real life.

Having a blog has been great therapy for me to sit for a moment, and find the time to share our life with others, express what my heart is feeling, share our real life experiences, showing the "realness" of our family, and the trueness of our God. As so many of you have been following our precious little Ellie, we can't begin to express to you all how your prayers carry us through each day. As a mother, there are days I don't understand the coordination struggle with Ellie's eating. It's hard. I haven't gone into much detail on my blog about her recent eating habits at home b/c sometime I just want to believe things are all better and magically this week she is going to take all of her bottles by mouth. This hasn't been the case. Ellie has had a feeding tube in her stomach for 6 weeks now. If you are wondering what that is- it almost looks like a port that someone would get their chemo treatments from. It is a button type plug that opens- I put a tube in the plug and slowly give her breast milk every 3 hours. Why do I share all of this with you now? Because it's our real life now. When a parents is told their are some struggles with your child you want to almost refrain from the truth. I know she is having a harder time than others but will it continue long....that's what we don't know. Sadly, this world tells us lies, makes us want to hide the truth of our faults, wants us all to look perfect in everyone elses eyes. Well, my sweet baby Ellie has taught me that life is completely a gift- a blessing. I haven't talked much about her feeding tube due to the fact that I don't want anyone to think or label her as being slow or having development challenges. But, so far all her other developmental signs are right on track except for eating. The doctors believe with time her coordination with swallowing milk will get better, it's just up to Ellie.
Today we went in for her 6 week button change- they taught me how to take it out of her stomach and put it back in. My stomach fell to the floor when they took it out and I saw their was a hole in my babies tummy from where the tube has been for 6 weeks. Reality hit me like a ton of bricks. We have been in our routine here at our house, we feed ellie, and we just do what we have to do. Today- the sadness that our daughter is really having a hard time broke my heart in half. I wanted to be the one on the table- not her. I couldn't stand seeing her in pain and couldn't help but wonder how long we are going to have this tube in her. But, as I scooped her up in my arms once all the doctors/nurses left the room- her almond shaped eyes spoke to me. She looked deep into my eyes I just put my nose to her nose and told her over and over- we are going to get through this sweet love. She has been through so much and she's only 9 weeks old- what a fighter! She finally settled down and fell asleep in my arms and all I could say on the way home was- "thank you Lord for this child." The realness of life is clear to me. She has shown me more about life than anything. My daughter has taught me what really matters, how this earth is so dark, how God is all we really need (truly, not just sounds good), I am so content.