"There aren't enough hours in the day any more."

Tuesday, August 13, 1991

     There aren't enough hours in the day any more.  There's no time for anything but baby stuff.  Once in a great while I get a little bit of a break.  Two or three times Guy has watched Elizabeth when he got home & let me go out by myself.  I usually just ran errands that I'd been putting off because I felt they would be too much trouble to do with Elizabeth along.  You can't just pick up & go and hop in & out of the car with a baby.  Maybe once she's big enough for us to use the big car seat it'll be easier to get her in & out of it than it is this seat.  In case I haven't written about it, we rented a seat from the hospital & it's one of those bucket-type.  You have to undo the strap almost completely to get her in & out.  The one we bought won't fit in the back seat facing backwards so we have to wait til she's big enough to face forward to use it.  That shouldn't be much longer.  By our scales she weighs 16-17 lbs.  Hopefully at her checkup next week the dr. will say it's ok to turn her around.

     Hopefully E's about to take a nap so I can catch up a little.

     We had a hard time getting her birth certificate.  The hospital said to wait six weeks before sending for it but someone at work told Guy not to wait or it would take forever to get it back.  So we went ahead & sent for it when she was 2-3 wks. old.  It came back in about 2 wks. & everything was fine except they had her listed as a male.  Meanwhile I had called the hospital because someone had told Guy they were supposed to have given us a temporary verification of birth that the Navy would accept as proof to enroll her in DEERS.  When we got that it had Elizabeth and Ellen and listed her DOB as May 19.  So I had to call & get that corrected.  They'd sent it & Guy took it in and they said we had 60 days to bring in the birth certificate or they'd remove her from DEERS.  When I called to find out how to get the B.C corrected, the lady who does that said to write a letter to Richmond stating the error and that she would send a correction or amendment for them to fix it.  We waited & waited and nothing came so I called the hospital when we had about 2 wks. of the 60 days left.  The lady was on vacation and the one taking her place had no idea what to do.  She told me to call Vital Stats in Norfolk.  They told me to call Richmond.  There wasn't an 800 no. for them but Guy told me to call anyway.  I called on a Mon. & when I finally got through they said the person I needed to talk to wouldn't be in til Tues.  So I called Tues. & she said she hadn't gotten an amendment from the hospital, but she'd call the hospital and get verification for the amendment and send us the new B.C.s (we'd ordered two).  We still hadn't gotten them by the next weekend so I called Richmond again on the next Mon. & the lady said they were going in the mail that day.  They came Friday - the next Mon. was the end of the 60 days.  So that was cutting it close.

     Other things from my list that I haven't written about yet:

     The day after Elizabeth was born we got a free steak supper with sparkling cider.  We got to keep the champagne glasses.  As I remember, it was a very good meal.  I think there was also baked potato, salad, and cheesecake for dessert.

     For the first few weeks Elizabeth had all this dry skin flaking off of her almost everywhere but mostly on her face and in & around creases, especially fingers & toes.  I thought it would never stop but it did.  We asked the dr. about it at her 2 wk. checkup & she said it was normal and not to put lotion or anything on her so that her natural oil would kick in.

     Our pediatrician is the Tidewater Children's Assoc.  On my prenatal interview I talked with Dr. May.  He reminds me of the man who played Herman Munster.  He wears a bow tie.  In the hospital I saw him, Dr. Mink - a young man, and Dr. Kevorkian - a woman maybe our age or a little older.  Dianna Landon takes her kids to their office in Chesapeake.  She told me not to see Dr. Schulwolf cause he's not as good with the kids.  So far we've only seen Dr. Karp, a young woman.  She is so nice.  I always ask when we sign in who's there & write down which one we want to see.  We've been lucky to be there on her days so far.

     At her first checkup - 2 wks. she had a thrush infection in her mouth.  Dr. Karp said that's common in newborns & it's kind of like a yeast infection.  I'd seen a kind of white film in her mouth with little white particles but I thought it was from starting to give her formula cause it appeared a day or two after that.  We got some medicine we had to give her in a dropper and use a swab to spread it around her mouth.  It was cleared up by the time we went back at one month but she also had a bad diaper rash by then & Dr. Karp said the thrush infection was mixed in with it; from her swallowing it went through her system.  So we had to get some cream to use on that.  It took a week or two for it to clear up.  Since then we've been using disposable diapers at night and disk. diaper liners with the cloth diapers.  That keeps her drier & she hasn't gotten a bad rash like that again.  Sometimes she gets little spots here & there that look like heat rash to me.  We had to switch to the next size up of diapers three weeks ago.  We have to fold them down in front like we did the newborn ones in the beginning.  Some of the diapers are thinner than others & sometimes I double them.  Like when she'll be taking a nap.  Otherwise, when she has the thinner ones on I try to check & change her more often.

     She's gradually been sleeping longer at night til she's averaging about 9-10 hours a night now.  She got to where she wouldn't sleep as much during the day once she started sleeping longer at night.  But I think I've solved that.  It's gotten to where noises that didn't used to bother her do now and she won't sleep in the Travel Tender downstairs any more.  (Except once when we'd been out running errands all morning she slept there for an hour or so.)  I've been bringing her back upstairs to her crib for naps & it's going better.  But she seldom sleeps longer than an hour or so.  I've been trying to keep her from getting dependant on having a bottle in her mouth to go to sleep.  Sometimes she'll go to sleep with the pacifier but it usually takes a bottle to get her to sleep.  That's the only way Guy can get her to sleep besides walking her.

     I can't believe she's been asleep 1 1/2 hours now.  There's still so much I want to write - both about things that are going on and things I'm feeling.  Sometimes I just get so down because I feel like I don't have time for myself any more or for me & Guy alone.  And I get so tired sometimes, especially when she won't go to sleep or when she does but keeps waking up every few minutes.  And when I look around the house at all the mess I just feel like we're living in a pig pen.  The only thing that gets done regularly is the kitchen.  Our bathroom is semi-regularly & everything else is just whenever we can get to it.  And the money situation isn't too good.  I don't think I wrote about the argument we had while Sue was here.  Guy decided without saying anything to me that he was giving $500 to church to pay the deductible for the insurance.  (The building had been broken into three times in a month.)  He went and cashed in $1000 worth of our bonds.  I was so upset with him.  Not only for not discussing it with me but because I didn't think we could afford to be giving away money when there were so many things we were going to be needing for E. that were going to cost a lot.  He said that's why he took out $1000 - half for the church & half for E.  He said he just felt so blessed since we had her and she was ok that he just wanted to make a special contribution.  I didn't have an answer for that.  But the money has been so tight.  We're spending money we can't afford and kept taking money out of savings.  Guy kept saying not to worry about the money & I told him someone had to.  Yesterday he went & cashed in two more bonds.  He put $300 in checking.  I don't know how much cash he kept - he gave me $20.  Sat. he'd talked me into going ahead and buying a new stroller.  I really wanted to get one that was pink but it was too heavy when I tried to see if I could lift it as high as I needed to put it in the trunk.  We got one at Baby Superstore that's pale blue and has two bunnies & a goose on it.  It has a reversible handle on it and a mesh "platform" underneath for storage.  It really is nice but I still feel guilty whenever I look at it.  I need to call Kathy Dotson & see if she wants hers back.  Guy charged the stroller & said he'll pay it off on the next bill.  I don't know exactly how he intends to use the rest of the $300 unless it's to pay more on other credit cards.  I guess some of it will go to everyday expenses so we won't be in the hole at the end of the month.

     Guy says things will be better in Jan.  His pay will go up because of going to sea duty, going over 18 years, and the regular Navy pay raise.  We, or at least I, were counting on him making Chief and he didn't.  I keep thinking how I should've been working all this time and saving money up for baby things.  Everything is so expensive.  And we'll need money for the trip home at Thanksgiving.  We have started buying lottery tickets more often & Guy talks about how nice that would be.  But I know that's really a long shot and don't want to waste so much on something that'll probably never happen.

     She'll probably wake up any time now so I'd better try to get some lunch before she does.