You are not alone

I received a message this afternoon that read, in part,

I thought I was alone. I thought I wasn't supposed to feel this way.


No, mama, you're not alone. Your body wasn't made to birth from the abdomen. It wasn't made to be cut. Cry, rage, hurt, grieve! Something precious and irreplaceable was stolen from you and you have every right to feel "this way". The scar you can't see takes much longer to heal than the one you can see.

Whew!

Anna will be three months old on Monday. Wow! Where has the time gone? Where has my "baby" gone? I have to say that while I absolutely adore having a "normal" size baby, it sure does seem they grow up faster. At this point, Anna is as big as Sarah and Caleb were at 6 or 7 months old. She's so active! Last night I had a dream that she walked at 5 months old. Let's just hope that dream doesn't come to pass. Sarah walked at 9 months and Caleb walked at 16 months. With two other children in the house I think I'd rather she took Caleb's path!

She's also teething now, and exhibiting teething "behavior" that neither Sarah nor Caleb did. She's drooling buckets and chewing on her hands. She'll even quit nursing, pull off the nipple, and put her fist in her mouth to chew on. Strange. I guess I'd rather she chew on her hand than my breast! Caleb got his first tooth at 7 months and Sarah was almost 13 months. I guess I was kind of hoping Anna would follow after her sister in teething!

I still can't believe what a breeze nursing has been for us. After two failed attempts, I thought something was wrong with me. But after Anna's amazingly quick, simple birth and not being high or hooked up to anything, it just seemed natural to nurse her. I pushed her out, she was handed to me, I put her to the breast and there she has stayed for the last three months!

Like my other two at this age, she has become markedly more "organized" in the last week. I never set any kind of schedule for her, just let her nap and nurse as she saw fit, but she has set for herself a fairly predictable routine now. During the day she has three naps: early morning, mid morning and early afternoon and she nurses approximately every hour and a half. At night she sleeps cuddled up next to my breasts and nurses (I think) once or twice. Neither of us really wakes up for night nursing.

Here are some pictures I'd like to share with you.

Isn't she pretty? I call her my "strawberries and cream" baby. Her skin is so milky white and her hair a pretty shade of auburn.

Anna nursing at the butterfly garden. Just after this photo was taken, a butterfly landed right on Anna's head and stayed for several minutes. Beautiful!

My family and me at a marriage conference recently



Anna nursing at the marriage conference



Anna and Sarah- sweet sisters!




Sarah and Anna- they're great friends already!

Anna and me at the children's museum

Forecast: Partly Sunny

So, today's the big day! My husband came down to get the children and me and we're all going to be a family again in Georgia. I feel like I can finally exhale.

Last Tuesday I had my six week postpartum visit with the midwife. It was really hard. Anna nursed through the whole exam and the midwife and I cried as we hugged and said goodbye. My body hardly bears any traces of a pregnancy now, and I weigh almost 40lbs less than when I first became pregnant.

Also, it looks like we're "getting out of Dodge" just in time! See this picture? Pensacola is right there inside that "circle of possibility" and the weather channel has just issued a tropical storm warning for Pensacola.

FYI: Yesterday Pensacola celebrated the 450th anniversary of the settlement of Pensacola (1559). It was, however, wiped from the map by a hurricane.

Birth- days

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child must work for a living,
But the child that's born on the Sabbath day
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

I read this poem with a mind towards my children's births. My cesarean and failed home birth attempt were both on Wednesday nights. My first unmedicated, incredible, birth was early Sunday morning.

As far as the children themselves, I wouldn't say that Sarah and Caleb are "full of woe", but Anna is most certainly "fair and wise and good and gay"!