Lots of good news today! Brandon got weighed today and he gained 60g and 2cm since his last weighing. He also had the chest sticker tabs removed – they said that because his breathing was constant and normal in the last 48 hours he is taken off the breathing monitoring. He still has the little foot monitor which tracks his heartbeat and his O2 levels, but eventually he’ll be ‘downgraded’ to one that only checks for breathing apnea.

I gave him his bath today, before he got weighed and measured. After that he was able to properly nurse for about five minutes before getting tired, at which point I felt it would be better that he get the rest of the meal from his feeding tube.

I brought 13 pots of milk to the hospital, which they had to put into the large freezer because the new fridges with the glass front doors had been put in. I wonder what they do with the old little cube fridges? I’ll have to ask, if only for curiosity’s sake.
Going to have a cuppa tea to relax, then extract milk for the evening before going to bed. G’nite!

So, after the Christmas and New Year and Vincent’s Birthday marathon, I thought I’d actually get some writing done, finish Blessed Hope, which sits at something like 85% completion now and…

Seriously, Murphy, sod off.

I do have a cutecute son though after all the life-disruptions, so… I guess I really can’t complain too much. The entirety of my schedule at present revolves around the production of enough milk for Brandon. Happily this is improving and my target for every time I’m not at the hospital visiting is 8 little containers containing 35 ml worth. So far I’ve managed at least that.

The ward felt rather cold today, because while I was changing Brandon he started to shiver. Rhys bundled him up very nicely and we put a cap on his head, which… kind of makes him look like a little toadstool straight out of Super Mario.

I noticed that lately, my hands are much weaker than before, and I’m prone to being very clumsy – I’m often dropping things or knocking things over that I would not have done before this whole pre-eclampsia-ish gravid hypertension thing. My right hand, which is my dominant hand, hasn’t been very strong in gripping things since about three weeks ago and after the last cannula was put in it’s been much worse. Even typing is a chore because I think I’m exerting enough effort to press the keys and somehow it isn’t good enough because most of the time the touch doesn’t register, which is strange because the laptop’s keys are supposed to be those light -touch chicklet keyboards. I spend a lot of time hitting backspace. So if there are more typos and missed spaces between words or missing letters that’s why. And this issue is true regardless of any keyboard I use in the house.

I also find myself constantly terrified of falling over. My legs always feel like they’re about to collapse from under me. That’s not even counting the feel of pulled muscles and strain around the hips that I feel all the time that is the main cause for my awkward limping right now.

I really hope this weird thing with my limbs goes away in time. And that my freaking sleep schedule normalizes itself in due course.

I probably will sleep much better when Brandon relearns how to nurse from the milk source and can come home with us.