Things are going well. The bug hasn't once set off the apnea monitor yet. Her reflux seems to be more obvious now. She spits up even an hour after eating. Now that I sleep with one eye open and have seen or heard how that effects (affects? ) her breathing, I think it was probably to blame for the apnea episode. That said I really question whether back sleeping is safer for her, but I'm supposed to take that up with the pulmonologist on Monday.

That gives me a whole week to detoxify myself of all the REM sleep I'd been getting and collect my own 23-hour data reel each day.



**Since I mention that I got the shaft on the work shower, I feel that I should also mention that a lot of people I would never have expected have sent or brought by adorable little gifts. It was really touching.

This week we had a little more drama. Just as I was getting used to having the Bug home and had begun treating her like a regular baby...

She stopped breathing (don't worry, she's ok now).

We have one of those SIDS mats and it works pretty well - no false alarms. So it went off and kept going off (meaning no breath sounds registered for 20 seconds). Mr. Kim went in to check on her and found her still and blue. He tapped her feet (the first step of infant CPR) and she opened her eyes and pinked up.

We paged the on-call pediatrician who sent us to the hospital where we were admitted for 24 hours of monitoring and tests. After lots and lots of tests, nothing. They did a sleep study and ruled out central apnea (caused by brain not sending enough signals to breathe). Not even close.

Several urinalysis results ruled out UTI. They did find reflux, which may explain things except we didn't find any spit-up anywhere near her when it happened.

So she is home, with a heart and respiration monitor that is a complete pain in the ass. It looks like she is hooked up to an 8-track tape player. But without it I'd be a basket case, so I suppose I'm glad to have it.

Now the long process of allowing this to become our new version of normal - something we don't think about and don't obsess about every minute.

More later, I'm exhausted.

Oh the irony. The Bug has been fussy with gas and pooping discomfort so - since I'm breastfeeding - I have to change my diet. First and foremost I have to eliminate all dairy products from, you know, my milk. There is something confusing and circular about the whole thing.
Anyhoo...
No more dairy, no more nuts of any sort, no soy, no eggs, no chocolate (sound of record scratching). Ok, I drew the line there. If all else fails I'll give up chocolate, but come on - what are the chances it's because of my square of dark chocolate every night.
The really strange thing is that since I've been on this elimination diet (about a week and half now), my mouth tastes like milk all the time. Cruel world.
In good news... wait, bad news it doesn't seem to be working very well. Over the weekend the Bug actually slept - so I actually slept. But with the start of the week and no back-up for me, she stopped. In the past two nights I've slept about 4 hours total. I've stopped the charade of going back to bed even.
So maybe I'll be able to go back on the dairy. On the other hand, I'd like some sleep. Cheese or sleep? A question as old as time.

Oh man, I knew this would happen. I knew once the baby was born I'd look back on bedrest fondly as a time when I could sleep all night, then top it off with a nap midday.

The Bug has some sort of thing that makes her grunt all night. And every once in so often she spits milk up through her nose and gags on it. This is terrifying and ensures that even when she is sleeping I'm not. I have my ear plastered to the monitor and jump up to check on her with every odd noise (which she makes a lot of).

So as it turns out the anxiety never truly ends.

I have no witty turn of phrase. I'm not sure why I'm awake now (the Bug, interestingly, is sound asleep but now it's daytime and I can't sleep).

Why, yes I am - how good of you to ask!

We've been home since Saturday and things are going well. The Bug is slowly kicking the jaundice. I've also taken to calling her Mellow Yellow. She is the easiest baby ever. She almost never cries unless she's being weighed naked or bathed, these are the two things she cannot countenance. Otherwise she's gives a grunt and screws her face up until she looks just like Winston Churchill.


She does wake up every two hours all night long to feed and far from focusing on the sleep deprivation, I feel like the luckiest woman on earth every time I drag myself out of bed.

The Bean was sent home from school again today for nits (lice eggs) in her hair. Now, for those of you who were here for the first installment of lice-mania, these are almost certainly just leftover eggs from back then. It's hard to get every single nit off of a kid with longish hair.

But the school continues to find nits (which means nothing if you've treated the child - the eggs are dead) and continues their downhome Salem-style witchhunt. Their latest move was to hire a professional nit picker. I'm not kidding. If she finds nits, this pro nit picker will, conveniently, agree to pick your child certifiably free of nits for the low-low price of $85 an hour. And then that same pro nit-picker will be the one to inspect your child. I sense a conflict of interest here. I had no idea the lice eradication business was such a hotbed of cronyism.

The pro nitpicker also recommends using a powerful pesticide on your children and leaving it on for 3 times the recommended soak time. Ok, a little research by Mr. Kim (the microbiologist) found that the pesticide in this shampoo is the same as in Raid, but 3 times more concentrated. I don't think you need to be riding a Greenpeace boat that's ramming itself into whaling ships to think soaking Raid into a kid's scalp is a bad idea for the kid and planet.

And what are the public health concerns surround lice you may ask? Brilliant question. There are none. They are gross, but so far no one has ever been literally grossed out, medically speaking.

Now, a friend of ours from Sri Lanka told us that there they just get a monkey to pick you free of the lice. It's a real win-win because it's great for the kid (they get a monkey for a day!) and the monkey gets a buffet of proteinaceous snacks. It's the circle of life people. This seems like a great fundraiser for zoos. At this point most of the parents at the Bean's school would gladly clean a little poo off the walls of the family room in exchange for a nit-free child and a few precious days of sick leave salvaged.