Miss M

So sorry it has taken us a while to post an update this time. Life has just gone through another major adjustment, so fitting in blog time has been a challenge.

On Wednesday night, we went to pick up M, a sweet little 7 1/2-week-old girl. When she came to us, she had been overfed, so she weighed 13.5 pounds, only 5 pounds less than Zizi at 9 months!! Her stomach was churning constantly. She was spitting up all the time, and she just looked bloated and uncomfortable all the time. Contrary to our first meeting with Zizi, I didn't instantly attach to M, and that was somewhat difficult for me over the first couple of days. I didn't feel the same adoration I had felt with Zizi, but I really just had to pray through that, and the Lord has been faithful as I have fallen more in love with this girl each day. Yesterday I even caught a few smiles that melted my heart.

Over the past 2 days, she's gone down to 4 ounces every 3-4 hours (rather than the 8 ounces every 4 hours that she was getting), and it's remarkable the difference. She weighed in at 11 pounds 10 ounces yesterday, and she looks much brighter and happier. Her stomach still seems a little unsettled most of the time, but we're making progress!

The first night we had her and last night, she woke up every 3 hours on the dot. On Thursday night, however, at one point she slept for 6 hours!! There was much rejoicing in our house! I hope we can return to that soon!

We don't know how long we will have this precious baby. Unfortunately, the court system does not seem to be working in her favor so far, so she may return to a pretty rough situation in the next week. Please join us in praying for God's provision in this. It's so hard to make sense of it all. Our specific prayers are:

• that the Lord would provide time and resources for M's mom to rehabilitate before accepting M back into her life
• that we would have the opportunity to provide a solid baseline for M in these significant first months of her life
• that the Lord would protect her from physical and emotional damage if she does return to her mom sooner than we would like.
• that the Lord would give M and I a healthy attachment but would prepare my heart and my husband's heart for letting her go