Thankful

I am thankful for the little Jedi in Training and his dad. They are too cute.

We've begun to face the monster that is "sleeping" this past week. It has been hard, and well, inconsistent to say the least. After a visit to his ped and her saying that we really should get him sleeping 8 hours through without enabling him I've started up the old pat down and calm routine. Some nights its good, some nights it ends up with 4 visits + and bringing him back to bed with me.At times we do get pretty frustrated and just really really tired.

This past week however has shown me that my frustration is missing the point. A couple of key instances have occurred to make me reexamine my sleeping issues. A mom that carried a baby to full term only to see him slip away shortly after, a mom-to-be who suddenly wasn't, and a mom who found herself in the toddler years looking back tearfully to the baby days. It all added up to me to mean the same thing. Everything is short lived. Nothing is guaranteed.

Sometimes as I watch Harrison I think about another would-be baby. My own Peanut who was a baby-that-wasn't. A while before Harrison announced he was coming there was Peanut. I really think Peanut was a she. I remember discovering her on a Friday, telling Jon that night, walking around New York with her, telling my parents over the phone, making an appointment for the following week, teaching my classes with my mind daydreaming away. And then I was in the hospital and she was gone, as quickly as she came that next week. That one incident hurt me on a level that I'd never felt before. It was like sitting on a bubble of depression. Feeling like I could sink right down further beneath the surface. Family and friends kept me up, balancing on that bubble until I could feel myself resurfacing again. Sometimes I look at Harrison and think, are you Peanut? But I know he isn't. He always felt like a completely different baby. And of course he was my little bear :)

When we found out about Harrison we didn't tell friends until 4 months along. I couldn't help but fear he would leave me like Peanut did. To be honest, the entire first trimester I steeled my heart for another unhappy ending. Self-preservation I guess. I didn't want to "love" the baby growing inside. I could only bring myself to want desperately to protect it and to see it into the second trimester. It wasn't until those first flutters and that first ultrasound that I began embracing the fact a baby was on the way. And once I felt secure enough I could feel my heart open up and love just pour into that little boy. And the rest they say is history.


So when that annoying little monitor is crackling with static and blaring Bear noises I get up. And when I sit by the Bear's bed patting down his angry tummy, singing about ants marching along, I don't just remember these stories, I hear them reverberating in my body. And even as he yells and fusses I can crack a happy smile because he is here.