Tag Archives: irritable

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D-day disaster

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Tuesday, 4 March 2014: Three Hundred and Thirty Seven Days Old.

Today was D-day (“D” standing for Day Care”) and it ended in disaster.

The morning started off smoothly and to plan; Ayla had slept well, she had some breakfast, a bath, and I even got her day care bag all ready complete with labeled clothes and expressed milk.

At around 10.30am Ayla was looking tired, and although she was rubbing her eyes a little earlier than I expected I decided to put her down for a nap and planned to get stuck into my uni readings, preparing the dinner and doing some washing while she slept.

But by midday Ayla still hadn’t slept – apart from accidentally falling asleep for 10 minutes while I was feeding her – andI was completely frazzled.

The washing was beeping, the frying pan was burnt from being on without having anything in it, the flies were trying to get to my half chopped veggies, I hadn’t gone near my computer and Ayla was crying. It was overload to my stress levels.

Ayla was just really clingy, she would settle in my arms but as soon as I put her down she would start coughing then wake up and cry. This cycle went on, and on, and on, until Ayla’s eyes were red ringed and darkly shadowed and my nerves were completely shot.

I knew there was something wrong that was keeping Ayla from sleep, whether it was a virus, her teeth or something else, which made me feel bad for her and had me questioning my own judgement about leaving her at day care while I went off to uni.

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to take Ayla to her first afternoon at day care when she was so tired, upset and irritable so I made the decision to give Week One at uni a miss in order to take care of my baby girl.

Although I was happy with my decision, I think all the stress and pressure of the last couple of weeks finally caught up with me and I found myself in tears anyway.

Thankfully, like a knight in shining armour, Hubby came to the rescue by taking the afternoon off work to come home and look after Ayla.

It was a gesture so small and simple but it meant I got a whole three hours to myself to de-mummify, engage with a world outside my four walls and do something purely for me.

We’ll just have to try day care again next week.

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Allergy

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Baby Ayla is NOT allergic to nuts, seafood, shellfish, dairy, wheat, stone fruit, bananas, coconut, eggs or any of the other usual suspects…

Baby Ayla is allergic to grass.

I’m the same; if we sit or lie in grass for any more than a few minutes we’ll break out in a fine, red, itchy rash that’s borderline painful.

After a number of short adventures on the lawn I thought Ayla may have escaped my grass-rash gene, but today she spent a good hour in the backyard and by the end her of it little legs were red from the knees down.

I felt awful for Ayla because I knew exactly what she was going through and I could tell that the rash was upsetting her because our usual night time routine was in an uproar of irritability.

Even when I put Ayla in the sink for a bath she still yelled and whinged, and it was then that I realised an itchy rash must be torture for baby who can’t scratch!

So out came the Calamine lotion, which I rubbed on Ayla’s little legs after she’d had cool bath, and then Hubby carried her around under her arms for a while so her legs could dangle and dry.

Finally when the Calamine had set and Ayla was cocooned and ready for bed she started to settle, so I turned her air con down a couple of degrees and hoped we’d all get a good nights sleep.