Family meltdown tonight.

Another long day ends in a very tough night. We started the morning off okay, with the intention to have breakfast together. Mike ended up having to take a call from the office while Lila & I ate our cereal.


My sister Sandy came into town with her husband Todd Friday afternoon. They had come over the afternoon before to relieve my Mother-in-law to allow her to head home before too late. They came by in the morning to work out how the day would go with them. The plan was for me to get a ride from my friend Felicity to a memorial for a photographer that F & I used to work with, beginning in 1988 for me and continuing for over 12 years. He died a couple weeks back from Pancreatic cancer. 


I kept thinking, should I go to this? Is this trying to do too much, and is it the right thing to do in my current state of mind? I just thought of what David would do if it were me and decided to go. 


Mike really needed to begin to get some real work done and there's barely a bare organized spot in the house for him to sit down. The upstairs where our offices are was completly torn apart. His plan when I was still in the hospital was to organize the whole house and have it done by the time Ian & I came home so we could just walk in and start taking care of ourselves. Obviously best intentions unable to be followed through with.


In his prep to have this finished, he was consolidating our offices in order to make his prior office space into a make-shift guest space with a bed. He really felt the need to finish at least the merging of the desk space in my office so he could have a surface for which to work. I would go to the memorial and he would finish the desks while Sandy & Todd would take Lila to the SM Pier. 


I was really glad I attended the memorial. Saw many old friends and was able to pay my respects. I told Ian's story a couple of times but eventually, I just smiled and nodded when people patted my belly and said I looked beautiful pregnant. I was just too tired to go into it again. Felicity dropped me off at the hospital and I rolled (using a wheelchair cause I'm still not so good on my feet and had been standing at the memorial way too long) my way into the cafeteria, got a quick slice of pizza and a bunch of drinks to devour on the way up to the NICU and headed up.


Right when I arrived, I began speaking to Ian, just telling him my day so far while I prepared to pump by his bed side. The nurse gave me the download, which I'll post in his daily update later. Overall good news but she alerted me to the fact there was a EEG tech coming by to glue sensors to his little head so they could measure his brain waves to see if he was having seizures. Just a precaution to make sure. I finished pumping and quickly grabbed my camera to do a couple of shots before the guy began. I had rented a macro lens in order to get close-up shots of his little hands and feet for Lila to put on her bed. We told her before that we had taped pictures of her to his bed and she asked why his picture wasn't on hers. I refuse to share, post or show her a picture of him with all his tubes and things coming out so I decided I could shoot tight little snipets for her. 


I began shooting while the tech was setting up and got a couple of shots of his little head before the probs were placed. 


This was quite an invasive procedure, as the nurse had warned me. It consisted of rubbing glue with q-tips onto many spots on his head, then putting dolops of glue in the same spots, pressing a tiny sensor onto the glue, then taking a gauze wet with another glue over each sensor and "blow drying it" with a little air gun that looked like an airbrush. The nurse had me hold my hand over his arm so as to comfort him as much as possible through it. I finally felt like I was able to help for the first time. Although most often when they are doing anything to him I don't allow myself to watch. 


I bucked up and, for the first time felt like I was there for him, talking him through the process. Explaining that he was getting a head massage and didn't that feel good? I explained how much Daddy loved those. When the dryer came each time I would warn him the blow-dryer was coming and explained how we blew-dried his sister's hair the night before. 


He didn't like this whole thing much but I'm hoping I at least made it a tiny bit more palatable or at least he had the distraction of my voice.


After the tech was done, he kept trying to open his eyes. This was the first time I saw the whites of his eyes. Quite moving. He wasn't very successful in focusing. It kind of reminded me when I was first on Mag and how I would try to open my eyes but they were going every which way and eventually I had to close them.


I spent the next few hours just hanging out with him, talking to him, pumping and reading to him, chatting with the nurse about pumping and other things.


Mike eventually came by to visit and pick me up. As soon as he arrived he told me that a very good friend and his family were there to say hello to him. He went down to say hi. When he came back, he asked if it was okay to let them in to see Ian. That was a tricky question for me. On one hand, why not? But on the other hand, it tripped me out that they would even want to see him like this. Like I mentioned before, I don't want to post pics of him or really share them with anyone, so the idea of someone, other than family (which that even trips me out) seeing him like this was hard to get my head around. I went out to say hi myself and they explained, it would help them to send him the positive healing energy they did if they could meet him. So I agreed.


You know when you're not feeling so well and someone asks you if you're okay? You always break down, right? Because you're right on the edge emotionally and that just takes you over it. When our friend left and she said that she would be praying for Ian, I thanked her but lost it. I guess it's probably good to do that every once in a while but I hate it. I especially don't want to break down when I'm there with him. Luckily I was down the room from him a bit. I just don't want him to get that energy from me. 


Before we headed out, the nurse (who's also a lactation consultant) reminded me that I should pump and eat something before I go. I received quite an education about pumping. When I had Lila, she took care of getting my milk supply going. She literally wanted to nurse the second she came out into the world. I've been trying to be good about pumping as much as I can but it's so tricky. It depends on where I am, and what distractions or delays I have throughout the day. She informed me that I should pump no less than 8 times a day. She also said I should be getting an ounce for every hour it has been since I last pumped. This was definitely not happening. She said if this is something I want to do, I need to try to step it up during the day because the 1st three weeks would be setting up his milk supply for the rest of the time I'd nurse him. I knew none of this. I pumped on the way home and made a conscious effort to try to be more diligent.


When we arrived home, Lila was on our front lawn playing ball with my sister and her husband. So adorable to watch. The one good thing that is coming out of this is that 2 of my 3 sisters have now been down for a visit two times in the past two months. My parents are coming down today again as well and they were just down last week. This is giving Lila a chance to have more of a relationship with them, which we have worked on but is hard to do from 360 miles away.


Out of the car and the nightly race was on, drop our stuff, finish dinner prep (tonight was a shepherd's pie dropped off by a friend), eat and get her on the road for bed time. Tonight I just felt like I was about to fall over so while Mike steamed some veggies, I went into the bedroom to lie down. I just needed a minute to rest. Of course, Lila found me and proceeded to bring every blankie she had, her sheep pillow, everything onto the bed with me so she could lie down next to me. Mike was trying to give me my space but I told him that it was fine. I have barely seen her in 5 weeks, the connection with her is important. Whenever she's near me, I just want to stroke her hair and kiss her forehead. Tonight she was a bit sweaty from playing ball and dancing around the house the minute she was through the door. 


She popped out for a few minutes to eat dinner, then came back. I decided to do the countdown to bath time early. I figured if we could have her in the bath as close to 7:30 as possible, we've got a better chance of having her in bed by 8:30 or 9:00 which is closer to how it used to go before all the chaos began.


Daddy gave her a bath and I could hear the tone in his voice while he tried to get her to listen and work with him to get going. It was not the Daddy she knows. I told my sister, this is going to be a rough one. Mike very rarely looses his patience, that's more of a Mommy problem, but tonight I could feel he was at the end of his rope. I went in to help put on the jammies and Lila was in rare form, while her Mommy & Daddy were on the edge of patience. 


It was a struggle to get the jammies on. We were passing the patience between us. One of us would loose it and the other would take over. It was almost like I was looking in from the outside and not really believing that our control was almost gone. One of the trickiest things for us to know is how much of this is normal behavior/pushing the limits of a 2 3/4 year old, and how much is a residual of the chaos that is our lives. 


A while back we had read a parenting book that had helped us a lot. Where we to implement these methods right now or did we need to try to work with her to push through this in a different way? We finally got her into bed but it was a big challenge. Mike eventually lost it and kissed her good night and left the room. I stayed thinking I could hold on but I eventually got to the same point. He came in again, and there was the baton pass again. I went out to tell my sister they should go. I just had to scream and cry for a minute. 


Once I did, I was able to go back in and lie down with her. Mike stepped out again and I just spoke to her softly, stroked her hair and laid with her for a few minutes. I tried to explain that this was a tough situation for the whole family, Mommy, Daddy, her and Ian, and that we all had to remain strong and get through it. By the time I was done with the 2nd song, she was asleep. I can't remember the last time I left her room after a tuck-in with her sleeping.