Parenting - Gas Masks Required

You know, at those lovely baby showers celebrating the greatly anticipated arrival of your little bundle of joy... people rarely mention that parenting involves more than just staring in wonder at your little sleeping angel.

 For example, while you might hear mention of the 3:00am feeding ("Oh, but that's such precious mother-child bonding time!"), you certainly DON'T hear tales of the 3:00am vomit duty.

Apparently poor Lucy wasn't quite through being sick. Did you know? Just before that maternal, caring-for-my-poor-baby instinct kicks in, there is a definite moment in which your heart sinks as you hear the familiar gagging sound over the monitor, and realize you have to rapidly drag yourself out of bed to deal with "yuck" (as Lucy said over and over while we were cleaning up).

Don't know whether it's good news or bad, but Jacob and I are getting to be quite a team in cleaning up Lucy and her bed. This is parenting. Working side by side in the middle of the night when you both have had too little sleep over the last week, caring for your shivering, gross child, and doing your very best to overcome your own gag reflex in the process.

Of course, parenting includes both these extremes and so much more... But this week, we're certainly practicing handling the ickier side of things. ;)

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On a completely unrelated note, I had a doctor's appointment today for Patrick. I'm just over 37 weeks now. The midwife let me know that I'm at about 2 cm and 60-70% effaced, and Patrick is head down. AND, she doesn't think he'll be all that big (she threw out a guess of around 7 lbs, though there's lots of room for error when you take a guess by feeling around the outside of a pregnant tummy). So, all good news so far. :D

Don't get too excited yet, though... I was about at the same point two weeks before Lucy was born, so I don't think anything is imminent just yet.