Under

I had written a post about a week ago at work, but discarded it for being too much the same.  I suppose that this might be as well, but dammit it has been too long between posts! :)

I have been under the weather for what seems like ever, but has been less than a week.  I can't quite get a handle on this cold either.  Usually it follows a pattern of general body aches, followed by the full blown cold, followed by recovery (usually indicated by being incredibly hot).  Well, those phases all happened, but instead of recovery I spiraled back down.  I feel worse today than at any other point during this ailment actually.  Stupid colds.

Q is also going through another cold of some kind.  It just means he is extra boogery.  On top of the drool, spit up, urine, and poo though, it is hard to really notice one more leaky fluid.  I just feel badly for him because he clearly has a much harder time sleeping because of it.  It is his second such ailment since starting daycare about a month ago.  Poor little dude.

Q is also still quite a bit under weight.  This is evidently an issue with him not getting enough feeding in when he is not with Tia.  It is something that appears easily fixed though, just up his bottles by about 2/3 of an ounce and up the feeding frequency a bit.  The hard part, obviously, will be Tia producing enough supply to meet this demand.  I know she will try.  Worst case, we augment with some formula.  He is otherwise very healthy and doing well.

Work remains pretty much the same.  They offered my job to a former charge nurse who had applied for it, but she had some child care concerns and told them she would get back to them.  Of course, she never did.  She just fell off the face of the earth.  Not only did she not end up with the job, but now she isn't welcome to continue working as an on call either.  Hard to figure out why you would want to burn your bridges (especially since she has left and returned previously), but she has.  Had she left her current job though, she would have burned her bridge there (my old boss hired her on at that job just 3 months ago).  Some people definitely don't consider the ramifications of their actions.  The end result is the same for me though, still no one taking the gig.  They are evidently going to do another round of interviews soon.  I won't hold my breath.  Of course, all it will likely mean is that I will be commuting much further.

There is still much talk about the 'new' company that may end up absorbing all the clinics anyway...starting with the Park where I officially work.   Based on the meeting I attended, this doesn't appear imminent, despite the stated goal of it happening the first quarter of 2013.  Rather than bore anyone with the details, let me just say they have a lot of ground to cover yet, not the least of which are HR related.  If it were a house, they would still be in the design phase with, maybe, some rough sketches.

Tia's job remains about the same.  She is overworked and trying to manage it without going back to full time (which would mean 10 hour days).  Her job is made much more difficult because her replacement did nothing, meaning she is not only trying to keep up with current demands, but trying to catch up for the three months she was out.  In typical fashion at her job, the offending party is not really getting any real flack for it.  She is just passive aggressively being written out of projects and pushed out to other teams.  So that other teams can evidently deal with her incompetence.  Seem like not a very effective way to deal with problem employees.

My head is starting to swim a bit.  More to come as always.
 

QT (Quinn Time)

Week 1 with 2 days of Quinn all by myself is in the books.  It was a quite terrifying proposition since he isn't exactly a baby who enjoys a long nap.  He doesn't really nap at all honestly unless he is in motion.  And he seems to be acutely aware of the difference between automated motion (ala the swing) and someone holding him and moving.  Obviously, this prevents you from napping with him......or at all.  In fact, it prevents you from doing anything much besides dealing with Q.

I made it a goal each day to get out of the house with Q.  This takes considerably more time than I am used to and some strategic planning.  Quinn eats pretty reliably every 2.5 hours.  The bottles need to be warmed.  I can't make milk, so I am at a disadvantage there.  So the game is to, somehow, get him fed, play with him until he is at least somewhat tired and make sure he is changed and have all the gear ready to go along with another bottle heated up to room temp to take with and then try to get the baby and all his accessories into the car and on the road.  Again, he does not like to be put down much at all, so prepping yourself is a challenge.  I have found that I can do this, but generally something has to give.  That something, I am finding out, is generally eating.  This has led me to the conclusion that drive thrus were not made for the portly and indolent, but rather for new parents who know that going into a restaurant entails WAY too many steps and is likely to wake up the baby and prohibit eating.  Suffice to say, I think I will become well acquainted with them.  Note to Chipotle, please put in a drive thru.  New moms and dads everywhere will thank you!  

The nice thing about staying home with Q is that I get to see his happy moments.  He smiles and makes all sorts of fun noises and is becoming much much more interactive.  He is still a colicky terror in the evenings, so remembering that he does have another happier side is HUGE.  

I learned from my friend Lesa when her little one was much younger that we all become rather entranced with baby poop.  It permeates many a conversation.  So, Lesa, this is for you:

Q had gone 9 days without a bowel movement.  I used my general nursing skills to assess him, but his abdomen was soft and non-tender with bowel sounds.  He was certainly passing gas.  His pediatrician said it was not abnormal for a breast fed baby.  But, inevitably, the day would come.  Our hope was that this would be visited upon his daycare providers.  Perhaps this is mean, but we both knew that it could be a fairly traumatic experience.  Suffice to say, it happened Wednesday when he was with me.  Thankfully, it happened on the way home and not on the way to somewhere (and since I was on the way home from signing paperwork related to a house refinance, it wasn't exactly a good situation for a blow out).  Also, mercifully, the cloth diapers do a marvelous job of keeping most everything in that is supposed to stay in.  Unfortunately, EVERYTHING in that area was completely and utterly covered in baby poop.  I looked every so briefly at his wipes and quickly discarded the laughable notion that a dozen or more would be up to the task.  So, ran to the bathroom and sprayed him down with the showerhead sprayer.  Then I bathed him.  Then I wiped everything down.  It was pretty ridiculous and funny honestly.  I was dumbfounded.  It was definitely a moment when I thought, 'what in the hell is going on with my life?!?!?'  Ah, parenthood.  

Work remains the same as before.  They are filling in the gaps with a hodgepodge of people, so I spend quite a bit of time fixing things from the days that I am not there.  There is some faint hope on the horizon though...my former supervisor who left in late  July to work in mother baby at another hospital evidently applied for the clinic gig when we realized that the night shift isn't for her (and that it takes about 10 years to move to days).  I really hope she ends up getting it.  She will already know most of what she will need to know to run the clinic, and will just need to brush up on the computing side.  More to come as I hear more.  Still no word on a manager though.  

Tia is back to her job and, unfortunately, the woman who was supposed to take over her projects while she was on leave managed to either do nothing at all or make things worse.  So, she is having to pick up on new projects that got funded as well as undo a lot of the mess that was left for her.  I feel badly for her.  They clearly need her there full time and she just as clearly does not want to do that.  However, it seems like she may have to choose between being full time and getting paid as such or staying at 80% with the expectation being that she will work full time anyway.  She is very very good at her job, so she is in high demand, but it inevitably means that more people want her time and effort.  We will have to see how things shake out.  Again, more to come as events warrant.  

I am going to call this good since I will otherwise sit on this for possibly weeks until I find another time and space to write.