Dear Gabriel,
You are now 10 months old. Time is flying by more quickly
than I ever thought it could.
Since figuring out how to crawl last month, you are now
pulling up to standing while holding on to furniture. Today I even saw you take
a couple of little steps as you cruised along the couch. You’ll be running all
over the place before I know it!
A couple of weeks ago we bit the surgery bullet and had
tubes put in your ears. You were on antibiotics for the sixth time in six
months, so we decided it was time to do something more aggressive about it. I
had a little bit of anxiety about sending you away behind closed doors for a
surgical procedure that required anesthesia, but when it came time for the
procedure, I was really at peace about it. I know it was the right thing to do
for you. The only bad thing about the whole thing was the half hour after the
surgery when you were coming out of anesthesia. You really were not a fan of
that feeling at all.
Since the surgery, it seems that you are sleeping better at
night. Which means your days are a bit better as well. You are playing
independently more and are less clingy and fussy overall. I should knock on
wood now, because I know as soon as I say these things aloud, something will
cause a set back.
We’ve been working on eating more table foods…you still have
some texture issues, but you’re really happy when you can feed yourself. You’ve
been eating a LOT of Cheerios lately because you love being able to pick them
up and put them in your mouth. We also realized that you like French fries, so
we’ve let you eat some roasted potato pieces. We’re going to try sweet potato
fries and cooked carrots soon.
We started supplementing some of your liquid nutrition with
formula this week. I gave myself permission to stop working so hard to pump
enough milk for you to have breast milk all day at daycare. The pumping routine
takes a lot of dedication, and I found that I was having trouble staying
committed to it. The plan is to keep nursing in the morning and at bedtime, but
to have formula bottles during the day. I think making it to 10 months without
any formula is an amazing accomplishment for the two of us considering that I
was worried that you wouldn’t ever nurse properly before the tongue tie was
fixed. I am so glad that I stuck with it and provided you with breast milk for almost
a year!
You haven’t really picked up any new syllables, but you’ve
been playing with spitting sounds lately. And you do this funny thing where you
suck your lips in around your gums and then exhale strongly a few times through
your nose. Oh and you do this other funny thing with your mouth where you kind
of suck your lips around your gums while you babble. It kind of makes it look
like you have a beak or something.
You’re just growing so fast. It seems like it’s all
happening so fast! At night while I rock you before bedtime, I just stare at
your sweet face and try to hold these moments in my heart. I breathe you in and
let your existence fill my heart and my soul. It could have been a terrible day
in every other respect, but holding your sleeping little body in my arms can
heal all of the day’s damage.
You’re like magic.
Love,
mama
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