I spoke too soon. Jasmine vomited three times in the night: 1am, 4am, and 5am. And then at 6.30am it seemed as if the milk was flowing down her nose, into her stomach, and back out through her mouth. I switched the pump off, as I couldn’t face it anymore and I was knackered and the pump is so rubbish. I am going to do a user experience (UX) critique on it and put it on my technical blog as soon as I can write sensible things in a professional manner, as yesterday I told the community dietician that in my professional opinion it is crap. With a bit of thought (and you don’t have to be a UX consultant), the pump could really easily be improved, e.g.,
- Don’t put the information button (which tells me how many mls before she reaches her target) next to the on/off button. If you must, please have luminous buttons which glow in the dark.
- Don’t beep at me every eight seconds when I put the pump on hold – I am not a goldfish and would like to set my own beeping defaults.
Jasmine threw up just mucus before her 9am and then milk after it and her 12noon feed. So we had several outfit changes before we left the building. Her rhinestone jumpsuit is now in the wash.
She has been home three weeks today. To celebrate I took her to the baby clinic to get her 2nd set of vaccinations. She cried a little bit, but was generally very good. I cried more. They wanted to weigh her and I refused and there was a bit of a kerfuffle until I explained that her kidneys don’t work and having to say it out loud when I was very tired made me cry. I mentioned that I have to weigh her twice a day and all of that so could you write that figure down in the red book. No they couldn’t as she hadn’t been weighed there. I understood (and will write my own damn figures in the damn red book since it is just a record for me) but it just reminded me of all the silly things I have had to listen to over the past few days by people who are supposed to be supporting us, so I burst noisily into tears. Result: they let me jump the queue and get her jabs done next. They were very nice to us saying that they imagined that we wouldn’t want to hang about and we didn’t have to have a doctor’s exam either. Suits me fine.
Jasmine was brilliant for the rest of the day. No more vomits and was crying this evening when we put her down and I think she was hungry as she had missed some of her required amount. We have started her overnight feed early to catch up.
We spent what was left of the afternoon lying on the bed listening to the radio. No phones call – bliss! I popped in the beauty parlour after the jab clinic today to see what nice things I could use as a pick-me up. I can no longer wear nail varnish on my fingernails whilst doing sterile handwashes for dialysis so I might have either a pedicure or a full body massage. Alternatively, I could save my pennies and paint myself orange and run naked up and down the street to let off a bit of steam. I just can’t decide.