Celebrating a VERY BIG Little Thing!

To say that I NEEDED today would be quite an understatement!


I really, really, really needed today!


You see, my sweet little Miss Molly is colicky.  Very colicky.


I didn't think that it would be possible, given the law of averages, that my 3rd baby would be my 3rd colicky baby, but I should've known better when she cried the entire night in the hospital!


It's never a good sign when you have to take your 2 day old baby to the pediatrician because she won't stop crying!  At that young age, they usually tell you she is crying because she is hungry and to feed her some formula until your milk comes in.  But when your milk comes in gushing like Old Faithful, you know that milk supply and hunger are not the reasons for her continued, painful cries!


So, by day 7 of her short life, I knew what we were facing for a 3rd time... the dreaded colic.


This time, I decided to take matters into my own hands!  At 2 weeks of age, I started taking Molly to a chiropractor who claims he has a 100% success rate in "curing colic", usually within 2-3 weeks.  Let's just say that this so-called "baby whisperer" had never met a Holtzman baby!  I'm afraid Molly is proving to be a bit of a deterrent to his "too good to be true" success rate!


So, for the past nearly 7 weeks, we've endured endless hours of Molly's painful, gut-wrenching cries.  We've tried everything to calm her and make her comfortable...


We've gone to the chiropractor every day for 5 weeks and the pediatrician four times.  We've done gas drops, swings, swaddles, shhhing, bouncy chairs, vacuum cleaners, heartbeat CD's, car rides - you name it, we've tried it!  All to no avail.  Poor Molly cries all.the.time!


And then there's my diet!


The "baby whisperer" chiropractor (who has yet to prove himself to be that) put me on a diet which eliminated almost every food imaginable.  The theory was that these foods can make a baby more gassy and complicate the colic symptoms.  I have followed the "Molly Tummy Diet" (as Noah calls it) religiously for 5 weeks.  And let me tell you, it has made me G.R.O.U.C.H.Y!


What, you may be wondering, would make me so grouchy about a diet?  Well, if a food was not listed on this list, I couldn't eat it...


Plain chicken
Plain turkey
White bread
White pasta
Carrots
Potatoes
Butter
Vanilla Ice Cream
Vanilla Yogurt
Cheese
Milk


Yep!  That's IT!  No fruit, no vegetables, no nuts, no spices, no rice, no CHOCOLATE, and worst of all... no CAFFEINE!  As a matter of fact, the ONLY thing I can drink on this lousy diet is PLAIN water!


That fact alone is enough to make a sleep deprived, emotionally unstable mother of 3 crazy!  If you know me well, you know that I LOVE my Diet Cokes!  It was the very first thing I asked for after giving birth to Molly!  For 2 short weeks after her birth, I delighted in being able to make my daily "Sonic Run" to get my Diet Coke... somehow, those Diet Cokes, well, they just made me feel better!  


And then they were gone!


The only consolation was that I could have vanilla ice cream.  My other weakness is sweets... specifically ice cream.  In fact, if I could only have one food for the rest of my life, I would probably choose ice cream!  I ate it every night while I was pregnant (which I'm paying for now!) and every night for 5 weeks on the "Molly Tummy Diet".  It was my little treat at the end of the night after Molly was finally sleeping.  


I'm writing in the past tense because my eating world was once again turned upside down when I took Molly to the pediatrician last week.  She found a bit of blood in her stool and told me that it was an indication that she has a dairy sensitivity.  So, now, I've eliminated dairy from the restricted "Molly Tummy Diet" too, leaving only white bread, pasta, and chicken for the majority of my meals!


And my sweet tooth has been raging ever since!


So....


All of that was a very long way of saying that my caffeine-deprived, sugar-craving, hungry, exhausted self just needed a little something to help me remember that although it seems like it will never happen, Molly will eventually get better and she will be happy... sometime!


And so today, as I laid her down on her changing table to change her diaper, I was treated to nearly 15 minutes of pleasant, calm, content, dare I say HAPPY, baby time with my little Molly!


And I got this...

Now I know it isn't an all-out grin, but it is the beginnings of a smile and it is something so different than the painful, scared, crying faces I have become so accustomed to.  To me, it was a smile, her first one... a little reminder that she is, in fact, healthy and will eventually be smiling all the time.


And I really needed to see it!


And just to make me even happier, I heard a few sweet "coo's" too!  I was so happy and excited that I eagerly told Noah and Emily to come and "talk" with their baby sissy!

Emily even "read" her a book!

So, today, I'm celebrating a VERY BIG "little thing"... Molly's "smile" (or pleasant look) and her "cooing".  


Thank you, Jesus, for my sweet girl and for reminding me that I CAN do this and that she will eventually grin with delight!


And if that wasn't enough to celebrate, I went to the grocery store tonight and guess what I found...

Yep!  Vanilla Oreos don't have ANY dairy in them!  They have a whole bunch of other bad stuff in them, but no dairy!

And today, I really needed them too!


As Noah saw these atop my kitchen counter, he inquired about them by asking me if I had tried them yet.  I responded that I had, indeed, "tried" them.  As he opened up the top of the package, he sweetly said...


"Oh yep!  I can see that you tried them because I can see a row is missing!"


As I said...


I really needed them!