Let's Start at the Very Beginning

It’s a very good place to start. When we last left our plucky heroine, she had just given birth to Little H and almost had to spend Christmas in the hospital.

To summarize my 13 weeks of maternity leave – Christmas, bottles, diapers, waking up at 1am and 3am, New Year’s, bottles, diapers, waking up at 3am, turned 35, bottles, diapers, waking up at 5am, etc. I think you get the picture. Actually, I can’t complain much at all. Little H has been an excellent baby. She’s a good eater and a good sleeper – she’s been sleeping through the night since she was about 7 weeks old. Now, she’s 4 months old and working on sitting up and trying to roll over already. She’ll have her four-month check-up tomorrow – and I’ll already have something new to post about!

So, I went back to work on March 26th and everything since then has fallen under the category of “nothing is ever easy.” I woke up on the 25th with a fever, congestion, sore throat - the works. My fever broke later that day but I absolutely, positively had to go to work the next day. Luckily, my officemate and my boss were both out the whole week I returned, so I kind of took it easy, trying to get my feet wet again, but honestly, the whole first week is kind of a blur.

After I recuperated over the weekend, Big H got sick. She had just finished a bout of strep throat the week before and it sounded like it was back. So Monday morning, we dropped Little H off at the sitter’s and then I took Big H into work with me so I could bring home some work to do and explain everything to my boss. How mortifying! Big H went to the doctor and then to the back-up babysitter on that Tuesday, since she couldn’t return to preschool until we had the results of her strep test. Her strep hadn’t returned; it was just a regular sore throat and she went back to school on Wednesday and I managed to work the rest of the week (three days) without missing a day (which was a short week with the Good Friday holiday).

Week 3 was even shorter. I worked Monday and then went into the hospital on Tuesday for gall bladder surgery. This should probably be a separate post, but I’ll try to be succinct. On President’s Day, I went to the emergency room because I thought I was having a heart attack. (Good thing I wasn’t since I would have died in the waiting room, but that really is another story.) I ended up going to see my doctor the next day and she diagnosed it as a gall bladder attack (I had had a similar, but shorter and not as painful attack the previous Thursday). An ultrasound confirmed “multiple stones” and even though I pleaded my case with the surgeon at my consultation (I’ve already been off work for three months, I can’t be out again for a week; I have a small infant at home who needs to be cared for; I’ve used up all my medical leave for the year), he didn’t want to hear it and scheduled the surgery for April 10th. So I was off from work from April 10th through April 13th. After staying with us for two weeks after Little H was born, my mom returned again to take care of Little H again.

I returned to work (again) on April 16th and that week was uneventful. I worked a full five-day work week. And now I’m two days into what is technically week 5 of being back at work and decided to start blogging again. So I’ll make the usual promise to start updating again.

PS - Wow, I should have switched over to the new Blogger sooner and maybe I would have updated more. It’s so much faster and I love adding tags to things (it’s just like making lists).