Ever since S started daycare (back in November), settling into a consistent & organized daily schedule has admittedly been a challenge. More often than not, Chris and I both sleep in until S wakes up (7:30-8:00), I sleepily nurse her and then one of us hauls butt out of bed to get her changed, fed and packed up for the day while the other either showers or lollygags in the sack for a bit longer. So needless to say, our time with her in the morning hasn't been of the highest quality, and we're often still feeling tired and crusty by the time we get her to daycare and start work at 9:00ish. Then the whole day just kinda feels out-of-whack. (Side note: we both work from home, for the same software company. WFH can be both a blessing and a curse, as I'm sure it can be seen!)
To be fair, our family's been battling various sickies since I returned to work. S gets exposed to a lot of germs at daycare (no surprise here, and surely a Good Thing in the long run as she's building up her immune system), so she has been snotted up pretty much constantly for 2 months. Chris and I aren't sure whether or not we should be concerned with this. On the one hand, when it had "only" been 2 weeks, we took her to our family doctor who put her on antibiotics claiming it's not normal for a baby to be sick for this long without getting better on his/her own. (The antibiotics didn't do anything. :( ) On the other, many people have told us that their little ones went through the exact same thing when they started daycare. One person even said their babe was stuffed up for an ENTIRE YEAR. So...yeah. We decided to book an appointment with her pediatrician which will hopefully lead to some balanced answers/advice on this topic.
In somewhat related news, S is overdue for her MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shot based on the standard vaccination schedule, however I've recently read Dr. Sears' Vaccine Book which, for various reasons, led me to the conclusion that I'm more comfortable giving her this shot when she's between 1.5 and 2 years old. *nods*
You might have seen my FB update that I had strep throat over New Year's. Huddled on the couch feeling miserable wasn't the most ideal way to ring in 2012, but dems da breaks. Thankfully the antibiotics DID kick in here and the oh-so-pleasant sensation of swallowing razor blades faded after several days. Plus, Chris and S managed to dodge this bullet entirely which was a huge relief! I had very little contact with S for the first couple days which may have prompted a pretty significant bodily change - got my period back on Jan 2nd! So we could, theoretically, get on trying for S #2 - but not just yet. ;)
One crappy thing about my strep-cident was that it caused me to lose several pounds, which Isn't Good since I am still struggling to reclaim some of the weight I had lost following S' birth. Related to this (and likely Aunt Flo's recent visit as well) I'm pretty sure I've become iron-deficient once again. This problem has insidiously crept in several times now over the last few years. Same pattern: I'll slowly start feeling tired (despite adequate sleep), weak, foggy-headed and generally crappy which will prompt me to wonder what the heck is going on and start entertaining thoughts that I've developed some sort of deadly disease. And then I'll smack myself on the forehead and go duh, of course. A few tins of smoked oysters + several ferrous gluconate tablets later and I'm almost always feeling back to my usual productive, energetic self. So here's hoping that's all that's going on here as we have a lot of stuff on the go!
Which brings me to my next post - my ideal daily schedule. I was planning to write this up tonight but ended up doing this here life ramble instead, and I want to ensure I get in a good 8-9 hours of sleep tonight. So hopefully I'll get to this puppy tomorrow.
Because I don't want to just use my blog as an outlet to b!tch and complain about feeling crappy. That's not my bag, baby. But I do need more energy to write about all the AWESOMENESS that deserves to be bloggified. More great reviews/giveaways coming up. Tasty recipes. A green living series. Tips on hosting giveaways. Lots more. Just....neeed....energy.....!!! (And Time!)
I've heard from friends that their kids were constantly getting sick when in daycare. One said that her boys were sick every couple of weeks. She ended up finding someone to watch her kids only (besides one of her own). No more constantly sick kids after that. Any chance a family member or friend can watch your little one instead?
ReplyDeleteI must admit I'm a a little jealous that you get to work at home with your husband. I'd love to be able to do that. I used to be a software engineer before kids and my husband is a Drupal developer, so it's possible, but very hard to find jobs like that. For now, I'm still at home with my 4-year-old and 16-month-old (just working on some sites for myself) since we thought that was best for our family, but it's definitely hard on us financially. Not sure if I'll be able to stay home until my youngest goes to school. We'll see how it goes...
Any chance you could start juicing veggies and fruits to get all the required vitamins and minerals in you and your daughter? We got a juicer (slow speed Hurom one) for Christmas and the kids and I love the fresh juice. I was really getting tired of taking vitamin tablets, so it's nice to be able to drink a yummy juice instead.
Also, since both you and S. have been on antibiotics, make sure you get enough probiotics. Yeast likes to show up after one takes antibiotics.
~ Agnes from Waterloo, ON
Hi Agnes - thanks for your thoughtful response!
ReplyDeleteAs for daycare, there are some possible other options though there are a lot of other considerations to think through aside from this one.
Regarding juicing, funny as we actually sold our juicer last year on Kijiji. :) We found we weren't using it as we make smoothies instead. We like this approach as you get the full fruit/veggie and there's less waste. Plus this way we can use frozen fruit as well which results in a nice, super-cold smoothie!
Good point about the probiotics. I did notice that S had some yeast after she was on the antis so we gave her a lot of yogurt which seemed to fix her up!
We had a juicer that we hadn't used in years because it was creating too much waste. I'm much happier with this one.
ReplyDeleteI must admit it's easier to make smoothies, so I tend to make them more often. I do like to have juice a few times a week though because of its higher vitamin and mineral content.