So Exhausted, But So Worth It...

Let me begin by telling you a bit about my crazy schedule from yesterday leading in to today. I woke up at 8am yesterday morning. (Thanks to Nathan letting me sleep in that late!)Mark, Nathan, and I ran errands, to include going to Target and purchasing half of the store... I LOVE Target! :o) When we got home from all our running around we were all tired, so we all napped. I slept from about 3:15pm to 4:30pm, normally I wouldn't complain about that, however, it's never a good thing for me to sleep that early in the day on Sunday, as I have to go in to work at 10:00pm Sunday night until 6:30am Monday morning. Usually, I try not to lay down until 4ish, and sleep until 8:30pm. It's still not a lot of sleep, but it's hard to sleep much longer than that as it's the only night of the week I work overnight. So basically, by the time I left work this morning at 6:30am I'd been up 22.5 hours.

When I arrived home this morning at 7am, Nathan was still asleep, so I quickly changed clothes and snuggled up on the couch to get quick nap in before he woke. That lasted about 30 minutes. Nathan and I played until 9:45am when it was finally his nap time. (Thank goodness for morning naptime!) He had consumed nine ounces of EleCare by this point! I was so happy to be off to such a good start today! We both napped until 12pm. :o) When Nathan got up, he drank six more ounces of his EleCare! WOW! I thought, 15 ounces and it's barely lunchtime! So, again, we played and read books, then I decided I've got to get myself together to run a few errands before too much more of the day got away from me! It was near 1:30pm when I was finally decent enough to go out in public, I decided to offer Nathan some more EleCare before heading out, and he drank four more ounces, plus and entire six ounce jar of pears! I feel like I've got my old Nathan back along with his appetite too, I thought to myself! So we go out and about and return home around 3:30pm, how convenient... it's afternoon nap time! Nathan takes one more ounce of his EleCare before laying down, a bit discouraging after how he drank this morning, but I reminded myself that one ounce at a time all adds up. I slept until 4:30pm when Mark called to tell me he was on the way home from work. I quickly prepped some things for dinner before waking Nathan up at 5pm. He drank 3 more ounces and ate 1/2 jar of pears. At 6:05pm, Nathan had 2 more ounces, and right before bed he ate the remaining 1/2 of his jar of pears.

Nathan's total for the day at this point was 25 ounces and 2 jars of pears. I was happy about this, but I began having second thoughts of should we do a 7oz. feeding over night tonight? He really is supposed to have a total of 32oz. of his EleCare through out the day. Was it wrong of me to be so happy about him drinking so well yesterday (26oz.) and not give him the remaining 6oz. while he slept, justifying it because he had 200 calories worth of pears that day also? So tonight, even knowing he had, again, 2 jars of pears totaling an additional 200 calories, I decided... he needs to hit his 32oz. of EleCare for the day, I will give him a feeding of 7 more ounces over 4 hours tonight. So we put Nathan down at 7pm, and he's wide awake... I decided to let him play in his crib for a bit and fall asleep before hooking him up, as the tubing connected to the feeding pump on the IV pole has become somewhat of a fun thing for him to play with, to the point of pulling the IV pole over. Fun for Nathan, obnoxious for mommy and daddy. All I can think about it crawling in the bed and going to sleep, but alas I decided to work on laundry while waiting for Nathan to fall asleep. At 7:45pm, he was finally quiet. (He had been having full on conversations with his stuffed animals up until that point.) I go in his room to find him lying down, but still wide awake, I decided to go ahead and hook him up and start his feeding because this mama was tired and ready for bed herself! Needless to say, it was a bad idea... I fought with him and the IV pole and the pump alarming because he wouldn't stop playing with the tubing... at 8:30pm I turned it off and said heck with the last 7 ounces today! It's not worth this struggle tonight being as exhausted as I was. So I go to bed. That lasted all of 5 minutes before Nathan began crying. So I got up and took him downstairs, I thought, maybe he's hungry...hmm.. how ironic, I'd been fighting to feed him via his NG tube for the past hour almost and he was going to have nothing to do with it. So we go downstairs and I offer him his cup... he eagerly drinks 5 more ounces!! Yes, that's right... Nathan drank 30 ounces of his EleCare and ate two jars of pears today!

We are still downstairs 45 minutes later so he could play a bit more and I could write this horrifically long blog post. He just rubbed his eyes, better get him back to bed, and I'm going to be right behind him! Oh yeah... and HECK with those last two ounces for today! :o)

I'll take a day with no rest after being awake for 22.5 hours if it means Nathan drinks 30 ounces of EleCare in one day for sure!