He slept!!! Woo hoo. A regular night sleep, which for him means about 3.5 hours, a feed, followed by another 3 hours of sleep(that’s actually good for him normally). I feel human again. The world looks so much sunnier when you get some rest. I kept telling myself that it has to get better, but Wednesday and Thursday felt like the two longest days of my life. I was literally counting the hours until my mother would come over and bring me some relief, which isn’t really comforting when it’s 2:30AM and you’ve got 8.5 hours to go. Yikes! He’s still a cranky puss, but it’s nothing abnormal for a 5 1/2 week old baby.
So you know how they teach about not having ANYTHING in the crib or bassinet while the baby sleeps. Well, we’ve got at least 4 receiving blankets, a polar tech blanket and another baby blanket to help prop and cushion Aleck while he sleeps. This way his legs don’t feel like they are floating in space since they don’t touch the mattress when he lies down. It’s working so far so I’m not going to overthink it.
The one thing that’s really nasty about this casting process is that since the cast goes all the way up his leg, it gets wrapped up in the diaper and there is absolutely no way to clean it. If you put water or anything liquid on the cast it dissolves it. The upside is that it’s getting replaced every week so at least he gets a fresh start again.
We’re back to giving him sponge baths and boy does he love taking a poop as you are washing him. It’s the only time he gets quiet.
We haven’t started work with his hand splint yet. I wanted to give him some time to get used to the hip splint. He has been so miserable I couldn’t think about making him more uncomfortable yet. The splint has been rubbing up against his leg on one of the seams, they are going to fix that on Tuesday. In the meantime he’s sporting a bandaid that seems to do the trick. I spoke to our Orthodist (sp?), and she’s actually going to make a different kind of splint for his right hand since its significantly more contracted than his left hand. Instead of using the hard plastic she’s going to try a soft foam with support, a suggestion by a colleague, so hopefully it won’t be as painful. When he was born one of the first things Craig said is that he wants him to be a lefty, and I’m making my prediction right here, he’s going to be a lefty. His left hand is much more relaxed than his right, it’s his left hip that’s basically in the socket, and the club foot is the right one, so that’s another win for the left side. Craig is a lefty and I think he wants Aleck to be his Southpawed companion. Maybe one day they’ll open up a lefty store together…awwwww.