The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Pumper

Have I mentioned how much I hate pumping? Yes? Then have I mentioned it today? I love that I now have two bins full of frozen milk waiting for P, but my G-d, hooking myself up to this blasted green machine every 2-3 hours is a ring of hell I would only wish on my worst enemies.

Also, having a preemie who you can't actually HOLD for any length of time means your milk let-down gets all wonky. For me, that translates to: my nipples feel like an evil monkey has grasped them in his iron-strong paws and he's hanging from them. And he weighs 500 pounds. All the time. OW. For some reason, today Lefty is feeling the pain more than Righty -- possibly because she's producing more. (Step it up, Righty!) It's nowhere near unbearable pain, but it's that constant, distracting, nagging pain -- the kind that sets your teeth on edge and makes you want to punch people, any people. Find me people and I will punch them.

I have my phone set with alarms to remind me when to pump; the alarm sounds like an old-fashioned "Ah-OOOOga!" horn. When I hear that frigging sound, I get homisuicidal. I want to fling myself off a roof and land on people. GAAAAH.

Oh! And now I'm done. Okay. Life is good for another 2-3 hours.

Oh, sorry, were you here for news of an actual baby, rather than my tales of hooter woe? Well: She's doing great. She's still on the ventilator, but way down on the Ativan and very responsive to both my and Randy's touch. She looks beautiful, her color is completely back. She opened her eyes to gaze at me today, and really implored me to take her out of the isolette. It's very, VERY hard to wait. But I read in one of my four huge preemie tomes today about a thing called the "womb hold," a particular way of putting my hands around her that will make her feel most secure; I can't wait to try it out tomorrow, along with the "preemie massage" later in the book.

Her tests show negative for meningitis (but they'll do a second spinal tap in a few weeks to make sure), inconclusive for the kajdfahfejfcoccus (whatever the hell it was), and still positive for the yeast. They'll put in a Picc Line, a different kind of IV, as soon as her yeast is negative for 2 days -- that means they wont' have to poke her with IVs as often, which is great because today they ran out of places to put IVs and had to put one IN HER SCALP. which meant SHAVING some of her precious adorable HAIR. NOOOOOOES!!!!

i have the hair, though, and i'm going to go braid it now.