Heal Stick

My sweet baby Caleb turned two months old today.  Did he get a party?  No.  Did he get presents?  No.  Cake?  Balloons?  No and no.  What he got was stuck.  Three needles and a heal stick.  Now vaccines I can handle.  Shots are rather quick and over before the kids even react.  The heal stick is another story.  

Thankfully the first one done in the hospital I was not present for.  It was done in the nursery at some point while I was getting some sleep in my room.  The second was to check for jaundice when he was a week old.  It was pretty awful, but at least it brought good news.  No jaundice.  

The third and what was supposed to be the last was at three weeks.  That was one for the record books.  Thank the Lord for my husband who went with me to that appointment.  The blood just wouldn’t come out.  I was holding Caleb and the nurse just kept squeezing Caleb was crying and it honestly took about 5 whole minutes just to fill the first little circle.  I couldn’t take it.  I nearly passed out and Samuel had to take over while I sat down.  A lot of crying and a few more sticks later all the circles were finally filled.  And we headed home.

About a month later I get a call from the doctor saying that somehow the blood from the heal stick clotted on the way to the lab and we have to do it AGAIN!  If there was one thing that I never wanted to do again it was the heal stick.  

So for his appointment today we were prepared for the worst.  He got his check up and is beautiful and healthy.  11 pounds 8 ounces and 22 inches long.  I heated his little heals up with a warm wash cloth before they stuck him to get the blood pumping well.  And the nurse stuck him.  Ouch!!!  I’m pretty sure it hurt me more than it hurt him and by his crying I can tell that it really hurt him.  But to our surprise he bled well this time and before we knew it the circles were filled and he was sleeping soundly.  What a relief.  

Sometimes we cry like Caleb.  We cry and say “You don’t know what it’s like!  You don’t understand how much it hurts!  You don’t know how hard it is!”  But He does know.  He takes our sicknesses and carries our pain the way I do with Caleb.  When something hurts him it hurts me.  God’s compassion for us is the same.  He has decided to take our pain upon himself.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 

Isaiah 53:4