Emery,,,love and blessing,,,trial and fire....

Yikes! If you are wondering why I haven't posted since I started this blog it is a very simple reason. Memory loss. I forgot my password to aol. I couldn't get into my account to update this account. Technology and I do not like each other. Don't worry I wrote all my passwords down this time and put them in a very special place. wink, wink. So here's what's happening. I posted a blog I wrote 2 years ago before I lost my password. Not much has changed about that. Read and you will for sure know that is true. In my life a trillion and one things have changed. I had about 40 chickens up until last week. We have around 8 now. We added 2 lovely milk goats who will be bringing us forth gallons of milk in the spring. Oh we added another human to our farm. Yes, you heard me right we had a baby.Some will ask all those stupid questions, like oh was she planned? Every child is planned. How did that happen? Well, I really do not want to give a biology lesson if you need me to you will need to make an appointment. What does Jeff say? Jeff has always said that he will welcome as many babies as I want to birth. ( I am not sure he realized what he was saying when he said that.) Alas, he thinks children are a blessing as well. I had a pretty easy pregnancy until around 33 weeks. I lost all my amniotic fluid and was put in the hospital. My fluid went back up and I birthed Emery naturally at 36 weeks and came on her own accord:) It was painful but that is another blog in itself. I really want to talk about how life changed dramatically 4 hours after Emery was born. We thought we gave birth to a healthy whole baby girl only to find out she was born with a birth defect. It was a very minor birth defect if we look at the spectrum of defects. To our family it was a very MAJOR life changing birth defect. She was born with cleft soft palate. I am sure you know of cleft lips, Emery has only the cleft in her soft palate in the very back of her mouth. It could have been much worse. I am really tired of hearing that even though I KNOW it is true and we are blessed that she will only require one surgery and not the multiple surgeries a child born with cleft lip has. Emery could not suck. Not only did this propose a breastfeeding challenge she couldn't drink from a regular bottle. For the first months of Em's life I tried to nurse and pump and use special needs feeders over and over and over all day long for 24 hours . My life was feeding a baby. I finally gave up on the hope of getting Emery to latch and me squeeze the milk into her mouth as another baby with cleft palate and mommy were doing I had met.This sweet mother tried desperately to help me.She only had the one, I had 2 other children, a husband, a farm, a house to contend with. So from then on out my life was (is) my hospital grade breast pump. I love this pump it is my friend I named her pump. We talk every 3 hours sometimes 2, we drink coffee together, we eat lunch together, we teach the older kids together, we fold laundry, watch tv, check Facebook, feed a baby a bottle (most of the time) together. We even sleep together:) Pump has been there to help me give my baby what I feel like is the best I can give her to eat. I am grieving still the loss of breastfeeding. I am not sure what stage I am in. I honestly go from anger, to sadness interchangeably. We spend approximately 180 minutes a day together 1260 minutes a week. At this date, I have spent 240 days pumping this year already, I have spent approximately 72000 minutes with Pump from Emery's birth. That is 1200 hours pumping milk. I know that to some of you you are thinking well if you breastfed you will still be spending that time. YES, I would also be feeding her though now you have to figure in the times I feed her with the bottle afterwards and yes sometimes I feed her at the same time to save time. I have a great husband and daughter who helped me also. The next thing you have to think about is how she eats. She doesn't suck remember. So therefore you must squeeze the bottle into her mouth and she sorta laps it up into her throat. The first 4 months were complete craziness with using different bottles, milk coming out her nose, nipples breaking. I finally found a great nipple that cost $20 a nipple. I bought 3 and 1 was given to me. They all broke in my opinion due to very poor quality.From then on we looked for a cheaper alternative that I could maintain.We ended up with the Gerber cheap bottles that are flexible. I still have 5 medela nipples that need replaced but who has time to put that in the mail right now. Oh, I forgot to mention the time it takes to maintain a pump and bottles. I can't even put that into the time equation. I guess around 30 minutes 2 times a day. That is a guess. I am not complaining,or maybe I am. I am simply telling the world what I am going through I don't really care if you care. I just need to vent and I need people to realize there are other women out there who pump milk for their babies due to any number of reasons. I didn't mention the financial burden that came. I fully expected to nurse my baby. That was free. I want her to have my milk. I have to rent a pump, buy bottles, buy soap for the bottles, buy milk bags, buy steamer bags to sanitize, buy the membranes every month or two, buy Ziploc bags for my pump parts( of which I just use a tremendous amount of )and milk increase supplements. Did I mention I do not have insurance and Emery's insurance doesn't cover those little things that are necessary to be successful at pumping.I am sure at this point you are thinking why do you do it? I do it because I want to. I want to give her the best I feel I can for. I could give her formula nothing wrong with that I have given her some in the past when my milk supply is not great. I am able to pump right now and that is what I am going to keep doing. Is it demanding yes, is breastfeeding yes, is bottle feeding yes. Having a newborn is always demanding. I am not saying my struggle is worse than someone else' just different.I know that things could be worse. Trust me. Do I have up days and down days yes. I believe all worked together for the good also. So this one thing in my life, our life will not be a defining moment rather than a step to what we should do or become. It will not say this is the end it will instead say look where you were at Rachel and now where you are. It will be a piece of our story and not the book. In fact, there are so many pieces of the puzzle you would think we had the complete set. We do not. I could say that I will not blog anymore sad blogs. That would be a lie. Emery still has a surgery coming up soon. We still have a farm and 2 other children. So life is still always going to be a little unpredictable. I am happy for this one thing, God's never changing love. I write this blog because I see some of you backing away from us and I understand why. I may seem not all there, a bad friend, more out spoken than normal, a little off, scatter brained(more than I use to be) and I kinda wanted to explain some stuff to you. Some of you ask some don't. I don't really think I need to tell you but also want to in the same breath. I get really torn as to how much is complaining and how much is sharing with close friends life changes so they can help me through them. I figure after this blog post you either get or you don't. Please keep us in your prayers on December 4th. Emery will be having her surgery. Today I found out that another friend from our homeschooling coop will be at the hospital as well with her daughter. So when you pray for Emery P\pray for her friend as well. Also the sweet mom who tried to help me nurse, her daughters surgery is the 8th. Did I vent yes, AM I blessed totally, Does God heal and complete us YES!! I am counting my blessings...they go on and on and on. ...Do not be weary ...Galatians 6:9..I am praying for strength...to not faint...:)