Liliana Sue

Things have been busy around the Loveland house as uaual. Liliana is doing great. She continues to be happy and healthy with each new day. We hold her, read to her, and help her play with her toys. When you hold one of her arms up to one of her toys, her little hands go crazy. You can tell she is trying to touch it and move it and play with it. She is so amazing. I took care of her the other night. Toward the morning when she was still sleeping, I stood over her and just stared at her. A powerful emotion came over me which I cannot even describe. I was just truly amazed with her. She is getting so big. She has changed so much. It is an amazing feeling to know that this living breathing human being is a part of me. I was overcome with happiness.

Our nursing schedule has been one of the biggest stressors in our life right now. Nurses were scheduled according to my last month's work schedule which is the complete opposite of my work schedule for this month. This means that we have a lot of night time openings where we have no nurse. To add to this problem, a lot of shifts are being scheduled during the daytime where we don't necessarily need nurses all of the time. You would think that they would understand that we need nurses at night. I mean how many people can sleep during the day and stay up all night. Try doing that 3 days in a row when your body is not used to it. Fortunately, I am used to that because I work midnights, however LeeAnn is not. What if she were to get to the point of exhaustion where she just can't stay awake anymore. I know you've all had that feeling at least once before. When you get to that point, you can sleep right through anything. It is not safe for Liliana. It would be nice to have a nurse every night, but it would be even nicer to know that all of the nights that I work will be covered. I can take care of Lili myself on my nights off. However, I can't keep canceling shifts at work because I need to stay home because we either have no nurse or our nurse cancelled. If I have to call in or cancel a shift we loose out on a lot of money that we need and count on. I do not get paid vacation time or sick time. If I do not work, I do not get paid. If things do not start to shape up soon, I will have to consider taking a huge pay cut so that we will have the right benefits to try another nursing agency. I hope it does not come down to this because I'm not so sure that we can afford to take such a big cut in our finances right now. If only there was a way for me to get group insurance without having to take a huge pay cut. I hope everything starts to come together real soon. I do want to say a few good words about all of this: Thank you to the nurses that have rearranged their hours to help cover some of the nights that were left open. Hopefully our next schedule will be filled according to my CURRENT work schedule.

I had a nice 6 days off from work this past week. We had a lot of visitors. It was good to see all of you. Liliana is happy to have finally met you. I had to stay up with her 3 nights in a row because we did not have a nurse. I enjoy it, but with all of the visitors and trying to get things done during the day, it really wore me down. I started back to work on Thursday and was dead tired. We did not have a nurse thursday, so LeeAnn was going to have to do it without me. Her dad Craig was on call to come over and help out and support LeeAnn. She did an amazing job and did multiple things around the house to stay awake. I came home to a clean house, nearly slipped on the waxed floors, and was blinded by the sun reflecting off of the countertops. We both slept during the day and I was awoke early to LeeAnn telling me our nurse for the night had called in. Knowing that LeeAnn had not slept much during the day and that it would be very difficult for her to stay up all night 2 nights in a row, I cancelled my shift at work. If only I could get paid to do nursing in my own home. I am a nurse after all, and so what if she is my own daughter. It sure would make things a lot easier!!!!!!!!! Anyway, I am back to work tonight. I wish I was home with Lili but I know it can not be so. I will just do my work and look forward to seeing her in the morning.

I am sorry for all of the negative things today. I like to try and keep things as positive as possible on my BLOG, but sometimes you just need to vent. Rest assured that Liliana is doing very well. I wish I had some pictures, but I have not had too much of a chance to take any recently. I will definitely put some up soon.