February 28

I had thought that we were making progress with Sarah’s digestion and potty situation but it seems that we are not yet. I know that if the problem was too much gluten then it can take a few months to get it all out of her system. I had just hoped to have more clarity by now. The skin on her face is clearer than it had been a few weeks ago so that is something, whether or not it is related to anything else I don’t know. I alternate from thinking we can just chill out as we wait for homeostasis to return to thinking that I must start her on the GAPS intro again. There are cartoon pictures of Donald Duck when he is feeling glum and walks bent over with his arms dragging on the ground. That is sometimes how I feel.

I let myself notice verbally to myself one night that parenting Sarah is harder than parenting Amy. It is hard to parent someone who had a delicate digestive system but does not yet give me feedback in words about how her internals are doing. This is hard. That feels good to acknowledge. And… what if it wasn’t? what if I only think it is hard because I am believing it should be different? If I knew that I was doing the best I could and that it was somehow meant to be just as it is in all ways of Sarah’s development, then couldn’t that instead feel easy? I could just be here now and feel that I had arrived?

My headaches continue to be present off and on. Friday night I had seven hours of unbroken wonderful headache-free sleep. Last night my headache started before I went to bed, went through varying phases of intensity and has plateaued at a level 1 (mild) for what seems to be the remainder of the day. With the headache pain and my emotional pain of sometimes feeling like a lazy, not-good-enough Mom, I was able last night to hold the perspective that these are just feelings and not reality. The pain is not reality. Even when it feels deeply real, this perspective is helping me not panic another levelsworth of panic.

This past week we have done a new thing with our girl/grownup time. We have Sonia or Carl do 1/2 hour with each girl each day while I also do 1/2 hour with each. We start with one pairing and then trade part way through. This has been awesome and amazing. Just half an hour seems so easy and do-able and yet it is infinitely more than nothing. I love having the time to really focus on each girl, knowing that it won’t go on forever so I don’t need to be infinitely available, but giving me that time to work with more focus towards our goals for Sarah. I love giving myself more permission to really be with each girl with no feeling that I should do anything else, and I also give myself more credit for these times than I tend to for all the non-measured times I attend to them in varying ways, which I realize are far from nothing even as they feel intangible and invisible sometimes.

I am continuing to allow myself to have my times of sadness more often than I used to allow. I think this is helping me allow the girls to have their feelings without getting tight in an effort to shut those feelings down. Sometimes.

The most wonderful part of this week happened yesterday when I was out and Carl was with the girls. He and Sarah sang a duet of “I need a nap” from a Sandra Boynton book. This is a song Sarah has heard many times but singing a duet in this way seems new and amazingly wonderful. She has such passion.