V for Victorious

Calliope is very camera shy with her new skill. I love how she covers her
face with her whole hand

Well, after all that teeth gnashing... my first day back went pretty all right. For me, anyway.

The covering nurse practitioner stayed for today and will be there again tomorrow. I used the time to catch up a little of the giant backlog of paperwork.

Monday, I will be all alone and it will absolutely suck, trying to see patients, plus register a giant stack of consents for new patients, plus vaccinate all the kids who are about to be excluded from school for being behind on their vaccines (parents have to request that I do this -- I don't "stick" kids willy-nilly) plus do physicals for all the kids that want to go out for our new sports teams. This is in addition to sick visits, injuries, reproductive health visits, answering the phone, making ice packs, ordering supplies, charting... oh, and pumping 2-3 times. I thought I would only do two but today I went for three.

I'm nervous about how hard it will be. It's all well and good to say "you'll only do as much as you can do" but it's very hard to turn actual kids away. Working alone is completely exhausting. And that was before I had a little person at home to get home to.

The best part of the day was running (most of the way) home. I took the subway three stops, to get me up the big Park Slope hill, then got off and ran the rest of the way. It felt amazing. I loved that a little bit of the day was absolutely mine, and that I got to come home rejuvenated to my girl.

Calliope had a tougher day. I don't think she was particularly fussy, per day, but...

Normal Day (there's never a day, really, where I don't interfere at all, but if I did, this is what it would look like)
7 am wake, nurse, diaper, dress, play or read stories for a very few minutes if there's time
8:15 - 11 am morning nap
11 am - nurse, diaper, play
12:30 - 3 afternoon nap
3-5 nurse, diaper, play or go out for walk
5-5:45 evening nap
5:45 bath, change into PJ's, play, stories
7:15 nurse, stories if there's time & interest
8 pm (latest) bedtime
(plus 4 am feeding and straight back to sleep)

yes, my girl sleeps a lot! if she got all her naps in full, i think that's more than 17 hours per day of sleeping!

Today
7 am wake up, nurse, get dressed, fall asleep in stroller while sitter brings daughter to school
8:15-8:45 asleep in stroller, get woken when stroller is brought inside
9-11 awake
11 am refuse bottle
11-12:50 sleep
12:50 woken by sitter, takes ONE OUNCE from bottle (after mommy calls and is alarmed that it has been SIX HOURS since baby ate!) and falls back asleep
1-2:15 sleep
2 pm takes 4 ounces from bottle
2:30-2:45 dozes in stroller
4 pm takes one ounce from sitter
4:25-4:45 fusses in crib (finally back home)
4:45-5:05 naps in crib

so to re-cap, that's SIX ounces in TEN HOURS and one hour forty minutes of sleeping in a time where normally she would take approximately ten ounces and get six hours of sleep.

my poor girl.

she seemed dazed but okay when I got home. She then proceeded to nurse, take a bath, get a bottle one hour later, take a nap for one hour, then get up and nurse again.

I will be glad when the nanny starts next Monday. I think she will do a much better job of sticking to the schedule (partly because she won't need to take Calliope out to bring another child to and from school). Not that it needs to be iron clad, but this was a bit too far from our norm. Poor girl didn't know what hit her.

As for me, well, yes, I didn't get to edit my birth story after all. I crashed last night with total exhaustion, but didn't sleep all that well -- I was anxious. So it's 9:25 pm and I'm off to try to do better tonight.