Week 5

This is my new favorite photo of Sean.



Don't you just love when they do this? He's totally vertical, and it doesn't phase him in the least!



Love it.



We are entering week 5; Sean will be 1 month old on Saturday. I am in complete denial, and am frantically racking my memory for where the past four weeks have gone. How can he possibly be a month old already?



Everyone likes to talk about the First Six Weeks. Any good pregnancy/postpartum book will have an entire section on this, and veteran moms make a point of stopping first-time moms in the grocery store to encourage them to just get through the First Six Weeks. It's that magical time when you're expected to sit around in fat clothes, doing nothing---weepy, pudgy, sore, and sleep-deprived.



Four babies later, I have come to LOVE the First Six Weeks. I see myself getting grouchier the closer I'm getting to its inevitable end. The First Six Weeks represents the grace that I fail to give myself all of the other weeks of my childrens' lives. Grace to be a little manic, to ask for help, to embrace my expanded waistline. Grace to spend all afternoon snuggling my baby, even if it means that dinner is late to the table---or that we eat take-out, because there is no dinner at all.



The other night, I was up late nursing the baby and decided to sit at the computer with him afterwards, until he nodded off. So there I was, linking my way through blogs at 1:00 am, when I stumbled upon a blog detailing the labor and birth of a baby girl--a baby girl who was born on Reuben's 2nd birthday, in late November, and who died of congestive heart failure two days before Sean was born, mid-December. I was hysterical. I couldn't tear my eyes away. I sat in my dark living room in front of this glowing screen for over an hour, reading every account of her short little life, crying so hard I could hardly see the words.



After all that, I couldn't bring myself to go back to bed, so I sat up in the dark a while longer and cried some more. I absolutely couldn't bear the thought of wasting a single moment away from my new son, even for some much-needed sleep. I kept thinking: how are any of us immune from such grief? What if it happens to me, too?



Our First Six Weeks are almost over. I'm trying to make a game plan for the weeks to follow---a plan that includes remembering that baby girl and remembering to appreciate all of the little moments, even the ones that don't seem so fun at the time. Appreciating blurry-eyed midnight feedings and changing dirty diapers--realizing they are all part of the blessing, and that there are parents elsewhere who would give anything to change their baby's diaper, or be up all night with a crying newborn. The good and the bad are a packaged deal. I'm starting to get that now.

Matt and Nicole: We are overwhelmed with grief for you, and we are praying for peace to find you.