Just look at this little cutie crawling across the table to his Mama. What a big guy all of a sudden!
Last night I had one of my worst bouts with "New Mama Paranoia" ~ the air conditioning unit thingy (what is this thing called? The heater? Whatever runs the central air) was making a strange noise so Nate was sent down to the basement to investigate. He turned everything off, and then turned it back on. Soon some weird smell started coming out of the unit.....like a burnt engine sort of smell. It also no longer seemed to be working. I came down to aid in the investigation (since I don't even know if its a heat pump or a furnace or WHAT you can imagine how helpful and logical my input was). Anyway, I started reading the warning sticker on the side of the 'thing'. It had all sorts of dire warnings about how if you smell gas run for your life, and how carbon monoxide is a DEADLY gas that quickly and silently kills you.....especially if you are a baby. Other warnings about how, and I quote here "Substances in the fuel or from fuel combustion known to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm". Well Yippee. What an awesome bunch of things to read while pregnant and as a mother to a sweet 6 month old baby sleeping away upstairs above this harbinger of death machine.
I was ready to grab the baby and run for the hills. Not kidding.
A couple of LOGICAL thoughts did remain in my head though (if Carbon Monoxide is so deadly because it is odorless, than I can logically deduce that it is not carbon monoxide that I SMELL, nothing is leaking, it's simply broken etc etc.....) But all I could picture was going in in the morning to pick up sweet Luke and sweet Luke having been silently suffocated in the night by C0 fumes. I was sick with it ~ could not stop picturing it. My heart was overriding my head, which said that the air conditioner/furnace/heat pump/mystery machine had simply broken, and I was smelling harmless broken byproduct smells.
Was so paranoid that I demanded that we check all of the C0 Monitors/smoke detectors in the house. (good job us, by the way, we bought them and installed them right before Luke was born).......The one in our room appeared normal, but of course we had never really looked at it before......I hit "retest" about 5 times, listened to those ear piercing BEEPS over and over, and still was not reassured. Made Nate get out the instruction book on the alarm so that I could read it, and also insisted on checking the one in Luke's room.... but that meant going into Luke's room and turning on his light....which of course woke him up. Whoo hoo! Nothing better or more logical than waking up a peacefully sleeping baby at 11 pm ~ RIGHT as I was hoping to go to bed! He went back to sleep after nursing, but then decided to enact his sweet revenge on us by waking me up about every 2 hours.
It was a long night, and I have been up since 5 am with the little critter. I am happy to say that we all made it through the night, appear to be in no imminent danger, and that our C0 Monitors do work properly. I read the entire monitor instruction manual. Now on to the next fun challenge....getting someone over here to fix whatever it is that is broken.
Look at that big boy! He's so strong!
ReplyDeleteI would be just as paranoid as you if that was me. DH gets so mad at me because I get worried about every little weird sound or smell in our apartment. But that's our job. We're supposed to worry! I hope you get whatever it is fixed soon!