Alison is now almost 3 months old (and I started writing this when she was 8 weeks old....apparently I've been busy). I can hardly believe it. The past months have been so incredibly wonderful, and so.incredibly.HARD. at the same time.
Alison was not the happiest of babies. It was quite the shock to us, since James and I are such delightful people, we weren't too sure how we ended up with an unhappy little lady. Alison was oh so very cute and wonderful, but also quite demanding. She wanted to be held 100% of the time, and was a very restless sleeper. She had multiple nights where she had me up for hours on end, pacing with her. She would be fed, have a clean diaper and would finally fall asleep in my arms, but once I would put her down she would come to life, crying and wriggling and just acting so unhappy in general. There were multiple nights where I would wake James up so he could take a turn with her, because I was just too exhausted to carry on.
Days weren't much better. I would put her down long enough to go to the bathroom, and make a PBandJ for Zack, and even on occasion change his diaper.
Then came the day where I needed to go to Target. Of course, this day came after a night that was particularly rough, as in I got maybe 3 or 4 hours of very broken sleep. Alison was in quite the mood as we ventured to Target. She cried the whole way there, and continued once we arrived. I finally broke down and got her out of her car seat and attempted to carry her (crying the whole time), while pushing the cart and trying to keep Zack happy. I undoubtedly had not showered for over 24 hours, was probably in stretchy pants, and had very bloodshot eyes. A lady gave me a look that said "oh my goodness, you poor thing." I nearly started crying. James came home from work early that day. Otherwise I might not have survived.
After a couple of very bad nights (and days) in a row, I started to wonder if maybe something I was eating was causing her such distress. Looking back at my diet I realized I had eaten some dairy filled meals, and those seemed to precede her extreme misery. So I stopped eating dairy and we had a completely different baby. That night she slept, it was amazing.
But she was still demanding (she is a baby, after all....they can't do much on their own). We continued to have rough nights, and the days still involved holding a baby almost all day long. And she demanded to be held upright. None of the sweet cradling a baby in your arms, and gazing lovingly into her eyes while she cooed and smiled at us. Oh no, cradling the baby made her an angry baby. One day, I came to the conclusion that it would be easier to teach Walter (the dog....the OLD dog) how to speak Spanish than it would be to get Alison to sleep. I had already eliminated all that is delicious from my diet, and was eating the blandest foods that even a toddler would approve of. We finally decided that it was time to take her to the doctor, cause watching what I ate, burping her really well, and holding her upright for 30 minutes after eating (more like 3 hours....) still left us with an unhappy, and uncomfortable baby.
The doctor thinks she has reflux, and prescribed her some Zantac, and predicted that it would be life changing for us.
God Bless the creator of Zantac.
We had a completely different baby within a few days. Incredible.
Then came her 2 month check-up. The girl was growing in length, and her head certainly is huge and growing, but her weight was not moving along as quickly as it needed to be. Supplementing with bottles would be necessary. I somewhat welcomed the change. Bottles=freedom for mama. But, the girl is little miss sensitive we would have to give her hypo-allergenic formula. Dairy clearly does not agree with little Miss A, and 3 ounces of soy based formula created an absolutely awful diaper situation that resulted in the complete loss of an outfit. Hypo-allergenic formula smells awful, is outrageously expensive, and corn syrup solids is the first ingredient. (Now, I'm not against formula at all. Zack was a formula baby and has been quite healthy and is a very happy kid. But the first ingredient in his formula was milk, and milk is normal....corn syrup solids?? Not something I want to eat.)
So here we are today. Alison is gaining weight like it's going out of style. I nurse her, and then she gets a bottle of either pumped breast milk or formula. She is 100 times more excited to slurp down the breast milk, but also mostly tolerates the formula. It's kind of a pain to nurse her and then give her a bottle, but breastfeeding is free. Might as well give her as much as I can. She still has some pretty rough days that involve a lot of spitting up, back arching and crying. And she still prefers to be held upright, but it has been over a month since she has had an all night long crying session where James and I took turns pacing with her. She's even had two nights where she has slept through the night. Zack was 9 months before he did that....
Surviving the day at home alone with two children is quite challenging most days. My day isn't complete unless both kids are crying at the same time on at least three separate occasions. We are all very, very happy to see James when he gets home every night.
Even though the past couple of months have been crazy hard and beyond tiring, I'm still not 100% convinced that we are done having children. James seems to be a little more certain that 2 children just might complete our family. He says a lot of things will need to change in order for it to be a good idea to have a third child. And I agree, our house is quite cozy and there is no way a third car seat will fit in the Corolla. And then there is the whole "do we have enough time to devote to a third child?" question. But we love and adore Zack and Alison and surely have room in our hearts to love another child. For now, we are just going to do our best to survive and love on these two sweetie pie children that God has blessed us with.
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