TOYS BERITH HAS (from OyToys.com)

Here are some of the toys I got for her to play with. She still just stares at them and doesn’t even try to eat them yet but I have hope.

TOYS BERITH DOESN’T HAVE (from Fat Brain Toys)

I remember my cousins had Lincoln Logs and we would play with them when we visited. It was so fun!!

They also had building blocks. Nothing so fancy as these but if I had seen these when I was a kid, I would have lusted after them.

Here’s some more fun. I can’t wait to play with her. She can learn Euclidean geometry while she plays!!

• toothache … can’t chew
• backache … can’t walk
• mastitis … can’t sleep

I wonder what the fourth will be. :D

This morning, I am wearing Berith on my back for the first time. It’s even easier to get things done around the house like this … like wearing a warm, breathing, cooing backpack. Whee hee.

Meanwhile, in other news, I am getting my brains sucked out with her incessant nursing, and to prove it, she has a chin that goes down to her chest, folds on her things, and her cheeks are getting juicy. Yay! My daughter is getting fat. Let’s hope the chin-chest and fat thighs last only for babyhood and don’t recur at any other time in her life, but if they do, there’s always fasting and detox.

She laughed tonight when I tickled her!! Oh, joy. I wish I had it on video.

Every day is so exciting. I am enjoying every moment with her. I don’t want to miss a thing. I love to feel her little baby hands clutch my shirt, listen to her soft breathing, smell her sweet baby breath, watch her smile in her sleep. I love it when she looks into my eyes and tries to talk to me. When I sing to her, she watches me intently and tries to mouth the words.

Nothing good lasts long … does it? Nothing good in this life, anyway. Here’s my baby with her Valentine’s Day frog and candy.

My calm, sweet-tempered, cheerful, super-active baby got her shots today, FOUR shots, two on each thigh, and underwent a personality change. She’s feverish, scared, screaming, and needy and her arms and legs are limp. I want to cry.

Meanwhile, here are her stats from the pediatrician’s office this morning. She’s gained over an ounce a day for the last two weeks. I’m glad that all that nursing is doing something.

• head circumference: 38.3 cm (50th percentile)
• height: 22.25 inches (50th percentile)
• weight: 9 lb 2 oz (25th percentile)

She’s small for an American baby but way ahead in terms of baby development. She’s not quite two months old yet and is in the fourth month stage [BAK] for everything except recognizing names, laughing when being tickled and the pick me up arm signal.

Every day with a baby is special in one way or another, but today was especially special. A few weeks ago I posted a picture of me with Berith in the Baby Bjorn we have. Kristen, NINO Leader, saw the picture and let me know the potential dangers of having her head hanging like that. I started being careful about her head flopping around inside the carrier. I also started having worse and worse back pain lugging her around in that thing all day. So I started looking at some baby-wearing sites, mainly MamaToto and TheBabyWearer. Finally, Ben and I went to a fabric store and bought some stretchy cute purplish/pinkish striped fabric that was on clearance and voila, I had my first wrap. It doubles as a shirt, too. I need to take a picture of it. Here it is!!

I wore Berith all day today, morning till late at night and my back is fine. No pain, but lots of gain. Baby and Mama were both really happy today.

I also framed a couple paintings I bought in Vancouver, BC last October and and hung them in the dining room. I really like them. If you do, too, you can buy them here.

Today is the day my baby girl was baptized and excommunicated. God made her communicate, and Man excommunicate.

All those men throughout the centuries who have not suffered little children to go near Him will suffer sorely themselves. Or rather, they already have and still are as they look at Europe now, gone so appallingly apostate.

Life is bitter bliss, but bliss, nonetheless. She just smiled at me. And I trust that God is smiling down on her.

May God have mercy on us all.

On Wednesday night, a little after midnight, Berith threw up a handful of bright red blood. Mama, Ben and I were all totally freaked out and we called the 24-hour nurse hotline. I answered questions for 15 minutes and the nurse said we should go to the ER immediately, so off we went.

The doctor there ordered a battery of blood tests so the phlebotomist poked her heel with a little knife and started squeezing out blood from her heel into a vial, drop by drop. Berith screamed so hard her whole body started turning purple and her face went from pink to red to blue to ashen grey. I felt sick and was trying really hard not to cry and Ben was trying not to pass out. Mama was there and kept me strong. I don’t know how else I would have gotten through it. The poor phlebotomist looked like he was going to cry, too, but he kept going. After filling four vials of blood, I thought it was all over, but no, another phlebotomist came in and had the first one hold her down while she poked her tiny arm with a needle and drew more blood. My baby tried to fight them off the whole time and never gave up. The whole ordeal took an hour. She’s a strong girl.

We waited forever and the tests all came back completely normal. The doctor also wanted to order x-rays but I said didn’t want any unless they were absolutely necessary. He phoned the pediatrician on call that night who said to skip the x-rays and come in the next morning.

The next morning, before we went to the pediatrician’s office Berith threw up more bright red blood. I was worried and didn’t know what to think.

Growing up in Tokyo with a different medical system, we never had a family doctor or a pediatrician, so it was really interesting to see how they did things. First, the nurse checked her head circumference, height, and weight. She was a wonderful nurse, very careful and precise, gentle and cheerful.

• head circumference: 37.5 cm (50th percentile)
• height: 21.5 inches (50th percentile)
• weight: 8 lb 2 oz (25th percentile)

The doctor was really, really friendly and was surprised that Berith’s first name is Rinah. He said that was his wife’s name and that he had never met anyone besides his wife with that name before. Even though I had no visible cracks, he said that he was pretty sure that the bleeding came from me, not from the baby, and told me to get a breast pump to pump the blood out before I fed her.

We picked one up on the way home and sure enough, he was right. Pumping showed a big crack way inside. I had to pump an ounce and a half of blood and bloody milk before the milk came out white. Eww. So, Thursday was bloody milk day. Friday, things started to get less bloody.

Saturday, my friend Wendy arrived from Tacoma for a visit with her husband, four children, and my best friend from Tokyo, Kudo-san. Wendy had heard about all my woes and as soon as she arrived, proceeded to show me the right way to latch on. Nobody ever showed me that before. Nothing I did before worked. It didn’t matter how many La Leche League articles I read about latching, having someone show me the right thing was completely different. Suddenly, it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t believe it!! It was like a miracle!!

At least I only had 6 weeks. Mama had 6 months of painful nursing. Nobody had shown her how to do things either and she didn’t know what I was doing wrong.

Now Berith is nursing like never before, it doesn’t take me an hour to nurse her anymore, and there are no more tears running down my face while I try to feed her. Berith doesn’t keep swallowing air while she tries to drink so she doesn’t cry for an hour, sometimes two, after each feeding either. She is just calm and happy. Today has been a wonderful day.

I just keep feeling so miserable and horrible for putting her through all that time in the ER. If I had been feeding her properly, that wouldn’t have happened. But now she is fine and she has a good pediatrician. He explains everything in detail and doesn’t force any vaccinations that I don’t want, so far, namely, the hepatitis B vaccination. Plus, he’s Asian. :D

Well, God is good and Wendy works miracles. After taking away all my pain, she whipped up an amazing dinner, comforting because it tasted like Japan.

So, no more blood. Now, I guess I must say that life is bliss. My baby is happy … I am happy.