Kim’s Story, Chapter 4: Bringing Our Baby Girl Home
Bringing our baby girl home
began some of the best months of my life.
Kim’s Story, Chapter Four.
Now we were the perfect nuclear family of the ’90s.
Our family felt complete: 2 sons and now, a daughter.
Not only was Kim our first daughter, she was the first daughter in my husband’s whole family.
After 5 grandsons, we were all excited about having a girl in the family.
You can imagine all the girly gifts we got showered with!
And it was so much fun unwrapping and putting the frilly, poufy pretties away.
I remember one gift in particular. Pale pink dress with tiny white polka dots, puffed sleeves and full gathered skirt from a high waist, it had 3 rows of ruched white lace spaced 1″ apart around the hem. With matching diaper cover. The outfit was a gift from a client. Besides the generous gifts from family and friends, my husband’s clients sent lovely outfits and stuffed animals home with him on what seemed like a daily basis for months.
We felt so blessed.
Blessed, and thankful, and completely happy.
We could hardly wait to begin this next chapter of our lives.
Kim’s Story; Our Journey on the Spectrum
We’ve shared about Autism Spectrum Disorder before, here, here and here, but we’ve never told Kim’s birth story, the dawn of our journey onto the spectrum. Because when a child is on the spectrum, the journey involves the whole family.
To start at the beginning read this post, and then Chapter 2, and Chapter 3.
This begins “Chapter 4”.
The First Two Weeks
We brought Kim home to a small cream painted bungalow with Cape Cod blue shutters on a corner lot. Lots of shade trees and green grass gave it a park-like appearance. A wooden rail fence wrapped the front yard, and a 6′ wood slat fence enclosed a tiny but gorgeous backyard with more shade trees and grass.
And beside the garage, a giant mulberry with a tree fort!
I think Daddy was just as excited as his boys to build that tree house! It was a hit with all the little friends who came to play. I still have a sign “No girls alowd” they proudly posted. Interestingly enough, ours was a neighborhood of little boys. There were actually no girls they had to fight to protect their turf.
Kim didn’t have a designated nursery room
because our house was too small. Three bedrooms, 1 1/2 bath.
My sisters-in-law and I shared a rolling Moses-style basket cradle. Kim spent her sleeping hours in this portable basket, beside our bed at night and usually in the great room during the day. She was a good sleeper.
She was an all-around good baby, those first months. And looked angelic in her lace-draped basket. Sometimes I just sat and looked at her, sleeping peacefully after a “meal.” So tiny, so perfectly made, and so delightfully dependent. I simply thrilled having the care of our tiny new daughter.
And she was tiny. Most of the newborn size outfits were much too big for her, so she wore the few preemie size sleepers we’d been given.
A friend stopped in one day to visit, swaddled Kim up in her Care Bears receiving blanket, and tucked her into a frilled-up doll basket. What a picture. She could have been an Anne Geddes‘ photo, which were becoming so popular at that time.
Still, the wonder of our tiny baby
began to give way to a smidge of worry.
Why was she staying tiny for so long? She seemed to nurse normally, at regular 2 to 3 hour intervals. She slept all night almost from the beginning, so nursing in the morning was usually 2 hours apart, for about a half hour each time. This seemed appropriate, to catch up after 5 to 6 hours of solid sleep.
And yet, we began to notice that she didn’t squall and fuss when she should be hungry. It was more that I went by the schedule, and she ate. She could satisfy herself with her thumb and forefinger and if I didn’t pay attention, no one would know she was hungry.
That was a cute thing about Kim, and she was the only one of our children to do it. The very first day in the hospital after she was born, she stuck her right thumb and forefinger into her mouth. That was her MO for the first 5 years of her life. It never failed to comfort and quiet her. No plastic pacifier for her. She had a built in model.
Then came her two-week check up.
We bundled Kim into her car-seat-slash-baby carrier.
Other than to Grandma’s and one trip to church, she hadn’t been out before.
I wasn’t really nervous. It was normal for babies to lose weight after they were born, so Kim staying the same size didn’t push any uber-anxiety buttons.
And the pediatrician agreed. Kim hadn’t gained more than a few ounces, but at least she wasn’t losing. She appeared healthy with good color, and the doctor sent us home feeling optimistic.
Perhaps the lack of interest in eating would change soon and Kim would fatten up.
We slid back into our usual, idyllic days with 2 happy little boys and a beloved baby girl.
This is a link to the next chapter:
