Someone else's sadness made me appreciate my life even more.

I have been following The Progressive Parent blog for a while, or I should say, I had been following it. While on bed rest the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy, I think I read every parenting blog out there. I don't know why I stopped. Oh wait, yes I do. I used to describe it as "I'm stuck in bed with Emma day and night. She's permanently attached to the boob." The way I said it was awful. Yes, I was exhausted. I'm a stay at home mommy with a baby girl who isn't gaining weight as quickly as she should, who cries constantly, never wants to sleep and has horrible reflux. Over the past few months things have gotten better and I have found ways to carve little bits of time into my day for myself. I can read again. Maybe not a Nicholas Sparks book from cover to cover, but a few blog entries or a couple of magazine articles. I'm not trapped in bed all day nursing Emma. Maybe only half the day. We actually get out of the house now. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Tricia posted in our mommy group on facebook asking if anyone had been reading The Progressive Parent. It dawned on me I hadn't looked at that blog since before Halloween. What I read next instantly brought tears to my eyes. Julie (the progressive parent), had woken to find her son unresponsive. She was living my biggest fear. She had outlived her son, something no parent should ever face. When I was 5 my biggest fear was spiders. At 10, snakes. At 15, never getting my driver's license. At 17, being stuck in this town forever. At 20, never figuring out what to do with my life. At 25, failure. At 31, it's SIDS. I went to Julie's blog and starting reading, but I couldn't get through much of it at the time. I still haven't read all of it. What I have read has given me an even greater appreciation for my life. Yes, I'm still exhausted because Emma doesn't sleep well. Yes, there's times I glare at Robert as he's snoring away and I'm nursing Emma for the 5th time that night. But at the end of the day, I would rather be exhausted, nursing my child to sleep or rubbing her back to soothe her to sleep as I rocked her, than exhausted staring at her picture knowing that I will never feel her little fingers wrapped around mine again.