Two Month Check-Up - for Zane and for us...

Zane had his two month check-up on Monday and it went very well. He weighs 10 pounds 3 ounces and is 24 inches long. He is really tall for his age. His is kind of a skinny kid still, but doing just fine. We have been fortifying his feedings with a little bit of formula added to breast milk every other feeding and we have to continue doing that, which means I have to keep pumping, which isn't fun, but oh well. We do what we have to. I can let him sleep for a 6 hour stretch at night now so that is wonderful. I have now had two nights of getting 5 hours of consecutive sleep. Well, kind of. I still wake up automatically every few hours and feel the need to check on Zane. I wonder how long that will last. Zane sleeps the six hours just fine. What a good boy :)

When the doctor came in on Monday, the first question he had was, "So, does Zane move or support his head at all?" Well, wasn't I the proud mother as I laid Zane on his tummy and showed Dr. S what Zane can do! Dr. S was impressed almost beyond words. He just looked at me and said, "This is better than typical kids his age!" Zane held his head up great. When Dr. S was holding him and examining him, Zane looked around and turned his head. He is just the cutest thing! What an amazing boy!

Everything else looks good too. He is a healthy boy (besides the oxygen, which will be there until at least November). There are lots of medical complications that can come with Down syndrome and I have been reading up on them. I had a list of things I wanted to make sure Dr. S was aware of and would keep an eye out for. He knew about all of them and seemed impressed that I had already made myself familiar with a lot of that stuff and said that he was glad I had, it "makes us partners" in taking care of Zane. I liked the wording of that because I want to be involved and aware and educated on everything that goes on with Zane medically to the best of my ability and Dr. S wants that too. He has been a great doctor and I am grateful to have a good doctor that we like.

I went to lunch with my mom and our dear friend Janet yesterday. Janet has a daughter with a chromosomal abnormality, not Downs but something else, who is about 28 years old. It was so good to talk to her. She knows what is ahead for me and Rob and it was good to hear what she had to say. If anything, it helps to know we need to keep our sense of humor about life and let Zane bring us laughter. Janet and her family are wonderful and have lived full, fun, happy lives. It is good to see that example set before us of all the exquisiteness that lies ahead.

But the thing that Janet said that seemed the most important was that Rob and I will never have any pride. In studying the gospel and the life of the Savior, it is so easy to see that pride, that pride of the natural man, has no place in the life of a celestial being. Rob and I both have lived our lives to this point as fairly prideful people. Sure we are good people, but we lacked patience and understanding for others, I always think that I am right, and we pass judgment on others that we shouldn't. All of those things, among others, are elements of pride that we possess. I think that one of the reasons that all of this was so difficult for Rob in the beginning was that he knew, deep down, that this releasing of pride was something that he had to learn, that Zane was going to teach him that, but that it was something he did not want to learn. It is a hard lesson, one we will continue to learn for years to come I am sure. But I can feel it being stripped away from us even now. It started out as a painful process, but as we become more accustomed to it, we can feel that we are being shaped and changed into the people that our Heavenly Father would have us be. He is helping us become worthy of what He longs to give us someday, which is everything He has. It is funny to think we actually thought we could live life as we were, secretly knowing we didn't have many Christlike qualities, not wanting to really learn, love and sacrifice in order to become what this gospel that we so strongly profess to believe in wants us to become. In fact, requires us to become if we want to receive the blessing of celestial glory. Which is what we are all striving for, right?

So we are grateful for Zane beyond measure. He is giving us so much more than we could ever give him.