ENTERTAINING ANGELS

This week has been exhausting, to put it mildly. I haven't seen or spoken with very many people since Christopher was born, but those whom I have spoken to have all asked that magical new baby question: "Are you getting much sleep?"

Did you know that a recent survey found that more people are sleeping less than six hours a night, and sleep difficulties visit 75% of us at least a few nights per week? A short-lived bout of insomnia is generally nothing to worry about. The bigger concern is chronic sleep loss, which can contribute to health problems such as weight gain, high blood pressure, and a decrease in the immune system’s power, reports the Harvard Women’s Health Watch.

And when did I have time to research this? In the middle of the night on any given night this week, of course, while Christopher and I were sacrificing our need to sleep (well, at least mine) for a little bonding time!

But wait a second. Let's put things into perspective, here. This week has not only been exhausting, but it has also been extremely rewarding and even encouraging.

On Sunday night (July 20--"birth" day) at the hospital, Christopher slept OK. I would say he slept better than Susan and I would have expected him to. He was just so quiet and hardly ever cried! That was good and gave us the impression that he was going to be an angel in this regard. When one of the nurses asked how baby was doing, I foolishly said, "He's great! He's so quiet!" The nurse ominously replied, "That could change." What? What was she talking about? I know my son! He came into the world with hardly a whimper and when he was awake he would sit there and take the world back in. Besides, this nurse obviously didn't know what a quiet baby I was! So far, Christopher was behaving just like his namesake Daddy (we share the same first name, btw).

Turns out that nurse knew more than I did. In fact, I now believe she is one of those "angels among us" that Hebrews 13:2 said we might encounter in our lives--because she had this divine wisdom that said (to me), "YOU don't know what you're talking about!"

Well, OK, so I don't really believe she was an angel, but you get my point. She was right and I was wrong...sorta. You see, Monday night (July 21, our first night home), was rough. Tuesday night was even moreso! Between the two of us, Susan and I got a total of about 5 hours sleep COMBINED those two days! Wednesday night was a little better, but by now, Susan was starting to get sick. Rewind back to November 2001, immediately following the birth of our son Matthew: Susan comes down with PNEUMONIA!! Now, July 2008, she's complaining of labored breathing and has a pretty deep cough.

So we made a total of FOUR visits to various doctors and health care providers/nurse practitioners this week for both the baby and his mother! Yeah. That's fun right there. And here's another little fun nugget of epiphany that I discovered this week: Doctors GUESS! I mean, most of them aren't those angels spoken of in Hebrews, right? They're book-educated and they can't "look into" the depths of your body's well-being like God can. So what do they do? They collect data from you and then they make an educated guess as to what's wrong. That's fine and it makes sense to me. The only problem is, I've found many times that their first "guess" winds up being wrong. And in the case of Susan, it turns out that the first TWO "guesses" were probably wrong! The first doctor--at Urgent Care--looked at chest x-rays of Susan and said they were clear and so was the sound of her lungs as she breathed. Okay, so she's just recovering from having a baby and she needs to "buck up" and not complain. We got it. Except the symptoms got worse, so she went in again. This time, a doctor said she definitely had postpartum asthma which, if left untreated, could BECOME pneumonia. Aha! So that's probably what happened to her back in 2001. Good! Now we're AHEAD of that curve! He prescribed an inhaler for her...

...which hasn't helped. As of today, she's still feeling ill and having trouble sleeping because of the labored breathing. We covet your prayers.

Ah, but what about Christopher? I am thrilled to report that as the week progressed, his nighttime sleep patterns improved! He eats, sleeps, and poops (and poops, and poops, and...). Yesterday he did spend a lot of day time being awake and alert, just checkin' things out. And this afternoon at 5:45 p.m. PDT, he'll be exactly one week old...one week I wouldn't change for a ride on the space shuttle.

Oh, and one more thing about entertaining angels: I think we have one.