July 17, 2019

ONE YEAR of Wells


July 17 was Wells' due date last year. This was also the week in 2017 that we met with the fertility doctors and they told us our only chance at having a baby would be to try IVF again. Which means we tabled that for the time being because we had a lot of other things going on. IVF was kind of a nightmare and we didn't want to jump back into it, mentally, physically, or financially.


Veggie Tales decorations are almost impossible to find, so I just went to multi-colored everything. 

But Wells surprised us all because we found out during the week of Thanksgiving 2017 that we were pregnant. So, Wells was not only was a miracle, but he showed up a week early after a quick labor and an easy pregnancy. Miraculous, indeed!


Time is moving in a weird way. Spending Wells' first 5 months in Wyoming, a few weeks here and there in Colorado, and then these last 6 months in Pennsylvania...it makes is seem like SO long ago that he was born. As in, it's very easy to draw clear lines about when and where certain milestones happened.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate my sister-in-law's PHONE camera here? Scott recently got a similar phone and it also takes the best pictures and makes me hate my iPhone. It's painfully obvious which of these pictures were taken with my phone and which were taken with hers. 

While I will never lament him getting older, him getting older means we're farther away from this or that; "this or that" being a duty station, a school, a job, a group of friends or coworkers that I might miss so much it actually hurts sometimes, etc. Wells getting older means that we're getting farther away from another time that we might have really enjoyed: a favorite restaurant we might never get to go back to or a favorite hunting spot (Scott) or dog-walking trail (me) or a favorite house or season in a place we might not really see again. It all kind of ties into the military life and I don't know that I ever realized how quickly those parts of it can be gone until I saw how quickly this last year went.

When Scott held him, he dove for the cake (because he knew that'd be the best chance).

All I really remember from the day before he was born: I needed to go to the library and I wanted to get a pedicure. I went in to get the pedicure around 1:30pm, which meant I went into labor exactly 12 hours later (let's say it was the calf massage, okay?), but I'd had contractions constantly for weeks so who actually knows. Also, I definitely had no appetite and was subsisting on milkshakes at that point but I thought cereal sounded good for some reason. I had seen Golden Oreo-Os at Walmart and thought that seemed like a wise choice. I remember trying to eat them and thinking how awful they actually tasted. I'm pretty sure that box then hung out in the cupboard until September (when we eventually did eat them all). I don't remember if I walked the dogs...probably? But we'd hiked the day before (in the mountains, while I was having contractions) and gone out for Qdoba and Dairy Queen* so the dogs were probably tired, so I may not have. Truthfully, I just remember how awful those Golden Oreo-Os were. What a letdown. Also, everything in Laramie was very close together so I had to go back to the house to run to the bathroom between each of those three stops (Walmart, pedicure, library), probably really confusing the dogs.

*Laramie wasn't ripe with options for restaurants. Any weight Wells put on in the last month of gestation was due to McDonald's and Sonic milkshakes, I bet.

I went to Grandview Bakery for his cake. If you're in the Pittsburgh area, I would try them out in general. It's an adorable shop and they were SO nice. Even insisting they carry the cake to the car for Scott, who was parallel parked a half a mile down the road. 

The saying is that the days are long but the years are short. No. The days are short, the weeks are short, the months are short, and the year went by quickly. There's never enough time in the day. Sometimes I'll look at the clock and be like HOW IS IT ALREADY NOON? I've literally done nothing but try to convince him to take a nap and I haven't even eaten breakfast yet. 


After one or two tastes, he ate half of that cake. 

Wells had his one year appointment on Monday at the pediatrician's office. He's almost 22 pounds and is 29 inches. So that's the 60th and 34th percentiles. He's come a long way from his 10th percentile ranking at birth!



We just need to start weaning from the bottles and LORD HELP ME because he still wakes up at least once a night. His sleep schedule is a mess these days. His molars are coming in and he has a hematoma over one soon-to-be tooth that keeps him up half the night. The NP he saw on Monday said not to worry about sleep/bottles at night while he's dealing with this, but to move to whole milk and start putting milk in sippy cups during the day. Again, LORD HELP ME. He doesn't do well with transitions like this. 

Everyone compliments his sandals (Old Navy, $6) and I swear he will wear them until he walks out of them on his own. 

As for party decorations, it was mostly pictures and a few Veggie Tales things here and there. I didn't actually get pictures of all of it, but here we are. 





This is kind of random but this seems like the best possible blog post to throw it into: Wells isn't a rainbow baby. He's the only time I've ever been pregnant, despite the multiple treatments and four years of trying to *get* pregnant. However, during all those years we lived in Colorado, I would see constant rainbows in the summer evenings (when Scott was deployed two+ summers in a row) while I was walking the dogs (because it generally stormed most afternoons) and I would always tell myself that the rainbow was a sign of God's promise and it was like a personal reassurance to me that He heard my laments and prayers and knew my thoughts and we *would* have a baby some day (I feel like I was a regular Job that summer of 2016). I just didn't know when or how.  I had not much else to do during those summers than think about if we'd ever have a baby. It was always part of why I loved going back to work in August so much. 
ANYWAY. This rainbow popped up across from our house in Pittsburgh last week and it was so bright and clear and the first one I've even seen here. It was a nice little reminder of how far we've come. 


4 comments:

  1. Ahh - love that you keep seeing the rainbows. What a gift from God Wells is.
    Love his Veggie Tales shirt. He looks so happy!!!
    You're going to make all PG women want to go get a calf massage to hurry the labor on :) LOL
    So I gotta know - what kind of phone does your SIL have?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So glad he liked the smash cake!

    As for phones its as given, iPhones suck for pics ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Happy birthday to the little guy! Love him eating that cake... adorable.
    I didn't know about your pregnancy journey... hugs to you and what a true miracle.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Happy belated birthday to Wells! Looks like he had a good one. That cake is adorable.

    ReplyDelete

Comments make my day!