Breast Abscess

Get that shit checked out but pronto. Six hours in the emergency room overnight is a less than restful experience, especially when you are trying your almighty best to keep your baby out of the hospital and away from germs and sickies.

On the plus side, the Percocet took the edge off.

Baby Steps

Today marks the end of day two of being at home along with the baby. True, husband has come home both days to see his little girl and to kick his shoes off, put his business-socked feet up and watch a little crappy daytime reality tv (I know, redundant), but still, this has been two days of full, 100 percent responsibility for another life for more than two hours.

Yesterday, I had goals. Call the doctor about my trip to the emergency room to have the abscess that had set up shop in my right boob taken care of, call my midwife to let her know the same story, walk around the neighborhood once and pick up my prescription of Percocet. Check, check, check and check.

Today, the adventure for the day was to get to afore-mentioned doctor's office, making it the first car trip with me and baby on our own. The preparation was intense. In an effort to keep the vocalizations ("Why am I in this damn car seat again you know how I hate it why is this blanket hanging over the car seat so I can't see a thing you know I want to be fed right now and I am making a poopy diaper as we speak unnnnnnn..." (that's the pooping sound)) down, baby had third breakfast right before we left the house.

Plan was to give her a bottle with the breast milk that I have only days ago started pumping. Get bottle out of fridge, run hot water to warm it up...remember that the one with the boobs shouldn't give the bottle to avoid confusion and isn't breastfeeding hard enough anyway without confusion, so back goes bottle into fridge, shirt comes off over the head, bra comes off, baby comes to boob and she eats. Baby usually eats for five to six minutes at a time, so I'm thinking we have time. Yeah.

For the first time in a while, she eats for close to ten minutes, meaning I make the call to settle for peeking in the leg of her diaper to see if a changing is needed and skip the outfit change all together. She's five and a half weeks old, Eau de breast milk is IN this season.

Finally she's buckled into her car seat. As she expresses the appropriate amount of displeasure at her current lot in life, I sherpa myself up with a diaper bag, purse and car seat and head out to to the car. Being baby's first trip in the Beetle, I'm not prepared for the leaning forward past vertical position that the passenger seat has to be in in order to make room for the car seat. I take this as another sign that I will never, ever get my old life back.

Drive to doctor's office was fairly uneventful - took advantage of new baby-ness to call the doctor's office and let them know I was running late because this was the first time I'd traveled on my own with the kid.

Doctor's office visit also fairly uneventful - got another shot of lidocaine so that they could pull this "wick" (tape-like piece of cotton gauze) out of me and put another one in to keep soaking up the shit that abscesses when you have an abscess. Great news, we know this hurts like a son of a bitch but please pull it out a little bit each day and your boob will heal behind it as you go.

Drive home fairly uneventful as well.

Get in the door of the house, the dog has pulled stuff down off the counters and the table, I see the breast pump boob part on the ground, baby is fussing to eat, so I go to my default mode and cry. Get baby out of car seat, take her upstairs to eat, see that I forgot to put up the gate on the stairs so the dog has also pulled down my basket that I carry with me for breastfeeding, dirty laundry from the hamper, condoms (I know, hopeful) from the nightstand, the Twilight Turtle from the table and dirty baby mitts from the baby laundry basket. Default mode now is pissed off.

After a quiet but very pointed "bad dog!", I get her (the baby, not the dog) changed and fed. While feeding it becomes clear that someone needs to changed again, so we change again and then feed again.

When all that is done I know I should pick up the stuff the dog has strewn all over the house but that would entail putting baby down and putting bra and shirt on so instead I wait for hubster to get home so he too can see that awful awfulness perpetrated by our dog and make me feel better by agreeing that the dog is so bad and knows better. And maybe he'll pick it up.