"This is going on my blog!" and other threats Clara is immune to...

*Disclaimer-I'm a jerk. After being mad at my baby for 3 days because she was so fussy and angry, we found out she has an infection around her incision from her surgery. Worst. Mother. Ever.
After a few days of freedom (No oxygen tube running throughout the house! Bottles every few hours! Feeding tube only hooked up at night!) Clara started getting fussy and tired. We had a few visitors, so I chalked it up mostly to her irregular schedule. On Sunday morning, her NG tube got blocked. We had our home health nurse come help us place a new one, then we left her with Nana Wallace while we ran errands. As usual, she was an angel for Nana Wallace, no crying or anything. And then...

CLARA SMASH! (If you get that
reference, you are a nerd. Come by
and hang out with us.)

She was MAD. When she was awake, she wouldn't eat much orally and she spent a lot of time yelling at me. We had to give her food through her tube mostly, and she threw up one of the feeds.
We had a long night of Clara crying, it looked like she was having some reflux and gas. We kept trying to sit her up and burp her to help her get comfortable, but she and I had a lot of disagreements through the night. Todd is so good to be the one up and down with her while I sleep, but of course I couldn't really rest while she was so mad. We spent Monday fighting the same fights. I was SO MAD and SO TIRED. I threatened to tell everyone on here how mean she really is, but she didn't care. I put her in her crib for the first time, and stomped out of the room telling her to "figure it out!" (and then came in crying about 19 seconds later, and hugged her.) I told her she had to go live with Nana Wallace until she could talk nicer to me. We just could not get this girl feeling better.

Sorry I was so mean
earlier. Oops.

I finally decided to give her a bath since that usually results in her calming down and sleeping. We have to keep part of her incision covered and dry, as it is still a bit 'open.' When I was changing the bandage, I noticed that the 'open' area looked bigger, weepier, and was red around the edges. We called the home health nurse and he agreed to come check it in the morning (she didn't have a fever and the wound was not looking too scary at that point.) Then I finally checked in with the heart moms and got a list of ideas to help her out (gas drops, warm bag on her belly, tummy rubs) and she FINALLY FELL IN TO A DEEP SLEEP! Problem solved.
Tuesday morning, Clara was much happier and when I put her in her Boppy on the living room chair, she had her usual morning conversation with the ceiling fan. She stares at it, and moves her mouth and hands around like she's telling it stories, it is her best friend. The nurse came to check her scar and suggested we call the cardiology team to see if they wanted to see her, he felt it looked a bit off, even though she still had no fever or any other signs of being sick (because she wasn't yelling in his face at that time, of course, and we thought that had been resolved by gas drops and had no connection to her incision.) Cardiology suggested we come in the next day, since we would be up seeing genetics anyway. Sounds good to me!

Crying? ME?

Clara and I then took a field trip to Nana Wallace's house and her store Upon the Shelf to check out Clara's Corner (More details forthcoming on that...) As per her usual game, she behaves beautifully for her grandmother, and her mother looks like a crazy woman who complains about her mean baby for no reason.  
Our appointment with genetics was early, and we didn't get great sleep the night before. But the geneticist was so optimistic and full of good news. Her t-cells looked good; short in some areas, but he suggested that most of us are, and since she had made it to 5 weeks with no major or weird infections, she would probably be able to fight off diseases as well as any of us. He looked at her face, her muscle tone (she has strong soccer legs), reviewed her eating history, and talked to us about what challenges we might expect with 22q. He ordered a calcium test for follow up and sent us on our way. Hooray!

Then we went to cardiology at PCMC to have Clara's chest looked at. The next few hours were a whirlwind: go to outpatient registration, go to the lab, draw blood, Clara SMASH, wait in cardiology waiting room, get moved to room to have nurse check vitals, back to waiting room, cardiothorasic surgeon comes by to look at chest, moved to room again, cardiothorasic surgeon poking in Clara's chest with ACTUAL SCISSORS, Clara SMASH, go to admitting, finally get admitted back to surgical unit, IV team stabs Clara 3 times to get an IV in and bruises her leg with the turniquet, Clara and Mom and Dad SMASH SMASH SMASH. Finally, Clara was given some meds for pain relief and fell asleep. Mom and Dad went home and crashed. We are so thankful for the most expensive and most qualified babysitters-the nurses of the Children's Surgical Unit at Primary Children's Hospital. They are getting a fruit basket.

ALWAYS keep one arm
out of the blanket. You
need at least one arm
to defend yourself.