Bitching

I think I'm going to have to admit to myself that I like puns. I still think of them as the one-legged puppy of the humor kingdom that would be put out of its misery if it wasn't so damn cute. But if I'm honest with myself, I know I use them a lot. And they can really crack me up, if they're clever. You know, like if you exit a building through the door that says IN rather than the door that says OUT, and you say, "I'm just not the outdoor type."

Sigh.

Anyway, yeah. Bottles suck. We want to put this sign up at Alicia's station, because of all the people who have told us that nurses gave their babies bottles without asking the parents, or even after the parents had told them not to. Doctors and nurses don't seem to give much credit to the horror stories of babies who drink from a bottle once and will never take the breast again. Which I wouldn't blame them for so much if it wasn't universally true in every case I've ever heard of.

Sigh.

So we made this sign and brought it in, and one of the nurses (not Alicia's nurse, just a random nurse who happened to be sitting nearby) suggested that maybe we not put it up because it might offend other parents whose kids were using bottles.

Now, it's not that I think her point is entirely ridiculous. Just mostly. And it's not that it didn't even seem to cross her mind that the sign was intended as humor. It's more that we've had about a hundred different nurses in two months, and we still have to meet a new one just about every frickin' day, and about two thirds of them seem to automatically and adamantly resist any input into her care we try to offer.

Now I know that that wasn't this particular nurse's motivation or even intention. But it fits into a pattern. Michelle has been at Alicia's bedside for two or three hours every single day since the day she was born (Alicia, not Michelle), and she still gets treated like she doesn't know what's best for her baby (Michelle, not Alicia. Stupid pronouns.).

Maybe if there were only, say, a dozen nurses who rotated taking care of Alicia, Michelle wouldn't have to struggle to get her questions answered instead of brushed off. Even twenty. Maybe then Michelle wouldn't have to snap at a nurse to get her to leave her alone and let her cry when she needs to cry.

I have more complaints about NICU, but maybe I should organize them into a more well-thought-out post. Right now I'm just bitching. Oh, and guess what? This is just about the best damn NICU in the country, and we know it. Separate parents from their baby, put them under a great deal of stress, and they'll whine about perfection.

Speaking of which, our friends are wonderful. But we'd like them to please stop telling us that it's almost over. Or that we're nearly at the end. Or that Alicia will be as big as Toby before we know it. Not helping. We don't need you to make this seem easier than it is, we just need you to be with us in it.

For now, I'll just wrap up this shiny happy post with a run-down of Alicia's last couple days. She got three immunizations yesterday, and within 24 hours had gone from being on the nasal canula, having very few spells, to back on the CPAP and having a heck of a lot of spells. She seems to be evening out now and her bloodwork was negative for infection, so we'll wait and see. But guess what? She's out of her box and in a crib. A regular old white crib with bars and everything! Sorry, we forgot the camera today. Maybe tomorrow.