Month: December 2008

You Can’t Be Serious

I know I have been a bad blogger which is surprising since I’m awake all the time it seems.

Jack is about 31/2 months old and still, truly my blessing. For all the sleepless nights and evening tantrums, when he smiles at me I can’t even remember why I was frustrated in the first place. I go back to work in two weeks and I am a smattering of mixed emotions. I’m excited to get back to work and start using my brain productively again, but I’m nervous about leaving my baby with virtual strangers. I know he’ll be fine. He’ll learn so many new things that I can’t teach him and he’ll be able to make some friends. Who knows- maybe they’ll even be friends for life! I think the other part of my issue with going back to work is the lack of sleep. I’m still pushing DH to help me overnight, but his ability to sleep all night while I end up with the baby is not an easy habit of his to break. He knows I’m frustrated, but he’s going to have to share in as many sleepless nights as me once I go back to work. I can’t feel this worthless at the office. Right now we are currently trying to break Jack from sleeping in his carseat. THIS is one habit that must be broken. As much as it kills me to give up his 8 hours of sleep for a couple week’s worth of very long sleep training nights, I know he can’t stay in the seat forever and while I have a couple weeks of leave left, I may as well suck it up and get him used to sleeping without that crutch. Funny thing is? Even though he was up all night, he is just as happy as can be today! LOL!

Unsolicited Advice #2

I am so damn sick and tired of receiving advice from people. Especially people who have no fucking idea what being a parent is really like. How hard is it for these people to simply love our son unconditionally? How hard is it to just let DH and I be the parents without ridiculous guilt trips? I’ll delve into this more deeply when I’m not updating from my iPhone.

Yet Another Guilt Trip

Just when I thought there weren’t anymore mommy guilt trips out there, I came across yet another one today.

Someone posted on the boards about her mommy instincts being off because she didn’t wake in the middle of the night to check on her baby (who was peacefully sleeping through the night). Instead of being flamed for missing instincts, the flames began on SIDS. As in, if you don’t have an Angel Care monitor for your infant you should be checking on him several times a night because with a regular monitor you won’t be able to hear him stop breathing. I’ll be the first person to say that when we moved Jack to his crib, I was terrified. I checked on him a million times a night and had the monitor cranked up and right next to my head. If I was lucky, I was getting maybe 2 hours of broken sleep a night. That’s it. I was exhausted and having trouble taking care of Jack during the day. At my 6 week OB checkup, we discussed my insomnia issue mainly because I was concerned I was developing postpartum depression. My OB asked me why I was so worried all night and I said “Frankly, SIDS”. She helped me by saying that if it is going to happen, it is going to happen. You can take all the precautions in the world and if he is going to have SIDS, the likelihood of being able to save him is very slim and to just stop worrying and LIVE. After about a week of working on relaxation techniques, I started sleeping regularly, only waking to Jack’s needy cries. Sure, the first few times he slept through the night I would wake up in a panic at 3am wondering if I missed his cry, listening intently. I think I have honestly become so tired that my will to sleep has become a necessity. Since I’ve “let go” of my fears, I have been more well-rested and able to take care of my son during the day when he’s awake and needs me the most. Thankfully my husband’s bladder doesn’t last the night and he usually gets up at least once to pee and then checks on him. Another thing I have learned about my baby is to not respond to every little whimper and moan. He’ll let me know when he is ready and needs help.

Most importantly, my need to sleep does NOT make me a bad mom!! I love my baby. I want to give him the best care and I can’t do that if my own health is being jeopardized.

That said… my Jack is healthy, happy and thriving. I couldn’t be more happy and more in love with anyone, ever.

Beautiful

I don’t like sending forwards, so I’m posting it here. This is one of my favorites.

My son is the greatest blessing of my life. I am so lucky that he is perfect and healthy and I never take a moment of it for granted.

A Cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery.

Her husband, David , held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver the couple’s new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.

At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature.

Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs.
‘I don’t think she’s going to make it,’ he said, as kindly as he could.

‘There’s only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one’
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived.

She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.

‘No! No!’ was all Diana could say.
She and David , with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four.

Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away

But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially ‘raw’, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love.
All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger.

But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.

At last, when Dana turned two months old. her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time?
And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.

Five years later, Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life.

She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving , Texas , Dana was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing.
As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby, when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, ‘Do you smell that?’

Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, ‘Yes, it smells like rain.’
Dana closed her eyes and again asked, ‘Do you smell that?’

Once again, her mother replied, ‘Yes, I think we’re about to get wet. It smells like rain.’
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced,
‘No, it smells like Him.

It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest.’

Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children.
Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.

During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

‘I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.’
This morning when the Lord opened a window to Heaven, He saw me, and He asked: ‘My child, what is your greatest wish for today?’ I responded:
‘Lord please, take care of the person who is reading this message, their family and their special friends. They deserve it and I love them very much’.

The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its beginning, but not its end.