Stayin' Alive

No, I'm not getting my grove on, although I am a huge Bee Gees fan and not afraid to admit it. I know you know what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the build up of 8 weeks of severe sleep deprivation. It is settling in and I. AM. EXHAUSTED. I'm averaging about 4-5 hours of sleep per night, broken up into several intervals and it has caught up with me. I'm managing okay with additional cups of coffee chased by an evening glass of wine (the only positive of not being able to breastfeed Katherine anymore.) But boy do I miss the days of "sleep when the baby sleeps". Yeah. That doesn't fly when you have more than one child.

So, here is a belated update while I've got the baby sleeping and Natalie in quiet time for about 30 minutes...

Katherine is gaining weight like a champ! She's up to 7 and 1/2 pounds and doing quite well. To get her to gain weight we had to pretty much go completely to formula. This broke my heart and I'm still very sad about it. I just miss the bonding of nursing an infant. But I know she is healthy and will be fine, so am slowly finding my peace with it.

The bad news is she has a urinary tract infection, so she's been on antibiotics for a week. This can be the sign of something more serious in an infant, so we have to go do more tests in a few weeks when the infection is clear to make sure she doesn't have either bladder reflux or some sort of anatomy issues. Sigh. So we are still not out of the water yet, so to speak. She is however, smiling all the time and starting to coo, which I just love.

Natalie is having fun in the big sister role although she does often ask when it will be time to put Katerine in the swing. I think she misses some of her playtime. But she's already starting to play with her sister. The other day I had gone to the bathroom, and came back into the family room to find that Natalie had joined her sister lying on her back on her activity mat and was telling her all about the birds and such that she was looking at. Melted my heart. I'm looking forward to watching their relationship develop as they grow and become playmates.

But for the time being, what I'm really looking forward to is an uninterrupted five hours of sleep.