Time For a Post

So I know it's been a while...

One day last week I had a brief conversation with my mom about breastfeeding. She had seen something on the Today Show (I think) about the benefits of breastfeeding but the excerpt also included some information about bottle feeding and the positive aspects of that. Don't worry, this post is in no way a lecture about breastfeeding. I have two children, one of which was bottle fed and the other breastfed so I can easily speak about both experiences and also firmly believe that a mother has to do what works best for her baby, her, and her family and I know that situations arise where breastfeeding isn't the best thing, like in Christopher's case, but that is another story entirely. The point of my story today is that after that conversation with my mom, I began tooting my horn just a bit because it had dawned on me that Lucy, my little breastfed baby, had just about made it through her entire first year of life with a perfectly clean bill of health. The girl had not run a fever, had an ear infection, or even had to make trips to the doctor other than her well visits. This simply was not the case with Christopher. While he never had any serious illness, he had to be treated for things like croup, ear infections, and sinus infections all before his first birthday.

Well wouldn't you know it, low and behold, Miss Lucy came down with the flu last Friday (positive test results confirmed on Monday). In my almost four years of motherhood, I have not experienced one of my children being this sick. It has been awful. Her fever would spike as high as 103 and she was just completely listless at times, doing nothing but sleeping on my chest. It was heartbreaking, worrisome, and of course, exhausting. I'm happy to say that today, on what I guess would be day six of the virus, I have finally started to see a few shreds of normalcy in my baby girl. She has smiled at me, eaten some solid food, and even clapped for Christopher this morning after he sang me a song. So I can breathe a little easier knowing that she is on the mend and will return to her normal happy self again very soon.