A Letter to My Rainbow Baby

Dear Dash,

Today you turned 4 months old. The last few weeks have been difficult for me as I've watched you grow. You're no longer the tiny little infant I brought home and time is flying by so much faster than I want it to.

Before too much time goes by, I want to share something near and dear to my heart. You see, before you were born, you had a brother. He was born sleeping just a little more than 9 months before you. He was tiny. His little feet were a little shorter than your pinky finger. His lips were shaped just like yours and mine. Like you, his eyebrows were so light they were almost invisible.

Someday, when you are older, I will show you the pictures of your brother.

If you want to know what he felt like, or smelled like, you can ask Grammy. She came to the hospital and held him. She touched his cheek, held his tiny hand, admired his perfect feet.

You can ask your dad, too, but be patient with his response. Daddy lost his son and that is something he has a difficult time talking about. We miss your brother.

Something amazing happened just 9 weeks to the day after your brother was born. We found out you were on the way.

My pregnancy with you was an experience you'll have plenty of time to read about.

Since your birth, our family feels a lot less empty than it did. I don't feel we are complete, but for now we are whole in a way we had not been for quite some time.

You are the sweetest baby I've ever met. I wasn't so sure about that the first 6-8 weeks, but it was all my fault you were a fussy mess! Once I quit eating dairy, you became calm, you stopped waking up with painful gas, and you now sleep 10-11 hours straight each night.

If you have children of your own, you'll understand just how precious that 10 hour sleep truly is!
While you're sleeping, I wake up each and every night to express the milk my body is making for you. You don't need this milk, so I am giving it to another baby because his mother is having a difficult time making enough milk for him.

You love to smile. You smile when your diaper is being changed, when you're nursing, when Daddy smiles at you, and when you hear your oldest sister's voice as she walks in the door from school each day.

You love to laugh. The sounds is infectious and we all stop to listen to the sheer delight you are sharing.

You love to hold on to things. When you are nursing, you always grab my shirt or my bra. I try to get you to hold my finger but you let go and grab my shirt instead.

You love to stand up and you're starting to bounce when we hold you in our laps.

You still watch everything going on around you, taking it all in. Sometimes you stare off into the distance, or at a wall, and I think you are seeing people we cannot see.

Who do you see? Is it my mother? Is it your brother? Is it a friend you knew in Heaven before you came to be with us?

At 4 months, we are still having some difficulties with your latch and position as you nurse. I have a milk blister that doesn't want to heal and it feels like a fire poker is stabbing me, especially in the half hour after you nurse on that side. You still sometimes make sucking noises because you lose suction. Most babies may make a little noise, but not like you! I nurse you around other people regularly and anyone who can hear sure does get an earful.

When you're super hungry, you seem to keep suction pretty well but if you're just nursing to soothe, it is painful so I frequently just unlatch you and wait a few minutes before trying again.
I have a goal to let you nurse until you are two years old. My mother always said I was the most stubborn of her children and that stubbornness has kept me from giving up on nursing you at the breast. There are times when I can nurse you without any pain at all and I love those times and hope that they will become more frequent as you grow.

The bliss on your face when you are "milk drunk" is worth all of the pain.
The rolls on your thighs and your double chin are worth all of the pain.
Your dimples as your cheeks have filled out are worth all the pain.
Every little bit of weight that you put on comes from me and that is a powerful feeling.

You ran a fever last week so I took you to the doctors' office. They checked your weight and I was pleased to see you've put on over 7 pounds since you left the hospital! Your weight was 13lbs 9oz that day. Woo hoo!!

The last thing I want you to know is about my feelings regarding my Savior and my Heavenly Father. I prayed daily for years to have another child. When we lost your brother, I was devastated. How could my Heavenly Father let me lose my son after all that we had been through to conceive him?
And somewhere along the line I realized that Heavenly Father knew exactly what I was feeling. He had to lose his son, too. That knowledge brought me peace and Heavenly Father let me know that everything was going to be okay. By letting His Son die, it gave me a way to return to Him.
Your brother's death paved the way for you to enter my life in much the same way that my Elder Brother lets me know my Heavenly Parents. If I hadn't lost him, I would never have had you.
So when you see me crying, just put those arms of yours around me and I will hug you back. You are the promise my Heavenly Father gave me.

With love beyond words,
Mommy

Motherless Mothering

It has been quite some time since I posted anything of real relevance regarding my life.

Or perhaps it just feels like an eternity?

I’ve had a few different posts running through my brain but I have been unable to focus on any of them. This has led to a complete absence of posts in general.  Oops!

Tonight there is something weighing on my mind that truly has no solution but I want to talk about it a little anyway because I know that someday my children will read everything I’ve written here.

I am not perfect but I want them to know that I’m trying to be the best mother I can.

My oldest is finishing third grade next month. This was her teacher’s rookie year but the snags from that end have been minimal. Unfortunately, there have been snags.

This is also the year that K was evaluated for the gifted program. Part of the evaluation included a parent survey, where I needed to evaluate K in specific areas, including social behaviors, hobbies, reading, math, etc.  I struggled with the evaluation because I don’t know how she compares to her peers or what is normal for her age group. I only know what she does and whether she is working her hardest or not.

For some time I have thought that K is a smart student who can remember facts and assimilate ideas in meaningful ways. Her ability to extrapolate math concepts is remarkable as well. What I did not know is whether that qualified as being gifted or not.

From a personal perspective, I don’t consider myself to be “gifted”. I consistently scored above 95^th percentile on standardized tests and my teachers called me a model student, but gifted? No. Upon entering junior high I was tested and I honestly don’t remember the results. I believe I fell into the “maybe” category and my mother could have pushed it but she chose not to. I seem to recall a conversation about ten years ago where she told me that she didn’t want me being ostracized further. I was already one of only two 7^th graders in advanced band and 12 students who had tested into the honors Algebra class. I wasn’t popular at church, either, for a wide variety of reasons I’d rather not go into right now. I didn’t fit in well anywhere and Mom didn’t want to make that worse.

For me to try and label my bright child as “gifted” just seems wrong. She’s not average, but I don’t think she’s any more intelligent than I was at that age.

Here is where the conflict comes: she isn’t your standard third grader but she’s not gifted, either.

Where does that leave me? With a child who is bored in school and starting to act out. Whether the acting out is related to being bored, to her new role as Dash’s sister, etc, I don’t know. I wish I did.

There was an incident on the playground last week that absolutely mortified me. I think she was trying to tease some of her friends, but it got out of hand. She was giving two students bunny ears and one of them, her closest male friend, took offense. I don’t know how quickly it escalated, but he pushed her down. She got up and for reasons I don’t even begin to understand, gave him bunny ears again. He repeated the pushing. I don’t know how many times she hit the ground, but the boy was given a referral to the principal and K got off scot-free, even though she was clearly antagonizing her friend.

To me, that behavior (doing something to someone they don’t like) is bullying. And I don’t like it.

When I asked her about her day when she came home, she didn’t mention a thing; she acted like everything was perfect. She was so hesitant to say what had happened and I know in my mommy heart it’s because she knew she had done something wrong. It took some serious patience on my part, knowing that how I handled the situation would set a tone for any future discussions related to K doing things she shouldn’t and/or me disapproving of her actions.

If the playground incident was a stand-alone incident, I wouldn’t be quite so worried, but it’s just another step in a pattern I’ve been noticing at home. K has become pretty aggressive with her 4 year old sister. She has smacked her face, pinched her cheeks, yells at her, trips her on purpose, etc. I feel like she’s trying to prove she’s bigger and better than others, and I don’t understand why.

I guess the moral of the story is that I’m feeling like a rather big fat failure as a mom. 

I wonder if my mother ever felt the same way?  Like me, she couldn’t call her mother and ask for advice, since her mother had passed away when my older brother was only 4. Her maternal support was her mother-in-law, who had raised 5 boys—a very different dynamic than the four children Mom had.

 Motherless mothering is hard. I knew it would be, but experiencing the reality as my children grow really drives that home. Sometimes, a mommy just wants her mother, too.

I have the option of appealing the decision regarding the gifted program but time is quite short and I’m not entirely sure I want to open that bag of worms. The process wouldn’t be very easy on K and a second rejection may be more than she can take right now . . .

But here is something cute to cheer everyone up.