Just a few weeks before Grey was born, I found out that my brother was engaged to his long time girlfriend, Sandra. They had originally planned to get married over Easter weekend which was just a week and a half after my due date (March 20th). Even though I knew it would be tough to travel so soon after having a baby, after calling my pediatrician and getting the okay to travel with a two-week old, I started looking for plane tickets for that weekend. I didn't want to miss out on an event when my whole family would be together with the new round of babies - and I still hadn't met Elaine's twins! I just happened to find a really great deal on Southwest out east so I bought three tickets for me, Brandon, and Lucy figuring if there were any complications with my labor and delivery or any post-partum stress similar to Lucy, I could just cancel the tickets and have my reward points refunded for two of the tickets and get credit for the other ticket I purchased.
What I didn't anticipate was that the date would change! Chris and Sandra were kind of limited because my father was visiting home from Japan and they wanted to get married before he had return to Japan in the beginning of April. My mother had just been in American for several months to help Elaine and Emily with their babies and to complete her biometric exam for her residency permit from December to February but she didn't want to miss her son's wedding and was awaiting to see if she would be able to make it from Japan (since she needed to coordinate with her sister's schedule so that someone would be able to take care of their father). Because Sandra is Catholic, the wedding was going to take place in the Catholic church and apparently, the Catholic church does not do wedding over Easter weekend because it is such a busy time for the church. So the wedding was moved one week earlier to the weekend of March 23rd. Since Grey's due date was on March 20th, I figured that there was no way I could make it to the wedding. Even if I delivered early (which I did), traveling with a one-week old would be very difficult. But although I anticipated that I would delivery early, I wasn't going to get induced to guarantee that and risk not having a natural birth. And if I happened to be late, I could have had Grey the same day as the wedding! So I canceled our plane tickets.
It was probably a good thing I didn't go to the wedding. Even though I delivered Grey three days early (Lucy was just one day early), it would have been a bit much to travel with a one-week old. Everyone thought I was crazy enough as it was to even consider traveling with a two-week old when we thought the wedding would be over Easter weekend on March 30th. But it was still disappointing to miss out on such a big family event. Emily and Elaine did a great job documenting it all on their (private) blogs HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. Thank goodness my sisters are such prolific bloggers.
Although it was regrettable to miss out on the wedding, the silver lining was that my mom came back out from Japan for the wedding and was able to fly to Utah for a week to help me with Grey after the wedding was done. When I'm overwhelmed, like with a new baby, I'm not very good a taking pictures. Fortunately, Emily caught a few of our mom with her newest grandbaby on this blog post. I just can't believe that she was able to stay out in Utah for three weeks when I had Lucy - I was so lucky but just took it for granted because I was suffering from PPD during that time! I didn't even think that mom would be able to come out at all for Grey initially since she had just spent so much time for Elaine and Emily's baby. Even though I only got a week with her for Grey, it was still awesome. She is so helpful cooking and cleaning and helping to take care of both Lucy and Grey. Brandon had gone back to work the second week so the timing was perfect.
The week with my mom was pretty uneventful. Lucy had preschool twice that week but we pretty much just hung out. But oh, how helpful it is to have another set of hands! Going shopping (and pretty much everything else) is so much easier and Lucy just loves having her Baba visit. She was also able to accompany me to Grey's 2-week appointment on March 29th. We headed down to Emily's house from the pediatrician's office that Friday since we were already on our way. Unfortunately, towards the end of that evening, I started to get really sick. I'm not sure exactly what it was but it felt like food poisoning (maybe from my Mom's crazy cleansing smoothies that I'm not used to). It was a real bummer because the next day on Saturday, March 30th, the Halecks planned a big Easter get-together similar to what they had done the year previous for Easter. Brandon and my mom took Lucy but I was so sick with diarrhea and vomiting that I stayed home with Grey all by myself. It just happened that this same weekend, Brandon's whole family came into town for Zeke's baby blessing. So after the Haleck get-together on Saturday, Brandon and Lucy headed to the Cook's house for more Easter festivities and the baby blessing. And I missed it all! I did get to see the Dayton side of the family after church on Sunday that weekend after I was feeling better for Easter lunch before Brandon's dad flew back to Buffalo and to meet my newest nephew, Zeke, the son of Adrian and Natalie. It was a crazy weekend but great to see family and introduce our newest members.
No comments:
Post a Comment