stresss (with a treble s)

An oldish picture of Dulcie from her (first!) stay in hospital taken just before Christmas.  I only realised recently I had never shared it and her burpy faced is too good to keep under wraps.

What a start to the day we had today.  Dulcie decided not to go to bed until 3.30am (her favourite new hobby) so when she started shouting for food again at about 7am, I did the bad mother routine and opted to spend just one more minute with my eyes shut and the covers over my head.  So you can imagine that I felt pretty bad when I went to get her and found her lying in a pool of blood, albeit looking happy and hungry.  Well, long story short we jumped in a taxi to the A&E department at the children's hospital and they checked her out thoroughly and concluded that the blood was not hers but mine.  The antibiotics Dulcie was given when she had pneumonia caused her to get thrush in her mouth which spread to my, er, milk jugs.  Not much fun, let me tell you.  We've been getting treatment for it (I actually have a daily timetable of when to administer our many and varied medications) but feeding has been agony for me lately.  Little did I know, though, that the pain was being accompanied by spurts of blood mixing in with the milk and I have to admit that knowing about it makes the pain feel even worse.  Poor Dulcie is having to try to digest all this blood along with her milk and it is really none too pleasant whatever end it comes out of.  She's been pooping and puking up blood all day.  We've been told not to worry about it so we're not, but it is very bizarre to calmly mop blood from your tiny baby's mouth.  I hope I heal up soon (ouch, ouch, ouch!) but with Dulcie still feeding every couple of hours this seems like a distant dream.  Sigh...  Our modest family goal is to stay out of hospital for the whole of February.  That's not too much to ask, is it?

On a more positive note, Dulcie got weighed at the hospital this morning and is 6lbs 8oz!  Wowsers!  She was 3lbs 12oz at birth and 5lbs 3oz when we took her home from hospital at the end of December so, considering she had to fast during Pneumonia Gate, she has come on great guns.  All that blood she's eating is obviously doing her good!