sleeping baby

I type this with Moriah sprawled across my lap, asleep.

The new week has brought with it new hope for fewer appointments. Our visiting nurse came today and was happy to see that Moriah had gained four ounces in less than a week...though I'm physically unable to breastfeed any longer (a source of sadness as I grappled with this reality over the weekend), Moriah is finally eating well with the dairy- and soy-free formula. It's like having a new child...she feeds so much more efficiently, keeps the food down, and has so many fewer choking/spit up episodes.

We have had more time to be a family of four this weekend, for which I was so grateful. Friday we brought Moriah to the final hour of the boys' soccer camp, and celebrated the close of another week with a "movie night" here at home together. And yesterday evening turned out to be precious...all of us gathered on our bed, passing Moriah around, talking and laughing together. These times are helping me to feel like life is assuming a new normal and that we won't always be inundated with appointments and medical demands. They reminded me, too, to just let Moriah be Moriah...not the baby with Down, or the baby with a heart defect. I've been reflecting a lot today on that--how to allow Moriah (not the doctors, or the research, or the medical books) to teach me who she is. Her name, after all, means "teaching place," and I'm finding again and again, when I'm overwhelmed, I hold her and feel peace again as I return to my rightful place as student, and she as teacher.

I am reading a lovely collection of essays written by moms who have children with Down Syndrome; one of them wrote, "Remember, the broken heart is in you, not your baby." And this perfectly describes what I feel by being with Moriah--my heart may be sad for her, or for us, at times, but she is not sad. She is not worried about her life. She is not concerned about her heart. She just IS, and who she is, I have only to discover, and that is will be a lovely and wonderful unfolding in my life.

So I'm grateful for today, when I have felt no sadness at all, and have shed (finally) no tears. How can I be sad when a little girl with deep blue eyes and jean overalls lies on my lap, and now stirs herself awake to look at me?