Lest I Forget

It was around two in the morning. In the dimly lit hospital room, I nursed my baby, studying this new little person. His sweet face that reflected a little of each of his siblings, his tiny fingers, his slender delicate arms. Carefully, I unwrapped the swaddling blanket to check out his feet. There is something so precious about those miniature newborn feet. Caressing his soft skin, I looked at his feet. Something didn't seem right. I slowly counted his toes. I counted again. I turned on the light. I paged the nurse. On his left foot, I kept counting to six! Surely I was mistaken. The nurse came in, casually looked at his foot, and calmly replied, "Interesting. Usually it is not a fully formed toe." Usually? As in, this is a normal thing to have happen? Not in my little world! After seeing the orthopedic doctor last week, we have a decision to make. Do we have it removed or leave it alone? The doctor left it up to us, though he did say it would be hard to find shoe...

Peter doesn't sleep very much or for very long. I have been trying to keep things in perspective. I mean, there are people with much worse problems than a sleepless baby. I keep thinking of those future saints who undergo being tortured for the faith. Then I think, isn't sleep deprivation a form of torture? I am averaging two hours of sleep a night. On a good night. Right now I am still functioning but I have a feeling it is going to catch up with me soon. I am offering up these sleepless nights and crazy days for a very special and worthy intention. My arms are so tired. Not just from holding him, but from our crazy nursing sessions. I am happy to report that he has been gaining weight and we have been able to completely eliminate the formula supplement. However, any visions of sweetly nursing a newborn are not happening here. He squirms and twists his body the whole time. He pops on and off. He arches his whole body until he looks like the letter u. It is like a wrestling m...

...that she was the baby. Here's where I have found her sleeping this week... Waiting for mom to finish feeding the baby. She even turned on the music and started the motor before climbing in by herself.

When we lived in Georgia, we had some wonderful friends with kids of babysitting age. Their girls would watch my kiddos on a regular basis. Ben had a special fondness for their oldest daughter and she for him. He called her "Kath-a-leen" with such a sweet lilt. She would paint his big toenail a nice bright red. I always thought that the nail polish was so ironic as the first time we went to their house Ben managed to spill bright nail polish in the exact middle of the room with nice white carpet! They remained great friends in spite of that. I received an e-mail earlier this week from my friend to let me know that Kath-a-leen is all grown up and married. She had her first baby late in August. I teared up as I read that as soon as she knew she was having a son, they decided to name him Benjamin in honor of my Ben. I had just wondered a few days earlier if anyone would ever name a child after my guy that I miss so much. Every time I look at Peter, I see his brother staring ...

With the arrival of Peter, we officially outgrew our little minivan. It was not a huge issue, though, for Sophie is away at college most of the time. We were even able to get her a car. Mind you, it is two years older than she, but it is in good shape. She was already to set out to Franciscan in late August when a freak storm blew through and flooded our street. Her car was parked in the street. Her car sustained some water damage to the brakes and the electronic thingy that was housed under the passenger seat. Tony ended up driving her back to school til we could get the car repaired. Sophie's soaked vehicle We have been searching for a bigger van for some time now, without any luck. The 12 passenger vans are either too expensive or too worn out. I kept searching anyway, hoping for a small miracle. We knew we would trade Tony's truck for the new van, so one day last week, we decided to post it for sale on Craigslist, just to see if we would get any bites. Twelve hours l...

I looked up from feeding Peter and saw Tony on the couch with Jack and Anna. They were reading a new library book. But where was Therese? It was quiet upstairs. Too quiet. I went up the stairs with images of all sorts of disastrous messes in my head. But as I peered into my room, my heart melted. There she was, curled up in the crib that not so long ago was hers. She was sound asleep...sucking contentedly on Peter's pacifier. Methinks she might miss being the baby.

Man, oh man. I wish that I could just trust the health care professionals whose care I am under. But unfortunately, this is not the case. I wonder if they really listen at all sometimes. Low milk supply is supposedly helped by taking fenugreek. I bought some in the form of an herbal capsule upon the recommendation of the lactation consultant and started taking the dosage on the bottle. I definitely saw an increase in milk, but it seemed like Peter was having stomach pains and his stool started getting foamy. I could not prove that it was because of the fenugreek, but I stopped taking it and he seemed better. But my milk production went back down too. Also, during that time, but I did not associate it with the supplement, my thyroid symptoms seemed to flair up. I know this is a possibility at any time since I had post-partem thyroiditis after Therese was born. I discussed all this with the lactation consultant and she suggested trying a drug called domperidone to increase milk product...

Isn't it interesting how babies don't seem to understand that nighttime is sleepy time? Peter usually sleeps the longest stretch mid-afternoon, waking just when dinner is needing to be prepared and hungry toddlers are pulling on my shirt and screaming louder than seems humanly possible. Oh, I will figure out how to juggle all this soon enough, but my sleep-deprived brain is a little slow these days. Meanwhile, Peter still struggles to gain weight. We are supplementing with a little formula at each feeding and I am pumping when I can, though he feeds so frequently, it is challenging. Anna celebrated her 8th birthday this weekend. I did not take one picture. I was nursing a baby the whole time. We did a craft party. Anna and her friends made little tote bags out of old t-shirts. They made their own personal chocolate cakes in coffee mugs. Here is the link for the recipe . Thankfully my sister was here to help me. Thankfully some of the moms also stayed and helped. I am so ble...