Great days out but something isn’t right tonight

If only road miles were a thing, like air miles. We’d definitely be earning enough to hit the gold tier on the ‘in patient’ scale. The reward – a regular trip to reality.

The last few days we have been home three times during the day, and today we accomplished a 45 minute drive to my work to attend a Monday morning team meeting. The only reason it can’t be defined as ‘proper maternity leave’ is it was missing the customary overload of coffee and cake! (Well, mainly the cake).

Visiting work with Clara was lovely, despite having to do a full stoma bag change on arrival! (Thanks for your help Elizabeth!) Everyone has been wishing Clara well on her tough journey to date, and the genuine happiness and interest people expressed in her today was heartwarming. They’re right when they say it’s the people that make the job. Although I love spending time with Clara, I do miss the thrill of working on my projects! Clara clearly had opinions on them too:

Another benefit of visiting work was the 2 mile trip to HomeSense after with the car. Previous trips have been limited in success purely on the basis I commuted via train and therefore had to carry everything. HomeSense is a dangerous place when your maternity pay stops this month, you don’t need particularly need anything, but you spot a few things which inspire a slight change in Clara’s bedroom (that ‘slight’ is there if you’re reading this Husband… Promise…) Where else can you come out with wall art, deluxe Pushchair hooks, and a Winston Churchill mug!? (Dad’s birthday next week… loves a bit of Winston that guy).

Clara has been a real delight – her personality shines daily, she’s so happy and excited. Her favourite times of day are currently 9.30am and around 7.30pm. For some reason that’s when her energy kicks in and she squeals and kicks and wants to play the most.

Usually, Clara then sleeps around 8.30pm to 8.30am. However tonight it’s 11pm and she isn’t settled. She’s trying to sleep, but something is making her uncomfortable and she wakes with a jolt and rolls side to side. She snuggled into me and got comfortable, but again something made her agitated for a second or two, before she settled again. We’ve not had dinner as we don’t leave her cot side until she’s fast asleep, but tonight I’m not interested in eating – I just want to make sure Clara’s okay.

It could just be stomach cramps – short gut kiddos are prone to that I’ve heard. But if it’s that then I’m not sure why they’re having this effect this evening, it’s odd. Nothing has changed in the last couple of days: her medication is the same, her outputs have been great.

In fact, her stoma outputs are the best they’ve ever been. We have increased her loperimide and it’s decreased her watery outputs. Perhaps we have increased it too much and slowed things down, causing constipation.

We have been recycling intestinal outputs over night from her stoma to her mucous fistula, but we haven’t tried it tonight because of how unsettled she’s been. The recycling has been going well though – her colon is squeezing some bits through as we wanted.

Less than five weeks to go until Clara’s reconnection op.

Watch this space.