A short week (in patience)

I realize I had promised yesterday to provide a write-up of the weekend in St. Louis, but the past few days have been what one might call "trying" days in the annals of parenthood and I was not in the mood or mind frame to write a glowing review.

If there are many days like the past two, I fear Megan may be an only child. Jillian, God bless her, has the patience of an angel. But I'm still working my way into this role of indentured servitude (um, I mean parenting).

The trouble has been with her recent eating habits. Which is she wants to eat always. For most of her 4 month life, she has been on a 4-hour eating cycle. Recently she started to get more towards a 3-hour cycle and we were fine with that. Most people recommend that type of schedule and to us it started to push her towards being 'normal' and not on some preemie schedule. The past two days, our sweet, precious Megan wants to be fed on a 2-hour cycle. Add in a little desire to either be held or have a parent within her eyesight at all times and it has become quite the patience tester.

It wasn't like her nap breaks were these uber-productive time periods for me. But they provided a break to do some laundry, read a few pages of a book, send out some e-mails, etc. But on a 2-hour cycle she was sleeping for about 35-45 minutes and then screaming ... I mean SCREAMING ... for food right that second. So that means she's screaming as I change her diaper. Screaming as I set her down to make the bottle. Screaming when I try to burp her. Then afterwards, if I put her down she grumbles. If I hold her in a way that doesn't suit her, she grumbles. It's a no-win game. So by the time Jillian gets home I've been fried. My mental state shot.

I just cannot handle the crying. The constancy of it, the pain of it, the shrillness of it, the hurt within it. Because inwardly, even though rationally I know babies cry, it becomes an audible marker of my inadequacies in taking care of her. And with a plane trip to California coming up in just over a week, I am nervous of how she'll do on the plane and how she'll adapt to the 3-hour time change.

However, today (as of 10:53 am) we are doing much better. After her morning feeding we read a book that Jillian's parents gave her called, "God gave us you." Reading that with her reminded me of how precious she is and that moments like that, despite losing my sanity, in the end will be well worth it. Because she is beautiful, adorable, huggable, and all those other -ble words and we are fortunate to have her in our life. So thanks Carey and Sue for helping to guide me from afar and put into perspective what she truly means.

Her spirits were much improved this morning and I kept her up for almost two hours before setting her down for her nap to get her more to that 3-hour mark.

Tonight we are off to see Jillian's parents and enjoy the cool Holland breezes.