Here and there... we were sick, now we're better.

So I’ve been so happy to tell everyone that I’m the luckiest mommy alive. My baby sleeps through the night! My baby doesn’t care if he has formula or breast milk. He’ll switch from breast to bottle without a blink. He gives me kisses. He likes to eat food. He stopped peeing when the diaper comes off.

My luck ran out over the holidays. I woke up sick on Christmas morning and it’s been one thing after another since then. I was on two antibiotics for eye and ear infections. WTF? It was so gross. And I was exhausted. Limbs feeling weak, nodding off at the desk exhausted.

W started running a fever on New Year’s eve and completely stopped sleeping through the night. I know lots of parents are laughing at me. Finally!!! Hahaha! See what we all deal with?? But I’m siiiiiiiick. Uuuuuuuuggggghhhh. Waking up every 45 minutes every night was killing me. M and I generally try to alternate picking up W when he cries. That wasn’t working. M just doesn’t have the mommy touch. W would fall back to sleep, but then he’d wake up 2 minutes later (usually while M is in the bathroom), so I have to go in there anyway. We tried a few nights of winging it. We’d look at each other at the first cries and hope he’d go back to sleep. That meant he just escalated to wails and screams by the time one of us was in there. So the rocking would be 10-20 minutes at a time. Then we would give up and bring him into bed with us. That wasn’t working. Then we tried the no cry sleep solution. We would go in the second we heard the whimpering and pick him up and generally we could put him back down in a few minutes. We also set a cut off time – if (when!) he cried after 3 am, he just came to bed with us. So we got at least a few hours of light sleep. That worked well the first night. Then he started getting stuffed up and just could not sleep unless he was kind of sitting up. So after lots of tears, we went to the guest bedroom with lots of pillows and we both tried to sleep there. M and I alternated days for this. M tried to take more than every other night and would tell me, “Tonight I will take care of W. I’m not tired.” Then he would roll over and push me out of bed at the first cries. I was not mad at him, it was kind of funny. He has no recollection of the pushing.

At one point, I took W to the doctor to rule out any ear infections for him, but he was perfectly fine. I love my pediatrician even more because he took me seriously when I said that my reason for coming in was that W was just not himself.

So that was my life for 2 weeks. Bad sleep, stuffy baby, sick mommy, yuckiness. We started putting some cereal in his bottle at night and we set up a vaporizer and we are squirting saline in his nose (by the way – bad mommy moment – the face he makes when I spray it is hysterical). Something in this combination is working. We’ve had 2 nights of bliss. He’s been waking up, but he wiggles his way up so his head is pressed up against the crib and his butt is in the air and he goes back to sleep. He’s a little piece of heaven. We’re happy again!

I was getting pretty upset during that no sleep time. I would just sit there and rock him and he’d be crying and trying to sit up when all I want him to do is sleep. I was almost in tears from frustration, but then I would stop. I thought to myself about all the times I cried because I didn’t think I would have nights like that. It was strange, and calming, to sit in the middle of the night with a screaming baby and think about how thankful I am. Because that’s what matters the most. Not sleep, I’d trade sleep for him any time.

So back to the cereal in the bottle thing – W is breastfeeding less and less. He used to go to bed around 8 or 8:30 and I’d do a little dreamfeed around 10 when I went to bed. This got all confused when I was sick. I was going to bed right after W went down and when he woke up around 12 or whatever I would try to feed him. Sometimes he didn’t want anything. Sometimes that seemed to make things worse. So I started giving him a bottle right at bed time with a small amount of cereal. That is keeping him asleep and he isn’t even really demanding food right when he wakes up at 6:30. So the night nursing is gone. I’m left with just once per day, first thing in the morning. I’m going to keep it up until next week. He’ll be 8 months on the 19th… I’ll give him a birthday bottle that morning.

How do I feel about this? Not like I thought I would. I’m sad. But not upset sad, we’re weaning on my terms and I’m completely comfortable with it. I want to stop. I want to take strong cold medicines and drink lots of wine. But I’m going to miss it. I’m going to miss the little face he makes when I put him on the boppy (um, he might think Milk comes out of the boppy) and the rooting. I’ll miss his little hands scratching me. I’ll miss the face he makes when I start talking while he’s eating. He pulls off and pushes himself off and gives me a LOOK. Like, lady, I’m trying to eat here. Can you please have your conversations at another time? Really?

The formula feeding stuff is awesome and convenient and easy. Washing the bottles kind of blows, but I had to do that anyway with daycare and pumping. It’s actually less now! W can hold his own bottle so we can feed him while we have dinner or do chores. That means more time for playing. He’s eating all kinds of pureed food. We’re going to start meats soon. He is –just- getting the hang of putting a puff in his mouth to eat it. I’m hoping he’ll start eating little pieces of banana soon. I want to feed him more finger food, but the lack of teeth is making me sad. I’ll be pureeing PBJ sandwiches when he goes to kindergarten.

Merry Christmas!!!

I haven’t had much to say lately – I don’t think anyone is interested in me just gushing about the little guy all the time. He’s army-crawling now. Yesterday I picked him up from daycare and he crawled to me. He started his heavy breathing (that means he’s happy) as soon as I walked in the door and then I knelt down and he came right to me. I was almost crying.

Breastfeeding is coming to a close. I slowed down pumping at work after W was 6 months in November and now I don’t pump at all. I’d been hoping to keep up nursing at night and in the morning, but I can tell my supply is dropping. Plus W is not interested in nursing so much anymore. He’d much rather look around and see who could be in the room. I’ve had to tell M to stop talking sometimes because W loves to look at him.

W’s been eating all sorts of food. Avocado, bananas, sweet potatoes, green beans, peas, pears, carrots. The poop colors have been amazing. I’ve been making his baby food. I never thought I’d be the type to do this, but it’s cheaper and so frickin easy. Even for a lazy bum like me.

I am over the moon excited about Christmas. We took W to see Santa and I thought my heart would explode. He was wonderful and gazed at Santa during the pictures. I loved watching the kids in line – they were talking about what they’d say to Santa and they got to put their letters in a mailbox that had gusts of “snow” blow out when they opened it. It was magical. I can’t wait for W to start understanding the season.




AKD at Little Footprints had a wonderful giveaway and I won (I’m pretty awesome). I feel like I know her in real life, so this is extra special. Her prize was to donate to the March of Dimes in honor of an angel. I’m so proud that my little boy will have this done in his name. Thank you, AKD, for being so generous. You light up my days when you post and your daughter is a beauty!

Zippers

I’m wearing pants that button and zip today. I’m not saying I’m in my skinny jeans or anything, but I’m getting there. 5 more pounds and I’ll be at my pre-pregnancy weight. 10 more pounds and I’ll be at my happy weight. Since we joke about the last 5 pounds being the hardest, M has told me I should shoot for 5 pounds less than my happy weight – I’m hoping his idea works!

I walked almost every morning on maternity leave. I started slow, but worked up to over an hour every day. If it was too hot or raining, I went to the mall and chugged around and prided myself on not eating anything from the food court (torture!!). I gained weight from my 2 week incision check to my 6 week check. The nurse asked me if I was breastfeeding. When I said yes she was surprised, “Oh? You gained weight.” Hahaha. Fantastic. I’ve read that nursing moms store fat in case of a famine. I guess that means we’ll get through the next round of potato blight.
Now I can’t walk as much because I have chores to do at night (washing bottles) and I want to spend as much time as possible cuddling. M is a fitness guy. He runs, he lifts weights, he doesn’t add salt to anything and won’t eat hamburger helper (you know the type). He tried to get me to do his exercises, but it didn’t work out. I thought it was boring and I wasn’t good at the “flex your muscles and make a tough face” part. So now I’m doing a post natal rescue DVD. It’s not awful. W watches me. It takes 15 minutes. I don’t know if it’s doing anything… I’m on the second step. I’ll let you know if I ever get to the third one.

I’m hoping a bunch of this weight is in my boobs. I KNOW some of it is in my stomach. I’ve got a little pot belly that is preventing me from getting into lots of my pants. My boobs are preventing me from getting into shirts. I had trouble with button-up shirts anyway. Now I have to stay away from those even more. I put one on this morning and I looked like I was trying to be some comic-book office girl all busting out. Hot? Nope.

32 Weeks!

Special thanks to all those who shared their BFing experiences and advice and fears. I feel better!

Here is my 32 week update. 8 weeks to go... holy crap.

The good: M has been feeling the baby regularly. He talks to the baby and all that great stuff. My big shower is this weekend! My new crib is being delivered this afternoon!

The bad: I am getting more and more uncomfortable every day. I am also getting angrier at the people around me (this might not be a bad thing)

The ugly: I am preparing for a child by spitting up a few times a day. Really. Out of nowhere. I don’t even get a burpy feeling, I just burp out a bunch of water. I have yet to make a mess or anything, but it’s still gross (read: I throw up in my mouth). I’m sure this is related to my fantastic heartburn and acid reflux problem, but the spitting up doesn’t hurt at all. It just gives me bad breath.

Normal life: I had a dentist appointment this morning. The hygienist talked to me about nursing the whole time. Does she read my blog? I have fluoride breath right now and it is gross.

{Drama Removed}

Pediatrician: I have one! I had a meet and great yesterday afternoon. He is a jolly man in a bugs bunny tie. He talked to me for about 40 minutes and made sure all my questions are answered. I didn’t see eye-to-eye with him on all the vaccine stuff, but he said several parents are on the schedule that I am interested in (Dr Sears). Why am I interested in the alternative vaccine schedule? My mom said she liked it better. I’m currently reading (skimming) the book and I agree with it. That doesn’t mean any other approach is wrong.

Breastfeeding Class

We had our breastfeeding class last night. I’m glad we took it, I feel more prepared now. I learned about positions and some other tips. I learned that my hospital doesn’t sell the pump I want (I can get it from the hospital where my mom works). I learned that we should grab 2 cookies before the class starts so we don’t have to share one.

The class started off kind of slow. We watched a video that makes it look so easy! She talked about the problems you can have and about the hospital services and policies. I was happy to learn about a back-to-work class that they have after your baby is born. I’ll be going to that!

M learned that boobs aren’t just giant bags of milk. He had no idea about the actual anatomy. Awesome.

She showed us some cream for nipple problems. I will probably just buy that stuff the next time I am at the store.

The biggest thing we got out of the class was the opportunity to think about what we want immediately after the baby is born. My mom will be in the room with me, my dad and M’s parents will be in the waiting room. We’ve decided that we want the first hour with just the 3 of us. We need to try the whole breastfeeding thing and just want that time to bond. The woman told us how a baby is usually alert for the first hour and then all the excitement catches up with them and they pass out. Our parents can come in and hold the sleeping baby. They’ll have plenty of time to get to know him/her afterwards. We’ll never be able to re-do that first hour. We’re happy we’ve decided this ahead of time so we won’t have disappointed parents knocking on the door.

So the real truth is that I am terrified of breast feeding. I’m more afraid of that than birth. Birth hurts real big one time and then you get a reward. You have lingering pain afterwards, but that’s manageable. I actually looking forward to that one. I’m terrified of breastfeeding hurting for months and months. My nipples are pretty sensitive as it is, I don’t think that will get better. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it. I’m afraid I won’t know that I’m not doing it right. I’m afraid that I’ll lose my supply too early (my mom did). I’m afraid my kid will starve. I’m afraid my MIL will think less of me if I can’t do it (she’s already been hinting about how natural birth is wonderful – ha!). I’m afraid of disappointing M.

I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself. I am going to try my best. If I can’t do it, then I have plenty of other ways to feed my baby. We can afford formula (I won’t be using this). No one is going to be angry at me. My child will be fine. I just keep telling myself these things over and over. I hope I can do it.