Doomed From Day One | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Dec 2-8, 2024

…but look at that beautiful jumper all the same

Monday

Until he turned one, Atlas didn’t sleep through the night, waking three to four times every single night to nurse – at which point he cut it down to maybe once or twice a night, before eventually petering out and sleeping through at two. It was a tough time.

Well, not as tough as last night (could he be preparing us for the new baby?!) when he woke, screaming and telling us that his ear hurt, six times. We tried taking him into bed with us; Brandin took him downstairs and tried to sleep on the couch with him; eventually, Brandin slept on the couch while Atlas slept with me, and no matter how often I placed him on Brandin’s side of the bed, he inevitably ended up sleeping with his head on my head, one soft baby hand on my shoulder. Cute, I’ll grant you, but uncomfortable.

Anyway, all of this means that, when I wake at 7am, I jump into the shower – Atlas wakes up too, and wails at the audacity of me leaving him in the king-sized bed alone – and then get ready to bring him to urgent care to get checked for what we all know is an ear infection.

Sure enough, he has an ear infection! One in each ear, in fact. He gets some Tylenol in the surgery and we head off on our way after paying our co-pay ($40), and I stop for coffee and croissants, which he has no interest in eating ($25 plus tip) on our way to my weekly appointment, which ordinarily I would reschedule, but because my blood pressure has been an issue, they want to see me regularly.

I’m seeing the nurse practitioner today so I figure I’ll be in and out quickly… which is a foolish thing to figure, because I am not.

First off, Atlas pukes on me the minute we walk into the office (Tylenol on an empty stomach, I guess, was not a great idea – he wouldn’t touch either of his two croissants, or the snowman cake pop I bought him out of sheer guilt) and I have to basically hold him, suspended, over a bin for five minutes while one of the nurses runs and gets us a towel.

Of course I don’t have a change of clothes with me for him, and I’m wearing a woolly jumper with nothing under it, so both of us are forced to sit in our puke clothes for the next hour; they don’t like my blood pressure, and send me to have bloods drawn, give urine and have an ultrasound, all while Atlas sits on a chair watching dinosaurs on YouTube and occasionally crying pitifully.

A disastrous morning (but luckily, all is looking fine with me, except the blood pressure, and I’m sent home with instructions to keep monitoring my symptoms and, “if you get a headache that won’t go away with Tylenol, go straight to the hospital.” Roger that).

The one upside is that, because my appointment took so long, Atlas’ antibiotics are ready, so we grab those from the pharmacy on the way. ($11.38)

Once we get home, I get some more medicine into him – like a fool, before he’s eaten anything – and he pukes everywhere, so I finally cop on and wait for him to eat at least one croissant before trying again. (MORE LAUNDRY!)

He’s understandably wrecked by nap time, so I put him down and go back downstairs, not to work but to gaze at the screen of my laptop and take deep, soothing breaths.

I also resort to an old friend to soothe me, and finally succumb to the lure of the Cyber Weekend shopping by buying a mocha chequered hat and PJ set from Solly Baby ($48.23) for the new babser, along with two books as Christmas gifts from bookshop.org ($54.38).

I also remember to pay our cleaner for November, an expense I’ve really been going back and forth on whether or not we can afford, going forward – maybe it’s just normal end-of-year stuff but all of a sudden it seems like we have a lot less money than we have had previously?! – but ultimately decide that she does a great job and saves us from, honestly, one of the main (few) arguments that came up again and again without her. ($500)

Atlas wakes from his nap entirely transformed; he’s delighted with life, shouting about dinos and running around like he was never sick. I mean, I’m happy for him but also, WTF?! Kids are weird.

By the time Brandin and the boys get home, he may be a new toddler entirely but I’m a shell of myself; I have absolutely zero recollection of what was made for dinner, whether or not anyone ate it, or what we did before or afterwards. I just remember doing a lot of laundry.

Daily total: $678.99