Week Seven - Faithfulness

"Ooh-oo child

Things are gonna get easier

Ooh-oo child

Things'll get brighter

Some day, yeah

We'll get it together and we'll get it all done

Some day

When your head is much lighter

Some day, yeah

We'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun

Some day

When the world is much brighter"

- The Five Stairsteps

 

 
Faithfulness
As an update to our last sad blog post, God has been so gracious to us this past week. We have seen His faithfulness in providing wisdom and guidance in caring for dear Karis and helping us to shepherd and nurture her faithfully with patience and love. In terms of sleep and overall contentedness things have definitely taken a turn for the better. We had a rough night on Saturday (in which I just settled down to watching Sound of Music while soothing her instead of painfully pacing her dark room to get her down) but by Tuesday night she was much less fussy and we were able to eat an entire meal together and finish a movie. Wednesday was even better with only one time waking during the night! Praise God for His great faithfulness!  

Here are more updates of God's work in our lives:

Visit to the Seminary
On Saturday I had a meeting with the intern wives which gave Greg the opportunity to fly solo with the little one. While I joined the wives at a home in St. Matthews (first extended time away!) Greg brought Karis to his old stomping ground, SBTS. Thankfully she slept the entire time which allowed Greg to get some studying done. At the end of the meeting I was feeling a little frantic because it was past her 3 hour feeding cycle, but to the praise of God the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I made it to feed her just as she was waking up hungry and was able to feed her at the Seminary before trekking home.

Small Groupie
Sunday was our first time back to our small group and again Karis shocked us with being a sweetie while we were out. She slept the whole time only waking up for me to feed her and then going right back to sleep. If only she could do this for naps at home! It was great time to fellowship with the body.

Karis finishing up her small group reading.

Lactation Consultation
Although feeding has been easy for me (praise God!) I had a couple concerns that I wanted to get checked out so I set up an appointment with a lactation consultant and I am so thankful I did! While most women struggle with having a low supply and baby not getting enough milk it turns out Karis and I are at the opposite end of the spectrum. I am overproducing milk and Karis is gaining much more weight than average (she really IS a chunker!). She weighed in at a whopping 10 pounds and 1 oz (up 1.5 pounds since her last appointment at 4 weeks.) While most babies should gain about an ounce a day, it turns out that in the 41 days Karis has been alive, instead of gaining 41 ounces she has gained 91, over double the suggested amount!

While weight gain is great and fine (the consultant told me, "Don't take this the wrong way, but she is overweight!"), milk overproduction can create a lot of reflux-like symptoms with an infant including over gassiness, spit up, explosive poops, crying while feeding and liking to be propped up (to help with the spit up). This is due to too fast of a flow of milk in the beginning of a feed and too much foremilk and not enough hindmilk which can produce gas. It sounded like Karis to the T!  Thus we were put on a new feeding plan that will help me cut back my production and hopefully eliminate many of her struggles that are waking her up at night and making her fussy! I know that this isn't the magic bullet, cure-all but I was so thankful to have some steps to help make baby more comfortable. God definitely uses means to give us His wisdom. Please just pray with us that it will help alleviate some of Karis' struggles.

It's a Party and I'll Cry if I Want to!
We had two social events this week and Karis got to partake! The first was a baby shower for a dear friend from church. Karis surprised me by staying up and crying in her carseat (normally she will fall asleep and stay asleep!) and was fussy at the shower, but still allowed herself to be passed around for all to enjoy. It was such a blessing to get out and fellowship with others!

Then we said goodbye to a dear family, the Gills who are heading back to CA. No more Asian Thanksgivings in Louisville but we are excited for this new chapter in their lives!

Not So Great Expectations
I think one of my early struggles with Karis' naptimes was due to expectations. With family in town it was easy to feed her, pass her off to a doting grandparent and then go about my day. I actually had a ton of time to organize, bake and clean! But now that it is just the two of us for the most part my expectations of what could be accomplished had to change drastically. Normally Karis naps for 1.5 hours during her three hour cycle. If she pops up and down or takes a long time to soothe (like 30-45 minutes) it basically means I may or may not get a chance to eat or do anything but be with her. At first this was an incredibly hard reality and I struggled thinking "we can not go on this way" and thought of the many weeks to come and how in the world we were going to survive. As I would sit with her for 30 minutes and she'd start to fuss up again I would think, I can't sit here another 30 minutes! But I think God really changed my perspective. If I walked into her room to put her down for a nap with the mindset I'm just going to be here for awhile and settle in and enjoy the time instead of thinking of the many things I was not going to be able to do it changed from being a nuisance to a time to enjoy and relax (except when she was really fussy!).

Karis-isms
Nicknames- After a character in a Christian novel, The Sword, Greg refers to Karis as "Little Sweet."

Diaper Duty- Karis has now grown out of her newborn diapers (we only wasted 3!). Also, although blow outs are almost a daily occurrence in the mornings, she had her first blow out all the way to her neck. Consequently we gave her a bath!

Bottle- We were really delinquent in consistently giving Karis a bottle on a weekly basis so now we are trying to retrain her to take a bottle. She definitely prefers the real deal.
Real Smiles- smiling has been confirmed this week! It is particularly sweet when she smiles as she is drifting off to sleep.

Conversations- she has started to have mini-conversations when she is calm at night with Daddy. They mostly consist of "oh?" back and forth. =)