Tough Stuff

No one said motherhood would be easy but sometimes it's unreasonably hard. We took Philip to the pediatrician's office to have her look at some red rash-like spots on his stomach and some dry patches in other places on his shoulders and legs. Sure enough, it's eczema. The pediatrician said she wasn't worried about it, that it's fairly common in infants, and that in a lot of cases it goes away on its own in time. I'd like to say I'm reassured by that but I'm not. I'm bummed out that my sweet little baby is all of 7 months old and has to deal with this. Granted it doesn't seem to bother him at all but in my eyes it's only right that he be perfect in every way.

On top of that bad news, it was determined that both of Philip's big toes have ingrown toenails. No sooner was that diagnosis made that we were sent off to see a podiatrist who within minutes of looking at our poor little guy's toes was performing a less than pleasant procedure on them. He snipped away the skin and toenail around the afflicted area without so much as an "I'm sorry, kiddo." Our poor little boy cried and cried and I about lost it. The most difficult thing about motherhood so far for me has been seeing my son in pain without being able to explain to him why it's happening.

The worst part of that visit though was learning that we would most likely be bringing him back every couple of months to have it done again until Philip is old enough to have a more permanent procedure done to correct the problem. I can't put into words how much this breaks my heart.

In other news, Philip weighed 17 pounds, 11 ounces on Tuesday. He's almost tripled his birth weight at only 7 months old! He's still long and lean, but he's freakishly strong--the kid is all muscle!