I caught a few good pictures of Patrick playing with the toys on his chair yesterday. You can see from the expression on his face how intent he is. He actually postponed his afternoon nap by over an hour because he was so involved in playing that he forgot he was tired. Even when he started getting fussy from the exhaustion, he would cry for a second then play for a few more before remembering to cry again.
We went to Patrick's six-month check-up today. He now weighs 12 lbs 12 oz, exactly four times his birth weight, and is 22 3/8 inches long. He has reached the 3rd percentile for height and the 25th percentile for head circumference, but his weight is still just under the chart. That means he is somewhat tall for his weight, and his head is big compared to the rest of him. No wonder he can't balance sitting up very well yet! As far as his development is concerned, he is right on track for a six-month-old. That's great considering for some things, he should still be acting like a four-month-old. He also had more shots today. So far he hasn't had any reactions, but he is drowsy now. We'll have to see how he is tomorrow.
Who would have thought one year ago that today we would have a wonderful six-month old baby? This is another of those days that I can remember vividly what happened one year ago. There are about four of those from last year, and this was probably the most scary. It started while I was in the middle of teaching fifth period. I started feeling something unusual, kind of like I had just started my period. Just to make sure nothing was wrong, I decided to risk a trip to the bathroom between classes. My sixth period was, shall we say, high-strung, so I knew it was a risk leaving any of them in my classroom without adult supervision. I'm glad I took the risk, though. I realized part of the way to the teacher bathroom, which was much too far away from my classroom by the way, that I really was having a problem. At the moment, though, I was far too concerned with the embarrassment of having blood staining my khaki pants in front of all those teenagers.
As I got close to the bathroom, I saw another English teacher, one I was pretty good friends with who had several young children of her own and just happened to have a conference period next. I hadn't told anybody at school yet about the baby, so I had to quickly explain the problem to Mrs. S, who was immediately reassuring and helpful. She guarded the bathroom where I hid until the passing period ended, signed me out of school for the day, reassured me that the bleeding did not necessarily mean I'd miscarried, walked with me back to my room, and even retrieved my purse and keys from my room so I wouldn't have to face my students. She took over my sixth period and found another teacher to cover my seventh. I hope she knows how grateful I still am for her help that day!
I called Matt at work on my way home to let him know of the unexpected problem. At this point, I was starting to get worried, but I was still too stunned to pass on much of that worry or to truly realize what could be happening. When I got home, I immediately changed first, even before calling the doctor. I remember standing in my closet and staring blankly at my clothes to find something clean to wear when it all hit me. I clutched my abdomen and lost it, sinking to the floor of my closet and weeping. At that point, I really thought I had lost the baby. It didn't help matters that when I checked my answering machine, I had a message from my doctor explaining that there was a problem with one of the tests they had done when I was there two weeks earlier. I was sure that whatever was wrong had doomed my baby from the start. It took a lot of courage to call and possibly find out my suspicions were true.
Instead, the nurse told me I had a urinary tract infection that would require mild antibiotics. The relief from knowing it wasn't anything serious made it easier to tell about the bleeding and get an emergency appointment in the afternoon. I was feeling a little better by the time I got to my appointment. I'd come to the realization that I'd either lost the baby or not, and there was nothing I could do at the time to change that. Still, I remember sitting in the waiting room watching all the other pregnant women and the children and babies, and hoping I would still have that future too. That's unusual because up until that afternoon, I was uncertain about the life growing in me. It was unexpected and unplanned. I was willing to do what I needed to to take care of it, but at the time I viewed it as merely a responsibility and not as much my child. I thought in some ways it would be better if I'd miscarried so that I wouldn't have to deal with the burden of baby then.
I hadn't been back in the examining room long when the doctor came in with the sonogram machine to do an internal exam to make sure that everything was ok. The urine test already verified I was still pregnant, but they still needed to know what was causing the bleeding. Unfortunately the sonogram was inconclusive about the bleeding. The doctor wasn't terribly concerned, though. (By the way, several months later we discovered I had a sub-corionic hematoma. I'm still not entirely sure what that is, but apparently it was somewhat serious. It could easily have caused a miscarriage.)
Although this wasn't my first sonogram, it was the first time I actually saw Patrick on the screen. I remember seeing one tiny dot that the doctor said was my baby. And when I looked really, really carefully, I could see a rhythmic movement in the middle of the dot. That was his tiny heart beating. The sight of that movement caught me off guard. Not only was I relieved that I was still pregnant, but for the first time I realized there was really life inside me, life that was a part of me. It was breathtaking. I was stunned as a new feeling washed over me, and I had to fight the tears from falling. That was the day I realized I really wanted to have that baby, to meet him or her. That was the day I fell in love with my son.
We went to Patrick's six-month check-up today. He now weighs 12 lbs 12 oz, exactly four times his birth weight, and is 22 3/8 inches long. He has reached the 3rd percentile for height and the 25th percentile for head circumference, but his weight is still just under the chart. That means he is somewhat tall for his weight, and his head is big compared to the rest of him. No wonder he can't balance sitting up very well yet! As far as his development is concerned, he is right on track for a six-month-old. That's great considering for some things, he should still be acting like a four-month-old. He also had more shots today. So far he hasn't had any reactions, but he is drowsy now. We'll have to see how he is tomorrow.
Who would have thought one year ago that today we would have a wonderful six-month old baby? This is another of those days that I can remember vividly what happened one year ago. There are about four of those from last year, and this was probably the most scary. It started while I was in the middle of teaching fifth period. I started feeling something unusual, kind of like I had just started my period. Just to make sure nothing was wrong, I decided to risk a trip to the bathroom between classes. My sixth period was, shall we say, high-strung, so I knew it was a risk leaving any of them in my classroom without adult supervision. I'm glad I took the risk, though. I realized part of the way to the teacher bathroom, which was much too far away from my classroom by the way, that I really was having a problem. At the moment, though, I was far too concerned with the embarrassment of having blood staining my khaki pants in front of all those teenagers.
As I got close to the bathroom, I saw another English teacher, one I was pretty good friends with who had several young children of her own and just happened to have a conference period next. I hadn't told anybody at school yet about the baby, so I had to quickly explain the problem to Mrs. S, who was immediately reassuring and helpful. She guarded the bathroom where I hid until the passing period ended, signed me out of school for the day, reassured me that the bleeding did not necessarily mean I'd miscarried, walked with me back to my room, and even retrieved my purse and keys from my room so I wouldn't have to face my students. She took over my sixth period and found another teacher to cover my seventh. I hope she knows how grateful I still am for her help that day!
I called Matt at work on my way home to let him know of the unexpected problem. At this point, I was starting to get worried, but I was still too stunned to pass on much of that worry or to truly realize what could be happening. When I got home, I immediately changed first, even before calling the doctor. I remember standing in my closet and staring blankly at my clothes to find something clean to wear when it all hit me. I clutched my abdomen and lost it, sinking to the floor of my closet and weeping. At that point, I really thought I had lost the baby. It didn't help matters that when I checked my answering machine, I had a message from my doctor explaining that there was a problem with one of the tests they had done when I was there two weeks earlier. I was sure that whatever was wrong had doomed my baby from the start. It took a lot of courage to call and possibly find out my suspicions were true.
Instead, the nurse told me I had a urinary tract infection that would require mild antibiotics. The relief from knowing it wasn't anything serious made it easier to tell about the bleeding and get an emergency appointment in the afternoon. I was feeling a little better by the time I got to my appointment. I'd come to the realization that I'd either lost the baby or not, and there was nothing I could do at the time to change that. Still, I remember sitting in the waiting room watching all the other pregnant women and the children and babies, and hoping I would still have that future too. That's unusual because up until that afternoon, I was uncertain about the life growing in me. It was unexpected and unplanned. I was willing to do what I needed to to take care of it, but at the time I viewed it as merely a responsibility and not as much my child. I thought in some ways it would be better if I'd miscarried so that I wouldn't have to deal with the burden of baby then.
I hadn't been back in the examining room long when the doctor came in with the sonogram machine to do an internal exam to make sure that everything was ok. The urine test already verified I was still pregnant, but they still needed to know what was causing the bleeding. Unfortunately the sonogram was inconclusive about the bleeding. The doctor wasn't terribly concerned, though. (By the way, several months later we discovered I had a sub-corionic hematoma. I'm still not entirely sure what that is, but apparently it was somewhat serious. It could easily have caused a miscarriage.)
Although this wasn't my first sonogram, it was the first time I actually saw Patrick on the screen. I remember seeing one tiny dot that the doctor said was my baby. And when I looked really, really carefully, I could see a rhythmic movement in the middle of the dot. That was his tiny heart beating. The sight of that movement caught me off guard. Not only was I relieved that I was still pregnant, but for the first time I realized there was really life inside me, life that was a part of me. It was breathtaking. I was stunned as a new feeling washed over me, and I had to fight the tears from falling. That was the day I realized I really wanted to have that baby, to meet him or her. That was the day I fell in love with my son.
Labels: Feelings, Fun Stories, Photos
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