Sleeping Sickness (or something)

Maybe I'm just naive, but when Kendra slept nearly 17 hours last night (minus the time it took to squeeze in a couple of feedings), I just thought she was going through a growth-spurt or something. But then almost immediately after she was finally awake and fed, she began to get grumpy! That definitely had me perplexed. And then as I watched her fall asleep in my arms as I was rocking her, I began to suspect that all was not right with my little girl. Maybe you're one of those lucky people whose kids are cute enough to fall asleep in your arms, but that's definitely NOT how my kids operate. If anyone's around, they just want to watch that person the entire time and sleep goes out the window. They need alone time in their crib to fall asleep. So even though it was sort of fun watching Kendra's eyelids flutter as she tried (with not much success) to look into my eyes, I knew something was not quite right. I consulted with my Mom, and she also agreed that it all seemed wrong, so then I called the doctor and made an appointment for the afternoon.

Now, if I'd really been thinking at all, I would have dropped Bentley off at a friend's or something, but the thought didn't even occur to me, so the three of us went to see the doctor together. And let's just say that it made for a very long afternoon.

Two hours. We were there for two hours. Two hours of hauling a very cranky baby and a very much wanting to wander away from me toddler from the waiting room to the inside room (what do you call that room???), to the lab to sign up for a blood test and then to a different waiting room and then to the lab where they drew blood (my poor baby!) and then back to the original waiting room, back to the interior room, and then once more to the waiting room and back again-- this time because the lab is done with the bloodwork, so I can get the results ("very virus-y" were the doctor's exact words), then to the pharmacy to order a prescription (for thrush, actually; there's not much you can do to treat a virus), about thirty seconds spent in the pharmacy waiting room before I realized that there were way too many bottles of pills and stuff all within Bentley's reach, so back to the kid's waiting room again, then pick up the prescription, back to the nurse's once more so she could remove the urine bag they'd put on Kendra (ick, but whatever they were testing that for came back negative, so I guess that's good), and then finally I managed to haul everyone out to the car which was, naturally, parked way far away in the parking lot.

I'm amazed we survived at all.

And the best part? In my rush to get out the door, I'd grabbed a pair of shorts for Bentley that were too big and kept falling down, so in addition to all of that, I also had to stoop and pull his shorts back up every few steps!

Let me tell you, I am such a good mother, I can hardly stand it. I bet all of you reading this think you should be taking notes so you can be a totally awesome mommy just like me!

In my defense, I did finally figure out that rolling the elastic inward once kept the shorts up a lot better, so that helped. Bentley looked ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as he looked with his shorts wrapped around his ankles. (At least he's not old enough to be embarrassed by that yet-- he just couldn't figure out how to walk that way!) And I have to give Bentley credit for being remarkably good-natured throughout the whole ordeal, especially since he had to have been pretty hungry by the time it was all over. Kendra should get some credit for doing pretty well, too, all things considered.

Once we were home, I changed her diaper and put her right back to bed. She's woken up once to eat, that's it. Isn't it weird how you can't enjoy something like your kid being unconscious for most of the day? That's just not what mothering is about, I guess. Instead, you have to worry about it the entire time and disrupt the poor kid's sleep with long visits to the doctor, complete with needles and urine bags. Life can be tough when you're six months old.