Saturday, December 01, 2007

Five pounds seems so small

My wife and I are fairly tall. All three of our daughters were in the ten pound range when they were born. The lightest was nine pounds thirteen ounces. Our largest daughter was ten pounds ten ounces. We are use to large babies.

Our first three foster care children have moved on. Janine picked up our fifth foster child yesterday. The baby girl was born five or six weeks premature. Her due date was around the end of December. In one sense she is negative three weeks old.

We've had her less than twenty four hours. Already our life has changed dramatically. The baby girl needs to be feed every two hours. We are struggling to arrange our schedule to take care of her.

We had a family council this morning with our three daughters. We explained that to keep foster caring this baby we would need their help. We talked for fifteen or twenty minutes about the extra chores we would like them to do. They were OK with the chores. Our oldest asked if she could cut back on her math. She expressed a little disappointment when we said no.

Our fourth foster care child is a fourteen month old baby boy. He is a happy boy. We have had him for about ten days. At twenty five pounds he had seemed so little. Now next to this baby girl of five pounds he seems pretty grown up.

Hopefully we'll be able to keep this up.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It can be pretty crazy, can't it? I took on three siblings once, and infant a two year old and a three year old. That was pretty busy on top of my own three at the time, even if it was only for a few days! The whole dynamics of the family changes. Foster parents have my utmost respect.

Dana
Principled Discovery

Henry Cate said...

I'm impressed you took on a three sibling group. Initially we thought we'd be willing to take in siblings, but now we are having second thoughts.

Bringing in two or more siblings appears to make it harder to have them conform to your expectations. When my wife, myself and our three daughters have one set of behaviors, it is easier to set expectations. A few of our friends have taken two and three sibling groups and found it harder to have the foster children act appropriately.

Defilus the Menacing said...

My son was a preemie, so I understand the care required. Loving little ones is a high calling. May you find wisdom and strength.

Blessings to you,
Renae
http://reflective.homeschooljournal.net

Crimson Wife said...

Congrats & best wishes! My 2nd was full-term but only 5#12 at birth and he seemed so tiny to me at the time. He's now 2 and only 22# so he's off the growth charts but is tracking parallel to it so our pediatrician isn't concerned. As she puts it, "somebody has to be below the 3rd percentile!" :-)

Henry Cate said...

dylan and Crimson Wife, thank you for your kind words and support.