I shouldn't Be Alive

From Bambini

Pictures are here:

There is a television show that has me glued to the box. It's on discovery I think. It's a collection of true stories of the survival of ordinary people who become stranded or have an accident in remote locations.

The show I watched tonight featured two guys that go sailing in a small dingy in Baja California and get caught in a squall. They end up on a small island without food or water in the sea of Cortez.

As they are slowly dying of thirst, their minds start to play tricks on them and they must use every ounce of will power to keep going and hopefully get rescued. Are you getting where I'm going with this yet?

Picture us with sunburned skin and shredded clothes with baby puke stains, badly dehydrated mumbling incoherantly and you have the general idea. In fact it's so bad and I am so sleep deprived I cannot tell you what day it is as I type this.

The main problem is lack of sleep. The graveyard shift is particularly tough between 6am and 9am (when the nanny arrives so Barbara can work). Nico is particularly cranky and yesterday went two hours straight with a fit. Even with earplugs firmly implanted, I was praying for the sea of cortez to hurl myself into, and that with luck I would immediately be devoured by hammerhead sharks.

I find I cannot sleep after 9am and have to wait until noon. Then I can only sleep a few hours before my body wakes up. I try to find a few more hours sleep in the evening but there is just so much to do. I am trying to make sure Barbara gets at least 7 hours sleep a night, as she is breastfeeding and working.

This has become an exercise in time management worthy of a major manufacturing plant. We have had several rounds of negotiations over what time we each go to bed and how we overlap. The worst time is early morning when they first wake up. No matter which one wakes up, he will start screaming and wake the other one. This leads to a race for bottles, daipers, wipes, blankys, tissues, suckers all of which they hurl on the floor as soon as you take you eye off them.

Inevitably one will need changing which means he will freak out at being woken up and having his nice warm smelly daiper torn off to be replaced with wet wipes and a cold daiper. Then even if the other was still sleeping he will wake up and join in. Luca has even perfected the sleeping scream, where he doesn't even bother to wake up.

Trying to keep a lid on the two of them at 0'dark 30 has had me contorted into all kinds of odd positions to keep them both comforted. By the time time Barbara arrives I look like I have completed the six week Army basic training in one night.

Despite all this, we have to put on a brave face as people ooh and aah about the new babies without realizing the work that goes on and try to take those kodak moment pictures that everyone expects to see. Its very hard. We took a few pictures the other day and I look like a zombie at halloween.

The humiliation is complete when others send us pictures of their baby in the cutest poses with all the family looking like they just returned from a two week vacation in Cozamel.

Our nanny was not stepping up and taking initiative as we had hoped. The daipers were not being emptied and she would put the kids to sleep and the read he bible. As soon as she left they would wake up and crank for hours. She could not get the concept so we let her go.

We were referred a replacement and she has offered to come very early so I can go to bed at 4am. She is much more motivated and seems more concientious. Hopefully this will bring some relief.

On a positive note, Athena is doing better but has been badly damaged psychologically. March 18 was the 1 year anniversary of the first confirmed H1N1 case in Mexico. There have been over 17,000 deaths from H1N1. It’s hard for me to comprehend the amount of suffering this virus has unleashed and then having to endure a loss after a painful struggle to survive.

From Johns Blog: I count my blessing daily that Athena is still with us and beat all odds fighting this virus when so many others weren’t as fortunate. The final tally of the damage H1N1 has caused to Athena’s body and mind is still an unknown.

There are 17,000 families without a loved one this year, many of them pregnant mothers, because of a cold virus. We are not among them, and Barbara's immune system is back to normal.