When I had the golden child, it was just her and I. Our relationship is still very much her and I against the world. We're super close as a mother and daughter, and I'm still blessed enough that she considers me her friend at 16. I couldn't imagine where another child would fit in when I had A2. How could I possibly love someone as much as I loved her? And then I had him ...and found that although the love was different, it was equally as overwhelming and fierce. The children themselves were polar opposites ...she was overwhelmingly shy and dependent ...he is outgoing and fiercely independent. I had always imagined that they would be very similar - I was raising them both, right? And yet ...they were born with these personalities.
During this last pregnancy, I always imagined that this baby would fit somewhere in the middle of them. And maybe he will. Right now, he looks so much like his older brother did at the same age that I sometimes find myself thinking of him as his older brother. And yet, already, his personality is so different from either of them. He's so easily soothed - he literally needs to just hear my voice to stop crying ..so blindly trusting that I'll be able to fix what ails him. He laughs and giggles easily ...and still has a lot of the seriousness that I remember from the golden child's infancy.
This afternoon, Monk took two pictures of the baby ...
The seriousness of his sister:
The silliness of his brother:
And yet ..somehow ...both of them are all him.
Who knew you could possibly love three this much.
So ...the good news is that I've managed to stay off the Zoloft and still feel like a normal person. So I suppose I owe an apology to my physicians and healthcare in general. It appears they were right ... I really did need to wait out the hormones.
I went back to work this week. It honestly broke my heart. As hard as it was to leave A2 ...leaving two babies was at least twice as bad. The first day I had gut rot ...the baby wouldn't take a bottle despite the $300 in various nipples and bottles that I purchased. We diligently attempted every day from the time he was 2 weeks old. There would be rare occasions when he would manage an ounce or two, but for the most part was unable to latch on. It got to the point that his jaw would start trembling and he would start crying when he saw the bottle. Leaving babies is bad. Leaving a baby and knowing that he's going to be starving, dehydrated, screaming and miserable was worse. We made arrangements for Monk to stay home so that he could drive the baby to me if needed. Monk called me a 9 ....to tell me that the baby drank 7 ounces of breastmilk from a bottle like it was no big deal and something he did everyday. Thank the lord for small wonders ...and stubborn babies.
My heart feels broken tonight. In my practice, there are 4 new babies ages 5 months and younger. A virtual baby boom. One of my partners is 42 and infertile. I think she has resigned herself to living child free. I can't imagine how painful this little baby boom is for her.
One of my partners, someone who is relatively new to the practice in the last year but with whom I've become close to because of our shared pregnancy and other similarities, is currently 34 weeks pregnant. She fell in the parking lot last week. They admitted her to L&D for observation and did an ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed the baby was way too small for gestational age and was missing a corpus callosum in her brain. To make a long story short, she had an amnio which was normal - and began to feel some hope. She had a fetal MRI at UofM yesterday. They called her at work today to let her know very, very bad news about the baby. She left work feeling extremely distressed.
I can't even begin to imagine. Can. Not. Imagine.
It's truly beyond a miracle that any of our babies make it out "normal" and "healthy". One little misalignment of a part of a gene. Just one.
I came home to squeeze my three extra tight. Extra, extra tight.
