It's Official: I'm a Worrier

I read every baby book and magazine that I could get my hands on before Sadie was born.  I finished the first five months of "What to Expect in the First Year" after zipping through "What to Expect When Your Expecting" a month before my due date.  I took every class that our hospital offered, despite the three hour round trip drive into town.  I hoped that all that I'd learned would stick in my head and that when Sadie was born I would have some idea of what was going on.  

I did learn a lot from all that reading.  I've only panicked and called the doctor with questions twice during the last six months.  But after our last doctors appointment I have been labeled.  I am a "Worrier."  

I'm a first time mom!  Of course I worry.  I worry that it is either too hot or too cold in the room at night.  I worried when I took her to get her first vaccines, even though I know logically, after reading all that I could find on the subject, that there is nothing to worry about.  I worried that Sadie was going to be allergic to the antibiotics the doctor gave her for her ear infection (I'm allergic to most of them, so there' some logic behind it!) and I hardly slept after she learned to roll over and started insisting on sleeping on her stomach all the time.  And that brings me to the reason that I have been labeled a Worrier.  

When Sadie started sleeping on her stomach I stopped sleeping altogether.  I hated that her little nose was so close to the bottom of the bassinet (this was before she was sleeping in her crib).  I imagined carbon dioxide collecting near her face despite the three (yes, three) blasting fans that cause a small wind storm in our otherwise balmy room.  I checked on her every ten minutes and would quietly try to slip her back onto her back once she was soundly asleep.  Within three minutes she would flip back over onto her stomach.  On one particularly long night I turned her onto her back twelve times.  I was so worried that when I saw a baby monitor (the Angelcare Movement Sensor with Baby Monitor) with a motion sensor that slipped under the mattress, I ordered it right away.  The mattress sensor attaches to a monitor with a halo night light and two little green lights.  One light shows that the monitor is on and the other flashes every time that the baby breathes or moves.  If the monitor doesn't feel the baby move after fifteen seconds there's a little beep.  If there's no movement for another five seconds an alarm goes off.  

The alarm has gone off a few times.  It goes off when I forget to turn it off when I pick the baby up at night.  It went off a few times when Sadie squirmed into a corner of the crib and shoved her arm out the side after pulling the "breathable bumper" down all the way.  And it went off once for no reason whatsoever.  This happened when she was sick, a few nights before the doctors appointment.  I rushed over and put my hand on her back and the alarm shut off.  I looked at the little green light and it flickered on and off again.  

At our appointment last week I asked the doctor what he thought.  He said that he's sure it was just a malfunction with the sensor, which is what Paul and I thought too.  But after questioning me on why I have the sensor in the first place (because it lets me actually sleep when she sleeps!  Worry free!) he declared me a Worrier.  

I may be a Worrier, but I'm a Worrier that sleeps a few extra hours each night!

And here is today's Sadie News: She rolled all over the room today.  She can change directions now and control where she's going.  While I was sitting next to her she rolled over to the rocks at the base of the hearth and tried to figure out how to pull herself up (we have some major baby proofing to do).  She also got to see her first giant burn pile today, because Grumpa is trying to get ride of all the broken branches from the trees that got cut down so we could have high speed internet (you have to have a clear view of the southern sky for satellite internet and that's not easy to find around here).  Tonight when we went out to dinner for a belated birthday dinner for Nani she sat up like a big girl in her high chair the entire time and ate a whole bowl of sweet potatoes and a whole bowl of peas before coming home and eating a whole bowl of rice cereal.  As I was wiping her face off, she did her baby Hungry Cry and tried to convince me that she was starving.  I think she might be going through another growth spurt.  At this rate she'll be taller than I am by kindergarden.