He is His

Since getting pregnant I have preached to myself that this baby is God's. I had to preach it to myself throughout pregnancy and the fear of what my body would or would not be able to do as it grew this tiny human. I preached it to myself throughout my time in the hospital to bring him in to the world. And I've preached it to myself every single day since.

My baby boy is God's, just as I am God's. He is good and in control, and even when life is hard and the circumstances are horrendous, He is STILL good. He truly does work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

But I have never had to fight so hard to believe those truths as I did in those first five weeks of Hudson's life.

This not so tiny peanut was born at a healthy 8 pounds 8 ounces. (I'm still amazed that I was miraculously able to carry and birth him at all!) In the first day he lost 14 ounces, not too big of a deal for a newborn as they lose all the fluids they have in their system. We took him home happier than I could have dreamed and went along learning how to take care of this tiny little person. We brought him in for his newborn screening beaming that we certainly had the cutest baby in the world (something I still standby).

He hadn't gained any weight back but everything else looked ok, and we'd go back in a week just to be sure. A week later he still hadn't gained the weight and wasn't pooping. Never did I ever imagine I would be praying so much for poop. We went in two to three times a week for the next month.

That month was honestly a whirlwind, I was an emotional mess as I saw his pediatrician more than any new mom should, lactation consultants, specialists. There was talk of surgery, a genetic condition, and things that I honestly can't even remember. I was up basically 24/7 trying to feed him because he was endlessly hungry, but everyone told me I was feeding him right and just to push through.

At the end of the month when we finally saw a new doctor, they explained that our precious one month old needed to be hospitalized as he was formally diagnosed with "failure to thrive." I've never broke down so quickly in front of someone I'd just met. Despite all efforts to comfort me, there was simply nothing that could make this easy. Nothing they could say would make me feel less inadequate to be raising this baby boy and that I had done something terribly wrong. It was the first time I had been to an appointment without Jake - so I just sat there holding my baby and crying out to God that He would help me believe that He was good. Thinking through it now still brings me to tears.

We spent a solid week at Children's with truly the most amazing doctors I've ever met. They were gracious and compassionate in ways I'd never seen before. They were more knowledgeable than I could have hoped for and talked through everything with me until I fully understood what we were looking at. The Lord used them in amazing ways to give peace in a situation that was simply tumultuous. We were able to stay with him the entire time, through every test, every night, all of it, it was our new little family working through our first huge trial together.

After countless tests, weigh-ins, measuring food intake, and so on, we were blessed to come to a very simple conclusion. He just needed more food. Looking back on it now I feel so foolish for not putting it all together more quickly. Not enough was going in, nothing was coming out, and no weight was being put on ... put more in. But in the haze of exhaustion, hormones, and a doctor filling your mind with the idea that there was a much bigger problem - we missed it, the doctors did too I guess, and by the grace of God it was an incredibly simple fix.

I had wanted so badly for Hudson to be exclusively breastfed, it was just my thing. And it was a thing I had to give to the Lord. When you're at the point of being hospitalized and you find something that will fix the problem so simply compared to what you were anticipating, you take it. When you realize it's either have an unhealthy baby who's not getting enough food, or add more food than what your body is making - the decision was clear - challenging, humbling, and difficult - absolutely. But clear none the less. I'm so thankful that we've been able to maintain breastfeeding and bottle feeding this long, it's only the grace of God. And this not so little chunk is up to a beautiful 18 pounds 8 ounces.

Even now as I sit and watch him sleep in his crib, all 19+ pounds of him, I still have to preach to myself. I am just entrusted with him for these brief moments. As he grows and skins his knees, and is hurt by others, and is faced with his own trials, I am blessed to be the one who gets to be here to hold him and comfort him, always remembering that he is His first, and He loves him more than I ever could.