My baby swing needs new batteries again

Gwen is ten weeks old today. And looking a lot more chubby, don't you think?

So, things have been hectic around here lately. There's a lot going on.

First, the good news. Her thrush is almost gone, as in you wouldn't see it if you didn't already know it was there. Even more exciting, the nurse at the health unit told me that since my nipples have been symptom-free for nearly a month, I can go ahead and start storing breast milk if I want to.

In other good news, Gwen is really cute when she wants to be, smiling and cooing and nearly giggling.

However, there are times when she is very anti-cute. Her latest habit is to wake up for her night feeding and then not go back to sleep. For example, last night she went to sleep at 6:30pm. She woke at 10:30pm to nurse. By 12:45am we were *still* trying to get her back to sleep. What usually happens is that she falls asleep while nursing or will pull off and drift to sleep while we rock on the glider. Then when I put her down in her crib she wakes up and fusses. I tried feeding her again to make sure it wasn't hunger, then tried rocking, shushing, walking, burping, even changed the diaper to make sure she was comfortable. At one point Chris said he would take her in the office where the white noise of his computer fans usually mellows her out, so I went back to bed until the next time I was needed. Apparently she screamed at him for 15 minutes straight and I slept through the whole thing. At about 1:30am I told Chris to go sleep on the futon downstairs and I took Gwen to bed with me so she could nibble-nurse all night and I could at least lie down while she did it.

So yeah, that part's not so great.

It seems that a major part of her discomfort is gastrointestinal. To put it bluntly, she cries (or screams) when she farts. When this happened a few weeks ago we thought it was because it irritated her thrush rash, but it's still happening and the rash is a non-issue, so I don't know what the problem is. I've started giving her Infacol, but it will be a few days before we know whether it's working.

Now, as for that mysterious bacteria found in her urine sample. There has been a lot of ridiculousness about this which, as I said yesterday, both bores and irritates me, so I'm not going to get into it. The latest is that she went to the pediatrics unit at the hospital today and got a catheter inserted so they could get a "clean catch" sample and be sure any bacteria present were actually in the urine, not just on her skin. I expect we won't have results from that until Monday. In the meantime, she is gaining weight which indicates there is no bladder infection. She is, however, still her cranky little self, and as far as we know there is no cure for that.

I will say, though, that since I am spending less time feeding her she seems like a more content and interactive baby on the whole. As long as she's not having any gas issues.

So, the catheter itself was not nearly as dreadful as I'd feared. Gwen didn't cry at all, which is so strange when you consider the banshee screams she emanates to let us know that she has to fart. After we got home from the hospital, though, she was fussing all over the place and opening her mouth so wide to scream that I could see something strange in her mouth.

Something that looked like a tooth.

It can't possibly be, though, right? It must be thrush or a mouth cyst or some freakin' bizarre oral growth that no doctor has ever seen or maybe even heard of, because she's inherited her charming medical luck from her mom. But surely 10-week-old babies don't get teeth?