Journal

Megan is 6 weeks old now... I went for my post partum visit yesterday.  My OB was so happy to see us and ooed and awed over Megan.  It was such a long journey to get here... almost 3 years from when we started ttc until Megan's birth and 3 losses in that time. 

We had Megan Baptized on Sunday... such a beautiful service and she was really good the whole time .  I continue to be amazed at just how in love with her I am.  Even my other kids are totally smitten with love for her.  The Baptsim was so emotional... we had waited so long to get to that point and it felt like something even bigger than a Baptism... a celebration of her life and of the infinite possibilities with God.  God is so good.  We had 30 people over for lunch after... I had spent all day the 2 days before getting things just perfect and I was really pleased with how everything turned out.  We had too much food-- homemade soups and salads and sandwiches along with a tray of homemade cookies and brownies and a beutiful cake from the bakery.

My dad brought me a great book that I would recommend to anyone who lost a baby and went on to have another... Elizabeth McCracken's "An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination."  The author and her husband had a stillborn baby while living in France and went on to have a healthy baby about a year later.  It was a book that expressed so eloquently so many of my feelings... about how happy she is with her baby, how the loss changed her second pregnancy and how the new baby does not take away the pains of the loss.  She says "It's a happy life, but somebody is missing.  It's a happy life and somebody is missing."  She also says the love of her new baby magnifies her love for her lost son and vice versa.  There are even some very funny parts.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, I am so aware of how much I have to be thankful for. 

4 weeks old... tomorrow is actually Megan's 1 month birthday!  It's been so wonderful, but it has flown by.  She is really starting to smile now... I love those toothless grins... right at me and you can see she is really in there behind the smile, if you know what I mean.  Each milestone I know will be met with a mixture of excitement, pride... and even sadness that time is passing and that soon she will not be so little anymore.  

She sleeps pretty well once she gets settled, but some nights it's hard to settle her in.  Usually, she goes down around 11:00 and sleeps 4-5 hours before getting up, but last night, I could not settle her and wound up falling asleep with her nursing in my bed.  I woke up at 2:30 with my whole right side numb from not moving.  I put her back in her bassinet and she slept until 6:30.... so I have little to complain about!

She is a champion breast feeder!  On Tuesday morning, she goes for her 1 month check up ... I can't wait to see how much weight she has gained.  She has outgrown the newborn clothes and I have had fun getting into the 3 month old outfits.   

Hard to believe Megan is a little over 2 weeks now.  She is a really good baby for the most part, but these night time feedings are tiring me out!  We gave her her first real bath yesterday since her cord stump finally fell off.  She actually seemed to like it pretty well.  The other kids were scrambling to get a spot around her to watch as dh videotaped it all.  Very sweet moment all around.

She is so beautiful and it's hard not to get caught up in how in love with her I am.  There are some surprising moments when I am struck by the weight of the babies I lost before her though... how odd it is to know that if I had not lost them, I never would have had Megan.  And yet, in some way, I can still feel the sadness of those losses.  There are times when I think about holding little Lia's lifeless body in the delivery room... how broken and devastated I felt then and how hard it was to imagine being here happy with Megan.  Somehow, my happiness with megan has brought those losses forward in my mind... I guess as I grapple to make sense of them still. 

I have tried to upload photos of Megan to my profile, but for some reason I have had trouble... hopefully I will figure that out this week.