What A Week

It's now after midnight, and so technically, it's been thirteen days since I gave birth to Peanut. (Yes, that has been her nickname since I first laid eyes on her - it fits perfectly.)

She is a dream, though we have spent a lot of time at the pediatrician's office this week, and tomorrow (today) we have another appointment, then another on Wednesday. She is spitting up/vomiting about a third of her meals, and subsequently is only eating about half of what she was eating and is beginning to lose weight (she lost an ounce between Friday and Saturday). Now the ped is having us add powdered formula to my bottled breastmilk for her to amp up the calories she takes in, for as long as she continues to eat less. It worries us, and I get upset every time she loses half of her milk. Tonight was terrifying - she kept sneezing it out of her nose after she threw up and couldn't clear it all out of her lungs adequately. She's too little for these problems, and it scares me to pieces. The doctor told us Friday that an option may be having to hospitalize her and have her gavage-feed...which is putting a tube down her throat to take in half of her meals, then bottle-feeding the other half. I put my foot down, adamantly. I will make her well, at home, if I possibly can. I will die before my daughter gets hospitalized under my watch - unless of course she truly had to do it. But for now it's just an option.

In other news, we are sleep-deprived, cranky, and tomorrow Chad goes back to work, but besides all of this, we are blissfully happy. Nothing and no one could have prepared us for the level of intensity of the love we have for this little girl. She is wholly-consuming, but all I have to do is watch her pucker up her lips and raise her eyebrows to wrinkle her brow at me - what I call her "kiss face" - and I realize that it's all completely worth it.

I have to get the "kiss face" photographed, it is totally priceless.

My devotion and incredible love for her is something I could never have imagined, truly. She is half of me and half of Chad, and together we've created something so sweet, so enthralling, that it's like she was always a part of our lives. But for me, one of the best parts of this entire experience is watching Chad become a father. He fell in love with her from the first second, and he is totally crazy about her. He covers her in kisses, snuggles with her on the couch, even babytalks her. (Shhh, don't tell him I told you!) I think I fall in love with him more every day the more I watch him with her.

She is still firmly in preemie clothes, but we are hoping she starts to pack on the weight soon. Length-wise, she's at capacity for those clothes and when she starts to get longer, she will have to move to newborn clothes whether they fit her around the middle or not! As of...Thursday?...she was still 18.5 inches long, but I imagine that will start to increase soon. She finally hit her birthweight Friday.

It's now nearing 130 am, and though this is a regular hour for me now, I'm exhausted. I am asking for prayer though. A situation has exploded back home, and I very nearly hopped a plane yesterday. Caia is the only reason I didn't. So please, keep my family in your prayers - we could use all we can get in a dark time. For now, I will delight in baby kisses and husband kisses, and be grateful for the family I have created for myself, and thank God above for it.