Outings

I had to get some blood work done the other day. Who would have ever thought it could be an exhausting outing that would be the only thing I could plan to get done in a day?

It was icy and slushy, so my DH dropped me off at the lab with the baby and he and his mother went to pick up some groceries. Since she had just fallen asleep in the car seat I decided to leave her in the seat and take the whole works with me. Bad idea #1. We have the Graco Snugride 32 - that means it can accommodate a child weighing up 32 lbs, but I think the "32" must also represent the weight of the car seat itself. It's a tank!

I entered the lab and took a number from the dispenser. Of course it was busy and there was just one seat left in the tiny cramped waiting area. I set the car seat down next to that chair only partially blocking the traffic flow, and BING she was awake and starting to grunt. Oh boy. I tried rocking the seat while juggling my big down jacket, her diaper bag, my purse, my health card, lab requitsition, and the little number from the dispenser. Rocking was not going to suffice. She needed to be fed. So, I wrestled with the car seat straps and extract the baby out, proceeded to pile all of the paraphinalia on top of the car seat, got seated in the chair and realized that my nursing cover and any recieving blankets were at the very bottom of the pile. She'd now progressed from grunting to squacking. There were 3 men all watching intently as I whipped out my boob for all to see and got her latched on nicely.

What do you know, but right then my number was called out to check in at the desk! I was not about to break her latch, so I kept her on the boob and walked up to the counter, where I gave the clerk my information. She then directed me to one of the lab rooms, where she said someone would be right there to draw my blood. I just decided to leave my pile of stuff in the waiting room, and carried on to the lab room with the baby still sucking away. She continued to nurse right through the woman taking my blood, and then came off to be burped soon after.

I did not want to wait in the germy environment of the blood lab for my ride, so I packed her back into the carseat, bundled her, put on her hat, dangled my paraphinalia on any empty limb space I had and walked across the parking lot to a quilt shop where I purchased the fabric for her diaper covers. I figured DH would only be a few minutes longer at the grocery store, and we'd be on our way.

After a couple of minutes I didn't want the baby to overheat, so I took off all the extra layers. At this point she began grunting and rooting again. So, I looked around and saw a nice chair with armrests near the sewing machine demos, and took up temporary resisdence again with my pile of stuff on top of the carseat. Luckily the women working in the store thought she was really cute and I showed them her diaper cover and talked about making some more in a larger size in a few months, so they didn't mind me camping out in the store even though I clearly had no intentions of buying anything that day, or even really browse the selections.

Nearly an hour later (no exaggeration) DH finally arrived. I guess my MIL decide that she needed a Starbucks and it was really lined up at the coffee shop! Sigh, it's only 3 days into the 11 day MIL visit and I'm already going a bit loopy. OK, that's a whole other post to come.

We got home and I felt like I'd been on a day trip out of town somewhere, not just to the blood lab. Whew! I'm sure it gets easier. Next time the car seat will stay in the car and I will carry her in my sling (which also doubles as a breast feeding support/cover.