Needles are YUCKY.

Dragon's stash from the treasure hunt at J-Mac's birthday party on Saturday. He was pretty pleased with himself. Thankfully neither of the kids noticed that I pulled a heap of the lollies out of their collection and left them at the party!

Monkey did really well until we hit the 24 hour mark... things fell apart and he has had maybe 30 minutes accumulated sleep since 3pm... it's 8:30pm. I don't know what brought on the change. I expected last night to be horrible but I'm pretty sure people were praying for us because it was a breeze. We actually woke up feeling MORE rested that normal. Things then continued to go well until 3 this avo.

Other than his blood test they went well. That was HORRIBLE. It's not over either. The poor girl couldn't get any out and he was hysterical and she had to give up and now he's got to go to the paed tomorrow avo so she can try. I want to cry just thinking about putting him through that again! I'm wondering if he's getting nightmares about the whole thing. I can't figure out what's waking him up every time he drifts off but it's like he wakes up in a panic about something. Don't even get me started on taking the band-aid off... I didn't actually inflict the needle pain on him but taking the band-aid off... that was me doing that. We used baby oil on a cotton ball to get it off as gently as we could because I could see his skin was getting irritated by it but he screamed and it was mummy that was hurting him. This 'mummy' job sucks when you've gotta do things like that.

We did manage to collect a little bit of wee for his urine test and yes, we got the fresh stuff. But because I was so focused on grabbing the jar and catching some I couldn't stop it from spraying wherever it wanted and I had a big old mess to clean up afterwards but it's something I do at least once a day so I'll survive, at least we don't have to stick on a little bag to collect it... you know that I'd be freaking out about removing that stuck to his oh-so-sensitive bits!

So what are my thoughts after 24 hours... Spreading out the feeds and ensuring he's getting more of the fatty milk and not just the sugary milk seems to be helping his tummy cramps and stuff. Getting rid of some of the symptoms has made the refluxy symptoms more pronounced though and he's started to actually spew a little bit on top of it all. We will keep going for another 24 hours before I go get the Zoton prescription filled to see if the reflux symptoms want to abate a little as well.

Like Mum-me said in the comments from the last post her motto was "it wont always be like this" and that is how I've managed the last almost 5 years. ALL the boys have favoured a 2 hourly cycle - day and night. People ask how on earth I cope with it and why don't I make them cry it out (not an option with a reflux baby) or any number of other suggestions. My answer just became standardised... "I plan on living to be pretty old. A couple of years of crazy sleep now is going to end up being a very small part of my life." Sometimes I'd add that it also means I'm guaranteed cuddles every two hours and that's not to be sneezed at... I love baby cuddles!

Anyway, all the comments have been so wonderful and I'd love to respond to everyone properly but I am missing out on 30 minutes of sleep by writing this so I am sure no one will hold it against me that I go and get started on catching up on sleep instead of comments...

Lisa - you'll have to fight my sister's Little Bear. She says very definitely "MY Baby"... check out mums post and see if you want to compete with that!

Heather - Honestly I think second baby is the hardest! You'll do great though and Gia will thrive being a big girl and helping mummy. I saw it with Lion and I'm seeing it again with Dragon!

Julie B - Do you really think it would be a good idea to let the big kids go crazy together... Katie and Lion's imaginations joining forces would probably cause destruction on a level we can only dream of!