Awed by milestones

When you have a child with Down syndrome, one of the things you start doing is celebrating every little milestone. There is a line in the movie The Incredibles (great movie btw) about how having a graduation at each grade is celebrating mediocrity. While I agree that celebrating a graduation for each grade is ridiculous, I don't agree that it is celebrating mediocrity or that celebrating each goal achieved is a bad thing when every one is going to have a different amount of effort to achieve those goals. I like it when things come easy to my girls, but I love it when I see them working hard at something to do it. I think one of the reasons that parents of children with Ds celebrate every little thing is because our kids work so hard to accomplish each little thing that other children most often come to without a second thought.

Darth Baby is five days old now and I'm discovering that I am going to find joy at all her little milestones, too. For my previous pregnancies, my milk was there already when I gave birth. With the nerdlet, the first time I pumped I got 5 ounces. With this pregnancy, it took longer. I could express colostrum, but I would get practically nothing when I pumped. I was using the same technique of feeding Darth Baby and then pumping, but she was still always hungry and for the first two days we were giving some formula to supplement (because of the GD and the worry that her blood sugar would drop as it was borderline in the low 50s). When we took her in to her first doctor's appointment Saturday morning, she had her first non-meconium diaper and it was seedy and looked just like a breast milk diaper is supposed to. If you had ever told me that I would be so happy over a diaper, I would not have believed it.

Now at day five, I'm watching Darth Baby work so hard to lift her head and turn it back and forth and I can't tell you how it moves me. The bear cub is really warming up to her younger sister and was making happy noises and clapping while her sister was doing it. I took a bunch of pictures and only managed to get a few with her head actually off the ground.


The nerdlet is really enamored of her new sister and keeps telling anyone near her, including Daddy, Grandma, and me to be careful and gentle with her. She brings her blankets and tries to sneak her toys and food. The bear cub is getting much better. For months, I've been signing baby at her and telling her we were going to get one and trying to prepare her only to get blank eyes back. Today, she signed baby for the first time and started patting Darth Baby while saying, "Bah, bah, bah." It was so stinking cute.