growing like a champ

We officially have a 10 lb. girl on our hands! Last week's visit to the doctor was a success, minus the first round of vaccines she had to get that made her cry her poor little head off. She's growing really well, and is even up to almost 22 inches! That seems remarkable to me that she's grown almost 4 inches in 10 weeks. Her little bones must ache! She's been having some growing pains lately we think, and I totally can understand why. She's finally filling out her newborn-sized clothes, and has jumped from the 10th percentile to the 20th for height and weight.

Her personality has also blossomed. She's smiling all the time, reacts when we make funny faces, and loves being sung to and danced around. She's such a joy. Her sleeping has gotten a bit more regular, although I don't think we'll ever get used to being so tired. She's the most portable baby I know, and loves to be taken just about anywhere. We went on an airplane last weekend for the first time to go to my brother's engagement party, and she slept through the whole thing. Jay and I still haven't recovered from an overnight trip, but its as if she never missed a beat.

All in all, things are going well. The stress of our schedule and the lack of sleep are making things a bit difficult for us to be rational at times, but I think that goes with the territory. And maybe because of stress, tiredness, hormones, whatever, I can't seem to shake this terrible habit I've gotten into of preparing myself for worst-case scenarios. It started with the terrible thought I couldn't shake for the first few weeks she was home: one day I'm going to die and leave her. I still think this daily. (Is this normal? Someone please reassure me.) But now I've started to play out circumstances in my head in which this happens. Case in point -- the airplane ride. I had planned out what I would try to do if the plane crashed. I figured that if we were on the ground, crashed and engulfed in flames, I would use all my strength to try to throw her as far as I could away from the burning rubble, thinking she would survive the impact of the throw better than she would survive the flames. In fact, I thought, if it looked like there was a way to throw her out of the plane right before impact, there would be a better chance of survival than if she stayed with me on the plane and burned. And when they found her, they would know who she was because we had registered her for the plane trip even though she didn't need a boarding pass to get on.

The next scenario is that I have her out with me on a walk, strapped to my chest in the baby bjorn. It's dark, and someone comes up to us and tries to murder me. I plead with them to let her go and they do, and they let me toss her into some bushes nearby before they kill me. Then, when they find my body, I will have been carrying my wallet on me and they will be able to ID us. But who carries their wallet on a quick walk? I never did, but because I'm so scared of this circumstance, I actually went out and bought a special wallet that has a place to hold a cell phone, so no matter what I'll always have my wallet and phone on me, my wallet containing her health insurance card to ID her. Of course, this morning I decided that wasn't enough, so I made up an emergency contact sheet, wallet-sized, with my name, her name, Jay's name and all of our info on it, in case something bad happens to me and they need to contact Jay, or if they need to ID the baby. Trust me, I understand now why people advocate for microchips to be implanted in all children with their emergency/medical/personal info on it.

Am I nuts? Could be. I've never been a paranoid person, and I've always been one to feel very safe. I took risks when I was younger that I would DIE if Maura repeated, and I came out OK. My life has never been in danger, and I've never been traumatized. I'm hoping this is just a normal (OK, maybe the far end of normal) reaction to loving Maura and wanting to protect her and that it will go away soon. Good thing I work at a psychiatric hospital if it doesn't . . .