely maye possibly scrapes into the house and sits in the hall with no room at all to spare.

So we've been trying to reduce the amount of airspace taken up at buggy-height by other hall-dwelling things, so that it can be steered into the house by a comparative expert (me) even if rank amateurs (Rob) still struggle and bash and swear and wake the baby (he doesn't swear, actually).

All the coats not in current use are upstairs. The shoe-stacker-hangy-thing we've been using for hats, scarves, gloves, Linnea's shoes, bike paraphernalia, umbrellas, etc, has been emptied - the clothing is all in a string bag (which hangs higher than the stacker) and Rob has moved mountains piles of filing, records, DVDs, videos, photo albums, and comic books to enable us to store shoes in a floor-level shelf which is practically in the hall, since it's right beside the library door. The nice thing about this is that it's big enough for mine and Rob's shoes too, so they won't be tripping anyone up any more.

Now there's the issue of emptying and folding the buggy, which I must get into the habit of doing every single night, but it's so tedious. I'd rather spend my evenings and mornings climbing over it to get from one part of the hall to another. Nyargh.

Quick today summary

Today I found it almost impossible to get up, so was late to a GP appointment (the receptionist was snotty when she said "You're fifteen minutes late," so I said "Does the fact that she's always twenty minutes late mean I can still see her, then?" and the receptionist said "she's never late, patients make her late." Er. When I got to the GP she was *lovely* because she always, always is).

After that we went to see Alison and family; Linnea was adamant that they lived in a house with a red door, where there was clearly no-one home, but eventually I phoned and found that they lived next door in the house with the purple door, where there were loads of people home and they were all apparently pleased to see us. It was nice to see the place Linnea has spent so much time, at last. She clearly knew where everything was, which was kind of funny, and I had to be given a guided tour. It's very much my kind of house.

I left Linnea there with the huge double buggy while I brought Emer with me on the bus in the sling to the hospital (well, a sort of auxilliary hospital outbuilding thing, actually) to see - guess what - the psychologist I was referred to yeeeeeeears ago for my PTSD! Short version is she's lovely, she likes my sling, and it's going to be hard, miserable work and very useful indeed - I suspect it might even go quite quickly. Deal with the panic and anxiety first, and that alone should make my memory a bit better, so that'll be good.

Back to collect Linnea and hang around for hours watching one of the children playing Donkey Kong, an incomprehensible game. Then there was a bongo-drumming game I didn't understand. Then Rob came and collected us and we went home and ate and watched tv and put the children to bed and sorted the hall and now I think Rob is replacing the wet, pooey bedding on our bed (a waterproof changing mat is basically a wide, flat funnel when the designated grownup is sleepy) and soon I will go to sleep.

I have taken my last antibiotic and my chest sounds fairly ok. Not clear, but ok.