Growth Spurt

I’m feeling like a million dollars right now. Yesterday, Gabe seems to have had his three-week growth-spurt. After a night of only four hours of sleep, for the third day in a row, I was dragging. I attempted a morning nap, but Gabe only slept for an hour – and it took me that long to nod off. Then he proceed to nurse. . . and nurse and nurse and nurse. It’s a good thing I’ve taken to grabbing a hearty breakfast at four in the morning, because during the day it took me an hour just to get myself a couple of slices of banana bread. Ultimately I did manage to stay well-fed, but I never did get dressed. Gabe didn’t take any significant naps between 11 and 5:30. And for that entire time he was having digestion trouble. He squirmed and cried and squirmed and cried, all the while attempting to nurse and periodically ripping his head away from my nipple (which hurts!) with a wail. I am amazed that he was still getting milk out of me by nightfall. By evening, my breasts were killing me.

In the evening and early night, he took two more hour-long naps, neither of which was long enough for me to really fall asleep. Chris helped out when he got home, and the feeding storm and resulting diapers started to relent about midnight. At four, when I got Gabe settled down for a nap again, I finally got my shower, and some more banana bread.

The only things that I managed to do yesterday aside from nurse, change diapers, and attempt sleep were brush my teeth, figure out how to reheat and eat pizza with one hand, and reread half of the final Harry Potter book. The book kept me sane through the endless nursing. I never even made it down stairs during the day.

And this morning I got a blissful three hours of sleep! And I feel wonderful. Now, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming, and to my delight, it seems easy by comparison. I can't say I liked the experience, but as a benchmark for comparison, it was a valuable day.

The antibiotics failed to fix my urinary tract infection, which probably made me more tired yesterday than I should have been. I hear Chris now, getting back from the pharmacy with my second round of antibiotics – yay!