A Necessary Evil??

Last night went just like the rest have been...  Ayden slept for three hours in his crib, then was up to feed and woke about every hour after that.  I finally brought him back in our room because I was getting tired of having to go back and forth so much.  We'll keep trying the crib but I'm thinking time will be the only thing that will get us through this little rough patch of ours (we hope!).

Still all smiles in the morning, though! :)

Gave our Blueberry pocket diaper a try for the first time.  LOVED it!!

Here was our sweet boy before his doctor's appointment today:

So trusting... he has no idea :(

Ayden weighed in at 11lbs even and is 23" long. He's on the small end of normal, percentile wise, and is very proportionate. We are so proud of our handsome, growing boy!

We got to have some fun family time after the nurse left and we were waiting for the doctor.

His doctor was very pleased with his neck control and alertness. Ayden was crying while he was examined and he impressed his doctor because he was working hard to stay focused on either David or myself the whole time.

Then it was vaccination time...

Disclaimer: I realize that whether or not to vaccinate can be a controversial topic (right up there with breastfeeding vs formula, whether or not to circumcise, co-sleep, etc). Please keep in mind that I am not writing the remainder of this post as a request for opinions or advice on the topic, but purely for documentation purposes and a place to sort my thoughts/feelings. This is my "new mommy" journal after all :).  I appreciate your respect and understanding.

We have (had?) decided to get all of the recommended vaccines but on a staggered schedule. Ayden was  supposed to get 3 shots today then go back for the next round in 2 months. With the staggered schedule he only got 1 today (though it was stacked, DTAP/HIB/Polio) and now we'll go every month, instead of every other, to get the vaccines we decided to wait on during the well baby exams.

The shot itself wasn't as bad for either of us as I had thought it would be. Ayden cried a little but we calmed him and he slept all the way home. I fed him, he had some playtime then he napped in the jogging stroller while David and I ran another 3 miles (The 5k is this Sunday!).

Calming my baby after his shot.
Harder on Mommy than Ayden I think...

When we got back, Ayden woke and started fussing so, because of his EASY routine, I assumed he was hungry and started to feed him. About 10 minutes in he starts to cry and it quickly escalated to a level we had never heard. I attempted to calm him to no avail and decided to check his injection site and take his temperature. The site was red and swollen (a normal side effect) and his temp was only slightly elevated (99.7* F). Then he vomited... It was all milk but it just kept coming and coming. I couldn't even believe that he could have eaten that much in so little time! Of course that made him cry even harder. We took him in the bathroom (to be on the linoleum, just in case he did it again). David went to get our exercise ball (a fail safe for calming Ayden when nothing else is working), stripped him out of his saturated clothes and I proceeded to bounce him and sing the lullaby we wrote for him while I was pregnant, with tears in my eyes, over and over until he finally fell asleep.  We are pretty sure that the vomiting wasn't induced by the vaccination but by his being so worked up or from his gag reflex...

This is where the guilt kicked in. We took our happy, healthy, smiling and content baby and knowingly... willingly... did this to him (I know that I'm being a bit hard on myself here but that's how I was feeling at the time). We get the big picture for the importance of vaccines (in our opinion), that is why we chose to have our son vaccinated; but on the personal level, the reality of it is harsh and so, so sad...

Ayden has spent the remainder of the night either sleeping or crying. The worst part is we don't know why he's crying.  Does the injection site hurt?  Does he have a headache, aches, chills, etc? Who knows what the rest of tonight will bring...  We are just looking forward to when he feels like himself again so we can see that sweet smile.

Poor, pitiful little guy :(

We know all of this is temporary and necessary (??) but none of that makes it any easier to see our baby feeling this way.  We have a lot of thinking/talking to do before Ayden's next vaccine appointment...

~Sarah