Mommy guilt

So as you may know,  Emmeline has been quite sick these last few weeks, fist with diarrhea and then with unexplained fever. However before all of this, she has had about 5 colds in her very short life span. I remember the first cold that she got at 2 months old, it broke my heart. Since then, she has had one every month more or less. At first I thought nothing of it, but by these last few days, I started to suffer from a bad case of mommy guilt. Why was my baby getting sick so often? I started to ask myself what I was doing wrong. What could I do to make it better? I know other people with babies al around the same age and none of their babies appear to get sick as often as Emmeline, so why us? It is more than just the fact that my poor little noodle gets sick so often. The problem is that every time she gets sick, all of our steps forward go backwards! We had started on solids, but the minute Emmeline got sick, she started to scream every time we had to eat. She had also started to sleep a little better, more deeply and wake up less, but she gets sick and suddenly she is waking up every 1 - 2 hours again. I felt like we were being hindered by every cold! I had been planning on taking her swimming for ages, but just as I got all the information together and had bought her hat and costume, she got sick, and then sick again, so we still haven’t been! Then I heard from my sister that she had taken my little nephew Zack swimming. I felt such a pang of envy!

All my mommy guilt and sleep deprivation started out build up making me feel worse and worse and feel like I was doing something wrong until today when I woke up in a total slump. We had a bad sleep last night with Emmeline waking every 2 hours just whinging. I felt exhausted. We did breakfast but she wasn’t being the easiest eater and in the end I literally threw the bowl in the sink and went for the easy option of breastfeeding her so save ourselves a little fight. Xavi works 6 days a week, so I am with Emmeline a lot obviously! And whilst I always knew that having a baby was not easy and whilst I knew about the sleepless nights, crying and nappy changing, I did not realise how exhausting t was looking after a sick baby. You have to give your everything because they demand nothing less. They feel like crap and they want you to either make it better or they want you to be around them all the time as that makes them feel better even though they are still sick.

I decided to do what everyone does when in doubt, I googled "why is my baby always sick" and I stumbled upon a forum of other mommies talking about why their babies always got sick. Reading one mommies post made me cry because it made me realise that I am not alone and that I wasn’t doing anything wrong . There are other babies who also seem to get cold after cold after cold! It wasn’t just me! The forum commented that even though I was exclusively breastfeeding my noodle and that is the best immunity for her, I was only giving her my immunity, and so if I didn’t have too much immunity against colds, well I have nothing to give Emmeline. It made sense! They also mentioned that if there were older children in the house, they could be carriers of the various cold viruses. This also made sense! We have yaincoa every other week, and due to his mothers total lack of care of her child, he has had one cough or the other for weeks now and as much as I ask him to try to look after himself a bit better, he is only 8, and so I don’t think that I will make much headway there. But whilst he does have a cough, he doesn’t always have a cold. But he may be a carrier.

I suddenly felt a bit better, this made sense and there were other mommies whose babies also seemed to get colds all the time, I wasn't doing anything wrong! I looked over at the little cupcake sitting next to me on the sofa and scooped her up showering her with kisses!! New mommy guilt is a powerful thing and I think one that will stay with me throughout Emmeline’s entire life. I am sure that I will always feel guilty about something and wonder if I could be doing more/better for her. I think that that is good; it is what helps us to strive to be better mothers. I think of the wicked witch (Yaincoa’s mother) and how she is convinced that eh is doing the best for yaincoa (and therefore does nothing more) and how nothing could be further from the truth. If she suffered the same mommy guilt she would be doing so much more for that little boy. I think of all the mommies like me who suffer from mommy guilt and I think we are on the right track, and that by feeling this guilt, we will always try to do more for our babies. They deserve it; they deserve the best we can do and more!

A Hard Week

So last Friday we had Emmeline’s 6 month vaccinations plus a private vaccination (Synflorix) which meant that in total, she got 3 injections! I felt like such a bad mommy for allowing this to happen to my little angel! But I thought that at least that way all done and dusted, and she would be protected! Well, the first injection went fine, the second bought a few yelps, the third bought several more, however the crying stopped after only a few seconds! Good girl.

Emmeline never had any reactions to vaccinations before so I was not worried, but on Friday night she started to get really irritable and pissed off with everything. When I picked her up I noticed that she felt much hotter than normal so I took her through to the bedroom and took her temperature, 38.5c. oh dear. I decided to get her bathed and to bed as quick as. She was fine in the bath, but by the time we were dressing her and drying her hair, she was screaming at the top of her lungs. My heart broke knowing that I could do nothing for her except give her medicine and hope that she fell into a long and deep sleep! That was the night that Xavi was going to feed her and put her to bed for the first time as we are now doing cereal in a bottle and not breastfeeding. But he saw my face and he said he would do it another night, he knew that all I wanted was to hold my little girl in my arms and try to make her feel better. She didn’t sleep very well and at 4am her temperature had risen to 39.1c. I bought her into bed with me and hardly slept a wink. The next morning after consulting my book and the internet several times, I knew that there was no need to go running to emergencies and that I should continue with her medicine. I did just that and we continued our day as per usual going to meet daddy. Her temperature dropped in the middle of the day, but rose again in the afternoon and the evening. Once again, she did not sleep very well, waking every 2 hours, something she only does now when she is unwell.

Sunday passed us by the same, Emmeline with a fever. She managed to remain smiling mostly, but was also a lot more weepy and irritable than usual. Monday morning and she still had a fever. I decided that I was tired of waiting so I got an appointment with the paediatrician for that same morning. Off we went. The paediatrician checked Emmeline and said that it may be a delayed reaction to the vaccinations, but that normally only lasts for about a day. But she also noted that Emmeline had no other symptoms, she was bright and alert, and she was still as friendly as ever. So I was told to monitor her temperature every 6 hours and if she continued with a fever, I was to return on Wednesday morning to do a urine test to see whether noodle had a bladder infection. Tuesday was the same, although there was a drop in the middle of the day. I got hopeful, but back with fever in the evening. Wednesday morning 9am and there we were at the paediatrician again. She had to stick a plastic bag around noodles cookie to catch her wee when she had one do to the test. So I could only loosely put her nappy back on and only put her socks on, no pants. We went outside to wait; I wrapped a blanket around her legs and fed her hoping to speed up the process. She was tired and started to get irritable. With her semi naked there was no way that I could put her in the pram to sleep and I certainly couldn’t walk up and down to get her to sleep. So although we have banished the dummy unless it is bedtime in the evenings, I found myself reaching into the bag for the emergency dummy I carry everywhere! This in my mind was definitely an emergency. I popped it into her mouth, and noodle was out like a light! When she woke up her little bag was full, but the paediatrician was busy! So we waited and as soon as she was free we went in. Unfortunately by this time, some of Emmeline’s wee had leaked out the bag and onto my shirt. Mmmmmm. Thankfully there was still enough to do the test! Turns out that there is no urine infection, yaay!

So we still didn’t know what was wrong. The paediatrician told me to go home and continue to monitor it. If she continued with a fever, I would have to go back on Friday morning for urgent blood tests, but she assured me that she was not worried as Emmeline had no other symptoms, she had good colour, she was in good spirits and she was bright and alert. It’s true that that morning she didn’t have a fever. Although that afternoon she did! But in the evening there was no fever and so far today, no fever! She is very irritable today and she has literally been growling at me all day, crying a lot more than usual and sleeping more than usual, so I have given her some medicine and hope that it helps. Hopefully she is on the mend as I hate to see my little girl sick! I feel awful for her! And I really don’t want to have to cart her off to the doctors tomorrow for analysis because that will mean another injection, and I think that she has been through enough already!

This week has been hard not just because I wish that there was more I could do for Emmeline, but also because it has been exhausting for me. She has had a week of fever more or less, and before that she had about a week of diarrhea! She has been waking up every night between every 1 – 2hrs in the last 5 days leaving me feeling zonked out again. During the day she is still napping, but she does not want to be left alone for even a minute. So on various occasions xavi or I have had to sit with her until she falls asleep. She is also not content to sit alone and play as much as normal, so she has been by my side a whole lot more than normal. And feeding her has been a total nightmare. We started on solids and before she got sick, she was kind of accepting things. But on the weekend especially she screamed blue murder at us when we had to feed her. She was having none of it! I can tell that she is getting better as she has been much better at eating yesterday and today thankfully! I am totally exhausted and really need to have a rest myself because being so tired means that I am not at my best for her. It means that when she wakes up every hour like she did last night, I am too tired to investigate what is wrong and instead I reached for the easy solution that was to simply feed her. Therefore even though I have not been to the gym in way too long and I really want to go, I know that the best thing that I can do for everyone is to go for a nice (if possible) long sleep with Emmeline this afternoon for both of our benefits! Actually scratch that, me sleeping is actually in everybody’s benefit! I will also shower my angel with plenty of hugs and kisses and hope that tomorrow she wakes up my little Emmeline again!