I Must Be Out of My Mind

Bags are all packed and in about fourteen hours I will be hitting the road. For a thirteen hour drive. By myself. With a ten week old baby. I think I've gone insane! Rob is making his annual pilgrimage to fish in Canada for the week and I have decided I would rather face the challenge of a road trip with an infant than spend a week here by myself. So, Robby and I are all packed up to drive to my mom's house in Arkansas. It will be interesting.

Who knew babies needed so much stuff? Packing for Robby has always been a task and a half when we are heading to the river for a weekend. Taking him away for a week is something on a whole new level. I hope everything fits in the Jetta, I am pretty sure it will. I am leaving the stroller behind and will use the car seat/carrier and the sling to cart him around instead. I've got my stuff in one small suitcase, so I should have room for the Pack 'n Play, bouncy, etc. I wanted to take his baby tub, so I used it to hold diapers, towels, bibs, bath supplies, and stuff like that. I guess I won't be able to do much shopping while we're there or I'll never have room to bring it all home.

The big determining factor in how this trip goes is how well the little guy sleeps. Luckily he is a really good car baby and tends to want to sleep when on the road-especially at highway speeds. Another challenge is going to be feeding. I am going to have to find places that I don't mind stopping at for awhile so I can nurse him. Hopefully these same places will also have a half way decent changing station in the bathroom. If not, then I will just have to change him in the car, I guess. We'll see how things go! :)

The Journey of a Thousand Miles.....

Isn't there something about starting with a single step? In my world the grandest journey I've known so far is that of becoming a mother. My son is 10 weeks old now, and I still feel I've only just begun. For me, the road started on August 2, 2006. An excerpt from my pregnancy journal:

"8/2/06-Wednesday

It's a day or two earlier than I am supposed to be able to take a home pregnancy test-but I was too excited to wait for the weekend. Took a First Response test this morning and, for the first time, I actually saw that second pink line I've prayed so hard for so many times. It's faint but it's definitely there! I don't know how I feel-I keep going back in the bathroom and looking at it over and over again. I can't believe it's real."

Four home tests and a doctor's visit later and it was definitely real and I was on my way down one of the most thrilling and frightening roads a woman can travel--motherhood.

I realized today that I did not have any of those naked bottom pictures of Robby that most moms seem to have of their kids. At first I wondered why, but once I thought about it for a moment I realized it was because of his hemangioma. Robby was born with a quarter sized hemangioma on his left hip. In the beginning I absolutely hated that bump. I spent a lot of time questioning why God would do this to my otherwise perfect and beautiful baby boy. Through our work with a wonderful pediatric dermatologist I've learned to make peace with this part of my son's anatomy. My own research revealed photos of babies with hemangiomas that were much larger than Robby's and located in more traumatic places like the face, internal organs, or diaper area. In an attempt to firm up Robby's diagnosis we went through blood tests and ultrasound pictures. Wondering what they could possibly be looking for, I did more research and learned more than I ever cared to know about fibrosarcoma. In the time it took to get all of the test results, I learned to be grateful that it was "only" a hemangioma.

Today I decided to go ahead and take those naked baby bottom photos, and I even took some close-ups of the hemangioma itself to record its existence for posterity. Someday it will be gone and I will be trying to explain it to my son. Now I've got the photos to help me do it.