Two Weeks In

Our youngest son and once youngest daughter are big brother and sister for the first time...

Jayna is now 2 weeks old! Well, sort of.  She's been a resident at the Boisvert household, united with the rest of her family for 2 weeks, she's actually almost 3 months old, and a whopping 6.5lbs!  We've been loving almost every minute of life with her. Almost, I say, because it's hard to smile through  those moments in the middle of the night when she's screeching because of a gas bubble, or a trapped, iron supplement-induced constipation class poo. Now the romantic among us might say, ahh but she's home, that makes it worth everything, and they would be right! But that does not make those moments any less exhausting. What it does do is help us to, on the brink of frustration, appreciate the gift of this baby so much the more. We will gladly endure night after night of gassy, screechy sleeplessness because she's home - with us - and not in a stuffy hospital environment where she is cared for but not loved, attended to but not nurtured. There is no price too high to pay for the chance to love and nurture her here at home. So bring it on!! I come from a long line of gassy french-men!

One of the people in this photo is uber-comfortable...

Jayna's fave position is curled up in a little ball on Candy's chest. It's no wonder since in all our skin to skin kangaroo care at the hospital, this was how we held her. It has not been unusual for me to wake up in the morning to find Candy sawing logs on her back beside me with this little precious ball of humanity curled up atop her. Sometimes it's the only way to quiet her, which of course is not ideal for mommy as it is not possible to sleep deeply like this. So as with any mom of a newborn, catnaps are the order of the day. I know that technically, at 3 months old, Jayna is not a newborn anymore, but  we feel blessed that really we haven't missed that stage at all because she's still so small, and in all respects still behaves as a newborn would.  

We had our first appointment yesterday with the paediatrician as well as another head ultra-sound last week, and both went well. Jayna is healthy and strong, and there are no issues to report! We are giving her an iron supplement as I alluded to above, to build up her iron stores. An infant will build iron stores during the last trimester of pregnancy in the womb, which Jayna of course inconveniently missed, and as there is apparently no iron in breast milk, Jayna is anemic (which explains why she sleeps so much) and will require this supplement for the first year.

Our first family ride in the van with Jayna         

To speak to that briefly, a friend was recently ruminating with me about how we are so fearfully and wonderfully made that it takes a team of doctors and nurses and round-the-clock care in NICU to provide for the infant a poor, (acceptable - but poor), substitute for what she would otherwise receive from a single umbilical cord in the environment of the womb. How awesome is our God in wisdom and power to create such a perfect environment for an infant to thrive in! Yet so many will not believe, but credit such a complex, intelligently designed system to chance and millions of years of evolution. I know who my God is: Faithful, Wonderful, Almighty, mirrored and expressed perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ, King of all Kings, my saviour and my friend! It is God who Candy and I credit with the birth, and the life of all of our children. Make no mistake, we do thank God for the medical professionals He had in place to assist in their care and are so very grateful for their knowledge and it's application in each situation, but it is God alone who we will glorify. After all, medical science comes from the mind of God, and it is the honour and glory of mankind to search it out. 

So we continue, and thank you all again for your prayers and support, and the love shown to all of us over the course of the last few months. Never thought I would pray for dirty diapers, but fatherhood does strange things to a man!