Well That Escaleted Quickly

I am not sure if I have mentioned that our daughter spent the first few weeks of her life within NICU while I was only a floor away in a room of my own for a majority of her stay. The labor and delivery I planned on was not at all what took place but that is a story for another time. I am sharing this background to set the stage for the amount of anxiety I had when we finally were able to bring our daughter home. I prayed every time I laid her down to sleep that the Lord would keep her breathing. I was a terrified ball of contained anxiety waiting to explode the first weeks of Allie being home. During one of our many nighttime feedings Allie gave me the biggest scare due to her trying to figure out her balance/strength while leaning away from me. She went a little too far and felt like she bent straight in half. She was crying and I was freaking out running my hands all over her to make sure that there were no broken bones sticking out. And of course she was perfectly fine and recovered immediately with some snuggles, kisses and a good feeding. 

The next day after a morning feeding Allie had fallen asleep, per usual. At this time I was working from home so I began to respond to emails with the hand that I had free. While my other hand was resting on Allie’s chest. It was with my hand resting there I noticed what felt like a lump underneath my daughter's pjs. I quickly checked to see if this lump was located anywhere else and I couldn’t find any other lump. My brain quickly went back to the incident the night before and that somehow I had missed the fact that one of her ribs had broken. So I gently touched the lump again while watching Allie to see if there was any discomfort. And she continued to sleep soundly, completely unphased. My brain then jumped to the next logical cause of the lump, my baby girl had a cyst. And in less than 0.1 of a second I was praying that this cyst would be benign and that surgery would not be necessary. 

Although I didn’t want to wake the baby sleeping so soundly next to me, I also had to see if this cyst was visible. If it was, how did her dad and I miss this growth on our baby for so long? And the script starts playing how I am a horrible mother for missing a cyst growing on my baby and hopefully it is caught soon enough. So unzipping her footie pj as quickly but stealthily as I could I pull the zipper down to look at the area where I felt the lump……

And do you want to know what I found? A nipple. Not a cancerous lump growing on my baby. Not a broken rib sticking out of her chest. Nope, just a part of her anatomy that was very much supposed to be there. It took everything within me not to burst out laughing at myself over the amount of crazy that developed in a 5, maybe 8 minute time span. That night when my hubby got home it was the first thing that I told him because that kind of laughter had to be shared. 

Bringing home a newborn is full of so many fears and unlocks a whole new level of crazy; at least it did for me. So if you feel like the walls and door frames are going to jump out and attack your baby or mistake an intentional part of anatomy for cancerous growth, you are not alone. It is totally normal. It is also okay to talk to someone about how you are feeling and to call/visit the pediatrician when there is uncertainty. I used all my resources and I still do around not only our daughter but also for myself. There are so many things that are unknown personally and with bringing a new life into this world. Each one of us has our strengths but none of us are called to be strong in everything. We are all a part of one body, working together. I hope that hearing about one of my craziest moments brings you the same laughter it brought me.