5 months old (2 and half weeks ago)

Bad, bad mommy. I got sick and we went away and it took until now to download any pictures off the camera. I also didn't go and weigh C.S.on June 10th  so I'll just have to guess that she weighed about 16.5 lbs back then. What ever the number is, she's huge!

Let's see what do I remember about C.S.'s 5th month:

- She learned to roll from front to back.

- She got her 1st tooth.

- She got her first cold.

- We learned how to get her to take naps in her crib. They are usually 45 minute naps, but that's still progress and her big sister was exactly the same way.

 

I almost had time to blog

C.S. is having a very, very rare more than 45 minutes nap so I have time to sit down and write.

Last time I wrote I was on day 10 of being sick. Six days after that, while visiting my parents in SK, I finally got fed up and went to a walk in clinic to get checked up. It was the right thing to do because after 2 days of AB's I started feeling better and stopped coughing all night along. I didn't sleep much better because C.S. hated the pack'n'play at my parents, but at least I could talk without it hurting so much.

(And as I typed those word C.S. woke up. It's now 5 hours later and she is down for the night.)

I still have C.S.'s 5 month post to do and there's all this stuff floating around my head that needs to come out somehow. However, D.G. sprained his ankle on Saturday and so I'm taking care of him on top of D and C.S. and it feels like I'll never get the end of my to-do list. I guess for tonight I have to be happy that I posted something and that I have caught up on all the posts in my reader feed. (Merry and Angela you make me feel like such a lazy blogger.)

So bleeping sick

I thought I was getting better, finally, then on Saturday I started losing my voice.  Now I can't stop coughing and when I do Cleo starts. (It's like a kick in the gut every time a little baby coughs like that.) I have some very cute 5 month pictures of C.S. somewhere on a camera that need to be posted. We are supposed to be leaving for SK to visit my parents on Thursday so I have laundry and washing and packing to do. I just want to sleep for more than 2 hours straight. Ugh, double ugh.

Any suggestions for BF-friendly cough remedies? I am really sick of drinking tea.

Good Milestones

We have spent so mush of the past 2 years marking sad milestones, but the past couple days have been filled with good ones:

- Cleo rolled over for the first time on Saturday night. It was the easy one, front to back, but she's not to far from rolling the other way too. Hopefully the swaddle will keep her from spending all her nights rolling over for a while yet.

- Cleo got her first tooth today. (It's the bottom right one just in case I forget later) We've been able to see it coming for the last couple days so it was no surprise. Also  D. got her first tooth at 17w 4d and C.S. is 21w1d old today. If you correct for the fact that I was pregnant with D for exactly 4 more weeks than I was with C.S. there is only 3 days difference between their ages when they got their first teeth. If I go by D's milestones, C.S. could have tooth #2 tomorrow.

With all this development happening, it's no wonder her sleep has been crap. I want my 6 hour stretch back so I can feel capable of accomplishing something beyond feeding C.S. and myself during the day. (Edit: I complained because she was up every 2 hours. To show me that I shouldn't have complained, she woke up every hour last night.)

....

The SIL's fiance is improving. He regained consciousness, but we are still waiting to find out if he's off the ventilator or not. Thanks for the good thoughts, ladies.

New reason for the 3rd to suck

I am a lot freaked out this evening. My SIL's fiance had a heart attack this morning. He is 35 years old and other than being a smoker, is relatively healthy. He collapsed at the end of a 5K charity run and so got medical attention immediately (well before he would have pretty much anywhere else). He is in the hospital in a medically induced coma and the prognosis is very scary.

They are 4 hours away so it's not like we can just swing by the hospital and give the SIL a hug, but really I don't know what to do. I have more of an idea of what to do if the worst happens but while they are stuck in a this horrible limbo, I just don't know. I can't be one of the people naively saying "He'll be okay, it will all be fine." That would be like denying the events of the last 2 plus years of my life. Any ideas out there?

Right Where I Am 2012: 2 Years, 1 Month and 4 weeks

This is my contribution to Angie's 2012 edition of Right Where I Am. If for some reason you  have not read about this wonderful project yet (although I can't imagine what that reason could be), all the other contributions are here.


My post from last year is here. Please forgive me if this post doesn't make sense, sleep deprivation is not good for my thought processes.

Last Sunday we attended the annual Spring Memorial service for babyloss families in our area. It was our 3rd memorial and a reminder of  how much some things have changed and how much others have not changed in the last 2 years. At the first service, I was a grieving zombie, sobbing with shock and horror at what my life had become. At the second, I could hold back the tears long enough to look around me and  see all the other grieving parents around me. I could recognize those whose pain was fresher yet not any deeper than mine. We sat with a group of families from my support group who had all welcomed their subsequent babies and I wondered if at the next service I would be holding a new baby or lighting candles for another loss. At this third service, I cried into C.S.'s fine baby hair and used her blanket to wipe my tears. I listened to the poems about little babies playing in Heaven and a God who took them there before they could feel any earthly pain and and still wanted to yell out "Bull shit!" (I restrained myself because this was not the place to work out my issues with God.) I felt bad that I could not give my full attention to the service because C.S. needed me.

Right now, grieving is one of the things I have to make room for in my daily activities. I think of Reid many times a day, but I don't have the same amount of time to devote to grieving for him that I did a year ago. Would that have changed without the arrival of C.S.? Likely it would have, but there would have bitterness about infertility and new sources of grief to take up my time, not diapers and feedings and baby smiles. I do wish for more time to give to Reid (and my blog and the rest of the babyloss community), but the live and loud baby cannot wait and the silent child will always be there waiting.
I feel badly for being unable to devote my time equally to all three children but I have a hunch that this feeling it is a normal part of parenting more than one living child.

I still feel bitter towards people who have built their families without struggle, especially those who have older daughters and younger sons. I am jealous of those who get to raise all the children they created and nurtured in their bodies. I can go out in public and be around these people without loosing it, but the feelings are still there.

I am very careful to refer to D. and C.S. as "the girls" and not "the kids". My girls are here and I love then fiercely, but right now I need that distinction to acknowledge Reid.

Right now I still have a lot of things to deal with that a a direct result of Reid's death. However, for the most part I can avoid them and usually do. Right now, I need to focus on taking care of my girls and myself. I know I'll likely have to deal with them at some point and maybe that will come in the next year, but I'm not planning on it. Plans are still scary things around here.