Dear Evany
Today you are both one month old and 37 weeks gestation. You turned 4 weeks a few days ago, but I thought I'd wait for your official one month birthday to post. A month ago, right this very second, I was being rushed down to the operating room for an emergency C-section. I was certain I was going to lose you moments before you were born, that I would be someone who lost not just one baby just before birth, but two.
But you proved us all wrong and you've thrived, first in the NICU for eleven days, then here at home. You have observed or slept through about 72 plays, originally composed songs, and dance competitions put on by your siblings in your honor. You have been petted incessantly by your brother Seth, who calls you "Baba", which is apparently his term for baby. Today I caught him trying to pick you up and hold you himself.
Generally, this is still what you do all day, every day:
Every once in a while, though, you wake up and give us all some dirty looks until you get fed. You have a major frown already...I have a feeling you're going to be just as much drama as your sister. Everyone who comes to meet you exclaims at how small you really are...the pictures don't do justice to your size. You are still squarely in Preemie clothes, although you're outgrowing them. Newborn clothes seem to be completely out of your reach, though, and I'm not sure who had the bright idea to create this gap that seems to exist between the two sizes, but it really annoys me. On the upside, we've gotten a lot of use out of all of your Preemie stuff.
Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and at one point I thought I would still be pregnant now, preparing to be induced sometime this week, which was been the original plan my OB and I put together. You were going to be a 2010 baby, although you didn't play ball with that game plan. You are, however, a very sweet little tax deduction. Part of the reason I wanted you to wait until 2010 to be born is because this year has been really hard for us. I wanted you to be born in a new year, one with fresh pages and a fresh start. But instead, you've redeemed this old year for a lot of people, and regardless of everything else that's happened, I'll never be able to look at 2009 as a terrible year the way I thought I would.
I'm not sure who you look like anymore...I think you look a lot more like the boys than your sister...she had completely different features than the four of you have. As your siblings have gotten older, though, they all look a lot like one another, and I'm sure you'll be the same. In fact, several people who've seen you immediately exclaim "Now that's a McCall Baby!" In fact, one person at church who didn't even know I had been pregnant ID'd you as my child based solely on how much you look like your brothers and sister.
There's not a lot to tell you about yourself yet, since you seem to be spending your third trimester very much as you might have on the inside. I don't know yet what you're going to be like, how you will grow and change. But I have to thank you for being such a good, easy baby...you have made the transition to having four kids at home seamless, and I'm still able to do lots of fun things with the older ones because you are okay with going along for the ride. You've never cried for more than about 5 seconds, although when you're getting hungry you do a whole lot of grunting. When you're not swaddled, your hand is always over your face, which is hilarious to me, because it's the same thing you did before you were born. It's the reason I don't have a single good ultrasound picture of you, that silly hand up over your face all the time.
Having you has been proof to me, all over again, that babies are themselves well before they are born. They're people, they count, they have habits and routines and little personalities whether they're inside or out, and although I felt that way before, felt like your brother was a real person who deserved to be remembered and mourned just like a baby who died after birth, you have confirmed it for me. Thank you for that. A little over a week ago, you became older than your older brother, and having those first weeks with you were very bittersweet for me, knowing you were younger than he was when he died, knowing that he was just as real as you, that he spent those weeks just as you did, sleeping and kicking and rolling around, but that he did those things inside of me instead of lying next to me.
I love you baby,
Mama
