Warning: The following post is more about Mommy than Haley

Haley only likes to be held facing forward these days, so this is how she often ends up napping until we rearrange her once she falls asleep!

"Hmm, who to play with? Mouse, butterflies, or kitty?"

"I know this is kind of a funny picture of me, but look how blue my eyes are!"

Ruby's not about to be left out of all the attention! She's not sure what's fun about this play gym, but she's not going to miss out on it.

Well, I suppose it's a good thing I got a cold because it finally forced me to go to the doctor's office today. I've had numerous minor things I've been needing to see the doctor about since Haley's been born, but I've just never made the time to do it. I was afraid my cold might be contagious though, and I don't want Haley to get whatever I have, so I decided I better go. Turns out that I do have a sinus infection and Dr. Hayward sent me home on antibiotics, a decongestant (with pseduoephedrine in it so I'm feeling a little happy right about now), and cough syrup. Hopefully it'll fix me up because I've been coughing so much whenever I lay down at night that I can't sleep! My nose is already not running for the first time in 3 days, so I'll take that as a good sign.

While I was there I also had him check out some suspicious new moles that have arrived since I had Haley, and he said that he would like to punch biopsy some of them to see if there are any 'atypical cells' present. If there are then he would refer me to OSU just because having atypical cells at my age means that you're predisposed to melanoma, and the docs at OSU are better at selecting suspicious seeming moles to remove early. Ah, the woes of being pale and freckly. But he really didn't seem overly concerned about any of them, just that it would be better to be safe than sorry.

Another random thing I brought up while I was there - for about the last 3 months I have been ravenously hungry. Now, I've never been a hungry person, not even particularly so when I was pregnant. So this is weird for me, I'm not usually someone who walks around thinking about what they might be able to snack on next. I've also been overly tired in my opinion for the amount of sleep I've been getting. I'm a lucky Mommy because Haley's a pretty darn good sleeper these days, and I'm still just totally exhausted. I know a lot of Mom's doing a lot better on a far less sleep. So Dr. Hayward also wrote some orders for me to have some bloodwork done, he wants to check on my thyroid and a few other things. Apparently even if you didn't have thyroid problems before you were pregnant, pregnancy can predispose you to thyroid problems which lead to excessive hunger/fatigue/etc. Hopefully I'll get that blood drawn this week and we'll see what comes back.

Finally, and the least socially acceptable to talk about, Dr. Hayward thinks that I have Post-Partum Depression. This is something I'm sure my parents, Chad, and myself have suspected for awhile. But, like Dr. Hayward said, with all the stress we've had and have, what else would you expect? I wasn't the one who brought it up, but he just kept asking questions and routed it out himself. Truth be told, while I was sitting in the waiting room I had been reading an article about PPD and how 1 in 5 women suffer from it, yet only 20% of cases are diagnosed because so many women are too embarassed to talk about it with the doctors. And even after reading that, and even though the women in the article sounded like a clone of myself , I wasn't going to bring it up. Luckily I have a good doctor who brought it up himself. I told him that I'm going to be starting back to work, just two afternoons a week, to try to get out of the house a little and see if that helps with how I've been feeling. He agreed it's a good plan and wants me to come back in a couple weeks and see how I'm doing. I'm hoping it helps a lot! I don't know though, I don't see how I can really ever relax when I can't even take one day for granted. I know it's a good and appreciative way to live, living life to its' fullest and never taking a second for granted, but it's also a little exhausting and terrifying - never wanting to talk about tomorrow because all of us might not be here for it. I guess that's always the way it is, anyone could not be here tomorrow - even all those healthy babies who should have their whole lives ahead of them - but I can't help but feel like it's a far more looming threat in my wonderful Haley-bug's case. I just love her so much and can't bear to imagine any future without her.

I am eternally grateful that Haley is only 4 months old and is oblivious to all of this. She's happy, smiley, growing, and playing. She hasn't been eating well the last two days - only the bare minimum so she hasn't been allowed to get her lasix - but that doesn't stress her out! She plays, sleeps, and acts just like her normal adorable self. Hopefully she'll pick it back up here soon, we'd been doing sooo well. She's been cooing up a storm the past couple days, and I'm constantly amazed how good she's getting with her hands. Today she just kept staring and staring at her hands, it was too cute!

Alright, sorry for the long, whiny post. It does help me to talk about it, just to get it off my chest a little bit. Thanks for listening.