In Which Carol Is Picky About Night Lights And Finds That Exacting Standards Are Hard To Meet

Tags

babies, children, lights, night lights, shopping

For the last year, I have been on a quest for a decent night light for Owl. 

You’d think it’d be easy.

But no.

It doesn’t help that I’m being as picky as hell.

You don’t find nightlights in the grocery store or pharmacies. Even places like Walmart have an abysmally small selection.

I eventually picked up a cheapy one with a little shade on it, and that worked for quite a while, until Owl broke the shade off.

My mother gave Owl a cute little giraffe night light, which worked great until last week, when Owl managed to break that as well. I’m not even sure what he did, but the switch doesn’t work any more.

What I really want to find is a cozy little lamp – one I can keep up on the windowsill out of reach. One that is relaxing, and dim enough to keep Owl’s room feeling like night time, but bright enough that I can read by it – I spend a lot of time in that gliding rocker trying to sing Owl down to sleep without booba.

Oh, and it needs to be cheap, too, because we have no money.

Daycare Lady has a lamp she uses for the kids during naptime, which she says they really like. I borrowed it for a couple of days and I loved it – it gives a warm glow that isn’t too bright but does illuminate the room. It has an inner bit which spins, casting dancing shadows which I find very relaxing.

I totally want one.

Two problems:

1. It has Dora the Explorer on it, and it’s bright pink.

Not only is it corporate branding, but it's wrong-gender corporate branding!

2. It is discontinued.

But that’s ok. I didn’t need this exact item.

I’ve been avoiding buying Owl anything with branding on it until he is old enough to request it himself. Besides, I was sure I had seen similar things in stores before, so I started trawling the lamp aisles at places like Zellers and Walmart.

No luck! In fact, I couldn’t find ANY children’s lamps, even though I am sure that I used to see cute ones all the time when I was out training service dogs years back.

So I went online.

I found the kind of thing I was looking for, all right. 

Another One Of Those Bullet-Point Posts

I promise I’ll be more entertaining soon, but I’m too tired tonight. Here is my life in point form:

• Job schedule is odd – I don’t get two days off together, but I do get three days off a week. Days that I work are 8.5 hours long.
• Got thrown into the deep end today – only tech on duty. Spent last night dreading work with an unspeakable and dreadful dread.
• DREAD.
• Good news: I put in my first catheter in nearly 4 years and got it in on the first try. I successfully monitored two anaesthesias without killing the patient OR seeming incompetent. I put together medications and prepared lab work successfully. I ran a urinalysis and the vet agreed with my results. I didn’t get yelled at. People were nice.
• Bad news: I screwed up taping the catheter, so I couldn’t connect it to the iv line properly. The time it took to fix my mistake resulted in blood going everywhere. It was a blood bath. Also, I couldn’t intubate a dog and the vet had to take over. I couldn’t get blood from a little maltese after poking the poor thing like seven times. A receptionist eventually got the blood. On the first try. I constantly had to ask the vet questions and was extremely inefficient in my time management. I ran behind.
• Good news: I heard back about the charity job which I would LOVE to do.
• Bad news: They want to know if I’d be okay with my work day starting and ending in a city that’s nearly an hour’s drive away in bad traffic. Also, I would need to spend three nights away from home every second week. Since Owl still expects booba at 4 in the morning, I’m not sure I could do this to him.
• I made 700 bucks on an Elance gig last week, writing dog training stuff, and I agreed on to another job yesterday. I love that I’m making money writing, but it does eat a lot of time.
• My doctor’s office called to tell me that my blood results are in, and wanting to know if I had “spoken with my specialist about them.” I said no, I tried to explain that there was no specialist – just a walk-in clinic and my sore throat – but the receptionist just booked me an appointment with my doctor as if I weren’t even talking. So now I’m going to the doctor, probably to be told that my blood is normal and to be asked why I’m even there.
• My son lifts his leg when walking past fire hydrants.

I think that’s everything of note. How are YOU?

The Cloud in the Silver Lining

Tags

anxiety, choice, employment, GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, jobs, life decisions, stress, worrying

I got the damn job.

To make it worse, the lady offering me the job is so NICE. She says that they are “excited to have me joining the team” and “looking forward to seeing me” and that she will arrange my schedule to be sure that I am out before my daycare closes.

Yes, that’s right, I’m COMPLAINING about how NICE she is.

“Carol always manages to find the cloud in the silver lining,” PH said over the phone to my mother today, which made her burst out laughing.

Let me walk you through my mind:

In order to determine how I feel about something NOW, I need to know how I will feel about it in the future. I’m afraid to be happy about something now if I think there may be a chance I might regret it later. So here are the future scenarios running through my mind:

Scenario A: Maybe I’ll love the people at this job, and won’t be offered the awesome charity job that would be perfect for me. I will be overworked from trying to work full time at my job PLUS the dog training business, and never see my family, but at least I will like my workplace.

Scenario B: Maybe I’ll love the people at this job, and will ALSO be offered the awesome charity job that would be perfect for me. Then I’ll have to choose between a full time job in a setting I don’t like but with awesome coworkers, and disappointing people who have been awesome to me and who I enjoy working with in order to pursue a more “ideal” job that may or may not pan out.

Scenario C: Maybe I’ll find myself in a similar situation to last time – feel incompetent, feel disliked, be generally unhappy. I won’t get the other job either, and I’ll just tough it out until the dog training business gets big enough that I can quit.

Scenario D: Maybe I will feel incompetant but then get the other job, and will leave feeling like a failure but at least I’d be going to a more “ideal” job.

Scenarios A and D are preferable, and I still dislike both of them.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m near tears most of the time. PH is alternately worried about me and frustrated as hell with my I’m-doomed attitude.

I can’t help it.

The future just… scares me. I have no idea if things are going to be okay.

Worrying About The Wrong Thing: Anxiety Girl Strikes Again!

Tags

anxiety, decisions, GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, jobs, problems, stupid, worries, worrying

One of the things they kept telling us in my Generalized Anxiety Disorder group was that we worried about the wrong things.

Our obsession with worrying about everything actually CAUSED problems because we’d be so busy worrying that we would let problems build and build until they became HUGE problems.

Which was exactly what we were worried about.

Something else we learned was that our worries always tended to end up at the same place. Heather Armstrong says that when her daughter makes a mistake in her piano practice, she visualizes a series of catastrophes that end in her living in a cardboard box.

Well, that’s fairly typical, I have learned.

For some people, that ultimate fear is ending up homeless.

For others, it’s ending up dead.

For me, it’s displeasing people and making bad choices.

Doctor sends you for blood tests because your sore throat could be a sign of a serious problem? Pfft. Not worried. Maybe it’s cancer, but it is almost definitely not. Certainly nothing I can control if it is cancer (which it isn’t).

Need to make a serious decision that will end up disappointing someone? BIG PROBLEM.

I hate making decisions. What if I make the wrong one? What if this single decision alters the whole course of my future life? What if this decision turns out to piss someone off? What if this decision makes me a bad person?!

So now I’m here, waiting for a phone call, worrying that I’ll be OFFERED A JOB.

You read that right. Not worrying that I WON’T be offered a job. Worrying that I WILL.

Last Friday, you see, was a big day for me. I landed a big job on Elance, and a national dog charity put up a part time job posting in my area. Suddenly I had a plan – I would train dogs, work part time for a charity doing something I KNEW I could do well, and make extra money on the side as a writer.

It was like ALL MY DREAMS COMING TRUE.

Then I got another call. From a vet clinic.

This clinic is a sort of rival to my previous employer. She was his employee, and when she left to start her own business, three quarters of his staff decided they’d rather go work for her.

So when she asked me to come in for an interview, I could be really honest.

…I told her exactly why I was no longer working there.

…I told her that I have severe anxiety around anesthesia now, thanks to Mean Vet, who she used to work with.

…I warned her that if she was looking for a surgical tech, I might not be a good choice.

She said she liked me a lot. She thought I would be a good fit at her clinic. She appreciated my openness and my candor. She always made decisions like this jointly with her staff, though, so she would talk it over with them and get back to me on Friday. Would I be available to start next week?

So now I’m scared.

If I get this job, I should definitely take it. A bird in the hand, right?

She seems nice. She and her employee vet introduced themselves by their first names, which is a nice change from the old place where I had to call them “Dr So-and-So” all the time.

But I don’t want it.

Why?

Because then what if I also get the job at the charity? 

WHAT IF I HAVE TO CHOOSE?

I SHOULD be worried that I WON’T get this job.

I SHOULD be worried that I won’t get ANY job.

But instead, I’m terrified that I may have to make a choice. I may have to let someone down – someone who took a chance on me.

It doesn’t help that I have so much anxiety about working in a clinic that just the THOUGHT sends my heart racing.

So… to sum up…

I’m waiting for a call, scared that I will be offered a job.

When I should really be scared that I won’t.

The Little Cold That Could

Tags

colds, doctors, medicine, sore throat, symptoms

A week or so before my birthday, Owl, PH and I developed mild cold symptoms. Very mild. So mild, in fact, that even PH didn’t suffer the usual Man Cold symptoms of constant moaning, excessive sleeping, etc.

But it just… wouldn’t go away. I was coughing right up through my birthday, never having actually been SICK… and yet… still coughing.

The cough has since faded away, but one symptom remains.

My throat hurts.

Not a lot.

Just a little.

Just the kind of sore throat that makes you wince a teeny bit when you swallow. It doesn’t hurt to talk, it doesn’t really hurt much at all. It’s just… sort of THERE.

Once a night or so I mention it casually to PH, like “my throat’s still a little sore”. It’s such an off-hand comment that he doesn’t even feel the need to enquire about it the next day.

But yesterday, when I mentioned it for what must be, like, the 14th day in a row, he said “Why don’t you go to the doctor?”

Well, because it feels stupid.

“Hi. I don’t have a fever, or headaches, or any cold symptoms, and I feel perfectly fine, actually. But it’s slightly uncomfortable when I swallow.”

Except now the pain kind of goes up my ear canal a bit, too. So I am going to go in. The doctor will probably think I’m a hypochondriac.

Canadians: If you’re wondering where your tax dollars go… me. I’m spending them. Sorry ’bout that.

Update: OR, the doctor will be totally stumped, and postulate a range of diagnoses from too much caffeine to hypothyroidism/cancer, and send me for immediate blood tests.

Too Personal

Tags

babies, breastfeeding, personal space, questions, tmi, toddlers

The first thing Owl wants when I pick him up at Daycare is booba. 

“Sit, sit!” Daycare Lady always says, and I sit on the couch and nurse Owl for 15 minutes or so while she lists everything Owl consumed that day. She nursed her own children past the age of three, so it seems perfectly normal to her.

Not so for all of the kids at the daycare. The older ones tend to be curious about it. 

“What is he doing?” a three year old asked me.

“He’s drinking milk,” I told her.

I don’t mind them watching, and Daycare Lady considers it good education for them.

But one little girl gets a little too up close and personal.

She’s just two, with golden hair and big, big blue eyes which stare in fascination at Owl’s face while he roots around and grunts in milky satisfaction. As I nurse, she draws closer and closer, a perplexed look on her face. She points to Owl, and to me, and I tell her “he’s nursing”.

Her big eyes look into mine for a moment, and then return to my breast. Her face draws well into my personal space, which catches Owl’s attention and he stops nursing to look at her in surprise.

Then, her tiny index finger comes out and gently touches my nipple.

“He’s having some milk,” I say.

I wonder – is she remembering her own breastfeeding days? WAS she breastfed, or is this an alien act to her? Maybe it is, because she looks like there’s something she wants to ask me.

Her earnest gaze catches mine, and she points again at my nipple with a smile.

“Tit?” she says, “Tit??“

…

Go away, kid.

Beware The Seahorse, Children. It’s All… Soporific And Stuff.

Tags

babies, childhood, conditioning, fears, psychology, sleep, weird

Okay, here’s where I explain the loss of the seahorse.

Remember the seahorse?

We really came to depend on that seahorse. During the whole Go The F*** To Sleep incident, Owl would often drift off to sleep staring dreamily at the seahorse’s glowing tummy.

When he started daycare, the seahorse went with him every day to help him go down at nap time.

Then, one Saturday a couple of months ago, Perfect Husband picked me up from work and told me that Owl was afraid of his seahorse.

“Don’t be silly,” I told him, “he fell asleep to it just last night – he just lay there and watched it until he drifted off, while I hummed in the rocking chair.”

“Well, he found it today and he brought it to me, so I turned it on for him, and he started to scream.”

“He must have just gotten a teething pain at that exact time. It must be a coincidence.”

To prove PH wrong, I turned on the seahorse and showed it to Owl when we got home that night.

…He took one look at his musical bedtime pal and burst into horrified, heartbroken tears, and ran off to find his Dada.

Monday afternoon, when I picked him up, Daycare Lady told me that Owl hadn’t slept. He kept standing up in his playpen an screaming in a heartbreaking manner which was entirely unlike him.

I couldn’t understand how he could have developed a fear of his seahorse literally over night, but it was looking more and more like this was, in fact, the case.

I asked Daycare Lady if anything bad had happened to Owl with the seahorse – maybe another child had thrown it at him?

No, she didn’t think so. She checked with her helper lady, and helper lady hadn’t seen anything like that either.

In any case, the next day he went to daycare without the seahorse and slept fine.

So I put the seahorse aside for a while.

I miss the darn thing because now if I want Owl to go to sleep without being on the booba, I have to sing “Mama’s Going To Buy You A Mockingbird” over and over and over and over again. I have had a sore throat lately and this ISN’T HELPING.

Besides, the music is soothing and I missed that, too.

In our organizing stint last week I dug up good ole’ Glowy again, and I offered it to Owl. It had been months. Surely… whatever it was that upset him about it… was forgotten by now.

It started well.

He seemed happy to see it and reached for it. He even pressed the belly to turn it on.

Words cannot express the look of betrayal that crossed his face when the music began to play.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??

The crazy thing is, every time I turned it off, he’d go over to the thing and turn it back on. 

"hey, it stopped! Let's just press the tummy and..."

"ARGH OH NO, WHY??"

(click the pictures for close-ups of the agony)

"HOW CAN I BEAR THE PAIN??"

"Hey, I didn't say TURN IT OFF..."

Suffice to say we’re baffled.

Sleep Update – Still A Night Owl

Tags

babies, night weaning, sleep

I haven’t updated on the Owl Sleep Situation in quite a long while, and there’s a reason for that.

I have no idea what the hell is going on.

If he were sleeping badly I could say “his sleep still sucks!”

If he were sleeping wonderfully I could say “his sleep is amazing!”

But it’s so random, so unpredictable, that I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

The GO the F*** To Sleep program works – I’ll give it that. The day before Owl started daycare he slept through the night. But then daycare messed it up. Once we were convinced that he wasn’t starving to death, we decided to reinstitute the program. But Owl kept getting sick.

It basically has been yo-yoing like this:

We start getting Owl to sleep without the breast at night

He starts sleeping for longer stretches.

He gets sick.

He coughs himself awake every 20 minutes.

We get desperate and start letting him nurse himself to sleep.

And then it starts all over again.

After the croup incident we decided to kick it up a notch by actually night weaning him. We tried the Dr. Jay Gordon method, which I discovered through the Leaky Boob.

It is very much like my No Cry Sleep Solution method, which is very like Pug Mama’s Go The F*** To Sleep method. But just as Pug Mama’s method was No Cry kicked up a notch, the Jay Gordon method is kicked up another notch, because he has a TIMELINE.

I didn’t blog about it because I had no time for blogging because I hated my life.

But it totally worked. We were tired, but even by the third and fourth night there were huge improvements seen. It helped that Owl is an old hand by now at being refused booba at night. Once he catches on that we’re serious again he goes right to sleep.

In fact, on night 5 he slept through the night. We were like “THIS IS AMAZING.”

Then guess what happened?

GO ON, GUESS.

Right. HE GOT SICK. The next night, night 6, he coughed himself awake CONSTANTLY and while he would go to sleep if one of us sung to him from the gliding rocker, he would immediately start to cry when that same parent left the room no matter how deeply asleep he appeared to be when we tiptoed out.

PH wanted to give in. I refused. I ended up falling asleep ON THE FLOOR next to the crib and waking up very, very stiff two hours later.

The next night, night 7, was worse, if anything. I fell asleep on the floor next to the crib again. PH dubbed me insane, said there was no point in sleep training a sick baby, and I reluctantly agreed with him.

Owl had found his way back onto my boob.

When he got better we tried to re-implement the criteria, but we couldn’t quite make it through the night. At around 3 or 4 am, we’d let him come to bed with us. After all, we said to each other, Dr. Gordon says to pick a 6-7 hour stretch through the night. Instead of picking 11-6, maybe we were just going to do 9-4.

And that’s sort of how it stayed. On good nights, Owl sleeps until 3 or 4 in the morning, and then PH brings him to bed with me. On bad nights, he wakes up multiple times and we sing him to sleep, USUALLY without booba.

The first time PH said “It’s time to go to sleep, Owl”, and Owl immediately stopped crying and lay down, he said it was like a miracle. That’s what he does, now, because when he hears those words he knows it’s serious.

But I really wish we could get past that 3 am stretch, because it would sure be nice to wake up some morning without a baby jumping on my head or trying to tie knots in my nipples.

And I’m sure PH would appreciate NOT getting kicked out of bed at 3 in the morning every day.

So we need to crack down and finish the night weaning some time soon.

Unfortunately, now we’ve also lost the help of the seahorse, but that’s another story…