Boy Does This Suck - and other random points

My fever kept spiking up to 102 all day, no matter what I took for it. I was not enjoying it. I hate having a fever. Consequently, while I pumped as much as I could today, I didn't attempt to nurse any of the babies at all today. I hope that doesn't cause a set back because I imagine tomorrow will be more of the same. None of them are good breastfeeders, but I was thinking we had started to make progress with Ellie at least. Our little guy is totally too lazy anyway and I'm sure he was relieved that I wasn't shoving a breast in his face half the day. Abby's so little that while she's got good technique, she's not physically strong enough to breastfeed effectively anyway. None of them would have done anything to help unblock any blocked ducts today, so I just pumped as much as I could and left it at that.

I hate having fevers. Pain I can handle (and boy is this a LOT of pain), but fevers are so miserable to me. Yuck.

I heard some bad news about a friend of mine today and I will hopefully write about it tomorrow. I feel just awful about it.

I completely copped out and Tuesday I had a baby nurse come for three hours. The advantage was that she fed the babies while I SHOWERED and then she organized the nursery for me and then she gave the babies baths. She was awesome and worth every penny. I don't know WHAT I would have her do if I had her here for 12 hour shifts, but she's pretty good at self-directing, so I'm guessing she'd figure something out. Anyway, her three hours here left me feeling completely calm and in control all day Wednesday. I would still have felt that calm and collected today, except that I felt like death all day. Fortunately, I had a friend here in the morning who rushed over when she heard about the mastitis because she said what I really needed was to get into the HOT shower immediately, but I couldn't shower without another adult here because of Ellie's heart monitor. And then this afternoon a teenager came to help for a bit. And finally, the baby nurse came from 4-8pm which was terrific, because I got a nice long nap to sleep off the fever a little, and she fed the little ones while I pumped pumped pumped some more.

I feel a little guilty for not taking care of them much today, but honestly, I was lucky to be upright at all. I'm just lucky today happened to be a day I had lots of help. Normally I don't have people here during the day, but I happened to accept an offer of help for the afternoon just yesterday, even though I had no idea what I would have her do with me. And when the baby nurse emailed me yesterday to say she could give me a couple hours this evening, I debated not having her come, but I'm so glad I took her up on it. She will probably come for at least one feeding tomorrow also, which makes her an angel or a saint as far as I'm concerned, considering that she's working overnight with twins tonight.

The good news is that this will pass. No one ever had permanent mastitis, right?