{"id":781,"date":"2008-12-08T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T14:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/monday-december-8-2008\/"},"modified":"2008-12-08T09:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T14:39:00","slug":"monday-december-8-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/monday-december-8-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday December 8, 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"me_and_my_brother<\/a> <\/font><\/span>brothers — do you think they look alike?<\/font><\/p>\n

Liam’s personality is emerging rapidly.  Our babies might look<\/em> alike; but they have night and day different personalities.  Adam is methodical.  He learned to crawl at 9 months with some coaching from my dad.  All through his life, he waits and watches until he can do something perfectly.  He refused to practice writing his name, then out of the blue, he did it solo.  As a baby, he did a lot of looking and not so much moving.  When he learned to walk, he refused to take steps between us then one day I was vacuuming and heard him do a little distress cry.  I turned around to see him walking in circles as though he’d gone into orbit.  From then on he was racing across the room.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"December<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/span>playtime<\/font><\/p>\n

Liam lunges, grabs, squirms, rolls, and contorts.  He moves all the time.  At six months he is across the entire living room floor in twenty seconds.  Not truly crawling.  Just getting up, on all fours, lunging, rolling halfway while contorting his torso to switch directions and then flip, flip, flip and boom, he’s there.  He giggles almost as much as he moves.  While Adam used to intently observe every single detail as I carried him through the house, Liam’s head darts here and there, eyes half smiling already and making eye contact with me every few seconds half giggling … just waiting for us to get to the hillarious place we must be going next.  Adam hardly touches him and he giggles so hard I’m afraid he won’t be able to catch his breath.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"December<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Still, the two have many similarities.  They both love attention.  They love stories, playing ball, and dancing in the living room.  They both love being cuddled … things I used to think were inherent to all babies.  The boys are both still sick with terrible colds.  Last night when Liam woke up screaming, I snuggled him close and rocked him gently.  Almost immediately his body began to relax.  Secure.  Warm.  Upright so he could breathe.  He drifted back to dreamland in five minutes; but I sat there five more remembering another day.  Another rocker.  Another baby.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"November<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

                                                                             <\/font><\/span>^photo credit to Adam ^<\/font><\/p>\n

I was in my final nursing school rotation doing pediatrics at a rehab center.  My patient for the day was a 9 lb six month old baby girl with the same first name as my own.  She was beautiful, but oh, so pitiful.  Her mother birthed her three months prematurely and abandoned her at the hospital.  The long months of high concentration oxygen therapy had left her (the doctors thought) nearly blind and deaf.  She looked like a newborn.  I administered her tube feedings, accompanied her to her chest x-ray, and watched the tech strap her in as she fussed.  My heart broke.  No one cared for her in that mama hen protective way that mommies fight for the comfort of their child.  <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\"November<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/span><\/a>\"December<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

                                                when can I go hang out with the men?<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/a> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Halfway through the day my instructor suggested I hold her in the rocking chair to give her some tactile stimulation.  I was delighted.  I’ve always loved rocking babies.  I held her gently and sang to her wishing she could feel loved.  Instead, it frustrated her.  She wasn’t accustomed to being held and very quickly went into respiratory distress.  The nurse supervisor insisted she be put back into her seat to calm down.  That night she ended up back in the main hospital.  I never heard how her story ended.  When I left, they couldn’t find her mom to get rights terminated but a nurse working part time at the center was hoping to adopt her.  I can only hope she did.  <\/font><\/p>\n

\"November<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

brothers — do you think they look alike? Liam’s personality is emerging rapidly.  Our babies might look alike; but they have night and day different personalities.  Adam is methodical.  He… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-cB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}