Long time gone...

Sorry I've been so absent. We've had a crazy, busy, overwhelming month or two. I've also had a dirty little secret that completely flipped me out for pretty much all of December and a good chunk of January. There's a lot of back-story here, so excuse the long ramble.

Sadie had issues nursing when she was born - a weird suck pattern from sucking on her ENTIRE hand in utero. I spent a few hundred bucks on lacation consulatants, talked to MANY people on the phone, and saw the pediatrician quite a few times. Ultimately, none of them could sort it out. I still wanted to nurse her, so we ended up in occupational thereapy. We did that for 6 weeks, and by the end, she was nursing like a champ.

BUT my OT red-flagged us with another issue. She believed that Sadie had a "low tone" issue, and because of her somewhat traumatic birth (dirty secret #2 - I had an emergency c-section, but that's a story for another day) she was concerned about cerebral palsy. And despite her saying that I shouldn't worry about it, I worried. I obsessed. And oh man, did I Google. And that's pretty much all I did for a month.

Each visit, she'd call in a different physical therapist for a second opinion. Each time, the PT would say they didn't see anything. But the OT was on a mission. So she called my pediatrician, who also freaked out and called us in because she thought she'd missed something.

Ultimately, the ped didn't see ANYTHING. She called in other peds from the practice, who all agreed with her. Bottom line - the OT was wrong. And Sadie is totally fine. And I'm breathing again.

We want our children to be perfect - and take every imperfection personally. I also have had way too much emotion resting on Sadie's surviving and thriving because of Isabel. I've compounded the pressure on her, and on me, I think to somehow prove that we're okay, we've moved on, we can do it. Not fair to either of us.

I had a major breakthrough in January. I feel like I was literally picked up and set down on a completely different path. Off a path that was full of fear, dread, worry, anxiety. And set back down on a road that's free from that. As Martha says, it's a good thing. So here's to a new year filled with a new, functional me. Hurrah for breakthrough :)