We pumped, we supplemented, I gave formula (soy formula no less, my own personal dread). I increased solid food, decreased it, then increased it again. But my son is losing weight. It doesn’t help that we had a nursing strike followed by a family wide stomach virus, from which I have just barely recovered. I try to make him eat, but as I’ve discovered there are two things you can’t make a baby or a child do, eat and poop. (Or in his case, stop pooping so much). The laundry has piled up and my indie author husband is behind on his writing and marketing. My own dreams of a novel are further behind than I’d like to admit along with every other project I had on the docket; all pushed to the back burner ( or in some cases, packed in tupperware and put in the freezer). I had the constant feeling of being behind, again. But more than all of that I worry about the baby. I hate that every time we go to the doctor they lecture me about his weight again, as though I didn’t want him to eat. Now they have me worrying about brain development. He doesn’t always look when you call his name. He doesn’t say Mama, at least not in reference to me. Sometimes he says Dada. He may be allergic to milk but it will take another month before we can get in to see an allergist. My daughter is a skinny stick too, but has suddenly decided that she prefers things with little nutritional value. So do I let her eat garbage just to let her eat? My mom-instinct says no, but I worry that she doesn’t gain much either and like the rest of us, lost weight during the stomach bug fiasco. She grows taller, just no wider and in fact gets skinnier by the day it seems. She wears gloves in the house today because she complains that it is too cold, which of course it probably is.
So here we are again. For all my reading of articles on efficiency and promoting peace in your home, my son cries because he wants to be let out of his high chair and my daughter shushes him and yells at him to be quiet as I write this. Apparently even five minutes is too much to ask. I pray for grace and mercy.

 

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