On Nine Weeks 38 and 500 Posts....

Five Hundred Posts. Well, including this one. I have written and published for anyone who was interested to read 500 posts on this blog. When I started it, I really don’t know what I was looking to do. Not too long before I started it, I found a blog my mom kept and I didn’t know about. It was a gift, and I thought that if I ever had children, I’d like them to have something like that from me. Then, when we started our adoption process, I found quite the network of blogs and really began to understand just what blogs were—documentation, networking, therapy…In the early days of this blog, I wrote of the various things we were doing in our process, ‘met’ different adoptive parents and followed their stories and ranted about everything from school frustration to what was happening in pop culture.

Believe it or not, this blog has not always been very heavy. In fact, once upon a time, I was able to laugh in everything…even in the most frustrated of frustrations, I could find something to laugh at because laughing always makes everything better.

Or so I thought.

Now I find that this blog is a lot of different things…many I didn’t and couldn’t have ever anticipated. I often find myself wondering why I write. I keep saying it’s for Luke to one day be able to know me as a person, and not just as his mother but I don’t think I am being all that honest in that. If that was the case, I’d still write, I’d just make it either in a journal or a private blog. I don’t…I air my thoughts in a very public forum and that leads me to believe that there has to be more purpose in writing for me than in just documenting for Luke. As Dr. Phil always says, we don’t do things that don’t have payoff. So, in analyzing the payoff of a public blog, I guess it’s selfish. It’s a way for me to tell people things I may not have the nerve or ability to tell them in person. It’s a way for me to just get thoughts out and maybe as they are jumbled when I write, after written I am able to process and organize them more efficiently. It’s a way for me to look back on things and remember—either fondly or not, I worry that my memory will fade and things I want to remember will slip away with it.

Mostly, and especially since Matthew was born and died, it’s a way to feel validated and supported in a quick, easy and consistent way. When other women who have had experiences like mine—whether in adopting, or teaching or being a military spouse or having a child in Heaven or just in being a woman with a real life—share with me that they feel the same way I do or they offer their friendship and support, I don’t feel so alone. I don’t feel crazy. I don’t feel guilty. I don’t feel so hopeless. I don’t feel so unjustified.

I feel normal in the most abnormal way.

So, whether it’s because this is our family’s story or I just need to get my thoughts out or am passive aggressively trying to make something known or I am publicly looking for validation and justification…I write.

And if you read, and offer any of the above to me, please know how grateful I am. Your comments and prayers and time spent in following what happens in our life honor me and spoil me in ways I can’t express.

I turned 38 Monday. My day started at 6 am with Luke cooing and smiling and giggling at me as I changed his diaper—which NEVER happens because he HATES diaper changes! I ended it around 12:30 am yesterday in the same way. He was STILL up (schedule off since Daddy got into the airport later and he obviously was waiting up for him!) and in his bassinet, was cooing and smiling and giggling at me so much! I loved it. Tessa wrote to me and said she bet that Matthew gave Luke some special snuggles to share with me. Starting and ending my day in the way I did, I am inclined to believe that.

Luke was 9 weeks old yesterday! His well-baby went fabulously. We got some cream for his cradle cap (it’s on his face, and looks like someone took a sheet of Velcro and just scrubbed him over and over and over again!), some cream for his eye (though the breast milk seems to be helping, just not quickly and the cream is in case it gets worse) and upped his Zantac dosage—it only seemed to help about half the time, so I felt like it wasn’t keeping its efficacy. He’s still jaundiced, but only on skin and his eyes are fine. Dr. Sheth again said I could clear it all up in 4 days if I wanted to switch to formula for a few days, but he wouldn’t worry about it, so I am not either.

Luke was 9 lbs., 6 oz! He is in the 6^th%tile for weight. He was 22 inches, which was the 15^th%tile for length and 11^th%tile for head circumference (38 cm.) Dr. Sheth said he was very pleased with Luke’s growth and progress, as well as how he’s doing with breastfeeding. Yes, it’s easier…but still we fight! Well, Luke fights toward the end…hopefully the Zantac helps!

He also got a vaccination yesterday—the Pentacel and rotovirus. Next month will be the Prevnar. Good grief, the Pentacel has A TON of stuff in it—so I couldn’t even follow the Dr. Sears Alternative schedule if I wanted because the Pentacel has so many combined. I am spacing them differently, so I feel better about that, but truthfully, I’d wait until he was 4 or 5 months before I began vaccinating. Daddy doesn’t want to—we live in a community where there are a LOT of unvaccinated children and higher incidences of whooping cough and now polio too! That upsets me—polio should have been eradicated. I believe in informed vaccinations and not inundating a system, but I still believe vaccinations are important. It’s so hard to know what ‘the right’ thing to do is and the right timing for it.

He did not cry! He puckered up and almost started to cry, and then it was over! I gave him his sucky and he was just as sweet and mellow as always. He slept well last night, and hasn’t been fussy at all…he is such, such, such a sweet and mellow little boy!

He seems like he is sleeping a little longer in the night—stretching his feedings out a bit more. Now we are in the dilemma of to swaddle or not…he sleeps better swaddled, but when he stirs in the middle of the night, he starts to try and fight it out, and that wakes him. He doesn’t fall asleep well at all when he’s not swaddled though (unless he’s being held!) so not sure…maybe this weekend we’ll try one arm swaddled and one not and see how that goes.

We go to the pediatric urologist tomorrow. Hopefully, it will prove to be nothing much, but I am glad we are going to check things out to be sure!

Here are a couple of pictures from the week:

One of MANY attempts to find the perfect swaddled...this is the generic version of the Woombie. He hated it. HATED it. Hated the Woombie too.

"Who is that kid who keeps staring at me????"

He's so, so jolly in the mornings!

Mommy's birthday celebration included a cute little Cabbage Patch Baby!

Looking like daddy in a cute outfit from his cool Great Aunt Marilyn!