My offspring hates when I show visible emotion, though. It's an eighteen thing, probably

BAH! 18?!? HOW? Though Noah is driving now, so aging does happen.

Remember being young and most of the tsuris you experienced was relationship. And now that I am middle aged, most of mine are work related. It's a fucking a lot right now and I have 9 years until retirement. That's a long time to figure out how to cope.

I think I could use one of those for anxiety attacks and hot flashes.

Super useful for those. Probably the frozen ones would be best for those applications. I'm more familiar with the soak ones because I used them for dog walks with my mom when pre-dawn was 80 degrees or more. For menopause or stress needs, the initial cold of frozen and intense chill is maybe better.

Flea I’m sure they wouldn’t say that if you were a man (I often feel that way). And I also was reading your post wondering if you wrote to Ask A Manager! Such a shame that your job isn’t feeling like the long term thing you’d hoped for. Boo. And I hear you on the “reconciliation” meeting feeling as bad as the original issues. Bleh.

Cass, that’s what I was thinking too.

I thought I had broken the insomnia cycle last night, but I can’t sleep again tonight.

Thanks, everyone, for the well-wishes. I've been reading a nodding along, in general, but haven't had a ton of bandwidth to comment for reasons that will be apparent. Also not yet on FB.

Arthur is fine. He is, as I have come to like to say, the least-sick kid in the NICU.

"Why," you may ask, "the fuck is he in the NICU?"

Because that was the only way to get him a pediatric ENT consult while also maintaining baseline monitoring. He has laryngiomalasia. This is pretty common, generally resolves on its own, and is more than the medical establishment in the second biggest city in the state could handle.

He is not de-satting. He's eating like a champ. He IS having to work a little extra hard to breathe, and he squeaks, snores, grunts, and whistles at various times and positions.

So, he and I got to ride in 2 ambulances and a medical transport plane when he was a day and a half old!

We're waiting for the doctor to be convinced that there is a safe discharge plan for sleeping positioning and that he's not aspirating at all when eating. No real reason to think he is, other than the diagnosis. But NICU doctors gonna NICU doctor and that means being professionally paranoid. I wish they had a floor for admitted non-NICU kids.

Now, I love my son, but the frequency with which people comment on how handsome he is is not entirely justified. He's a pretty typical baby. He often looks like a particularly chubby Vizzini. And then I realized that we're dealing with NICU people, who don't see full-term, double-chinned babies real often, so the aesthetics are rather Renaissance-y.

His dad gets here tomorrow. I'm hoping we can convince them to let us go home on Friday, even if that means having a monitor for when he's asleep. Because being in the hospital has meant that he's gotten interventions that he's needed mostly for... being in the hospital (they spent 2 days wigging out about his blood sugar because they kept wanting to have them drawn when he hadn't eaten for 2 hours. So I could't just pop him on the boob whenever, which would have--wait for it--kept his blood sugar up. It was low in the first place because they kept him in the nursery for 4 hours when he was first born, so OF COURSE it was wonky. I'm still pretty salty at the first pediatrician for being so medicalizing, and will spend the rest of my life pissed at the overnight pediatrics intern who basically stole him and kept escalating without talking to us. I really hope the awesome DO pediatrician supervising him ripped him a new one. He seemed properly cowed for the rest of the night.)

We're all pretty ready for Arthur to get to just be a baby and see his mama without a face mask.

Oh wow, Debet, that is *a lot*! Wishing you a quick and safe discharge and speedy recovery and all the rest possible under the circumstances.

Oh Debet your post brought back being so angry when my (perfectly healthy, not needing any unusual care) babies were taken away from me for apparently no reason in the hospital and various nurses who basically acted like the baby belonged to them. I’m so sorry that the cats you’re getting is so unholistic. But very glad to hear that Arthur is a small champion and I hope you get to go home soon.

Oh Debet! I do hope you and Arthur escape soon. Yes, I am sure NICU doesn't see a lot of newborns his size. It sounds like monitoring at home is the best solution. I'm sorry your first days are so frustrating.

Here's hoping all goes well and you get to take him home soon, Debet!

We're all pretty ready for Arthur to get to just be a baby and see his mama without a face mask.

That sounds right! Yikes and here's hoping that happens ASAP.

I’m so sorry that the cats you’re getting is so unholistic.

I know this is the curse of autocorrect, but I wish Debet were getting holistic cats!!

Oof re: work situations of meara, flea, atropa, and Susan!

I wonder if he'd say any of those things if I dropped a cartoon anvil on his head.

I am with Dana.