He's not a 'baby' anymore

Thank you so much for your thoughts and encouragement in my last post.  God heard my prayers and yesterday morning I got a call to a new end.ocrinologist that I requested my family dr. a referral to, and I managed to get in later this morning for an appointment (next one is in June!) 

Hope she is the right person to guide me through to close to perfect health again soon. 

Now in the last post, it was all about me.  What I neglected to say was that I am completely and utterly baffled that each day I look at my son and see how much he changes day to day. He's growing taller and taller, and the other day I saw the beginnings of a run. Yes, my little E, my Sprout baby, is now officially a toddler. His vocabulary is still not so expansive, his favourite (and in the past week only) word is car.  He points to cars on the streets, highways, books, toys, stickers - anywhere he can find a car he will point to it and say caaa-ar! I am not sure we are doing nearly enough to help along with his words but I am sure it will all come out one day and then that day I'm going to wish this stage lasted a bit longer.  He is such a smart boy, like, REALLY smart (I know, mother's bias) - I can tell him to pick up his toys, go get your panda, go drink some water from your sippy cup, can you find me your ball, what about your 'first words' book - and he is bang on, every time. So proud and so happy that although he can't verbalize to us yet, he can pretty much understand what we are saying to him. 


He's been doing really well at my mom's during the day.  We had one panic attack situation about a month ago when I was in an all-day workshop in an area of the building with poor cell phone reception. I talked to E and my mom at noon before heading back in, and thought nothing of it to put my purse (on silent) in my purse underneath my chair.  When I checked the phone at the end of the coffee break, I was so shocked and worried to see 5 missed calls, text messages from my husband (on both text and whats.ap.p), emails, etc.  Apparently out of no where, E started screaming and crying and clutching his belly - and he was inconsolable. My mom tried everything to comfort him and to help him calm down but NOTHING was working and she started to worry that something was terribly wrong.  She tried calling me several times and couldn't get a hold of me so she called my dad at work and he called my husband.  Luckily DH was able to cancel his meetings and catch the next train up (it's about 15 mins express +10 min drive to my parents) and by the time I rushed out of work and called them, he had finally stopped crying (this was going on for 2 hours without me having a clue) and my hubby was putting him down for a nap after he was absolutely exhausted. 


You cannot even imagine how horrible I felt.  As a mother, for the first time, I wasn't there for my baby when something was wrong.  I wasn't able to be there for my mom either, in a situation where she counted on me.  It was just an awful feeling in my gut that at that moment, I didn't care at all about work, and even said to myself - this is not worth it. I know I won't be able to be there for him all the time (think about school, sleep overs, etc down the road) but it has never happened that I was that much out of reach and touch. I blamed myself for not having the phone on my lap and on vibrate. I blamed myself for not checking my phone the minute we took the break during the workshop. 


Later that evening, E started getting the chills after his bath and developed a fever, throwing up everything, the works. We had an awful night all around and we called our T.el.e.health emergency line to ask for help and see if we should be taking him to the ER.  Thankfully it turned out that it may have been a stomach virus and the next day he was weak but definitely in better spirits.  Very scary, and very helpless watching your baby suffer or be in pain. 

Other than that episode, E generally is a very happy baby and sleepwise, he's still doing 11-12 hours straight a night, with the odd wake up here and there but he settles back into sleep within minutes by himself. We still have not weaned him off the bottle (he has 3 bottles of homo milk a day - one when he wakes up, one at early afternoon, and one at bedtime.) I am very scared to take the bottle away because he loves it so much and he is still eating his solids well. I think I will try doing 1 less a day and replace it with milk with his meals slowly - but I really am not looking forward to the resistance (or maybe I'm making it a bigger deal than it is?)


Here are some pics over that last few months of my lil' monster: 

SMOOCHES - Aug 2011

  E and I went to our first wedding 'solo' - daddy had to work

Canadian Thanksgiving, Oct 2011 

 Colouring at Swi.ss Chalet

At a friend's birthday party at a play place

 Being silly at home

 Last weekend Mommy and E went to a women and babies only baby shower 

See how much he's changed?!