Further to my last post here, this is just a p.s. I suppose, that I wanted to write before time passes and it never gets done. It's late and I should be sleeping, but I'm still pondering... I'm not wasting my time, I promise. This has been kind of deep within me for a long time now. I felt so silly about it, like people would think me daft if I admitted it. I DO think Elijah had a twin. I thought it at the time when it was suspected at the first scan. I have thought about it since, even knowing that by then, there wasn't a twin there. I STILL think about it, not wistfully like I wish it could be, but just because it's a fact of the matter, deep down - you know? I can't explain it any better.
Because I didn't get bashed for the idea when I finally wrote about it (!!), I feel safer admitting the next bit - that he has a name. Identical twins are obviously the same gender, so I know the little lefty-bean was a boy, and how blessed I am to know exactly what he would have looked like! :) Happy closure comes, for me, with naming him. I don't have to try to name him, because I knew immediately when I first thought that he existed, what his name would be. He isn't. Well, he WAS, but he isn't here now, and maybe some might think he might as well not be named because he "barely" existed (if there's even evidence enough to support that). But I feel so so so sure, I can't explain. I'm glad that somebody professional questioned at the scan - that even they thought they saw a second baby and a second heartbeat. I'm glad I have visible evidence of Elijah's hair whorl to really give weight to that original suspicion.
I know I said last entry at one point, "What would his name have been?" or something like that. But I knew his name. I don't know why I even put that. I guess I felt nervous.
His name is Toby David. Because... I don't even know why his name is Toby. I just knew, when I first said out loud, "Elijah and..." Toby just fell into place in that sentence without even a second's delay, and I was certain of his name immediately. I had no idea of its meaning. I wanted David next to it because I knew it had something to do with love, as a meaning, and I liked that.
Well just now, I looked them up.
Toby - from the Hebrew "Tobias" - "God is good".
David - Hebrew - "Beloved".
My heart is just about overflowing now that I've seen those meanings - how perfect! God is good ALL the time, no matter how it feels or seems. He's always good. He was good in allowing Toby to die, in order to keep Elijah safe, if that is how it happened. Toby is an example to me of how God is good, plain as day, simple fact. And beloved is so wonderful, so perfect to have in his name. Because obviously, he's completely beloved, and I'm glad to name him with that description of my heart for him.
That's all really. I feel really good to give him a name and actually tell someone. I don't think I will refer to him often. I still somehow feel a bit daft calling him by name and referring to him as a person, because MAYBE he didn't even exist after all? But I am sure he did. That's all I can say. I love how the names Elijah and Toby sound together, and I would love to be referring to them together on a daily basis now, but I am content with my GOOD God's plan, and my happy place in it. :)
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Ponderings without much point to them...
Since Elijah was born, I've just occasionally had my mind drawn to something, and now it's on my mind again so I thought I would blog about it. It's likely NOTHING at all but it's distracting me so I want to get it "out there" and then I'm done.
Elijah has such a sweet little head of hair! He has the least hair of any of my newborns, and hasn't yet got to the stage where he's losing it yet - soon though, if memory serves. Very soon. He is 12 weeks old now, and around now is when their hair usually starts to come out. Maybe a month later is when the new "real" hair starts growing in. My hair starts falling out like crazy at the same time (which I really really dislike!) so I know that is coming soon for me too.
He does HAVE hair though, even though he's the least hairy so far! ;) He has very little on top, but more of the usual amount (for my babies) on the back and sides. He has what I have affectionately referred to as a sweet little twizzle-top! :) His hair at the back grows in one direction while the hair on his crown, right on top at the back, grows the other way entirely, lol! It makes his little bit of hair at the back on top look like it's a little criss-crossing tuft of fluff! Melts my heart :) It's more fluffy and gorgeous when it has just been washed.
Elijah's hair whorl - the circular pattern on the back/top of the head - is different from all the other boys. They all have a hair whorl in the centre of their heads, which is the usual for human beings in general. I know they can vary. Matthew's is off-centre, slightly to the left. The others are all dead-centre. I did some reading on this the other day when I was pondering about it again. I know people have babies who have a right-sided hair whorl, or a left-sided hair whorl, but it's not very common, and it most commonly seems to occur in mirror twins, especially if the other members of the family and other siblings have central whorls. Mirror twins account for 25% of identical twins. They are the ones who have separated the latest. Any later and they would be conjoined twins. They are already developing their left and right sides when they separate, so the two identicals are mirrored in terms of left and right. They have hair whorls on opposite sides of the head, rather than central, and one is right-handed, and the other left-handed, and their dental developments are mirrored, etc, etc.
Elijah's hair whorl is SO far over the right side of his head, if I take a photo of the back of his head it's barely in the photo! Going to make for some interesting practice for me when it's time to cut his hair! ;)
But I wonder... I remember the scan at 6 weeks when the sonographer thought she could see another little blobby baby behind the first one, and another heartbeat. But there was so little room and he was so tiny that it was hard to be sure. I could see what she was seeing, even before she said it to me. She had me come back at 8 weeks for another scan to double check, and when I had that scan there was no sign of any other babies or heart beats, so that was that. It didn't mean there HADN'T been another little one there at six weeks, just that by 8 weeks, there wasn't. Not uncommon, I'm told, with twin conceptions, as many are unknown due to one twin not making it very early on.
Now I wonder all over again, because Elijah has such a strong one-sided hair whorl when it isn't a family trait in our family, and all his siblings do not. If there was another baby in there, they would definitely have been mirror-twins, because I noticed at the time (I blogged about all this at the time, actually) that there was no separating membrane, so they would either have been mirror twins or conjoined twins (and they weren't conjoined I presume, because one of them is here!). If they separate late enough to be mirror or conjoined twins, they share not only a placenta and a sac, but an inner sac as well. I was worried at the time, as I said here, because they would have been mono-mono twins. That would have given quite a high percentage chance of both twins dying too early to be saved - such a risky type of twinning.
I wonder if I really was expecting twins early on, and if so, just as the possible evidence at the first scan suggested, Elijah is the surviving twin from the right side? Pointless ponderings, hence the title, but I keep thinking... I don't mean to, but I just somehow do. In a way I feel sad, like a little reminder whenever I see the back of my sweet boy's head:
...Because what if there was the potential for the most adorable view of a little pair of mirror whorls side-by-side on my lap? What if there was a precious little person with the missing left-sided whorl to match Elijah's exactly, who would turn out to be left-handed, and get the opposite tooth to the first one Elijah gets, within days of his brother? What if there were seven instead of six? What would his name have been? How in the wide world would I have coped with twins?!! ;)
But then I am grateful. And I don't mean just three words on a page, "I am grateful". I am stripped to the core, raw, clutching my heart with emotion GRATEFUL. Because I feel that if I did have mono-mono twins in there, and God allowed one of them to die early, it would have been to save me the heartbreak of progressing further in my pregnancy and then losing them both due to the risks of mono-mono, just before viable gestational age. I can't fathom. I think if I was actually pregnant with twins like we had wondered at the time of the first scan, then if my little left-sided darling had not died, I would not have Elijah here with me now. I would be none the wiser as to his right-sided whorl of dark newborn hair, or his resemblence to Nathan, or his precious smile. It has been quite an exhausting first few months so far with Elijah, because of his distress and things. But I haven't had impatience with him, which is so different to how I felt whenever my first two babies were distressed for hours or wakeful, or fussy. No impatience. Just so grateful that he's here, and a weird sense of gratitude that sometimes feels just so SILLY that I am reluctant to admit it here, because what if I wasn't pregnant with twins in the first place?! ;) But a sense of gratitude towards the little left-hand bean for the laying down of his life, because it might be the reason that Elijah made it into my arms.
I do think about "what if?" and about my "other" little boy, who may not even have been - I will never know here on earth - but he really really might have been, and so of course I think about him, because if he WAS, then he was his own person with a heartbeat, created intentionally, and waiting to meet me and Neil and all of his brothers one day after we die. I feel silly when I don't KNOW if he was really there, but since there's no proof that he wasn't, and there's evidence that he was, I will probably think of him every single time I lay eyes on Elijah's hair whorl for the rest of his life. To me, it's the only physical reference to his existance, and it makes me smile and ache at the same time, but it's overall a good feeling.
So grateful for this baby boy who gives me so much joy, and so glad that, for whatever reason, God has enabled me to hold him and love him and raise him.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
9 weeks old, and back in the saddle again! ;)
NOOOO time to update, but here goes anyway:
* Elijah is 9 weeks old already!!! 10 this coming Sunday! Can't believe it.
* He is doing okay. Pretty much the same - and 8 weeks old was a bad week for him, but so far 9 weeks old is going better for the poor boy! :) It's all so random and unpredictable, but he's getting there I guess. The last osteopath appt (he has them every Friday) was with a different osteopath and he saw a senior osteopath who was supervising as well. They concluded that he is "one uncomfortable baby" :( He has a slight twist to his body through his spine from top to bottom, which isn't unheard of, but which is very difficult to treat apparently. He still has some neck and lower vertebrae issues, but the head compression is much better after several sessions of work on it, and his diaphragm is less tight than it used to be. He seems (apart from the last two or three days) just as distressed and uncomfy as always, so they are suggesting that he comes off the reflux meds if they are not helping, and also that I can go back on dairy again (WOOHOO!!) because if it's not making a difference, it's probably not an issue in the first place. It will be hard to tell if reintroducing dairy makes him react because he is often distressed, and unpredictably so, which would make it hard to link it to something. If he stays happier for more than just these couple of days, I will try adding some dairy back in and see how it goes. I am still giving him the ranitidine 3 times a day, although two different days in the past week I have forgotten to give him one of those doses, because the previous one was late and then distractions happened, etc. Anyway, the missed dose made no difference either of those times - one time he was just as miserable, and the other time was yesterday and he was just as HAPPY as he had been before the missed dose! :) I hope that's a good sign, but I don't really know how these medications work, in terms of time-frames. I am continuing with it for now, until someone tells me not to! I would rather not give him a drug that he doesn't need, but I want to do what's best for him and for him not to be in pain.
* Elijah is smiling and cooing a LOT now, and these past couple of days it's almost been like he's a different baby at times. I daren't mention it online really, lol! Last time I said he'd had his first GOOD day ever, he had the most awful week or two ever starting the next day. He is also cuddling into my front in a relaxed way when I hold him facing me, which he has pretty much never done except for maybe the first couple of weeks here and there. He seems so much like a.... normal baby, today and yesterday. He is still crying quite a lot and seems uncomfy at times, but he spends quite long periods of time (10 mins or so) looking perfectly comfortable and calm and quiet in the bouncy chair, just surveying the blurs of his brothers whizzing around the room. He has started talking to the button numbers we made that are high up on the living room wall (our "school wall"), and smiling at them in a rather flirty way, dare I say it, lol! His eyes are all, "How you doin'?!" with his smile when he looks at those button numbers, hehe! ;)
* He laughed for the first time!!! 8 and a half weeks old. I know that is quite a bit earlier than some of his brothers. I was snorting like a deranged pig, holding him about a foot in front of my face, lol! He opened his mouth wide in a BIG smile, and his eyes went all wide and shiny and twinkly, and then I did it again and he tipped his chin up suddenly and started a chuckle - just one "note" of a chuckle, mind you, and then it was violent hiccups, as they have all done when first making a new sound or action with their little larynx, bless their sweet hearts! :) He has laughed several times today, not just at the piggy snorting sound either, which is just wonderful for me to hear and see. I cried the first time he laughed. I didn't expect to, and it was ecstatically HAPPY tears. I just felt overwhelmed that he laughed, and seemed joyful, after such sadness for all these weeks of his short life. It was a precious moment.
* I got my period!!! I KNEW something hormonal was going on with my body! Always feels great to have been right about one's own body, hehe! I did have EWCM on and off for maybe 5 days to a week - I didn't chart (will back date and chart it when I get chance though) so I am not sure exactly when the EWCM stopped and thus ovulation might have occurred. I did have ovulation pain on my left side - or at least I thought it was, but it had been so long that I doubted my "knower" and wasn't sure if it was really ovulation pain. I didn't make note of what day/date that was so I have no way to know how long my first luteal phase might have been. No more than 5 days though, I'm pretty sure. The norm for me for the first couple of cycles is 4/5 day luteal phases, so that would be about right. I have had shorter ones on my first cycle though! So I was 8 weeks PP when my period came. Day 1 was really light and although I knew it was period-related (my lochia had cleared up completely the week before, and any new red bleeding is always cycle-related after that), I wondered if it would be a real period or not. Next day it was heavy, more so than usual, and the same the next day. It has been a heavier period than my usual ones are, but that's okay. It lasted 6 days and then a day of spotting, so definitely a period. I do not know what my body thinks it is doing, when I am nursing THREE children (including a new baby day and night), and stretched to the max physically and emotionally with Elijah's troubles and 6 little ones aged 7 and under, lol! But I will NEVER complain again about periods. They are a blessing from God, and they fill my heart with joy when they show up. They mean babies, and that is a joy that I am cherishing more than ever as the number of years left to have them starts to dwindle. The whole purpose of periods is to have babies. I am excited that my body is trying to get back to that so soon! I know it takes many months before my cycles are fertile enough to sustain a pregnancy, and chemical pregnancies are common for me as a result, but oh it's so wonderful to see a period! It's like God's reminder to me that He made me to have babies, and there's a breathlessly wonderful thought that He may bless me again before too long. Getting a period is a reminder, and a happy one, so I will never complain about periods again, even if they arrive in the midst of overwhelming-ness, only a week after stopping bleeding after giving birth, lol! I'm glad He allows me some months to physically recover though :)
I am going to start charting now that I'm having cycles/periods again, but I'll have to find a moment to do so (which means remembering to do it in the first place!). For now I'm marking a calendar (subtly!!) so that I don't forget dates of fertile signs and my periods, and I'll enter all that data on my chart when I get around to it. Yay for cycles! I love watching my body's signs in joyful anticipation of another baby-treasure somewhere down the line! It makes me so happy!!!! :D
So I should probably stop updating here really. Elijah is already 2 months old, and past the initial newborn stage. But I think I will just update sporadically anyway, because his issues are ongoing, and I'm ovulating again! :) So I'll post now and again as before! I love my pregnancy blog! Such an exciting time in my life, all this reproducing! I'm cherishing it for ALL I'm worth, for as long as I can!
I will try to get smiley photos and videos of Elijah laughing and cooing up sometime. I have a post on my arthursmummy
blog at the moment which has a little video clip of my 4 youngest boys, just doing random sweet things. It includes Elijah cooing (it is a couple of weeks old, this video clip) which I didn't expect to catch, and it's the first time on camera, so you can always see that there if you haven't already. I'll try to get recent photos up soon though! :) He has been hard to photograph for a while because of how sad he always is, but lately I'm starting to catch a few relaxed or smiley photos! :) Back soon, anyway. Time to medicate him and then feed him, and then sleeeeeep for the few hours I can before morning! Two days until the weekend! :)
* Elijah is 9 weeks old already!!! 10 this coming Sunday! Can't believe it.
* He is doing okay. Pretty much the same - and 8 weeks old was a bad week for him, but so far 9 weeks old is going better for the poor boy! :) It's all so random and unpredictable, but he's getting there I guess. The last osteopath appt (he has them every Friday) was with a different osteopath and he saw a senior osteopath who was supervising as well. They concluded that he is "one uncomfortable baby" :( He has a slight twist to his body through his spine from top to bottom, which isn't unheard of, but which is very difficult to treat apparently. He still has some neck and lower vertebrae issues, but the head compression is much better after several sessions of work on it, and his diaphragm is less tight than it used to be. He seems (apart from the last two or three days) just as distressed and uncomfy as always, so they are suggesting that he comes off the reflux meds if they are not helping, and also that I can go back on dairy again (WOOHOO!!) because if it's not making a difference, it's probably not an issue in the first place. It will be hard to tell if reintroducing dairy makes him react because he is often distressed, and unpredictably so, which would make it hard to link it to something. If he stays happier for more than just these couple of days, I will try adding some dairy back in and see how it goes. I am still giving him the ranitidine 3 times a day, although two different days in the past week I have forgotten to give him one of those doses, because the previous one was late and then distractions happened, etc. Anyway, the missed dose made no difference either of those times - one time he was just as miserable, and the other time was yesterday and he was just as HAPPY as he had been before the missed dose! :) I hope that's a good sign, but I don't really know how these medications work, in terms of time-frames. I am continuing with it for now, until someone tells me not to! I would rather not give him a drug that he doesn't need, but I want to do what's best for him and for him not to be in pain.
* Elijah is smiling and cooing a LOT now, and these past couple of days it's almost been like he's a different baby at times. I daren't mention it online really, lol! Last time I said he'd had his first GOOD day ever, he had the most awful week or two ever starting the next day. He is also cuddling into my front in a relaxed way when I hold him facing me, which he has pretty much never done except for maybe the first couple of weeks here and there. He seems so much like a.... normal baby, today and yesterday. He is still crying quite a lot and seems uncomfy at times, but he spends quite long periods of time (10 mins or so) looking perfectly comfortable and calm and quiet in the bouncy chair, just surveying the blurs of his brothers whizzing around the room. He has started talking to the button numbers we made that are high up on the living room wall (our "school wall"), and smiling at them in a rather flirty way, dare I say it, lol! His eyes are all, "How you doin'?!" with his smile when he looks at those button numbers, hehe! ;)
* He laughed for the first time!!! 8 and a half weeks old. I know that is quite a bit earlier than some of his brothers. I was snorting like a deranged pig, holding him about a foot in front of my face, lol! He opened his mouth wide in a BIG smile, and his eyes went all wide and shiny and twinkly, and then I did it again and he tipped his chin up suddenly and started a chuckle - just one "note" of a chuckle, mind you, and then it was violent hiccups, as they have all done when first making a new sound or action with their little larynx, bless their sweet hearts! :) He has laughed several times today, not just at the piggy snorting sound either, which is just wonderful for me to hear and see. I cried the first time he laughed. I didn't expect to, and it was ecstatically HAPPY tears. I just felt overwhelmed that he laughed, and seemed joyful, after such sadness for all these weeks of his short life. It was a precious moment.
* I got my period!!! I KNEW something hormonal was going on with my body! Always feels great to have been right about one's own body, hehe! I did have EWCM on and off for maybe 5 days to a week - I didn't chart (will back date and chart it when I get chance though) so I am not sure exactly when the EWCM stopped and thus ovulation might have occurred. I did have ovulation pain on my left side - or at least I thought it was, but it had been so long that I doubted my "knower" and wasn't sure if it was really ovulation pain. I didn't make note of what day/date that was so I have no way to know how long my first luteal phase might have been. No more than 5 days though, I'm pretty sure. The norm for me for the first couple of cycles is 4/5 day luteal phases, so that would be about right. I have had shorter ones on my first cycle though! So I was 8 weeks PP when my period came. Day 1 was really light and although I knew it was period-related (my lochia had cleared up completely the week before, and any new red bleeding is always cycle-related after that), I wondered if it would be a real period or not. Next day it was heavy, more so than usual, and the same the next day. It has been a heavier period than my usual ones are, but that's okay. It lasted 6 days and then a day of spotting, so definitely a period. I do not know what my body thinks it is doing, when I am nursing THREE children (including a new baby day and night), and stretched to the max physically and emotionally with Elijah's troubles and 6 little ones aged 7 and under, lol! But I will NEVER complain again about periods. They are a blessing from God, and they fill my heart with joy when they show up. They mean babies, and that is a joy that I am cherishing more than ever as the number of years left to have them starts to dwindle. The whole purpose of periods is to have babies. I am excited that my body is trying to get back to that so soon! I know it takes many months before my cycles are fertile enough to sustain a pregnancy, and chemical pregnancies are common for me as a result, but oh it's so wonderful to see a period! It's like God's reminder to me that He made me to have babies, and there's a breathlessly wonderful thought that He may bless me again before too long. Getting a period is a reminder, and a happy one, so I will never complain about periods again, even if they arrive in the midst of overwhelming-ness, only a week after stopping bleeding after giving birth, lol! I'm glad He allows me some months to physically recover though :)
I am going to start charting now that I'm having cycles/periods again, but I'll have to find a moment to do so (which means remembering to do it in the first place!). For now I'm marking a calendar (subtly!!) so that I don't forget dates of fertile signs and my periods, and I'll enter all that data on my chart when I get around to it. Yay for cycles! I love watching my body's signs in joyful anticipation of another baby-treasure somewhere down the line! It makes me so happy!!!! :D
So I should probably stop updating here really. Elijah is already 2 months old, and past the initial newborn stage. But I think I will just update sporadically anyway, because his issues are ongoing, and I'm ovulating again! :) So I'll post now and again as before! I love my pregnancy blog! Such an exciting time in my life, all this reproducing! I'm cherishing it for ALL I'm worth, for as long as I can!
I will try to get smiley photos and videos of Elijah laughing and cooing up sometime. I have a post on my arthursmummy
blog at the moment which has a little video clip of my 4 youngest boys, just doing random sweet things. It includes Elijah cooing (it is a couple of weeks old, this video clip) which I didn't expect to catch, and it's the first time on camera, so you can always see that there if you haven't already. I'll try to get recent photos up soon though! :) He has been hard to photograph for a while because of how sad he always is, but lately I'm starting to catch a few relaxed or smiley photos! :) Back soon, anyway. Time to medicate him and then feed him, and then sleeeeeep for the few hours I can before morning! Two days until the weekend! :)
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