My First Week With 3

 

At the risk of sounding like I'm complaining (or scaring any of you away from having more children), I am going to be completely honest about my first week with 3 kids.  Pretty much it was a nightmare.  (Just know ahead of time that we did make it through and things are much, much better now!)

 

I started out sleep deprived before I even came home.  Our hospital is "breast-feeding friendly" or something like that, which I think is great except for two things that killed me this time around- there is no nursery and no pacifiers (yes I could and should have brought my own).  Sadie would fall asleep okay, but the second I set her near that bassinet she would let me know how she felt about it.  I didn't have a pacifier to give her or swing or anything to put her in which means I pretty much held her all the time.  Then they make you watch those videos that put the fear of death into you about sleeping with your baby, and with no nursery to send her to, and Josh either working or watching the big kids, it pretty much meant that I didn't sleep for two days after already being exhausted from birthing a child.  (There she is on my bed next to that dreaded bassinet)  

 We came home on Friday night, which worked out great because Josh would be home for the weekend to help.  I had decided to wait to have my parents come out til the Friday before Easter so it would coincide with my mom's spring break and they'd be able to stay 2 weeks, which meant I would just have to make it through the first week by myself.  Little did I know what I was in for...Saturday went great, until that night when Shane started acting really tired.  At first I told myself it was just because of a crazy week, but as I was putting him to bed he was a little warm.  He woke up the next morning with a 103 fever, so we bagged plans for Josh to take the kids to church.  I thought "okay, he just has what Marissa had and it will be gone in a day no big deal.  He can just watch TV and he'll be easy to keep away from Sadie."  I should have known that when Shane gets what Marissa has, he almost always gets it worse.  So we watched a lot of TV, and he fell asleep a little before dinner, then woke up, and vomited all over himself.

 "Okay, I told myself, that's just what he does when he gets a high fever."  And it's true, except this was a little more than that.  He threw up every last thing he ate or drank for almost 3 days.  Josh had to go back to work on Monday, so I was by myself with 3 kids for the first time, which was already intimidating, but mixed with cleaning up vomit, trying to take care of my sick little boy, not spreading any of the germs to Sadie, nursing a newborn around the clock, and keeping Marissa out of trouble while we stayed at home all day... it was exhausting to say the least.  I told myself to just hang on and keep everyone alive til Josh got home and then he could help.  Except when he got home he told me that he had a fever and some other gastrointestinal issues that I won't go into detail about.  We didn't want him getting Sadie sick either, so now I was on the night shift on my own too.  Sadie had a checkup on Tuesday morning so I decided to make one for Shane then too since he clearly wouldn't be going to school and was still throwing up what little I tried to give him.  He was so dehydrated his poor little lips were all chapped and cracking.  So I somehow managed to get all three kids ready for our 9:40 appointment, and said a prayer that Shane wouldn't throw up all over the van on the way there (he didn't thankfully!). The doctor gave him zofran so he could keep something down and gave me a schedule of how to reintroduce fluids slowly and then crackers.  The poor kid was starving and wanted to eat so bad but I had to keep telling him to wait so he wouldn't throw it all back up.  The zofran helped and after that he was able to keep his food down (with one little lapse).  He was pretty weak and tired looking for a couple days after, so needless to say we watched a lot of TV that week ;)  Sadie was the shining star through all this, she loves this bouncer and pretty much slept in it in the corner or hidden away somewhere else the whole week, and managed to stay perfectly healthy thankfully!  

 

Marissa was up to a lot of shenanigans but did pretty good all in all. 

I got some kind of upper respiratory infection a couple days later but it passed fairly quickly and my parents got into town last Friday and have been a HUGE help.  We are all feeling good at the moment and I made it through that awful week!  That's part of the reason I wanted to document this, to look back at and know that if I could make it through this, I can make it through a lot of things! And we are all having a lot more fun enjoying Sadie without scrubbing our hands til they bleed!