On Hold

Finding time to blog with a newborn is hard.  I think when Sweet Pea was a baby I would just post pictures of her being cute and call it close enough to count as a real blog post.  And I must admit, the World's Cutest Baby is awfully cute!

Our newest addition seemed to realize that all my friend's children were swallowing pennies and requiring surgery, or taking life flight helicopter rides that cost more than I will ever make in my lifetime.  I guess she didn't want me to be the only one without expensive medical bills at Christmas.  So we spent last weekend in the NICU.

Poor baby girl had a dangerous combination of high bilirubin levels and dehydration.

(my Oompa-Loompa baby on Friday afternoon)

It was a long stressful weekend.  We nursed, and nursed, and nursed.  She laid in a baby tanning bed (with the world's cutest goggles, if only I'd had my camera).  They pushed iv fluids.  She made little progress.  We finally determined that while she has the muscle tone, and co-ordination to nurse, she lacks the stamina to nurse long enough to gain all the nutrients she needs.  When we switched from breastfeeding to giving her bottles of expressed milk she improved overnight.  She gained so much weight they weighed her twice to be sure she gained that much overnight.

(my chubby baby on Sunday night)

So now we feed a bottle of expressed milk every three hours.  Midnight feedings not only include feeding a bottle, but also pumping milk for a half hour (Mooooo) and then cleaning my pump and getting things ready for the next round.  I get done in time to sleep for two hours and then get up and do it all over again.  Sleeping in two hour increments makes me a sleepy zombie.

There is no crafting.

I've even carefully picked up all my tiny tiny triangles, and tiny squares and put them back into The Abyss.  I fear they would get dirty and lost laying out waiting for me to gain enough brain power to be trusted to run a sewing machine without accidentally sewing myself to the quilt.

My needles are still.  My projects can wait.

I've got a tiny baby to snuggle.