On days when work is stressful and hard, I sometimes take a minute to just look at some pictures of Lewis. Today I looked at a picture of him sleeping.

That, my friends, is the meaning of life – My sleeping, perfect baby. Not missed deadlines, messed up projects, or angry clients. My sleeping, perfect baby is everything that is right in this world.

Our pediatrician recently added online access to medical records, and I love it. No more packets of paper when you leave the office, and if you ever need to look back at something, it’s all right there!

But it also means that I can go and look at his growth charts whenever I want. And those are an endless source of anxiety for me, despite all the medical professionals’ advice that everything is fine.

My memory told me that at one point Lewis had been in the 96th percentile for weight. I checked his charts this morning, and it turns out that that was his height percentile. His weight for the first 4 months of his life was actually between the 80th and 86th percentiles. Very consistent.

Well… with his clothes on at his appointment on Tuesday, he was down another half pound since his appointment the prior week where they weighed him with his clothes OFF. You’d think with clothes on, he’d weigh more. But no. He is now down into the lower 50′s for his weight percentile.

Obviously, he isn’t “underweight”. And I don’t care what percentile he is in, as long as it is healthy for him. If he’d been in the 50′s all along, I wouldn’t have a concern in the world. But he hasn’t. I’m not comparing him to other kids, I’m comparing him to himself, and he isn’t keeping up with his own personal patterns.

I know that the doctors all say this is okay. He has seen three different pediatricians in the clinic who all say the same thing. But his percentile has fallen off over 30% since he was 4 months old. How that isn’t concerning is baffling to me.

Since my child has started daycare, he has stopped eating enough, and he has been sick every single day. You can see it on the growth chart, almost to the day when he started at daycare.

I have faith in the people who care for him at daycare. I know they’re doing a great job – It isn’t their fault that he gets sick, and it isn’t their fault that he won’t eat. But I don’t want him there (or at any daycare) anymore. If I could just take care of my own baby, he’d be fine. Instead, I have to pay other people to do my job. I’m shelling out money to pay for my baby to be in an environment where he doesn’t thrive. Paying for a service I don’t even want, and shouldn’t even need. Mothers should be able to take care of their own babies if they want to! It feels so wrong.

And I can’t do a damn thing about it.

To make it worse, I feel very lonely in my concern. I’m the only one who thinks there is a problem. I don’t want to be “the crazy mom”, but why doesn’t anyone care that my child isn’t gaining weight but me?

Sick baby has now had 3 doses of antibiotics. They’re already messing with his tummy. But it’s worth it because the fever is a thing of the past, and he is clearly already feeling loads better.

I am really becoming a believer in the “your baby doesn’t sleep cuz he’s sick” theory. Again, pulling Lewis out of daycare would sure help. But since that isn’t an option, let’s hear it for antibiotics. He slept way better last night after his first dose, and he went down easy tonight. TBD how the rest of the night goes, but a 20 minute bedtime instead of an hour or more is a nice improvement even if the rest of the night us bad.

And what am I doing with my extra time before I go to sleep? Well, husband is at the auto show with his dad, so I did a few chores, and then I did about 5 minutes of butt-toning exercises, and now I plan to read a book.

Yes! For the first time in probably a year, I’m reading a book! My whole life I’ve been such an avid reader. But I’ve had a string of books I didn’t like kind of stop me in my tracks. I don’t like to start a book and not finish it, so when I dislike a book, I just don’t pick it up, but don’t let myself admit that I’m not going to read to the end.

In the past couple years I’ve started to allow myself the freedom to hate a book and put it down permanently. No more denial, pretending I’ll finish it.

But each time I’ve let myself quit a book, I’ve picked up another that I hated and gotten stuck on. Not to mention the busy-ness and the baby…. So after nearly a year off, I’m trying again. And it feels good. I love to read, and this book is starting off okay. So maybe I’ll make it through!