"I don't know who I was kidding..."

Sun. Sept. 8, 1991

     I don't know who I was kidding, just myself I guess, to think that I could be a mother. I'm so tired all the time. I never get enough sleep. Elizabeth was sleeping about 10 hrs. at night but for the past week she's been sleeping less. Instead of waking up between 8 & 8:30 she woke up between 7 & 7:30 every day last week. She hardly ever takes a good nap. She dozes while she's eating and that's apparently enough for her. I just don't know how much longer I can do this before I get sick or burned out or something. Guy does help out a lot when he gets home but he's been having to work late so much lately and even yesterday morning & this morning. We take turns staying up with her on Sun. afts. Today was my day. I finally go her to sleep a little before 2:00 but she kept waking up. So I finally took her back downstairs. I laid her on her quilt on the floor & by the time I got my soda fixed she'd fallen asleep. She was still asleep when Guy got up at 3:45 & he told me to come on up & take a nap til 5:00. But now I can't sleep.

     I just don't know what I'm going to do. I put an ad on the bulletin board at the building saying we wanted someone to keep her one day or half-day a week and an occasional Sat., but no one ever called me. I took it down after a month. Sometimes I wish I could just run away for awhile but I don't know where I'd go. Guy said it was ok with him if I went to the ladies retreat. It might be nice except I remember how cold it was the last time I went. But maybe it would be just the break I need.

     I thought all the moodiness would go away once my periods started again & my hormones got back in order. It just seems like I go up & down. I guess part of it is the tiredness. I don't feel like I can ask Guy to do any more than he already is because he's under so much stress from work and having to work late so much. But I really do depend on him taking care of her when he gets home & some days I don't know how I manage to make it til he gets home. If only I could get her on a schedule. I tried to spread her bottles out to every three hours. Sometimes it works & sometimes it doesn't. It mostly doesn't work on the weekends cause Guy's more likely to just give her a bottle when she cries than try other things first. I need to figure out how to keep her awake while she eats. We didn't get to see Dr. Karp at her 4 mo. checkup. I asked for Dr. May but they gave us to Dr. Schulwolf, the one Dianna said was rough with the kids.  He wasn't real rough but he wasn't real gentle either. And I felt like he was rushing me when I was asking questions so I hardly asked him anything. I need to know how much I should expect her to sleep at night and during the day and how much and how often she should be eating. There's no problem with her growing. She was 15 lbs. 4 oz. & 25". She feels heavier than that to me. But her arms & legs are so fat. Everyone's always saying how big she is. When strangers ask how old she is they say how big she is. Maybe I'm forcing her to eat too much. I just don't know. The book doesn't say how much or how often & I don't know who to ask.

     Dr. Schulwolf did say we could start adding cereal to her formula & we did a couple of weeks ago.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm just a babysitter..."

Tues. August 20, 1991

     I just started my period tonight. It's the second one since having Elizabeth. The first one was July 27. That means this one was 25 days. Shorter than they used to be. Last month it happened on a Sat. & I had bad cramps so Guy took care of Elizabeth while I slept most of the aft. But he won't be here to take care of Elizabeth if I have cramps tomorrow. And she just had her 4 mo. shots today. She slept off & on all aft & evening. I hope she sleeps all night. Her 2 mo. shots only gave her a knot on one leg. Hopefully she won't get any more than that this time. She's been taking Tylenol like last time but I don't know how much of this last dose went down. I told Guy she'd swallow it better if he only put in a couple of drops at a time but he ignored me. It looked like she pushed most of it back out. Sometimes it's like he doesn't care what I think. Maybe it's because at the beginning I was so unsure about everything & always asking what I should or shouldn't do with regards to taking care of her. Whenever I got to the point where I did have an opinion about how to do something he'd either ignore me or tell me it needed to be done differently. And whenever I try to tell him he should be doing something differently he gets upset with me & says don't I know he wouldn't do anything to hurt her. I know he wouldn't on purpose but sometimes he doesn't pay attention to what he's doing. Like when he feeds her–he doesn't hold her, he just lays her on his lap, usually while he's watching TV. And the bottle doesn't stay at the right angle. But if I say anything to him he gives me a look like 'mind your own business.' So any more I'm afraid to say anything at all when he does something I don't think is right. Sometimes I feel like I'm just a babysitter, like I'm just the woman who takes care of her til her daddy gets home. Her face just lights up when she sees him. I always have to coax a smile out of her. And she laughed for the first time weekend before last for him. She'd done a little the week before that but this was a real laugh. She won't do it for me though. And she still doesn't look a thing like me, probably never will. If I hadn't been awake when she was born I wouldn't know she was really mine. As the photographer at Olan Mills said, "all that hard work you did & she came out looking like him!" Sometimes I think that maybe when I'm out with her & Guy's not with me, someone will take her away from me because she doesn't look like me and there's no way to prove she's mine.

     Sometimes I wish I'd known beforehand what it's really like to have a baby. Nobody ever talks about how you lose yourself after you become a mother. It's like you've become nothing and the baby is all important. In a way she is. Because really, what life's all about is passing it on to your children. But I never expected to feel the way I do about how much time & attention she needs. I just never have time for myself any more. I'd love to be able to sleep as long as I want, get up when I want, do what I want when I want. But that'll probably never happen again.

"Last night she slept for 12 hours..."

Thu. August 15, 1991

     Elizabeth finally went down for an aft. noon nap.  The electricity is off so I can't sew like I intended to if she did sleep so I decided to write some more.  

     Tues. I started keeping a record of how much she eats & sleeps to tell the dr. when we go for her shots next week.  I can't see any real pattern except that she usually goes to sleep while she eats and I already know that.  Last night she slept for 12 hours though - the longest she's ever slept!

     Guy was supposed to have this aft. off because he had a security meeting this morning.  But it's 3:00 & no sign of him yet.  I don't know if he's still there or had to go back to SIMA or what.  He'll be awful hungry when he gets home though cause he didn't take lunch.

     Well, the electricity just came back on so I need to go reset all the clocks.  It was off almost exactly an hour.

"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.

"...she's slept for 10 hours every night!"

Friday 7/12/91

     Sue helped me do the birth announcements while she was here.  I'd taken them to the hospital with me thinking I'd be able to do them there.  HAHA!  We mailed out the ones that I didn't want or need to send pictures with.  It took almost a month to get the hospital pictures back.  Meanwhile, Deanna Oliver had loaned us her Polaroid camera.  Carole & Guy had taken some pictures at the hospital for him to take to church that first Sunday.  Sue took some pictures of the three of us so we could send them to family.  She typed on the word processor while I dictated a letter.

     Barb & Rick Leland came to visit the last night Sue was here.  She left on Tues 4/30.  Guy took her to the airport alone.  While she was here she was working on a cross-stitch sampler for Elizabeth.  She had already finished 2 x-st. bibs for her.  She also brought a little t-shirt that says "Someone in Texas Loves Me."  I wish she could've stayed longer.

     We've had a time getting a birth certificate for Elizabeth.  When the lady came by the room for us to sign the papers for it (they had called already & asked for all the information) things were pretty hectic.  I was sitting (very uncomfortably) in the chair while the sheets were being changed.  I was trying to nurse Elizabeth & she was getting really fussy.  I still had the IV in (saline & piton & antibiotics).  A guy came from the lab to take blood.  He said he recognized us from the Naval Hospital.  He left a bruise on my arm that lasted for weeks.  The lady was talking to Guy & he brought the papers over for me to sign.  I looked everything over & saw that they had her listed as a twin.  I told Guy & he told her & she scratched it out I think.  Anyway after it seemed to be corrected I signed it.  The lady gave us a booklet that had a form to send in for the birth certificate.  It said to wait six weeks to send for it.  Someone at work told Guy after he went back not to wait that long or it would take forever to get it.  They also said that we should've gotten a verification of birth from the hospital that PSD would take as temporary proof to enroll her in DEERS so we could start filing for CHAMPUS - or rather the pediatrician's office could.

     Well the birth certificates (we paid for two) came about two weeks after we sent for them.  They didn't look like any birth certificates I've ever seen, showing all the info. from the form.  It just had both our names & where we were born.  Elizabeth's name & birth date & that she was a male!  I called the hospital & they gave me the number for medical records.  The lady there said to send them back to Richmond with a letter explaining the error and that she would send them an amendment.  So we sent them back on May 23.  Mon. 7/8 we hadn't gotten them back yet so I called the lady at the medical records & they said she wasn't in this week.  I asked if anyone could tell me if she'd sent the amendment.  The woman put me on hold & then said she couldn't tell.  She said the easiest thing to do would be to go to Richmond & I said no way!  She told me to look up the number to Norfolk Office of Vital Statistics & ask them.  They told me to call Richmond & gave me the number.  They don't have an 800 number so I called Guy to see if it was ok to make the call & he said to.  When I finally got through, I explained the situation & they said the person I needed to talk to wouldn't be in til Tues.  So I called back Tues. & got the right person.  She said she got the letter & the B.C's we sent back but hadn't received the amendment from the hospital.  I told her that the Navy would only accept the temporary verification for 60 days & that that would be up on 7/22, if they didn't see the B.C. by then they'd have to take all her info out of the computer.  She said she'd call the hospital to verify it & send the corrected B.C.'s out this week.  Guy said if they don't come by Mon. for me to call her again.  I sure hope they come.  The last time I talked to the lady at the hospital she was very apologetic.  If I have to talk to her again I'm going to ask to speak to the manager or whatever & ask for a written apology.

     Back to telling things in order.  I mentioned earlier that Dianna was loaning us a bassinet.  We kept Elizabeth in it right beside the bed for 6-7 wks.  When she started waking up only once a night I still wasn't getting much sleep because I'd wake up every time she moved or made a sound.  I didn't write it on the calendar but I remember it was a Sun. night when I told Guy that something had to give because I wasn't getting enough rest even with her sleeping more.  So we decided to leave her in the bassinet but move it into the front bedroom.  We had it right beside the crib. (That's another story.)  She started sleeping a little longer after that & gradually increased til at 8 wks. she slept completely through the night.  She was getting onto a schedule of sleeping for 8 hrs. no matter what time she went to sleep, then waking up for a bottle & going back to sleep for 3 hrs.  But for the past four nights, since 7/9 she's slept for 10 hours every night! That may or may not be connected to the crib.

     When we ordered the new crib I decided not to put Elizabeth in the old crib but Guy didn't take it apart til the new crib came in.  When he got around to putting the new crib together, when he took it out of the box one of the end pieces had a crack.  He called the store & they said they'd order a new one & asked if this one was safe to use.  He said it was so she said we didn't have to bring this one back.  He went ahead & put it together which I didn't understand since Elizabeth was still in the bassinet & he'd have to take it apart again when the new crib came in.  Anyway, I just used it to hold all the stuff we got at the baby shower.  But she's growing so fast that she's almost outgrown the bassinet.  She scoots around so much I think she was waking up because she couldn't move around enough without bumping the sides.  So Mon. 7/8 was her first night in the crib.  I spent most of Monday trying to get it ready.  I didn't get the dust ruffle on & barely got the sheet on.  The bumper pads are a little bit long cause they're made to be tied to the ends & there are no openings on the ends of this crib so they have to be tied to the sides.  Once we get the new crib I'll try to fix them better.  They're really pretty though.

     She really still scoots around.  Sometimes when we check on her or she wakes up she's sideways & sometimes she's headed the opposite direction of what we put her in.  I think she likes it.  But she doesn't like being put down on her stomach if she's still awake enough to realize it.  I'll be glad when she can turn over on her own and we don't have to always put her on her stomach.

July 7, 1991

"Elizabeth slept the whole time."

7/11/91

     It was nice having her here.  I may have overdone it a little bit while she was here.  That Sat. we drove out to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  We stopped at the island & went to the shop/restaurant.  I stayed in & had a cookie & milk while they went out on the fishing pier to look around & take some pictures.  We drove on til we came to the Eastern Shore then turned around and came back.  Elizabeth slept most of the time.

     I can't remember if it was that day or Mon. when we went to get the rocker.  Guy had always said he'd get me a rocker when we had a baby.  The first time we were expecting we'd gone to the unfinished furniture store and checked out the rockers.  But we didn't go back to buy it before we lost the baby.  I was glad we hadn't gotten it because it would've been a reminder of losing the baby every time I saw it.  So this time I told Guy I wanted to wait til we had the baby & everything was ok.  So we went & picked one out.  We were going to have to wait til after the next payday to get it but Sue said she'd pay for it and we could write her a check for it the day after pay day.

     Elizabeth hardly slept that night & we didn't hear the alarm the next morning.  Sue was going to stay home with me & Elizabeth while Guy went to church but he didn't go either.  I think he went that night.

     Monday we went somewhere, I forget where unless that's when we got the rocker.  Then we went to eat at Red Lobster.  Elizabeth slept the whole time.  Guy laid her on the seat by him - we were in a booth.

     The diaper man came before we got up that morning & Sue woke us up when he came.  He'd come the first time around 11:00 Guy said so that's when we expected him.  But he said he'd come between 9 & 10:00 every Monday.  Usually Guy puts the diapers out when he leaves for work.  But I made sure I was up once & Guy didn't put them out so the man would have to ring the doorbell so I could ask for a new deodorizer.

"The first couple of nights at home with Elizabeth were rough."

Saturday, July 6, 1991

     The first couple of nights at home with Elizabeth were rough.  It was 4 or 5:00 in the morning before she went to sleep.  For one thing, they bathed the babies at midnight at the hospital & I think she was expecting that.  Also, we didn't have any receiving blankets to wrap her in & she was probably not warm enough.  It sounds silly now but at the time it's what we thought of - we wrapped her up in one of Guy's t-shirts.  We also put her little hospital cap on.  But for whatever reason, she wouldn't go to sleep.  Guy walked her around for the longest.  I tried to nurse her, then pumped and let Guy feed her with the syringe.  Like I said, it was a rough night.

     Tues. aft. 4/23 Deanna came over & stayed with me while Guy went to get some blankets and other things for Elizabeth.  Kathy Dotson came by that afternoon too.  I tried to nurse Elizabeth when she got fussy but she just fell asleep.  Kathy & Deanna both had brought some hand-me-downs they'd gotten at garage sales plus Deanna brought some from her brother & sister-in-law, including a couple of blankets.  So Elizabeth slept better the second night but she was up a lot, too.

April 1991

     Thu. 4/25, Sue flew in from DFW to visit.  We left the house about 30 min. before her flight was due.  As we got to the interchange I saw a plane & said "I hope that's not her plane" & Guy said it was too early.  But it turned out that her plane was early.  We went down toward the gates but they were only letting people with tickets through so we headed back to the central area to wait.  We'd looked on the screens for her flight but there weren't any listings for the airline she was on (American?)