Wednesday's Child

I've never put stock in horoscopes. Never paid too much attention to the zodiac. Fortune cookies don't hold a lot of truth for me. But one thing I hold tried and true to.... Mother Goose. For those of you who have never been introduced to the wisdom that is Mother Goose, let me enlighten you:

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace.

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go.

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living.

But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day

is happy and loving, blithe and gay.

Yep, yep. There it is... truth in its purest form, straight from the goose's mouth. See, how can you not trust something as sure as this?! But since Emmett came along, my faith in this wisdom has been shaken. Yes I admit it, my faith in Mother Goose has been shaken to the core.

She has been right for my other children - Teagan and Garrett were both Monday's babies and are pretty to look at. And Owen was a Thursday's baby and is always proving that he has some goal to be working on - this week we are working on not talking angry to Garrett and not throwing temper tantrums... and yes, he does have far to go on this goal!

So it only stands to reason that Mother Goose would be correct about Emmett as well, right?! But that is where my faith in her predictions goes awry.

Mr. Emmett was, sadly, a Wednesday's child...poor kid should be full of woe. And so far her predictions have been wrong for him. He is the least woeful baby I've had so far - very happy, pleasant, contented...no woe in him! Until yesterday that is.

We went to his 2 week check up with a black cloud hanging over us. Emmett was still being his wonderful baby-self that he is, but I knew what was coming. After all the pleasantries of "what a cute baby", and "oh how much hair he has", and "look how tiny he is" came the "okay, strip him down to his diaper and we'll be right back". Ouch. Naked + Emmett = a sad baby. But we did as she asked anyways and other than a scrunched up face, he was fine. I nursed him to make his belly full and happy, and swaddled him up until they came back. She took his measurements and with a full tummy he weighs 8lb 7 oz and is still 20.5" tall. Which meant that he has only regained his birth weight which is an indicator that he isn't nursing as well as he should. Then in came the doctor. He checked ears, eyes, mouth, heart... everything was fine other than that his tongue was tongue-tied. - and that was what was making nursing still a toe-curling experience for me and wasn't letting him gain weight like he should. Then came the bad part (dun, duh duh - insert foreboding music here) time for his circumcision and since Emmett was tongue-tied, it was time to clip his tongue to free it up a little more and to help with nursing.

His low blood sugar in the hospital made it so he wasn't peeing (I don't know the connection, but that was what I was told). And since he wasn't peeing like he should, they didn't do it in

the hospital like they normally would have (they actually made us stay longer than we would have liked because they were waiting for him to wet his diaper). So it was left for me to either convince Scottie that we didn't need to get it done, or to take him to have it done by his doctor. (As hard as I tried, I couldn't convince Scott that it wasn't necessary- he won't trust the research I found - and it ended up being one of those arguments that wasn't worth arguing.) I reluctantly took Emmett in, after calling ahead and making sure they were going to numb things up before starting to slice on everything (if they weren't going to numb things up, I would have fought a more valiant fight against having it done!). I knew what was coming, but poor Emmett was as happy as ever - he was swaddled, had a full tummy, was being held by mommy - life was great for him! Then we strapped him to this table thingy and the doctor started numbing him - that's when the woe began! And it continued for a whole...2 minutes... I'm telling you, Emmett is an angel baby! After that he stopped crying and just laid there looking at me, holding my finger, and sucking on his pacifier. The doctor finished up the barbaric slicing and then moved to Emmett's head and clipped the frenulum of his tongue - another barbaric cut - which brought another minute or so of woe and tears for Emmett. And when it was done I picked him up and nursed him and he was happy again. Then came in the nurse to draw some blood... more woe and tears. The doctor had us wait a while to see if Emmett could go pee for him, but after about 45 minutes he sent us home and told us that he needed to have gone within the next 4 hours or there could be a clot somewhere due to the nerve block they did for the circumcision.

We left with a lolly-pop (for me), a sticker (for Emmett?!), and a scowling baby. We got to the van and putting him in the car seat brought a new round of tears(quite understandably!) So I tried nursing him again, and then we headed straight to the grocery store to get some baby Tylenol and gave him a dose of it to help with the pain.

Emmett slept a lot yesterday, and we waited and waited for a wet diaper. After 5 hours of no pee, the doctor had us come back up to the office to check him out... again. The doctor stripped him down to his diaper(again) and then pressed on his bladder to try and get him to pee... but nothing came. So he sent us back home (again) and told us to give it until 10pm before we get too worried. So home we went to wait for the pee (again). I have never waited for a kid to pee more than we have with Emmett! Finally around 8:45, while changing his third poopy diaper since the appointment, he peed on his blanket. Yippee - the waiting was over! We were so excited to see the miniature Old Faithful in our living room that we clapped and startled him! His doctor called at 9:15 to check on him, and when all was cleared, I went to bed.

So yesterday was quite literally the worst day of Emmett's life (out of all 14 days!), and he cried all of three times. Now tell me, does this sound like a kid that's full of woe to you? I'm starting to think that Mother Goose might not be the best authority to trust.