Praise the Lord?

So somewhere in the back of my mind I thought surely God would have mercy on us after all that we've been through and give us an angel of a baby who sleeps through the night, never cries, eats well, and doesn't cause too much trouble. Sure he owes us that much.

Ha. Ha.

Think again.

God apparently doesn't think we deserve anything of the sort.

Alicia's first few days at home have been hectic. I thought that since Alicia's been out of the womb for four months and the hospital had her on a regulated schedule, all we needed to do was to follow that schedule and all would be good. Oh, the naivete.

I forget that my little girl is a person, with a mind of her own, and emotions. Oh, SO MANY EMOTIONS. She is not some robot that we can program by plugging in some numbers and then she just does what we tell her to do.

Oh, no.

The books always make it sound so easy. Do this, and this, and this, and you'll have a happy, healthy baby that coos when she wakes up. Huh. Are we missing something? =) Well, I know it's just the first few days and things will get better. =)

Thankfully, things are already better. The trio of us are adjusting and we're are making progress as a little family of three. Linda and I are learning how to care for and meet our little girl's needs in the way that she likes and Alicia is adjusting to her parents and our funny quirks as well.

Since my last post, we've had a couple of tough days and nights. There was one night when she wouldn't eat, though I knew she was hungry, she wouldn't sleep, though I knew she was tired, and it seemed like nothing we did made her happy. Talk about feeling like a failure.

It was quite an interesting experience, holding on tightly to a squirming, fussy baby with one hand while frantically flipping through our baby book trying to find something, anything that might give me a clue as to what might be wrong with her.

Eventually, we did figure out that she probably had some indigestion and probably had some gas and once that passed she was a lot happier and calmer.

Lesson learned, don't rush the feeding process and burp frequently.

The odd comfort in all of this is that it's all so NORMAL! While yes, I am sleep deprived and sometimes I just want to shake my little girl out of frustration, the lovely thing is that it means that she's healthy. She is JUST LIKE any other newborn. No longer am I describing things that people can only sympathize with. Every time I post something on Facebook, or talk to anyone who has ever had a newborn, I get empathy . . . or apathy. Which is actually, fantastic! It actually feels really nice to be able to join the world of average parents. It's nice to hear from people, "Oh I'm sorry. We went through that too. But it'll get better." Or "Yeah. You don't get to sleep? Well, what do you expect having a newborn in your house." Haha.

A friend of ours recently told Linda and I that he felt we'd be going through another period of difficulty soon and that the key to combatting it would be thanksgiving. When I heard that, I knew immediately that those words for the time that we're going through right now. And it's true, that as we continue to give thanks for Alicia's health and for her being home with us it takes away a lot of the sting of the inconsolable crying.

The great thing is that as people have told us over and over things are getting better. Last night, after Alicia's midnight feeding, I put her down and she slept deeply. She didn't stir, she didn't make a sound, she slept. And for the first time since Linda and I brought Alicia home, so did we.

Linda still had to wake up at 3:00 to feed Alicia, but at least she had tot wake up. It wasn't like she had been up already cause Alicia was crying the whole night. So we're making progress.

Thank you for your prayers. They continue to be very valuable and precious to us. =)

We continue to move onwards and upwards. Praise the Lord!