The new year has gotten off to a mixed start. Peanut is doing very well, for which we are thankful and happy. The other really bright news is that our friends who were trying unsuccessfully to have children are now pregnant with twins! They're well into the second trimester, and the genetic tests came back fine.

On the other hand, Mom checked herself back into the psych unit on New Year's Day. She's out now and seems to be fairly stable. She was/is depressed (which explains a lot of her not-so-nice behavior at Christmas), had a urinary tract infection, is in a lot of pain from her osteoarthritis, and has an accelerated heart rate, which the hospital seemed concerned about. The hospital has put her in touch with a pain management specialist, got her infection under control, and is monitoring the heart issue (which is odd, because she's always had an irregular heart beat and apparantly had a rapid heart rate last time, but it didn't raise any red flags that time). She seems to be doing better emotionally now that the holidays are past, the infection is cleared up, and she knows that someone is finally doing something about her pain. I'm trying to get her to find a new internist - he dropped the ball on the infection 2 weeks ago when she last saw him (was having indications of infection then) and he has supposedly been trying to get her in touch with a pain management specialist and new neurosurgeon for the past 6 months or so - all to no avail.

I'm doing pretty much OK. The lack of sleep is still really hard for me. The fact that Peanut still won't/can't breastfeed is really getting me down. I had to back off trying for a while because he was to the point of freaking out, screaming and arching his back every time I'd put him to the breast - even with the nipple shield. He can latch with the shield on, but doesn't get enough milk -he'll still be hungry after an hour of nursing and constantly falls asleep at the breast no matter what I do. The shield also seems to really interfere with my letting down since he always is gassy and has green poop after nursing with it (which indicates he's not getting enough hindmilk). I've been surfing all sorts of websites, attending LLL meetings, and been in touch with 2 lactation consultants. The second one finally suggested not nursing at all for a few days, getting a lot of skin-to-skin contact and bathing with Peanut. It seems to have worked in that he's not freaking every time I put him against my breast and will root around onme. She also had me doing cycles of several pumpings in an hour to keep my milk supply up - it's diminished some and I can barely keep up with his needs. And to add insult to injury, my period started last week - I'm only 7 weeks postpartum, pumping every 2-3 hours and I already have my freakin' period again.