Life's Little Miracles

Over the past few weeks (since about a week and a half before Jack was born until yesterday) we have been very much blessed to have my mom stay with us.  She cooked, she cleaned, and she took care of Jack when I needed to take care of myself (shower, eat, etc.).  It was a HUGE blessing to have her and my little brother here (he was really helpful too) and I was super bummed when she had to leave.  I've really been missing her and her absence is noticeable.  Case in point: I didn't shower until 1:00 this afternoon and lunch wasn't eaten until about 45 minutes ago (it's 4:10 now).

Because she had to leave yesterday, we decided to bless Jack then.  It was a large family event; I believe we had 37 people total in our little house yesterday.  There were lots of opportunities for stuff to go wrong. Luckily almost everything when right.

When Jack was born, he was super chill.  Lewis and I thought we had scored an easy ride.  He didn't cry very much and would just cuddle with us when he was awake and not eating.  It was awesome.  Little did we know, this was merely jaundice-induced lethargy.  Jack struggle quite a bit with getting his bilirubin levels down.  When they finally did start going down, the fussiness came up.  Swell.

To be fair to our adorable wee one, he's typically awesome at night.  Most nights I have to wake him up to feed him (I won't let him go more than four hours between meals) and then he'll go right back to sleep.  I'm tired, but my sleep hasn't suffered as much as it could.

During the day, though, this kid eats A LOT.  He cluster feeds happily in the morning, eats leisurely throughout the early afternoon around napping, then cluster feeds fussily in the evening (often with loud crying and refusing to eat even though it's clearly what he wants.  It's like he's saying, "I'm so hungry I can't even eat!").

And then there was Saturday.  He was fussy and wanting to eat ALL. DAY. LONG.  I was frustrated.  He was angry.  No ones was getting any sleep.  Of course this was the day my extended family was to come down from Idaho to meet him.  We had planned to go out to dinner with everyone to celebrate my birthday.  Jack was not doing well by the time we were ready to go.  This did not bode well for his blessing day.  We had nearly 40 people coming over to meet this kid and the forecast was predicting a gloomy time.  (For the record, Jack fell asleep on the way to the restaurant and slept through all of dinner.)

Sunday morning dawned quite early.  I was still tired from the day before, but since church is at 9 AM, I was up by 6, getting Jack fed, extra milk pumped, the house straightened, and both of us dressed.  (Again, having my mom here was a blessing - the house was in pretty darn good shape thanks to her.)

As I mentioned, church was at 9.  Something you much know about my child is this: he always wants to be eating at 9.  Always.  Incredibly worried was I.  Lewis and I left for church at 8:45.  Jack was asleep. The blessing was at about 9:10.  Jack slept through it.  We all came back home at 10:15.  Jack was still asleep.

YES!

He woke up pleasant when we got home and I handed him and a bottle to his Great Grandma.  He ate happily and stayed awake and pleasant for pictures.  Then he finished his bottle with his Great Granny.  Then he pooped all over his nice blessing clothes, but luckily NOT on the very nice wool blanket his Grandma Young made him.  Phew.

After that he went back to sleep and allowed everyone to pass him back and forth and drool all over his cuteness.

Let me tell you what: this was all a miracle.  He was an absolute angel.  Later he screamed for quite a good little while, both at his grandparents' house for dinner and the picking it back up when we got home.  But when it mattered, when there were 37 people there to see him, he was a peach.  Thank you for that Jack.

And thank you for finally napping today so that I could write this blog and remember that you are an amazing little baby.