Double the Trouble

 

 

Please someone tell me why I elected to have one child, let alone two?

This is what goes through your mind at 2 a.m. when the crying from the newborn has awakened the 21 month old who finally fell asleep at 11 p.m. after crying and talking in her bed for two hours. The same 21 month old who is allergic to sleep and, if awakened by her crying brother, is likely to be up for another two hours. Her carrying on will eventually wake her little brother… and the whole cycle will start over.

Woe. Is. Me.

Good thing I have a wife who is a teacher and has summers off. “Honey, can you deal with Tyson and Sydney and wake me in the morning?”

Yeah, right. The answer to that is likely to be a right hook that knocks me off the bed.

You want to know how life is in the Gregg household? Two kids. Two adults. Man-to-man defense.

I’m tired. Just tired.

And my wife is the one carrying the water. I suck at taking care of babies. I would rather watch Sydney by myself for a week than watch Tyson by myself for a day. I never know what is wrong with the kid. I can’t ever make him happy. I’m always afraid I’m hurting him, or smothering him or missing some sign that he might die in the next 15 minutes.

With Sydney, it’s like, “Here’s a toy, here’s the Sprout TV network, here’s a grilled cheese sandwich, there’s a gate on the stairs and the cabinets are locked down ….now let daddy play Words with Friends for three hours.”

Thank God for my wife. And I am not the only one who says that. I am pretty sure Tyson screams that in his little mind every time Brooke takes him from me because I have screwed up and sent him into a tizzy.  

Speaking of Sydney, she has not exactly welcomed her little brother with open arms. She still calls him baby. Occasionally, she will say brother. I don’t think she ever says Tyson.

The first time she saw him cry, she felt so bad she cried, too. But that sympathy didn’t last long. Ever since, when he cries, she laughs hysterically.

I’m clearly raising a budding sadist.

She hasn’t pushed him off the couch yet, but she hasn’t embraced him either. She, like Vegas the dog, mostly ignores him.  On the rare occasion when she does acknowledge his presence, she might go over to pat him on his head and show a little affection. But her pats are slaps, like when she pets the dog.

He’s too fragile to endure slaps upside the head.

She does like to bounce in his bouncing chair. The weight limit on it is 25 pounds. At her last doctor’s visit, she weighed 24. I’m thisclose to a broken bouncing chair.

Tyson is adjusting to his new world. He already sleeps better than his big sister. It is probably too early to make the call that he will be a good sleeper, but all signs point that way.

He LOVES to be held. I don’t know if it is the product of being in that hospital bed for two weeks and not being held, but, if he is awake, he wants to be in someone’s arms.

That can keep a person busy. Brooke is pretty adept at holding him while eating, or while using the other arm to play with Sydney. Surprisingly, I am not.  

He cries for three reasons:

·         He hates to get his diaper changed. Not sure if it is the cold air or he’s just too modest to be naked, but you can count on some screaming when you pull the tape on the diaper.

·         He is hungry. We all cry for food, right?

·         He has gas. And he has A LOT of gas. He doesn’t deal with it well and can’t seem to get comfortable. This necessitates me having to move him 100 different ways to keep him comfortable until the gas passes. Unlike Sydney, who was a farting machine, Tyson seems to hold a lot of gas inside. He gets the hiccups after every meal.

He also has a clogged tear duct that produces regular discharge from his eye. It has even crusted his eye shut a couple of times while he was sleeping. Imagine his terror when he can only open one eye! That’s his Indian nick name, One-Eye Tyson.

Poor kid can’t catch a break. A defective heart. Excess gas. Eye pus.

He actually has a myriad of issues that we can’t determine whether they are normal baby issues or because of his heart. He sweats, shudders, grunts and yawns a lot. One of the things they told us to look for was sweating, so we may be hyper sensitive to some of these things, but each has me concerned enough to ask the doctor.

Also, his lips blister. They look like the back of a boxed turtle. Is he dehydrated? He gets plenty of milk.

All of these questions shall be posed in the weekly cardiologist’s visit tomorrow.  

We know for sure we have had a bit of a set back with him. Doctors released him to come home with the understanding he would gain weight and be stronger for his operation. But, they warned, if he is not gaining weight, it will likely be because his heart is working too hard, which would necessitate his first heart operation, the one we thought we’d avoided.

Despite eating like a Sopranos character, he has lost a little weight since he’s been home. Now, Sydney also did when she first came home, and I understand many other babies do, too. But because of his condition, they have decided to supplement his breast milk to see if they can add on some pounds.

We’ll cross our fingers.

Other than that, life is normal. We’re living the dream. Well, actually, there is no dreaming in our house. No one ever gets to fall into that deep of a sleep.