Modified Diet

Tula had been getting these weird rashes on her face.


All of my kids have sensitive skin—they don’t burn in the sun, but their cheeks turn a bright lobster red from any amount of time outside. They have all (except Benjamin) had patches of eczema that come and go since they were babies, and we have had to be diligent about which sunscreens, soaps, lotions, and creams we use on them so it does not cause irritation. Tula’s occasional reaction was interesting, but not necessarily of note.


At first, I thought it was just teething rash. The other three would get a little contact dermatitis when they ate, so it could be that, too. I had learned that if you washed off their face and hands, it would pass after about a half hour or so.


Tula’s was more persistent though, and had the distinct white center indicitive of hives. Each time, it would get a little more wide spread—it started with just around her mouth, then blossomed out to her cheeks, around her eyes. The whites of her eyes turned red and she would scratch at them. Her nose would run, and she would sneeze and cough as her little nails raked paths across her skin.


I kept a food log and noticed when it happened:


Scrambled eggs.

Chocolate chip cookie.

Cheetos.






I had been off of dairy while nursing her because it caused such intense distress in her—as a new infant, she spent hours and hours screaming in the evenings until she fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. We tried activated charcoal and medicine for acid reflux, but the only positive change happened when I finally cut out all dairy. It was missed, but worth it when our evenings started passing uneventfully.

Originally, my intention was only to nurse for the first six months. When that came and went, I decided to supplement until she was on more solid foods. At nine months, still getting the primary bulk of her nutrition through me, she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes; nursing was such a comfort to her through that difficult time and through blood sugar crashes that I pushed back the timeline to a year.

One year, and then she would be officially done.

Around that time, my good friend brought me farm-fresh goats milk to try. It felt like a safe bet. Many people can do goats milk when cow milk does not treat them right. I gave T a bottle of it, which she sucked down, smacking her lips and saying “mmmm! Ahh! Mmmm!”




I felt like I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. This baby would not be nursing forever.

Turning around to check on her, she has the most widespread and severe rash she’d had yet.

Alarming as it was. she wasn’t wheezing, so I called the nurse to get dosing on Benadryl and made a note to bring it up a Tula’s one year check-up in a few weeks. From there, we got a referral to an allergist here in town for testing.

Using a back-scratch year, allergist determined Tula was allergic to eggs, milk protein, and soy. We will have to undergo further testing in the future, but we have to eliminate all three from her diet for the time being, including their presence in baked goods.

Which meant that I, who (despite my best intentions) is still nursing her several times a day, would have to modify my already limited diet as well.

I get questioned on my vegetarianism a lot, particularly in this state where it seems to be a lifestyle incomprehensible bordering on deviant.

March 2015 was when I stopped eating meat. Starting out, I was classified as ovalactopescatarian because I still ate eggs, dairy, and fish, but as of this actual post I am functionally vegan.

It started out as curiosity more than anything else. I wanted to know:

Would this help me with my migraines?

I vividly remember the first time I experienced a migraine. I was about seven years old, in the second grade. Mom sent me to lay down on her bed at the back of the house, away from the noise. The sink in the master bathroom had a leak that would drip, drip, drip. Each little droplet of water that splashed in the basin felt like it landed on my temple like a lead bullet, drilling deeper and deeper into my skull. My vision blurred a sharp contrast between the light and the shadows. Everything looked like it was vibrating and pulsating, this nightmare sequence of the environment advancing menacingly toward me and dancing away. At some point I vomited, but I was in too much pain to drag myself away. I lay there for hours, wishing unconsciousness would take me.

I was Ben’s age.

It never ceases to amaze me how long people will accept the unacceptable because we grow accustomed to it. Michael accepted being ill every time he ate shrimp, taking it at face value as the toll paid for that particular indulgence. I lived with weekly migraines for decades as just another unavoidably unpleasant facet of life.

In the same way, I tolerated extended periods of anemia and the associated symptoms: being chilled down to the bone and trembling, lightheadedness, weakness, lethargy. Each time it was rediscovered, I would be re-prescribed iron tablets and iron-rich foods in the hope that the unpleasant side effects of those were worth enduring for more stable red blood counts counts.

These were things I adapted to. I wasn’t happy about them, but after years of ineffectual treatments that seemed to make the situation worse, I acquiesced to these as less desirable facets of how my body functioned. Resigned, I stopped looking for a solution--I lived my life around migraines and intermittent anemia, focusing on treating the symptoms instead of looking for the underlying cause.

The vegetarianism started out as a whim based on the question: could this possibly have an impact on my migraines?

For the first two months, I felt kind of ridiculous and gross. I was bloated a lot of the time. Eating out at restaurants became tedious, particularly Mexican food that uses lard in beans and stocks in rice. People were puzzled by my decision, and wanted to be supportive but they genuinely didn’t know how. They wanted to know to what extent was I limiting myself? Was this just cutting out red meats, but still eating fish and poultry? Would I eat dishes made with chicken stock? Was it an ethical thing?

Why would anyone want to stop eating meat?

One thing that sincerely bolstered me through those early days when I was questioning myself and feeling ridiculous was my cousin, Sean. He, separately and concurrently, also decided to modify his diet. His was more based on unethical farming practices and cruelty to animals, but it encouraged me to keep going because he was persevering.

As my body adjusted to the increase in fiber and grew accustomed to this new fuel regimen, I started noticing...I was feeling better. It had been months since I had a migraine or a cluster headache, and all my blood work showed a healthy amount of iron. My hair, teeth, nails, and skin were healthier, shinier, stronger. My face lost the post-pregnancy puffiness and my weight, which for years had wildly fluctuated, finally stabilized. The amount of sleep I was getting did not change but I had so much more energy, rarely needing naps to get through the day. I even started running, a wild deviation from my norm, and found that I actually quite liked it.

It seemed my gambit had paid off and had exceeded my expectations, improving my health and quality of life in ways I had not anticipated.

The biggest, and by far most welcome change, was the lessened symptoms of my endometriosis.

Some women experience endometriosis to a certain extent after cesarean sections; it is a condition that causes endometrial tissue to grow in places it should not, causing pain. My particular brand ranged from very uncomfortable to downright distressing. Difficult to diagnose, the first time I had a name for the agony I was experiencing I was sitting on the floor of the doctor’s office, curled in on myself and hunched over the trashcan as they helpfully suggested, “have you tried ibuprofen and a heating pad?” as though I was 13 years old and first experiencing womanhood.

This...this was unacceptable. But after a barage of physicians that treated me as though I was exaggerating the amount of pain I was in, after ineffectual treatments ranging from oral contraceptives to injections to minor surgery that provided temporary tempering at best, it became an unextractable part of my life.

When I altered my diet, all of that--the visits to emergency rooms and prescription painkillers and knowing I would be completely out of commission three days out of every month...all of it just stopped.

I kept waiting for it to come back, flare back up, more ferocious than ever. It never did, and my new modified diet saw me through by far the healthiest pregnancy I ever had.

These unacceptable things I had been living with for so long were no longer a part of my life.

Tula’s allergies certainly further limit the scope of what I in particular can eat. I am making a clean sweep--all groceries have to be things that Tula can eat to avoid possible cross-contamination or accidental contact. The soy was the hardest part, surprisingly. It is in a lot of preserved foods, so we have primarily shifted our focus to whole foods. We are very thankful that it does not include gluten or nuts as then we would simply starve. A typical meal day’s meal plan might look like this:


Breakfast: Homemade bread with black currant jam, diced ham

Mid-morning snack: Whole grain sweet potato muffins

Lunch: Whole wheat spaghetti noodles with garlic mushroom marinara, zucchini

Snack: Vegan banana coconut “ice cream”

Dinner: Pork fajita rice bowls with cilantro lime rice, shredded red cabbage, avocado, and radish

For the meat portions, I substitute additional veggies, beans, or mushrooms. Meal prep time has gone way up, which is somewhat tiresome, but because I have the kids home with me I can use it as teaching time and have them help, which is a lot of fun for them. I also like that we are eating smaller meals more often because it is better for everyone and I have had less fussing about residual hunger.

Before we talked with the allergist, Tula’s blood sugar was completely unpredictable. It felt like we couldn’t win because she was all over the map. Since making these...I hesitate to call them “simple” changes because I have struggled navigating it thus far, but since implementing these changes, Tula has become much more stable--with the same amount of insulin, we are seeing considerably fewer highs, and less frequent or devastating lows.

And wouldn’t you know it, the rashes stopped appearing on her face.



Food sometimes becomes such an obstacle for people because we have been blessed to take so much joy in it. God made food to be pleasurable and we have been blessed with an abundance on which to avail ourselves, but that sometimes obscures the primary function of food--as fuel, intricately and intelligently designed with rich nutrients to help our bodies to grow and to flourish and to thrive.

Not having to deal with all that nonsense I used to--the migraines, the anemia, the endometriosis…

That has been worth anything else I may have given up.
--Andie

What's Going On

This has been the longest lapse I have had in a while writing, my last post being two and a half months ago. It hasn't just been on the blog either--I have sent fewer emails, updated by Facebook status less frequently, and had overall less human interaction than I normally engage in. This really has been for two reasons.

The first is election drama.

In the months leading up to November 8th, I (along with the rest of the world) was getting bombarded with a blizzard of election coverage. And not just regular, political white noise that runs loudly in the background of our consciousness like an overtaxed space heater that is about to explode. No, all of this peppering my every waking moment was more of a furious nature, something dripping with vitriol and the scorched earth of razed relationships. I, like so many Americans, can boast friends and family in every political camp and got a front row seat to the carnage--isn't democracy fun?

Early on, I decided that I was going to limit my political discourse to a select few--not those that agreed with my own assertions, necessarily, but those with whom I knew I could maintain a respectful disagreement. My sister is a good example of this, and my brother, too. Though we don't usually see precisely eye-to-eye on every matter, they are able to almost surgically remove their emotions from the equation in an enviable manner of sheer logic. I don't know many people that have that particular unique talent, and I know that their estimation of me does not rise or fall in regards to where our discussion leads us. Michael, too, is knowledgeable and rational, but we had to limit the sheer volume of how much we would allot for politics because we didn't want our days bogged down by excess.

It feels like we have lost the ability as a society or as a species to debate differing views productively. So often, there is anger. It isn't enough that we disagree with them; their viewpoint has to be idiotic, ill-thought-out, evil or corrupt. I think the logic there is that it would bolster our argument to moral superiority, intelligent, well-reasoned, just. The voice has been silenced that says the people we know (statistically speaking, at least some of them) are capable of assessing ideas and coming to their own conclusions based on experience, information we don't have, or their own mores and values. And yet, we engage in these fruitless, unproductive conversations that at best end in wounded feelings and at worst, in burned bridges. Why do we believe that we can just -reason- our way through to them, say that magical something that will sway them to our way of thinking as though theirs is any less valid than our own? I have chosen to engage as little as possible, and let those that wish to hurl themselves in the foray.

I would like to think this wise or mature, this selective mindset. Some days it feels that way. Most others, it feels more like cowardice.

Every time I sat down read the latest on the Clinton-Trump race though, I could physically feel the cortisol surging through my body, tensing my muscles, tightening my chest, and blasting my itty-bitty little fetus with an unhealthy wave of stress.

That is my second excuse for my absence. I am, as of this post, 19 weeks and 1 day pregnant.

To say it came as a surprise is an understatement. When that positive little "+" appeared...goodness, about 13 weeks ago (part of a monthly "better check, just in case" routine I have had for quite some time), I was stunned, and the intervening three months have done little to temper the news.

This was not precisely according to plan, you see.

As this blog will attest, I don't pregnant well. Never have, for indeterminate reasons, and I suffer from a laundry list of conditions that make the experience an ordeal for both me and the fetus I carry (not to mention Mike. Poor Mike.). After the delivery of my Benjamin, the doctor went so far as to say I needed to stop, if not permanently than for a minimum of five or ten years.

But, as sexual education teachers across the country will preach, no method of birth control is 100% effective except abstinence, so. Here I am. 19 weeks (and one day) closer to having a bouncy baby girl.

The news was far from unwelcome, though. I am in good health now, and Michael is beside himself with joy at the thought of another baby, particularly a baby girl. He has always been such a softy for the girls. And as this comes on the heels of both Amber and Julia (sister and sister-in-law, respectively) having their own little girls, I should not need for overmuch, I think. The worried stage has not really sunken in yet; still wallowing in the sheer surprise of it all.

That teeny gummy bear, the sweet flutters and kicks I am just beginning to feel, is the reason I have actively tried to avoid the great hideous political debacle. Excess stress does neither of us any good at all. Besides, at least September and the first few weeks of October, I had my mind rather occupied with other things. Specifically, laying in the grass of the backyard focusing very hard on keeping my minuscule meals down.

This one had a good idea of what I could and could not eat. Mostly the "could not"--anything served hot, or fragrant. Garlic was, in particular, offensive. Nothing with grease or oil, including peanut butter. My diet kind of devolved into swigs of pickle juice from the jar and sour patch kids. Sour things were generally alright, and I kept slices of lemon to smell in my purse to ward off the worst of the nausea.

The fog of hormonal rush coupled with poor sleep and little to eat has finally dissipated enough for me to write, and to (somewhat) assess what has been going on in my absence.

The Next Chapter in Our Story

This is story is continued from “God Is My Strength”.  “http://weardenfamilynews.blogspot.com/2016/05/god-is-my-strength.html”.

Gabriel had just been born, and Michael was fired from his job at the call center.

There is a concept in video games known as draw distance or render distance. Put simply, it is the maximum distance you can see out in the fictitious land from one immobile place. Done well, it can convey the enormity of an open world; done poorly, it is like wearing bad glasses where the further out you go, the more blurry and distorted it becomes.

Metaphor within a metaphor, better get to my point.

The time after Gabe was born is a lot like poor rendering. I feel as I stand here in my clarity like everything from that time is shrouded in a thick fog, isolated events and moments fairly obscured. Part of it was because of baby brain--I was pregnant more often than I wasn’t in those couple of years, and my body was having trouble recalibrating to its new normal.

The biggest cause may have been the sleeplessness. Gabriel did not consistently sleep through the night until perhaps the last year, and even now I say ‘consistently’ with a significant amount of hesitancy. From birth until the age of three when he could receive nighttime medicine, most 24-hour periods he got a nonconsecutive two hours of rest.

Someone had to be up with him during that time. Michael worked full-time; I couldn’t because the cost of daycare was outside our means, and because I was still going to school part time. All days and most nights fell almost exclusively to me. That is not to say that Michael had it easy or that he was not contributing. It is just one of those things.

That is why I have had such a time writing this; why it has been two months. The next page in our saga was not the most difficult; steadily our lives were improving, things were getting better. We would look back and laugh at some of the parts that made us want to cry at the time. Some parts, like the dirty taco restaurant near our old apartment, we would remember almost fondly. Others, like the day we got evicted...we don’t really talk about those. We bundle them up in the smallest parcel possible and stuff them way in the back of the closet of our hearts where we don’t have to see or think about them anymore. This blog series has been our first revisit to many of those memories.

A reluctant return in some cases; there is quite a lot I'd rather forget, let the render fog just….wash away.

To know Gabriel now, you couldn't even imagine anything bad about him. He's so gorgeous, loving, affectionate. His beautiful brown are always deep in thought. He likes to cuddle up next to you and give sweet kisses, loves Veggie Tales and docilely flipping through the Bible.

I don't want to take that image from you; that is who he is. There is kind of this unspoken code that you don't talk about the worst bits. People start to think the worst of your child, of autistics in general. Wonder if they are a danger to be around or allow to be with your children. It makes daycares feel justified for turning away special needs kids as liabilities. Churches feel like it is appropriate to ask a family to worship someplace else.

Everyone I tell this little tidbit to (particularly Christians) are absolutely horrified by it, but that doesn't detract from the truth:

I do not know a single special needs family that has not been kicked out of a church.

The manner, the politeness, may vary, but every one I have encountered shares this common experience. I have a friend that took her child to Sunday School, one they'd be attending for years, to find a group of parents clustered around a notice posted inside the window like Martin Luther’s theses nailed to the door. It was a letter from the church with her name clearly at the top telling her they would no longer accept her child in bible class or the church-run daycare.

People who hear that balk, and insist that surely their church would NEVER do something so horrible. How is that a Christian attitude, they demand. For didn't Jesus say, “suffer the children unto me”??! That is simply and utterly outrageous!

….except that it's not. Should be, but that's not how it always works out. Having a neurodivergent or differently-abled child is one of the most cripplingly, devastatingly lonely journeys. You feel like the whole world has turned their back on you, this is something you have to face--and bear--alone.

You'll often hear me say how lucky I am to have Gabriel, and I still fully, emphatically mean it. I adore him. Plain and simple--I've loved him hopelessly since the day he was born and every day since.

I find myself trying to sugarcoat it. Pulling my language; don't want to scare you away, dear reader.

Then I ask myself...who softened the blow for me and Michael when we were 22 and 24 (respectively)? Who pulled punches to protect our innocence? We made it through; this story is one of triumph, not defeat. We were not especially blessed, uniquely qualified, or graced with particularly robust patience. Quite the contrary: ask anyone that knows me well and they'll tell you I'm a cantankerous, ill-tempered troll better suited to scaring children from under a bridge than rearing them.

I'm resilient though, and stubborn as they come. Michael, too. And we have a God that has not abandoned us or failed us for a second.

Gabriel as an infant had to be in motion. Benjamin as a baby was squirmy--he liked to roll in your arms like a manatee on crack, but Gabe was different. If his body stopped, he was gale-force squalling.

It was so pervasive in our lives that Emerald, at the tender age of two, developed anxiety and started showing signs of stress. Her parents day out program called us to in to have a sit down meeting. They were concerned because whenever the classroom got louder (which it is wont to do, full of toddlers), she would wring her hands, twist her shirt, and yank out her hair, babbling incoherently. If it got to be too much, she had a meltdown or ran away, behaviors generally frowned upon in daycare.

I internalized this, of course. Blamed myself for keeping our house too quiet, not exposing her to more at a younger age. We called for an Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) evaluation, where she qualified for speech and occupational therapies. ECI is a government-funded program being part of the school, so you can go ahead and judge me for being on that one as well. Medicaid reimbursed them for coming, which is weird that the government insurance was paying for a government program, but I'm not going to overanalyze it. Even if we weren't on Medicaid, ECI saw you--if you qualify for services, you get services.

Speech helped her gain language; OT taught her self-regulating, soothing techniques. For her brief stint as only child, she really was the perfect baby. Bright-eyed and intelligent, eager to please. She was so happy all of the time. The transition was difficult for her. She adored her baby brother, always wanted to hold him, play with him. It was a big adjustment, though. Always is.

For one thing, we were co-sleepers. We tried to do the crib thing, cry out, read all the books on getting her out of our bed, but honestly, I liked holding her. She was warm and squishy and smelled like milk and lavender and undiluted joy. It made me feel safe having her close-by in case there was an emergency, and it helped me bond with her when it didn't come as naturally to me as it should.

When Gaby was born, I had to be available to him for feeding. I had the night shift then. Emerald stayed in our bed, but I slept on the sofa near Gabe. Over the next several years, I tried to move back into my bed with my husband, but more often than not I was on that tomato red couch. It was where Gaby was, and Gaby needed round-the-clock care.

Writing it all out, things fall into place a bit better than they had at the time. I didn't know I still harbored feelings of guilt for Emerald’s anxious behavior until just now. I can also see how we arrived at the place where our family was divided neatly down the middle: Daddy and Emerald, Mommy and Gabe. Michael and Emerald had our bed in the back; Gabriel and I took the other end of the house. No reason for everyone to be up.

For hours most every night, I would walk the baby in circles: through the living room, across the dining room, into the kitchen, front hall, then back again. At the start of the night, I would sing. That's what you do for babies, right? You sing. Gaby hated my singing though, so after a while my voice would peter out until all you could hear was the rhythmic patting of my bare feet on the linoleum. If I stopped, my tiny son would start to cry again, so I kept going for as long as I could stand.

The swing didn't move fast enough for Gabe’s liking, the gentle gliding motion not neatly vigorous enough; when I needed to rest, I strapped him in and coaxed it along with my foot, nodding against the wall and jerking back awake until dawn.

In June 2009, Michael got a job selling cars at Scoggin Dickey. It was often thankless work, 10 hours of standing on scorching asphalt six days a week to sell cars to the rudest, most ill-informed consumers in existence. Everyone buys into the crooked, cheating car salesman so full-heartedly that it has almost become encoded in our DNA to mistrust them. The company treated him very well, though--as long as he was trying, they took care of us, sales or no sales. The paychecks were inconsistent amounts; we never knew how much we would have to work with until it came through on payday. We made do. It was no extravagant lifestyle, but we were surviving.

The demands of the job were taking a toll on Michael; it is exhausting work, and he was unaccustomed to the sheer force of hatred directed at him from perfect strangers. He periodically applied for other jobs all over town, but nothing else ever came of it.

He left at 7.30 to get into his office by 7.45. The kids and I would go out on the front porch and have picnic breakfast in the cool morning, watching people heading out. Emerald would color with sidewalk chalk or play with bubbles while I would gently push Gabe back and forth in the stroller. When it got too hot, we’d go inside. Emerald’s favorite movie at the time was “Meet the Robinsons”, so we would all three pile together in the recliner. Run time at 1 hour, 42 minutes, if I could get Gabe calmed enough to sit--or, if I was exceptionally lucky that day, asleep--I could get an hour or so nap, so long as I kept the chair rocking while I did it. It wasn't the ideal situation, but it worked.

The commute to the dealership wasn't far--ten minutes each way--but gas prices were so high that we tried to drive as little as possible. Despite the cost, Michael drove home for lunch most days. I couldn't make it an unbroken nine hours; if he was with a customer, it could be even later. He could have saved the money and take his lunch at work, but he trekked back and forth to offer relief to me.

Living it, I didn't realize anything was wrong. I knew I was tired, and that I actively dreading going to bed at night because night was the worst time. Children are all different though; probably just colic. A phase. He’ll grow out of it and things will get easier.

With reassurances like that, our days faded in and out much the same way for a year and a half.

Back to School!

It's the first day of daycare for the Wearden duo, the second year for Emerald and the first for Gabriel! Needless to say, Mama was tense all day!!

We got up early this morning--I had packed as much as I could before going to bed, which means Emerald's lunch, diaper bags, etc. Emerald is in the monkey class (which I think fits her to a T!) and Gabriel is a caterpillar (he's so adorable!).

Emerald was really surly from the moment she woke up--she was never a morning person. Gabriel watched the Batman Animated Series while I changed and dressed Emerald--he is always very agreeable.

We left super early--Emerald snacking on apple bars--so that we could stop and see Rhonda on our way to daycare. Unfortunately, we didn't realize until we were at college campus (between our house and daycare) that Rhonda was home sick, So I took the kids to the financial aid office so that I could make sure everything was turned in (it is! awesome) and then off to school.

Maya is not in Emerald's class any more, nor is Cooper, but Drew and Mady are. Drew is the son of the director, and really chubby and cute; Mady was BBFF (Bald Best Friends Forever) with Emerald last year. She has the cutest headbands--thick things with giant flowers atop them. I wish I had as many as she does!!

Anyways, other new students include Sadie and Garrett (more about him later). Emerald we dropped off at class first, and she ran in and started playing, didn't look back once.

Gabriel we dropped off next--he was curious more than anything else, and I really worried about him, but his teacher said he was the sweetest little boy all day, and when I showed up, he was asleep in the swing.

After I got out of class, I went and got them back--Emerald started fussing the moment she saw me and insisted I pick her up. Her teacher said she wouldn't take a nap until she said "Pat, hold!" and her teacher Ms Pat rocked her to sleep =) She apparently was more fussy than Gabriel, and is being really clingy now.

We gathered all our stuff little Garrett (just precious little blonde haired boy, and the only baby I have ever seen that is bigger than Emerald) jumped up and ran to the door where Emerald was leaving yelling "BYE!! BYE!" and blowing Emerald kisses. Emerald, always the cool customer turns to him and says "Bye, Jake". Oooh, cool use of the "wrong name", doll ;)

All in all, we are looking forward to a great year!

~Andie~

Gabriel's Day in June

Gabriel had a very up and down day today. He wasn't able to maintain the sleeping through the night two nights in a row. He woke up at 1am after having peed out of his outfit and all over himself, then again at 4.30am. It must have been very unpleasant and cold, being covered in your own urine, especially since Michael and I keep the fan on in our room. Dr. Stripling said a rotating fan may help prevent SIDS.

We got up earlier than usual because Gabriel had such a rough night, and went to Game Stop with a gift card we had been holding on to. Gaby Baby loved the extra time with Daddy last night and today--as a family, we have generally been splitting up, with Michael and Emerald spending more time together, as I have had to focus on Gabriel so much since his birth. He really does think Daddy is funny though--he has a rich, throaty laughter that is just delightful.

Unfortunately, he was still constipated today, and starting to get very uncomfortable, so he enjoyed an ice cold apple juice and two walks.

I know God must have heard my needs, because the weather was incredibly mild near our house--the wind was gentle and cool, and the sun wasn't beating down quite as hard today. He really enjoyed the fresh air and smooth, rocking motion.

I tried singing to him, but he is not a big fan of The Wiggle interpretation of Duke Ellington's "The Mooch" (basically me meowing at him).

Finally, just wanting to get the poor kid calm, I gave him a lavender scented bath. He really seemed to enjoy it, though he got chilled after a moment and had to be taken out. Emerald, when she was his age, bathed much more frequently, but he gets very greasy when we bathe him every day, and it is pretty disgusting. After his bath, I gave him a lotion rub and dressed him in these adorable, skintight long johns Aunt Amber got for Emerald. He had a toasty bottle, some Nystatin, and Mylicon and fell very asleep.

Luckily, all my efforts paid off today, and he is no longer constipated, and is sleeping like an angel. He is much happier, so maybe he will sleep again tonight!!

~Andie~

Gabriel's Got Thrush!

Oh, goodness--Mr. Gabriel Lynn has thrush!

In case you don't know what that is, it is a very common infection where the normal yeast in your mouth starts overproducing, usually due to a adjusted climate in your mouth (specifically, when you begin taking oral antibiotics, which kills off the good bacteria that balances out the bad bacteria in your mouth). Lots of babies get it, but it is very contagious, so Michael and I can't kiss on him for four or five days. L

Its really not serious--the saddest part is that the bacteria went down his throat, causing soreness and so his little voice is all cracked and pitiful. He can barely cry, and he refuses to be set down at all.

We are really concerned that Emerald is going to catch it, because she loves to "share" with Gabriel--she will take his pacifier or give him hers, finish his bottles, and smother him in kisses. The last thing we need is a re-infection cycle starting up between these two!

--Andie--

Gabriel's Birth

Welcome to our Wearden Family Blog! Hopefully, this will help us keep everyone more up-to-date on the comings and goings of us--Michael, Andie, Emerald, and Gabriel.

Since we have been hermits for the last few months (years), the next couple of posts will probably be catching up to the point we are now--Emerald is 20 months old, Gabriel 3 months. First, Gabriel's birth!

Gabriel was due February 24th of 2009, or Rhonda's and Marian's (Gigi/Granny) birthday. Unlike my pregnancy with Emerald, it didn't look like I had gestational diabetes, which was a huge relief, as it was an inconvenience more than anything else. Unfortunately, they were wrong, and due to Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR)--meaning Gabriel was not able to grow--and the diabetes, they wanted to get him out as quickly as possible. His lungs were "severely underdeveloped, due to miscalculated due date and uncontrolled diabetes", which means instead of being born on February 12-14, he had to bake an additional week and a half.

It ended up being a godsend that we had to delay the birth of the baby, because Emerald chose that moment to develop the flu, RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus), double ear infections, and antibiotic-related yeast infection and had to be kept away from me and the little baby until she was no longer contagious.

Michael was the only one that got to know the baby's gender, and therefore he was the one that got to choose the baby's name. He later told me that he had narrowed it down to three boys’ names, three girls’ names--Alexander, Dylan, and Gabriel, and Aeris, Myka, and River. I love all those names--my husband has wonderful taste!

We did the c-section at 1pm on February 20th (a Friday), and it was a bit of a fiasco, to be honest. The nurse in charge of me was having quite the difficult time, resulting in multiple attempts to insert my IV, a veritable gusher of my own blood all over the hospital bed, and administration of amoxicillin (to prevent infection during the surgery), to which I am allergic. So, I was a little panicked when I actually ended up in surgery, but it all turned out fine in the end.

Gabriel Lynn Wearden was born 6lbs, 9oz (the exact same as his big sister had been, and 1 oz lighter than I myself had been) and 19 inches long (1/2 inch longer than Emerald). He had the loveliest olive skin, big dark grey blue eyes, and a dusting of the silkiest dark hair.

We stayed in the hospital for the standard three days after the c-section. He did not have any trouble when he was born--no jaundice, no blood sugar issues (despite the diabetes), nothing. He was perfect. J

Now he is the happiest, gassiest 3 month old baby boy, and in the next few days he will be joined by his new best friend, Baby Boy Bevill!!

--Andie