Wednesday

-21 grams, but it's okay.

They gave him a diuretic yesterday because he was retaining so much fluid. He's been retaining the fluid for some time- we knew that. But I guess his day nurse yesterday thought we should go ahead and do something about it. The NP agreed and everyone agreed it might help his breathing as well. Not that his breathing is going badly- quite the opposite, really, but help is always good.

Anyway, they gave him the first dose about 4 in the afternoon and when I changed his diaper about 8, it weighed a TON. The whole thing was soaked. The nurse weighed it and said it was 70cc. She was impressed. Later in the night, two other nurses heard us discussing his weight loss and they were sort of reassuring me and I told them it wasn't necessary because I knew it was fluid. Then nurse told them about the diaper and they were impressed as well. Since I have no idea how that compares to anything else, it means nothing to me, I just never know I've never seen or felt my son have nearly that much pee in a diaper.

Our holding time went much better last night. So did my evening with his nurse. The baby next to Robbie was quite fussy so she was spending a lot of time holding/rocking/consoling her, which sort of kept her from hovering over me. A couple of times she commented that she could get another nurse to help me when I was getting him out of bed, putting him back to bed etc. I didn't really need it and she finally seemed to realize that I do actually know what I'm doing for the most part.

As annoying as it is for her not to trust me to take care of my own kid, it is also reassuring to know that she really wants to take care of him. I trust her when I'm not there. That's really all I need out of a nurse.

Soon, I'll be able to be there more. My leave of absence was officially approved. I went ahead and put in to finish out this week and next. I have a little bit of vacation time left that I'm splitting into half days and using in the mean time. So I'll work 4 hours today, Friday, next Monday & next Wednesday, 8 hours each of the other days through next Friday. Then I'm off.

I put it in to return to work April 1st. I don't really think that money will hold out that long, but the leave can only be changed once. So I can come back earlier if we run out of money, or I can stay out longer if we have a sudden windfall.


To all of those who gave suggestions on ways to earn a little extra cash- THANK YOU. I'll be checking into all of them.

I'm also going to allow some a.ds on the blog. I really hate to do it because I like my a.d free space here, but at this point, function beats form. Would all of you who read regularly be willing to cli.ck on my a.d once a day? Would it be completely obnoxious to add a little P.S. to each post to say "Psst, please cli.ck my ad?" Even if it's an extra 20 or 30 bucks/month, it's something. Let me know what you think.

Off to the primary care doc about my gallbladder/whatever. Just a follow up to say that the drugs haven't helped. Hopefully she'll go ahead and schedule the scan of my stuff and we can get this show on the road. If I am going to require surgery, I'd REALLY like it done before Robbie comes home. It'd be just my luck that they'll schedule surgery and then let Robbie come home the same day or something.

--Trish