First Christmas

Dear Peeper -
Today is your first Christmas.

You are 8 weeks 3 days old, or 4 weeks 2 days, adjusted. Your adjusted age is also one month today, and you will be two months old in two days.

You've continued to grow and develop by leaps and bounds since my last letter.

You are now just absolutely, totally, for-reals, breastfeeding - no bottles, no nipple shield, just you and me, kiddo.

I'm still pumping some, but only for my own comfort when you don't eat as much as my breasts seem to think you should.

I must admit that I went into this rather smugly assuming that we would have no problems, everything would work great for us, I knew all about this stuff and surely my baby would be a champion eater.

Gah. I could not have been more wrong.

I was also very judgemental of women who either never attempted to breastfeed, or who "tried it" and quit as soon as things didn't go as easily as they had hoped.

Okay, I still think it's the best thing a woman can do for her baby, and that everyone should at least give it the old college try, but I can totally understand why many women give up.

It's amazing that something so natural, and that ought to be so simple, can be so complicated and so hard.

As determined (and hard-headed) as I was to make this work or us, there were days, and one in particular, when I thought you'd never get it, and I thought, "There is no way I can do this (pumping) for a year."

(Note: Don't worry, I plan to nurse you for more than a year. But, had we been doing the pump/bottle thing, I might have moved you to cow's milk when it was okay. The goody, you can have as long as you want.)

Of all the issues that you've had and all the concerns we've had about you, I think the one that's taken, by far, the biggest emotional toll on me has been the breastfeeding.

It's also the one that's made the biggest difference, day-to-day, as it's been resolved, and I think that it is your - and my - greatest accomplishment of your little life, so far.

It's still not easy - I still have to obsess over it, and I still think and calculate constantly about when you ate last, and when you're likely to be hungry again, and how full or uncomfortable I'll be by then, and when I can nurse you and where and will it be quiet and calm enough for you to settle in and get to it, and will it look like I'm "running away" or "hiding" when I go looking for that quite, calm place, and am I caving in to the "can't you do that in the ladies' room?" crowd by being just as glad that we need to go that place for now?

(Neither of us is yet quite the lactivist that I'd like to be. Yet.)

But that is so infinitely better than looking for a place to pump every couple of hours.

Infinitely.

And, you are growing - essentially an ounce a day, since you've been exclusively breastfeeding - which means that we must be doing something right.

I know that you're just now getting to be the size of most newborns (you're now bigger than either of your girl cousins was at birth - and more than a pound bigger than Mommy was at birth!) but you seem so big, compared to where you started.

You're begining to have some weight to you when I pick you up, and you are looking so "mature" - like a baby, rather than a newborn or a preemie.

I can't tell you how relieved we are to know that your tyrosine level is down, and that you do not have a metabolic disease.

On the other hand, I also can't tell you how terrified we are at the prospect of you possibly needing open-heart surgery in a couple of months.

I know they say that VSD repair has become "routine" and that they do it all the time, but you know what, it would be the first time it's happened to our baby, so that's only marginally reassuring .

We've done a lot of talking about this stuff - asking why you've had some many health concerns, and why we've had a kid with so many health concerns.

Just like we have to believe that you came early for a reason (top theory: your funky placenta and cord didn't have another month in them, or the amniotic sac rupture might not have gone well later), we have to believe that there's a reason that you - and we - are going through all this now.

You know, they say that "God doesn't give you anything you can't handle," but I don't believe that at all. Look around and you'll see tons of people clearly not handling what they've been given by God, fate, the universe, chance or whatever.

However, I do think there's some truth to that other platitude that's often trotted out to comfort those going through tough times, that "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

I think that we will all be stronger for having gone through this rough start with you.

We've already had to really step up and start growing into our roles as parents, and I think we'll be better parents for you because of it.

The scares you've given us, and the other, much sicker, kids we've seen remind us how lucky we are to have you, and that you are as healthy as you are. I don't think we can ever take that for granted.

I feel like these experiences - all the doctor's visits, the tests, the medications, the worrying - have helped to forge and strengthen the bonds that will hold our little family together, and we will be a stronger family for them.

And you. You have been a little trouble-maker for months, scaring us and then being just fine, over and over.

(Feel free to continue that pattern with this heart thing. Another big never-mind would be great.)

But it's not all been tricks. You have had to overcome alot of real stuff as well.

Hell, it was quite a feat for you to even be conceived, and then your challenges began in utero, with the single umbilical artery and the velamentous cord insertion and whatever reason(s) you've always been small for your age, and then the difficulties from coming early and being so little when you got here, and all the issues stemming from that and, of course, the heart thing.

I really believe these things will make you a stronger person. Or maybe they already have.

Ove the past two months, so many people have told us us that you are "a little fighter" and that you are "very special" and that "there's a reason [you're] here."

Of course, you're very special to us, and you will be no matter what, and the first reason you are here is for us to love, but I tend to think that they are right, that you've got big plans for your life, or that the universe has big plans for you.

Maybe that's just what every parent wants to believe for their child, but I think I really do believe it, and if that gives me the strength to get through the next few months of uncertainty and fear, then I'll keep on believing it.

What I have absolutely no doubt about, though, is how much your Mommy and I both love you, and how much you have changed our lives, and changed us, for the better in just this short time that you've been here so far, and how much we look forward to the living the rest of our lives your parents.

We love you so much, and we hope that we can some how make you know that.

Merry Christmas, little one.


Love,
Mama


PS - I'm sure Santa will do a much better job in the future. He was very tired this year.