Little Bug had her 9 month check up on March 1st. What a wonderful appointment it was!

Little Bug weighs 16 pounds 15 ounces (20% percentile) and is 28 inches long (70% percentile). I find that interesting. Little Bug is tiny like her Mama and tall like her Daddy. She’s a great combo of us both, which is only something God could have done!

As a parent you want to hear that your child is healthy and growing and developing as they should. When the pediatrician asked what Little Bug was doing developmentally and I told her that Little Bug says two words, her response was, “Wow. She’s advanced, you know. Most babies say sounds like Ma & Da by 9 months, but haven’t yet said words like ‘Bye’ and ‘Ut-O’”.

Advanced?

Let’s just put it this way … it made me feel so good to hear those words spoken about my daughter because it makes me think I am doing something right!

The only thing I dislike about the fact that I did not carry Little Bug in my womb is that I had absolutely no control whatsoever over what she was exposed to in utero. And, as we all know, Little Bug was exposed to some not-so-good-things during her 37w3d gestation.

But as God has shown once more, He is faithful in everything. And in His great mercy He has allowed Little Bug to overcome the obstacles that were placed in her life before she even took her first breath.

Little Bug has been our little girl now for 6 weeks and 6 days, the same amount of time we had to prepare for her upon learning of her arrival the day we turned in the paperwork to the adoption agency.

These past almost 7 weeks have flown by in comparison to the almost 7 weeks that we waited for Little Bug to arrive.

I’d say the 3rd, 4th and 5th weeks were in the hardest in caring for her because the first and second week I had almost constant help from family members.

And now here we are at 7 weeks! I can already tell there is going to be a tremendous difference between week 3 and week 7.

We haven’t quite hit the routine mark yet – but we are very close!

Little Bug has developed somewhat of a eating pattern, which makes it so much easier for me to predict when she is hungry. She has also developed somewhat of a sleeping pattern, which has enabled me to better know when I will have a block of time to do laundry, wash bottles and blog!

And let me tell you … The Miracle Blanket is a MUST HAVE!

For about a week now, Little Bug eats around 9pm and then has a good awake time (when we go on a walk). Then we put her bed anywhere from 10-11pm and she doesn’t wake up to eat until at least 3am – sometimes even later than that!

*****

Thank you for all the kind words concerning my blog. I love that through my trials many people have read this story and found encouragement in their own struggle with infertility.

I once heard that it is only once you have actually been through something that you are able to really empathize and help others going through the same thing.

That is so true. No one quite understands what it is like to go through infertility unless they have personally gone through it as well.

Being infertile opens the door for me to minister to the hearts of other woman going through the same thing. I will not miss out on that opportunity. 

In those dark days when infertility seemed to surround me from every angle, I longed to find others going through the same thing. It was through blogging that I found a tremendous support system. I “met” other women going through infertility and through writing the blogs, people locally and from all over the globe started praying for me.

I greatly desire to be available to anyone who just needs to make that connection with another infertile woman!

With that said, feel free to contact me through a comment. If you desire contact by email, leave your email address and I will respond as soon as I can!

I usually sit down to write a blog with the topic in mind. However, today I am here really just to kill time before Little Bug’s next feeding (which is only a few minutes from now) and I don’t really know what I will end up writing.

I’ve written a lot of posts recently about how challenging bringing Little Bug home has been. I think it is time I write a post about the complete JOY it has been to bring Little Bug home.

Before I even knew about Little Bug, I would think about what my baby would look like. I would wonder if she would be petite like me and have her daddy’s eyes or her daddy’s smile. I always pictured a little girl that looked like me when I was little … blue eyes with blonde, curly hair.

Being that Little Bug is adopted, it really is amazing that she looks like she could really be biologically half me and half Dave. She has gorgeous blue eyes and a mixture of brownish blonde hair. She is so petite and little.

Not that it really matters in the least bit that Little Bug look like us, I find it very interesting that she really does look like she is biologically related to us.

At night when I wake up with Little Bug for those middle of the night feedings, I bring her out to the living room so we do not disturb a sleeping Daddy who must get up and go to work the next day, and sit with her in the chair. Her little mouth and tongue are moving signaling to me, “Mommy, I am hungry.” I make her bottle and as I am shaking it to mix formula with water, Little Bug’s cries stop for a brief moment because she knows it’s coming! I lay her on the arm of the chair, put the bottle to her mouth and she begins sucking. Sometimes, she sucks vigorously and other times she sucks slowly. Her little hands are balled in a fist and are usually resting on her chest as she sucks away. So cute! I need to get a picture of how she does that.

I enjoy feeding Little Bug in the middle of night. All is quiet and it is just my hungry little baby and me. And sometimes, Pup. She will wake up and come out to the living room with me and sleep on the couch when I feed Little Bug sometimes. But that is usually only when she has the desire to chew Little Bug’s burp clothes. I have to take the burp cloth with me when I go to change Little Bug’s diaper or else Pup will be chewing on it when I get back. Weird little dog!

At night when I am feeding Little Bug, it is a good time to think about what God has planned for Little Bug’s life. I know He has wonderful plans for Little Bug just like He had wonderful plans for her mommy. I look at those little hands balled in a fist and wonder what those little hands will be doing in service for the Lord when Little Bug grows up. I see her tiny little feet and wonder what roads God has planned for Little Bug to walk.

Maybe this week I am beginning to emerge from “survival mode” because I’ve been thinking today about the importance of praying for Little Bug every single day. Praying for her future. Praying that she will one day realize her need for a Savior and surrender her life to God. Praying that she will have a tender, compassionate heart willing to be of service to the Lord. Praying she will have an obedient heart. And praying that she will learn to trust in the Lord for her every need when she finds herself on a road that is very difficult to walk.

Not only is it my responsibility to meet Little Bug’s physical and emotional needs but it is my great responsibility to bring her up in the Lord. It is my great responsibility and privilege.

God has entrusted her to us. I pray we will be found faithful in raising her to love the One who gave her to us.

Little Bug wearing the dress Aunt Amanda bought for her!

I bought Little Bug these flip flops to wear with her 4th of July dress but they were way too big for her little feet!

Uncle Wesley and Little Bug “wearing” the flip flops!

Our first 4th of July as a family of 3

*****

Little Bug did okay yesterday. It was her first big outing since we went into “hibernation” almost 2 weeks ago. She was overstimulated at times, but overall, she did okay. I went into the back bedroom to feed her and she slept in the back bedroom several times swaddled and with her “Soothing Sounds” CD.

We do feel that it is still important to keep Little Bug as unstimulated as possible so no more big get-togethers for Little Bug until she is completely recovered.

Little Bug will be 6 weeks old on Wednesday, so hopefully we are just weeks away from full recovery!

Today has been a good day! It’s probably because Dave has been off work today because of the 4th and my mom came over today to help me clean my house!

If you don’t already know, I am a clean freak. I actually like to clean my house. I know … that is odd and no, you can’t pay me to come clean your house! I just like the way my house looks after it is clean and I just like clean I guess you could say.

I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I always had the super clean and organized room and my little brother was the one who lived in the pig sty. Which is why I was super happy when he moved out of the room we shared into his own room. It used to drive me crazy having to clean up after him all the time when we were kids!

I know now that I am a mommy my house will no longer look like a model home at all times! And, I’m obviously okay with that!

It won’t be too long though and Little Bug will be right there “helping” me clean. Her birth mom was a clean freak too so I fully expect Little Bug will be too! (It’s okay if she’s not but I don’t think she stands much of a chance.)

*****

The methods of Dr. Karp continue to do wonders in our household. We ordered the soothing sounds CD and it really has given us an extra hour or two of sleep every night! She has done at least one 4-hour stretch each night since we started using the white noise at night. That is really nice. When she is sleepy during the day I use the CD and it helps her to sleep longer and more peacefully.

Dr. Karp really is a smart man. Everything he does is based on the fact that an infant who is less than 3 months old is essentially still a fetus and feels most at home when swaddled, in motion and listening to synthetic womb noise (or some kind of white noise).

It all makes complete sense to me because before birth a baby is constantly hearing the mother’s heartbeat and the swoosh of her blood flow and the amniotic fluid. According to Dr. Karp this noise is louder than a vacuum cleaner to baby in the womb! Baby is constantly in motion (or jiggled) as mom goes about the day. That is why when mom lays down at night to sleep and is still baby wakes up and keeps mom up! And baby is in very tight quarters in the womb so swaddling is just the thing a baby needs to feel secure and at home.

Dr. Karp says you cannot spoil a baby under 3 months of age because they are already used to being swaddled, hearing white noise and being in constant motion. That is how they lived 24/7 before birth. So, if we are mimicking these things for them outside the womb for only 12 hours or so a day (when baby sleeps) we have already cut baby back tremendously from what baby is used to before birth.

Little Bug does seem to sleep for longer periods and more peacefully when she is swaddled and the CD is playing.

Whatever works and keeps baby and mommy happy is good enough for me!

Here is Little Bug as I type … snoozing away to the sound of the womb right here by the computer desk!

Yesterday was a day in paradise, today – not so much.

I’m telling you, newborns are very, very, very, very, very complex creatures. What works one day makes them scream the next. Just when you think you might actually have a piece of their puzzling world figured out, the bottom drops out and you’re back at square one.

Two words.

Survival mode.

A few days ago Little Bug LOVED the sling. Then, she hated it. And now, as I type, she is sound asleep in it.

One word.

Relax.

I have to keep reminding myself of that one word because I absolutely hate not knowing what my baby wants when! It’s the worst feeling.

So what can I do but pull out every trick in the bag and hope and pray I find the one she wants.

I like what Kellie said in a comment in response to my Up and Down, Up and Down post:

Thank you for being so honest! I think we dream up how it’s going to be when we are forced to wait, and after reading this I am going to prepare myself a little more for the "reality" of it all!

She couldn’t have said it better, I don’t think.

After years of infertility, when baby FINALLY arrives, I think we just have this picture perfect scenario in our minds. We think that everything will just be sunshine and roses because we have all we’ve ever wanted … a baby!

We don’t tend to think about the exhaustion, the crying baby who cries and you have no clue what the matter is. We don’t think about being bombarded with all the parenting methods out there and then feeling like maybe you are doing something wrong because that isn’t the way you are doing things. We don’t tend to think that suddenly from one day to the next our relationship with our husband changes. Not necessarily in a bad way, but you suddenly have this other little (demanding) person in the house and it just changes the whole household atmosphere in a way I don’t think we really expect.

We tend to only think about holding our peacefully sleeping newborn baby in our arms and staring at their perfect little features while finally feeling like all is right in the world.

I’m not saying there are not moments like that. Believe me, there have been tons of those moments in this household over the past 5 weeks!

What I am saying is exactly what Kellie said.

After waiting so long to have a baby we have tons of time to think and dream about what life with a baby will be like!

I know I did my share of dreaming and I even told myself that adjusting to life with a newborn will be a cinch for me because I’ve been changing diapers and caring for babies since I was 10 years old. I’ve essentially grown up taking care of babies and children. Oh, and don’t forget, I nannied for twins. Twins! If I can handle twins I just knew my own baby would be a cinch.

One word.

HA!

Little Bug has been anything but a cinch! In fact, she has been a tremendous challenge. One that I just wasn’t expecting because after all, infertility is enough of a challenge, wouldn’t you say?!

I think the difference here is that Little Bug is a welcome challenge! Infertility was not something I willingly signed up for. (Although after having walked that road and witnessed the hand of God perform many miracles through my infertility, I most certainly do not regret in any way having been “signed up” for infertility against my will.) Little Bug is certainly a challenge – but one that I most certainly did sign up extremely willingly for.

I think this is where FOCUS comes in to play. These days are fleeting. As much as a challenge some days (like today) may be, these days will be gone in a flash.

One day I won’t be able to look down and see my newborn daughter sound asleep in the sling, mouth wide open.

So, I’ll cherish these days – even these challenging days. And I will also cling to the advice so many of you have said: The first three months are the hardest. It will get better!

Yesterday Little Bug was … restless? grumpy? gassy? always hungry? I really didn’t know what the problem was to tell you the truth. She would fall asleep and then 10 or 15 minutes later would be up and frustrated at the world, it seemed.

Late afternoon I remembered a DVD a blogger friend had ordered for me off Amazon and had shipped to my house. When I received it, I put it with all our other DVDs and didn’t think about it until yesterday when Little Bug was “out of sorts”.

The DVD is called The Happiest Baby on the Block (Harvey Karp, M.D.). The outside cover claims you can watch the DVD and learn the secrets of the world’s best baby calmer by discovering the amazing Calming Reflex that supposedly every baby is born with. It’s a baby’s natural crying “off-switch”!

I thought, Why not put it in and see what he has to say? I mean, I am in survival mode, so at this point, I’ll try anything!

I turned on the DVD and began watching. Dr. Karp started by saying that the first three months of an infant’s life are the “Fourth Trimester”. Humans are born extremely immature, compared to all other creatures born on this earth. For example, a horse delivers her baby and that very same day the baby is up running around! Not so with humans! Humans are born helpless.

Dr. Karp says babies that are less than 3 months old need to feel like they are still in the womb, and when they do feel that way, they are most happy.

He went on to tell of his 5 S’s, which are 5 simple steps that can help all babies be happy and sleep better too!

Swaddle

Side/Stomach Position

Shushing

Swinging

Sucking

I’m not going to go into every S in detail. However, after watching what Dr. Karp did to stop babies from crying (it really was like flipping a switch!) and to help sooth them so they will sleep peacefully, I was ready to give it a try on Little Bug!

I swaddled her like Dr. Karp showed on the DVD, held her in the Side Position to calm/soothe her and then put the Soothing Sounds CD on (mimics sounds from the womb) and Little Bug slept peacefully for the first time that day!

A-MA-ZING!

The DVD cover also claimed that if you swaddle baby all night and play the Soothing Sounds CD, you can get an extra 1-2 hours of sleep. Like I said, we are in “survival mode” around here so we were willing to try ANYTHING for an extra hour or two of sleep!

First, we had to figure out a way for the DVD to play in our bedroom. (We don’t have a TV or DVD player in our bedroom and we did not feel comfortable with Little Bug sleeping in the Living Room by herself).

My technology savvy husband hooked Little Bug up using some speakers and the laptop and here she is swaddled and snoozing away to the sound of the womb right by our bed around midnight last night!

Little Bug had a feeding at 11:30pm. We put her to bed around midnight and she did not wake up until … drumroll … 4 AM!!!

And she continues to snooze, peacefully. Here she is sleeping away to the sound of the womb while swaddled up like a burrito!

Day 2 of trying this out begins …

Here’s the link: The Happiest Baby

Thank you, April, for sending me this DVD!

After Little Bug’s therapy appointment on June 22nd, when we learned that she was still going through withdrawals, Dave and I decided the best thing for her was to go into “hibernation” for a while to help her, hopefully, get better quicker.

I think it’s working! Little Bug and I have stayed at home all week long. I have ensured that her environment is as unstimulating as possible.

On Saturday I started noticing Little Bug being able to look into our eyes during feedings. The therapist’s main clue that Little Bug was still having some withdrawals was when I told her that Little Bug wouldn’t look at us when we fed her or would look at our faces for just a little bit and then turn away. The face is the most visual stimulation for a baby and for Little Bug, it was just too much.

But now she consistently looks into our eyes when we feed her (unless she is in and out of sleep during feedings)!

Every year since we have been together we go to Dave’s parents’ house for 4th of July. We are planning to go there on Saturday and then continue taking each day at time beyond that. If Little Bug still needs more time in “hibernation” we will do that; if she is ready to “face the world”, we will start going places in moderation.

Little Bug LOVES to sleep in her bouncy seat with the vibrator going. I’m glad we’ve found that she likes this because it enables me to wash her bottles and do a load of laundry while she is sleeping.

Little Bug will be 5 weeks old tomorrow! We definitely are still in “survival mode” but I have accepted that, for now, I will live in “survival mode” and in a month or two, Little Bug and I will be able to establish some kind of routine to our days.

Not a day goes by that I don’t take the time to just sit and hold her and relish in the miracle that she is.

Thank you for continuing to pray for Little Bug. I cannot wait for the day when Little Bug learns just how many people were involved through prayer in the miracle of her becoming our little girl.

Little Bug will be 4 weeks old on Wednesday. She has overcome much in her 4 weeks of life.

As I have mentioned before, Little Bug’s birth mom was on a prescription drug during pregnancy. When she was born Little Bug had to go to the NICU to be monitored for withdrawal symptoms.

The main thing Little Bug needed was routine and as little stimulation as possible so her nervous system could begin the healing process from chemical exposure in uterro.

We were told she would be in the NICU anywhere from 5 days to 3 months. She was released to come home after only 5 days in the NICU.

However, her withdrawal symptoms are something that we are still dealing with almost 4 weeks after her birth.

Yesterday we went to see the physical therapist. The therapist was wonderful and really took the time to explain to us in great detail what Little Bug is going through. She said that because of the exposure to chemicals in utero, Little Bug’s nervous system is extremely sensitive and she is still very easily overly stimulated.

Little Bug still needs low stimulation. The therapist explained that once Little Bug was born she was suddenly stimulated by all 5 senses – touch, sight, smell, taste and sound. Little Bug very easily can be bombarded by all of these senses and her little immature-trying-to-recover-from chemicals-nervous system just goes on overdrive.

“Low stimulation” means that she still must be held mostly by Dave and me. Passing her around from person to person is too stimulating for Little Bug at this time.

Eating is a very stimulating activity for any baby. When we feed Little Bug we are to cut out as many of the sight, smell, sound and touch senses as possible. Best case scenario would be to feed Little Bug in a dimly lit, very quiet room.

Sleep is extremely important for Little Bug. It is while she is sleeping that her body is able to grow and repair itself. While she is sleeping we are to let her sleep and not touch her and make her environment as unstimulating as possible.

As the therapist was telling us all this I (of course) immediately panicked thinking I had been doing everything wrong with Little Bug because we had eased up on trying to not stimulate her and had been more lenient in allowing other people besides the two of us hold her. The therapist told me that because I had said I had her in the sling at my parent’s house for Father’s Day instead of letting her be passed around she knew I was “being smart” with her.

The therapist described specific signs that show Little Bug is over stimulated. We have seen all of these signs in Little Bug and now that we know what she does when she is over stimulated we will better be able to help her.

It is especially hard for me for family and friends to not be able to hold Little Bug as much as I know they would like. But at the same time I am Little Bug’s mother and I WILL do what is best for her. And right now following these guidelines is what is best for her.

While all of this information was extremely overwhelming to take in yesterday, there is wonderful news!

All of this is TEMPORARY! It is just a matter of time and Little Bug’s nervous system will mature and all of this will be in the past. But for now, it is extremely important that we follow the guidelines of Little Bug’s doctors and therapist so she can fully recover.

Here are some specific prayer requests:

1. Pray for Little Bug’s immature nervous system. Pray for complete healing and maturity as each day goes by.

2. Pray for Dave and me as we seek to do what is best for Little Bug.

3. Pray for wisdom in knowing what Little Bug needs when.

*****

My new best friend???

This sling!

This is the first week I am flying solo with Little Bug. I am very fortunate to have a mother and mother-in-law willing to help out but the reality of the situation is I can’t just lie on the couch every single day of week holding Little Bug while others take care of my house!

So when it is Little Bug and me plus a sink full of dirty bottles and piles of laundry … in the sling she goes if she is wanting Mommy to hold her and Mommy is needing to get those things done!

LIFESAVER!

PS: Sorry for the corny picture but I am by myself and that was the best way to get that shot!

*****

Pray for Little Bug!