The Simple-But-Not-So-Simple Things

Sometimes we take the simple things for granted.

My sweet Annabelle has taught me that.

Like, for example, breathing. It comes super easy to you and I most of the time, unless you’re like me and feel like you’re going to hack up a lung when you run too long… but let’s leave my out-of-shape self out of this. For the longest time, Annabelle had to fight for every single breathe. She had to be fed extra calories through her formula because of the calories her body burned as it fought so hard to breath.

Lately, I’ve been getting super frustrated at her lack of eating. We’ve been in feeding therapy for over a year and still, she is not eating ANYTHING.

We’ve made improvements, absolutely. A year ago she would scream at the sight of a spoon because she thought we would try to put it by her mouth. If I even got “her” food from the cupboard, she would go ballistic with crying.

At feeding therapy… She won’t eat the cereal bar by itself… but leave it in its plastic and she’s totally game!

Feeding therapy a year ago consisted of singing A LOT of songs while we set food in front of her to try to get her used to just being in the presence of it.

Today, she licks a variety of types of food… mostly the “safe” ones that don’t leave too many crumbs in her mouth or don’t have funny/wet textures. But she will put them in her mouth, pretend to bite on them, then put them in a bowl.

That might seem not-so-great to some, but to us, this is big progress.

Still, even though my brain knows that it is leaps and bounds from where we have come, my heart screams for my sweet love just to be able to do normal things like drink out of a sippy cup or sit at the table and eat. Scott and I went out to  lunch yesterday to celebrate him getting a new, closer, better-for-him job (he starts next week, YEAH GOD!!!) and the waiter asked if Annabelle would like something to drink. I shook my head and said, “No, she doesn’t eat.” He looked at me funny then left.

Later, when delivering our food, he noted that it would be good for her to eat, and I again shrugged and told him she was tube fed and didn’t eat.

Most don’t quite get that concept, which is totally okay. It was just a reminder to me of something Annabelle is missing out on, even though she doesn’t really know it.

I get so frustrated and impatient. It shouldn’t be that hard to eat, right? I mean, I eat way TOO much… I wish I could just give the too-many calories I sometimes eat to her and then we’d be even, eh?

Yes… sometimes it is the simple things we take for granted.

And I realize too, that it’s those things I forget to pray about. I pray for her heart to continue to be strong on a daily basis… but honestly? I forget to pray for God to help her eat. Somehow I’ve decided that this is my job as a mommy to help her figure out, and forget that God wants my sweet love to eat too. I can take this to Him and lay this burden at his feet too.