on my heart

I’m so far behind right now, H turned 3 months old on Friday and I haven’t taken his pictures or written his post – I’ll get there, I’m just no quite there yet. If the past week and a half and the rest of this week doesn’t kill me, I hope to be back soon in some sort of routine.

I love being this boy’s mom.

It’s more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.

Watching him grow daily brings me a joy I’ve never known before. I’m stuck in this turmoil of wanting to know his little personality and who he is going to be as he gets older, and then wanting to cherish every single day of him being little.

The last month has been challenging for me, dealing with infant reflux is no joke. I went a solid month of having to pump every bit of milk he consumed during the daytime {he still nursed at night}, I’ve changed my diet drastically, and I’ve tirelessly dredged through. The great news is that we’re back to nursing about 70% of the time, making it 100 times easier on me, but the bad news is, I’m back to work for real.

I don’t know if the combination of the stress of reflux with the stress of figuring out work and praying that my milk supply will stay up with his needs has gotten the best of me. Last Sunday, I got mastitis – fever, chills, the whole bit. Called the doctor Monday and got on antibiotics. H and I drove to Dallas {my first road trip solo with baby} to meet with a client Thursday who no-showed me. I logistically couldn’t figure out how to leave him and be that far away from him in the chance that my meeting went long, while still trying to feed him – yes, I have milk stored up, but with a kid that can usually eat every 2 hours, it’s all I had stored. So, my mom rearranged her schedule to take care of him for me during my meeting that never happened. All of that for nothing.

And guess what? Since the client wasn’t there, no decisions were made so I have to do it all again.

Friday evening/Saturday morning, the mastitis reared its head again {mind you, I was still on antibiotics for the first round}. I called the on-call doctor who instructed me to just continue taking the prescription as directed. Sunday, things started to get better so I thought we were on the up and up, minus the diaper rash H had developed.

Then Monday came.

My symptoms came back and to top it off, I started noticing H break out into hives across his head, face, neck and chest while he ate. I freaked out for a second, stripped him down to see if they were all over and thankfully they weren’t. My first thought was the antibiotic, but I took him home {we were at the office}, gave him a bath and changed his clothes hoping he was having a reaction of some sort to what he was wearing. They cleared up so I didn’t give it another thought until later on when he was eating and there they were again. I showed the hubs who agreed with me that I should stop taking the antibiotics. After talking with a doctor friend who agreed with us, I stopped the medicine.

This morning? No hives – great! But my symptoms are not going anywhere, so we’re just waiting to hear back from my doctor on what to do next.

I’m getting very little rest – I think the meds have affected his sleeping as well in the last week – and I’m back to work {with no place to pump- way more to that story, by the way}. To add the icing to the cake, H started at his Mother’s day out program today – a great place, but thankfully I kept it together.

My whole life I never wanted to work when I had kids, but we have no options right now. I know there are so many women who do what they have to do to make ends meet with kids, and I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just sort of venting. Is it considered post-partum depression if you get it 3 months later, or is it just a bad mood? ha!

Life is challenging right now, I know it is just a season, and one day we will look back on this time and think our problems were so miniscule. But right here, in this moment, it’s kicking my tail.

Here’s to looking up and leaning on faith.