Well, my sweet little daughter is 3 months old, 15 lbs 5 oz (checked
her on Monday because we need to monitor her weight since we are having a
hard time getting her to drink milk while Mommy is gone at work), and
such a sweet smiley bundle of preciousness. Yeah, parenthood is pretty
amazing the second time around too. Here is what has been going on in
our family this month....
I went back to work 2 weeks ago, and
it has been a very difficult and challenging transition for all of us.
Hadassah is much more vocal than Ben, gets angry much more quickly, and
is just kind of an "all or nothing" type girl...so where Ben waited
until he was 5 months old to decide bottles were overrated, she pitched a
fit right away, and continues to do so each time a caregiver tries to
feed her when I am gone. Prayers on this count would be much
appreciated-I so hate to think of her being sad and hungry, she is
awfully young to go for 2 5-6 hour stretches per day without eating or
drinking, and I am sure it is wearing on Josh to have her spend as much
time crying as she does. We are trying everything we can think of-cup
feeding, spoon feeding, syringe feeding, various bottles/nipples, etc.
and have had only limited success so far. A dear friend got her to eat
1.5 oz today from one of our new bottles (which is by FAR the most she
has accepted not from me) so maybe we can still convince her to at least
have something!!
Josh is so close to being done with school we
can taste it...and yet the insanity of his final semester means he is
literally always doing school and still not totally caught up (at least,
he doesn't feel he is). We are just trying to survive and hang in there
as a family until he is done...he and I haven't had a decent
conversation in the last 2 weeks, we aren't often both home at the same
time, and we are both so intensely exhausted (him because he regularly
stays up far past midnight to complete work, me because of Hadassah
reverse cycling and foot pain that is bad enough to prevent sleep many
nights). We are so incredibly thankful for friends who have stepped in
and offered to help us with childcare, meals, etc.-we would be drowning
without this help, I am sure!
Just quickly, since I know some
people will be curious...my foot started acting up when I was pregnant
and has gotten markedly worse over the weeks since Hadassah was born (I
am sure that spending much of my 17 hour labor standing and squatting
while barefoot did not do me any favors-not the smartest move I have
ever made in my life, but I was not thinking about my feet at the time).
It has not been this bad since I was a teenager. It's the one that I
have had 5 surgeries on (3 on the other). An MRI has shown there is an
exostosis (new bone growth) underneath my fibula (basically just below
my ankle) which is causing some tendons to be compressed/pinched and now
I have something called tenosynovitis (means inflammation of the tendon
and tendon sheath surrounding the tendon). I almost certainly need
surgery to prevent worsening of the growth and potentially eventual
tendon rupture, but we really can't afford (physically or monetarily)
for me to be off work and off my feet right now, so we are trying an
injection on Friday to see if we can buy some time. Meantime, I wear a
brace at work and am supposed to be nonweightbearing at home. I do my
best, but with 2 under 2...it's not the easiest. If you come to my
house, be warned...it looks like a toddler lives in it with a Daddy who
is too busy and stressed to clean and a Mommy who is too exhausted/lazy
and is usually not able to manage standing for more than a few minutes
at a time by the end of the day.
Okay, on to fun stuff!
Hadassah
can roll from her back to her tummy. She doesn't do it regularly yet,
but I have seen her do it enough times to be pretty sure it isn't an
accident when it happens.
She has the most gorgeous, sweet smile
that transforms her face from adorably chubby to simply angelic. How
hard you have to work to get her to smile is a pretty good indication of
how close your relationship is with her. She smiles pretty readily at
me and at Daddy, extended family and friends have to work at it a little
harder, and there is exactly 1 person in the world that she smiles at
without him smiling first...big brother Ben. Thankfully, those 2 adore
each other. He often asks to hold her, he loves to kiss her and hug her
(and "hold" her), and he loves to rub her back or pat her sweetly while
they both nurse. I so hope they keep on loving each other as they get
older! (anyone have suggestions on fostering a sweet loving relationship
between siblings? I'm all ears!)
Her head control is greatly improved, though she is still fairly wobbly.
She
likes nursing quite a bit, but is not quite as in love with it as Ben
was. She doesn't always comfort nurse to the same degree that he did,
and there are times when she actually prefers another means of comfort
over nursing.
She LOVES being worn, especially in "her" wrap (we
were borrowing it from a friend, and she fell so madly in love with it
that I ended up buying it from my friend).
She loves being rocked,
which makes me very happy. Ben never liked rocking, so now the glider
is actually getting some use! And with the foot pain, it is SO nice that
she actually prefers rocking over walking/bouncing most of the time!
We
have done a little bit of EC with her, but I think we are going to wait
to really start that until Josh is done with school. She is just with
too many different caregivers and so often out of the house.
She
has gotten a bit better about wet diapers-she still doesn't like them,
but she usually only makes me change her 1-2 times per night, which is
much nicer than 6 or more!
She loves to "talk"-she will coo and bob her head and make such sweet faces.
Just
think, by this time next month, Josh will be within days of graduating!
That will be awesome, and maybe bring some big changes for our family.
We'll see. Until then, if you don't see or hear from us or I forget to
respond to you, I am very sorry...feel free to pester me at will. As I said, in some ways we are just trying to survive the next few weeks.
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