This little ginger

Lately, the days seem to go by so quickly yet so slowly all at the same time. Kevin has to go back to work next week which I'm dreading for lots of reasons. It's been so wonderful having him here, and he's been pretty much waiting on Sammy and me hand and foot. He's been cooking, cleaning, bringing glasses of water to me, changing diapers as needed, staying up late to help - he really is the best husband and dad anyone could ever dream of. And of course, I love having our little family time and will be sad when he has to go. But of course, real life must go on.

While Sammy sleeps, I've been knocking out to-do items like phone calls to insurance, tidying the house, etc and feel like I'm finally getting in a bit of a groove. I'm actually feeling hopeful that this VLCAD issue will end up being a false positive. Maybe that's the Zoloft talking, or maybe it's just the fact that the second screen did come back as normal. Either way, living without paralyzing anxiety has been a nice change. I can't believe how debilitating that kind of anxiety is and I'm glad I got help for it when I did. I do feel better. If any of you find yourself struggling with postpartum anxiety or depression, please don't hesitate to ask for help. I'm not ashamed to talk about it and neither should you.

As far as tests go, we still haven't received the results for both the DNA test that will tell us which embryo batch Sammy is from, nor have we received the definitive DNA sequencing for the VLCAD results. I hope to at least get the embryo batch DNA test back this week, and if not, I'll be making some calls. We could get the VLCAD results this week, but probably next.

Can I tell you how much I love this little girl? I don't ever want to lay her down. I want to hold her all day and all night. Of course, that's not realistic but it's what I would do if I never had to sleep, eat, or shower. I could just stare at her beautiful face all day long and tell her how much she is loved and was prayed for. I love our 'girl talks' we have after she's fully fed, changed, and happy as a clam. She's my Sammy snowflake and I always want her to know how special she is. Kevin and I tell her we love her at least 100 times a day, and that's probably not an exaggeration.

We've noticed she's got a red hue to her hair....

Ginger snowflake

I never expected Sammy to be born with red hair, but I think it's a wonderful surprise. Of course I would love her no matter what color hair she has - red, blonde, black, green - it doesn't matter! But I feel like there's a nod from my mom in that hair color somewhere because she always said Kevin and I would have a baby with red hair. And when we discovered my infertility, I had to grieve that red-haired child would never come to be. I wrote a blog entry about it long ago you can read here: The ghost of a red haired child.

When she's laughing in her sleep, which she does often, I think it must be my mom tickling her in her dreams! What else could a newborn baby be laughing at? ;-)

She's beautiful beyond comprehension. And not only do I feel overwhelming love for her, I also can't describe the overwhelming gratitude for the donor family who made it possible for her to be ours. We are so, so blessed.

I thank God for embryo adoption.