Envy

It is the way of the world that just about any person can find someone else who "has things easier than she does."

I look at women who had a smooth route to parenthood (and, presumably, will easily have second and third children) and am envious.

Women who had to use IVF or other extreme measures to conceive are envious of me, who only had to use pills for my first pregnancy and miraculously conceived for my second pregnancy.

Women who were never able to have children are envious of those who have.

It is easy to say that one should be grateful for what she has. But, unfortunately, we are all human and can't help feeling sorry for ourselves every now and then.

My friend A's daughter, who turns 1 tomorrow, had 1 hour of fussiness while she was teething. That's all. Then, poof, she had one tooth, and another the next day. This is the same child who doesn't cry when she goes down to sleep and has had a predictable schedule since she was 1 week old.

Tyler, on the other hand, has now had a week of pain. He's absolutely miserable, and while I've tried all the remedies (please don't suggest more), the only thing I can do is wait for that darned tooth to break through. While he's a good baby, he definitely is susceptible to the typical trials and tribulations of infanthood.

I try so hard to just let it go, but I find myself resentful of my friend because she's never "had it rough." She easily became pregnant, had an easy pregnancy and has never once worried about her daughter's health. Call me a terrible person, but I find myself wishing she could go through a rough couple of years so she knows what it's like for the rest of us.

I'm glad this blog is now invite-only, because I wouldn't want somebody who hasn't been following my story to stumble on this post. I know I'm whining, and I know I should be grateful, but it's hard to stop comparing myself to others. I'm worried I won't be able to stop the comparisons when Tyler gets old enough to figure it out. I just don't want to be one of those mothers.

I wish I weren't so damned competitive.

Stuck

I have a unique situation on my hands.

Though Tyler can roll over both ways, he rarely rolls from his tummy to his back and seems to forget that he can, indeed, do so. Instead, he scoots backwards until he gets tired, then cries for me to rescue him.

We have been using a sleep positioner since he was four months old to flatten out his head. Even after his head was looking better, we continued to use it because it deterred him from rolling onto his tummy when he was about to fall asleep or had just woken up. It worked well...until now.

For the past few days, Tyler has woken up in the morning howling because he's stuck on his tummy in the corner of his crib. This morning, he had a hard time going down for a nap because he kept rolling over and getting stuck.

Honestly. Out of all the issues a baby could have, this is Tyler's?

Good news

The CT scan this morning went more smoothly than I could ever have hoped. And, within 2 hours of returning home, Tyler's pedi called us. There is no hydrocephalus; just a larger than average (but still within accepted range) amount of fluid in his head. We'll need to have a follow-up CT scan sometime in the near future. Tyler just has a really big head (97th percentile, but then again, he's 95th percentile for height).

The big surprise was that he has fluid in his left ear. An ear infection! So that's why he's been fussier than normal over the past couple of weeks. And I thought he was teething...

Back in the Land of Worry

On Tuesday, we will be back again at the children's hosptial where we lost Zach.

It's hard for me to keep back the tears...even though they're a bit premature.

Tyler's pedi wanted him back on Thursday for a head circumference check. It seems his head is not only big, but growing faster than the doc would like to see. Sure enough, his head had jumped a few curves, and the pedi wanted him to get a CT scan. He tried to tell me that I shouldn't be terribly concerned, but I couldn't help it--I broke down in tears in his office. I've been told once before that "it's probably nothing."

Logically, I know that it's very unlikely to hit the lottery twice--or in this case, the polar opposite of the lottery. But it's very hard to think of my little baby in the CT machine, and even worse to think about what could happen. I wish I could be one of those people who just takes things as they go, but I've had too many bad experiences to do that.

The crappy part is, he's not allowed to eat formula for six hours prior to the scan because he's going to be sedated. I scheduled it for 8 a.m.; I figure that if he's going to be really upset and hungry, I might as well do it after he's had a night of not eating. He'll get up about 6:30, and hopefully we'll only have about an hour of a very unhappy baby.

Oh, how I hate waiting.

I L-O-V-E this video

'Nuff said.

I am frustrated.

I had the best of intentions: I was going to make as much of Tyler's baby food as I could, because I wasn't willing to pay the high prices for Gerber food all the time. We waited until 6 months per his pediatrician's orders, then started with rice cereal. Tyler wasn't having any of it. Thinking it was the taste of the rice cereal, I pureed my own peas, then tried him on that. He still wasn't thrilled.

We took a few days off, setting him in his high chair at mealtimes so he could get used to the feel. When we tried rice cereal again a few days later, he actually opened his mouth for it! Back to peas, and he would take little bits at each meal.

Now green beans. The first time I pureed them, I didn't add enough water and little chunks were still present. Tyler choked and threw up. We bought Gerber green beans just to see how he would do. He did wonderfully.

Then, I tried pureeing a second, much more runny batch of green beans. While he'll mostly get them down, he tends to blow raspberries with his food, and today, he threw it up again. Argh. Next on the menu is more Gerber green beans. I bet he'll love them.

Could my kid be on his way to a processed food diet?

I had almost forgotten how different my experience was from other mothers' experiences.

Today I was at the weekly baby group I attend, and the other moms--most of whom have babies younger than Tyler--started talking about induction, and labor pains, and general labor/delivery stories. One woman said something like, "Mothers-to-be just never really understand that, no matter how much you plan, things never go exactly according to your plans." She was referring, of course, to women who have specific "birthing plans," etc.

But then I started thinking about how our family-building had taken such a detour. How can you ever possibly plan for being told that your baby will never live outside the uterus, and you have to make the impossible choice between terminating your pregnancy and carrying a doomed baby to term?

I decided I was going to tactfully share my story with the other women. But the opportunity never arose. They were all busy talking about epidurals and Pitocin, and my tale of woe would have been awkward and a conversation-killer. My closest friend in that group knows our story, but no one else does.

I really wish they knew that part of me.