Holy Crap! 3 months ago I had a baby!!!!!
I still can’t believe it!
Here’s my Cutieface in all his 3-month glory, waiting for his Well-Baby checkup at the Dr’s office. Will update later with his new stats as well as a general #whatsgoinon with us post since it’s clear we are seriously overdue for an update here.
ETA:
Mr. Cutieface is now:
12lbs
24 inches
OMG! Can I tell you how I have the bestest friend in all the world!
My good friend D is into arts and crafts, she likes to sew. She makes personalized blankets, pillows purses, bags and stuffed toys that are just unbelievable! She made beautiful satin purses for me and my bridesmaids when I got married that matched their dresses. She has also made me dolls, bears and pillows for me in the past. She sometimes uses me as her guinea pig, testing out new methods, materials and designs.
She made this set for my preshus:
- 3 chewie towels
- 1 full sized blanket
- 1 bear
all personalized with his name.
Did I mention that everything is hand made!
Did I tell you how the material is so squishibly soft I want to use this stuff for myself!
I don’t know how much she sells a set like this for but to me, this is absolutely priceless! All she asked me for is what colours I liked and how much he weighed at birth and she did the rest! I couldn’t have asked for a better gift.
The woman is a genius! She’s gonna sell a billion of these, I’m sure of it!
So the pumping continues, more or less. I’ll have to go to the store to buy some supplies. So far I’ve been using some of the freebee bottles that I’ve collected over the last 2 years, I have yet to use the beautiful glass bottles that TheMrs sent to me because they are larger and it will make sense to use them when preshus is older and drinks more.
So far I’m pumping anywhere from 2 oz to 4 oz at a time, depending on how long it has been since the last time I pumped/breastfed.
Things I have learned so far:
- Each time he eats from a bottle I have to pump because otherwise my boob just gets overfull and sore
- Again, pumping is clumsy and I feel like a weird moo cow doing it
- i’m somewhat embarrassed to pump in front of hubby and my mother because really, it’s just a weird thing to do
- it takes just as long to pump as it does to breastfeed him
- when i pump and someone else feeds him, i feel like i’m missing out on quality time with him. i’ll have to be sure to make a point to cuddle him more when other people feed him
- when we don’t spend as much time with each other when I nurse him, he smiles at me more when he does see me
- if i don’t pump when he is being bottle fed, the likelihood of me leaking breastmilk all over everything is very, very high
- pumping doesn’t empty my boob completely so the next time i breastfeed I have to do so from the boob that was pumped last. but since there isn’t enough milk in it for a full meal, I have to switch sides and feed him from the other boob as well which I don’t normally have to do
- while it takes me a minimum of 20 minutes to nurse him to fullness, and 20 minutes to pump about 2 oz, it takes him about 5 or 10 minutes to drink a bottle of 2 oz. presumably because the fake nipple has a faster flow than my real nipples
Things I have to buy:
- More tiny bottles with nipples that match the style of his baby gum drop pacifier. he seems to be doing well with them
- milk storage bags
Things that are funny:
- watching my nipple get sucked into the pump. actually it’s a little more weird and creepy to see than funny
- the look on his face when he realizes that the thing in his mouth is a nipple with milk rather than a pacifier with no milk
- the look on his face when he realizes that he’s eating but mommy is across the room. if i’m in the room he stares at me instead of the person feeding him
- how he furrows his brow when he eats from a bottle.
*and if you know where this lyric comes from i’ll send you a prize!
pumping
I’m doin it.
or trying to anyways.
Yesterday morning it popped into my head that I’m ready to start pumping so that my husband can start feeding our preshus. Hubby is constantly asking me when I’m going to start. He says he wants to be able to help me out so that I can get more sleep. For me, I can’t expalin it but my mind and heart have finally flipped over to the side where it’s time and I’m ready to take that step to bottle feed my preshus. Hmm… as I’m writing this I don’t think I’m being very clear on what I’m trying to say.
Not to long ago I wrote a post about how I felt the need to be selfish and continue to breastfeed my son. I think it was the connection to him that I was trying to maintain. That and my own need to feel needed and important in this process of raising him 100%. Sure my husband and mother are here to help me, but lets face it, I’m the one who has to remind people to do something as simple as change his diaper when he starts to fuss. No, taking care of him doesn’t consist solely of cuddling him and playing with him and rocking him to sleep when you have a few minutes to spare in your day. This job is 24/7, and I’ve taken that responsibility on pretty much by myself since the day he came home. Yes that’s my job and I understand that. But that said, I’m the one who’s life has taken a complete 180 degree turn while it seems to me that everyone else has only seen a minor change in their routine with the arrival of the preshus.
Anyways, long story short. I pumped for the first time last night. And for the second time this morning. Pumping will allow me to do the following:
- Get more sleep as hubby as promised that he’ll take over the occasional late night or early morning feeding duties so that I can get more sleep
- Allow my mother to feed preshus as she has been whining to do so ever since I got pregnant. She’ll now be able to leave the house with him to visit all of her friends.
- Get my drink on when we go to Niagara Falls in 2 weeks. Our trip to Niagara Falls during my and my baby sister’s birthday weekend will mark 13 months since the last time I had a drink. I’m looking forward to it.
I guess this whole thing has been a learning and growing experience for me.
That said, I know people talk about pumping as this monumentally hard thing to do. For me it hasn’t been hard so much as clumsy. I’ve got a Medela Harmony manual pump and it works fairly well, not that I have any other pump to compare it to. I got 2.5oz last night on my first pump, and 2oz this morning. Hopefully the more I pump the more milk I’ll be able to produce. Basically what I think I’ll do is every time I feed him I’ll feed him on one side and pump the other, then pump the side he fed on. Then I’ll switch sides at the next feeding. We’ll see how that goes. And a big shout out to TheMrs who sent me my superfantastic microwave sterilizer. Thanks Girl!
Now all I have to worry about is weather or not we can get preshus to actually eat from a bottle! I’ll leave that task in hubby’s capable hands since personally I still don’t think I’ll use the bottle to feed him. To me breastfeeding is still the easier way to go.
Oh, and just for posterity’s sake, my Tweet from last night…
@BAYBESBREATH
Pumped for the first time this evening.
Taking care of bottles is hard work!
Burnt myself sterilizing. 10 hours ago
Not with the microwave sterilizer mind you, I had to sterilize the nipples and breast pump for the first time in boiling water. Still hurts.
4.5oz of Liquid Gold
Madela Harmony Manual Pump
Microwave bottle sterilizer
Conversation my son had with his hands this morning…
“You again, Mr. Right Hand! Don’t think I haven’t noticed you. Your friend Mr. Left Hand has been cooperative and tastes good in my mouth, but you Sir, will learn to do my bidding!” (insert evil laugh here)
My preshus is 9 weeks old this week and yesterday we went for his Well-Baby visit at the Dr’s office. (incidently, this appointment was the reason for the previous post and the non-brushing of my teeth.) I am very happy to report that I have a very Well Baby!
Stats:
- 11lbs
- 23 inches long
Dr. says he is right on his growth curve, not that I know or want to know how he should be doing, I’m just happy to know that he is doing well!
This appointment was also for his first set of vaccinations. He had one administered orally and 2 shots, one in each thigh.
The Dr. pasted on 2 ginormous band aids on his gorgeous chubby thighs. Unfortunately the band aids left welts from the adhesive after we peeled them off this afternoon, his poor delicate skin.
He handled the injections pretty well. He cried a little from the shock of getting the first needle, and cried twice as long after he got stuck the second time. Thankfully, I didn’t cry at all (shocker).
He didn’t come down with a fever which was nice, but our experience with the baby tylenol was funny to say the least. I gave him his first dose about an hour before his appointment to cut down on the amount of pain he would feel, and it turned him all loopy! It was the funniest thing. He got all happy and smiley and if he know how to laugh he would have been laughing hysterically. I know I was.
In the end he had to have 3 doses of baby tylenol to keep the cranky at bay, including one right before bed when he was at his crankiest. That said, when we were able to get him to fall asleep he slept for a good 6 hours straight which was great, and woke up all happy and smily the next morning, none the worse for wear.
His next set of shots will be at his 4 month Well-Baby visit.
There’s a certain amount of personal hygiene that I’ve given up as a new mother. I’m not sure if it happens to all new moms, but it’s certainly become a part of my reality.
Case in point, if I need the car for the day that means that I have to drive hubby to work, which means I have to get up and be ready to leave the house just as I’m normally preparing to nurse preshus and go back to sleep. What I’m trying to say is that in order to wake up and get out the door after only 4 or 5 hours sleep, I tend to skip brushing my teeth in favour of nursing for an extra 5 minutes. Better to have him a little fuller than to worry about how my breath smells.
*note that I’m posting this a day after I started writing it. *sigh*
Or more to the point, on staying home with my baby every day instead of going to work.
I have to say that I am extremely thankful that I have the opportunity to stay home for one year with my baby instead of having to go back to work like now or else lose my job.
That said, I wouldn’t be very honest with myself if I didn’t admit to the following things:
- I get bored at home
- Staying in bed till noon while fun, makes me feel very lazy, even though I do it to catch up on much needed sleep.
- Getting into the car and driving to the grocery store has become the highlight of my week. I went to the bank the other day and had a ball
- It’s weird not having any adults to speak with during the day
- It sucks living in the burbs because there’s nowhere to walk to that won’t take me 30 minutes one way on the best of days, and even then I’ll only get as far as a crappy convenience store.
- My biggest dilemmas each day are weather I should do laundry, or the dishes, or take a shower, or give preshus a bath, and weather I can do any of these things before hubby comes home from work
Again, let me say that I absolutely love the fact that I get to stay home with my son all day, I just wish sometimes that we weren’t stuck at home without a car all day every day. I suppose I could take public transit to the mall with him, but I don’t think I have the energy to go on such a big outing just yet. Maybe in a few weeks.
As usual, the days are going by so fast that I can barely believe it. My preshus is 8 weeks old today (yay!) and I still can’t believe that he’s here. He’s so amazing, all cute and squishy and stuff. Even when he farts (which is a lot! – and the smell –hoo!boyhowdy!). As crazy as it seems it’s the funniest thing ever when I’m feeding him and he’s farting at the same time. Breast milk goes in…farts come out. It’s awesome!
The last week or so he’s started learning to use his voice. So cute! All gurgles and babbles and oohs and aahs. Adorable!
He still hasn’t found his hands or feet yet, but you can see that he’s trying to get some general control of his arms. When he eats he grabs my boob with both forearms like a giant bottle. So cute!
This is our nursing pillow.
It is our friend. It allows us to nurse in comfort. And at night, when we fall asleep nursing in our big comfy chair watching Lord of the Rings, it is where my preshus sleeps, with my arms curled around him. A mommy/baby/pillow cocoon.
Awesome.
(diaper break…
…10 minutes later)
You would NOT believe the diaper I just changed after he made this face for about 5 minutes:
"almost time to change my diaper, lady"
Anyhoo…
We finally started using a pacifier about a week and a half ago and it has been somewhat of a lifesaver. It allows me to put off feeding him rightthisinstant so that I can finish whatever it is I am doing (washing dishes, eating, peeing…) before I feed him. Keeps him from creating a huge fuss the instant he wakes up because he’s hungry.
He’s also learning that it is a comfort item that he can use to fall asleep. So awesome. After he eats (I know he’s done when he starts gumming my nipple, not fun!) I plug him in, lie him down, and if the stars and the moon aligns just right, he falls right to sleep. Not at 2am mind you, that still requires me rocking him to sleep. But during the day it is proving to be a big help.
We are using Baby Gum Drop Pacifiers which were recommended to us by our prenatal class instructor for newborn breastfed babies. We love our Baby Bum Drops! They are teh awesomes. And the vanilla smelling ones smell totally delish.
Because she asked and because I totally forgot to include my thoughts on the subject in my previous posts, yes I plan on pumping, but probably not for another month or two.
Why you ask?
Well I’ll tell you. In list form. Because I feel my response requires a list. And I like to make lists. And it’s been a while since I’ve made a list.
- While pumping and bottle feeding means someone else can feed him, it doesn’t save me any time or effort, and I’m lazy
- Pumping will likely take up just as much time as breastfeeding, so I won’t be bottle feeding him. Why should I when my boobs are all good to go
- Pumping means having to prepare bottles, including washing and sterilizing and pumping and storing breast milk and keeping track of new milk vs. old milk and making sure we use the milk before it gets old or goes bad and all kinds of other stuff that I haven’t even thought of and as I said before, I’m lazy
- I’m still worried that starting him on bottles at this early stage (he’s 7 weeks old now) will mess up all the progress we’ve made with the breastfeeding.
- We’ve just recently started using a pacifier with him and I want to wait until he’s used to using it before he starts using bottles and learns that food can come out of that plastic thing we just shoved in his mouth. I want him to learn to be pacified with his pacifier. If he learns that there’s a possibility that food can come out of a plastic nipple like thing and not just from mommies boobs, then the pacifying aspects of the pacifier will no longer work.
All of these reasons may sound silly, but they make sense to me so that’s what I’m sticking with. Besides, unless someone (aka, my husband) plans on waking up to do the overnight feedings via bottle, and I just don’t see that happening, then at this stage of the game what would be the point? I’m not in the mood to insert a complicated procedure into my already crazy day until I’ve got a better handle on things.
And one last reason, and this one is, if I’m being honest with myself, the main reason why I don’t want to pump yet. I’m afraid that if we start bottle feeding him he won’t want to nurse anymore, and I’m not ready to face that possibility yet. I mean, what if he starts to prefer bottles over breastfeeding? What if pumping affects my milk supply? What if I hate pumping? What if I just stop whining about it already cause it’s apparent to me as I’m typing this that I’m being totally selfish about this whole topic. *sigh*
There would be one major bonus on the side of pumping though. I’ll be able to drink again. And oh how I do miss drinking. Wine, beer, cocktails, whatever. Haven’t had a drink in exactly 1 year + 1 day.
In any case, I’ve been mentally preparing myself to start pumping when he hits 3 months. Until then, it’s all boob, all the time.
Thankfully breastfeeding seems to come more or less pretty naturally to me and my preshus. That’s not to say it’s been easy for either of us. Oh lordy no.
In the beginning, when Preshus was a wee 10 or 15 minutes old (actually I don’t know how many minutes had passed before I got to hold him because it took a little time for his APGARs to go up and for the pediatrician to check out his arm which had gotten stuck during his birth – they wanted to make sure he was ok), the nurse helped me get my little sweetie latched on and boy did he latch. Well, I don’t recall that the latch was very good but he surely did give it his all. And even though my mother was worried that I was starving him to death (mom: “maybe you should give him some water or some formula” me: “um…no.”), my baby did a really good job at latching on and sucking and getting all the colostrum he could get. The problem we had for the first few days in the hospital was that he preferred to nurse from my right breast and insisted on screaming bloody murder whenever I tried to nurse him on the left. Thankfully the hospital I was at offered all new mothers a breastfeeding class that they encouraged us to take within the first 48 hours and they taught me how to do a football hold with his little body tucked under my left arm. After the first week or so I was able to get him to nurse from both the left and right sides although sometimes he gets all screamy and kicky when I try to nurse him, but I think this has more to do with discomfort from gas than anything else. Usually if I pause to burp him he will settle down to eat.
About cluster feeding. We’ve had a few instances of it where he’s pretty much begging to be relieved of his starvation every hour on the hour. And when you’re nursing for anywhere from 10 to 40 or 50 minutes at a time, well, I don’t have to tell you what that means for getting any sleep at all. But we get through it.
About pooping. At the beginning I wasn’t bothering to keep track of when or how long he was nursing for. I set my blackberry to wake me every 3 or 4 hours so that I could feed him and since he seemed to be doing well, I didn’t think too much of it. Everything that was going in was coming out appropriately. Until we got home and when he was 4 or 5 days old he went a whole day and a half without pooping, just long enough to put me into ‘freaked out mommy’ mode and head straight for the walk-in clinic at my dr’s office to have him checked out. Turns out he was fine and a few hours after some leg and belly manipulation by the dr, my preshus was pooping with the best of them once again. I’ve never been so happy to see poo.
After that I started tracking when he was eating and for how long, just to be on the safe side. And about a week ago started feeling confident enough that I’m no longer tracking his feedings. I’ve gotten pretty good at reading his hungry signs and he has gotten pretty good at making sure he’s asking to be fed at least every 4 or 5 hours, if not more frequently. Most importantly, I can now sleep for as long as he will let me during the night. He’s good at waking up to eat on his own. Now I keep a hair tie around my wrist to remind me which boob to feed him from at his next feeding. I suspect eventually I won’t have to do that anymore either. I’ll just remember. This whole breastfeeding thing is a learning process for sure. Also, now that I’m not as much of a newbie mommy, preshus and I have come to an understanding that the poops will come every other day or so, and if he doesn’t poop for a day or two, he will more than make up for it by pooping up a storm when the gears get going again.
About pain. Specifically, nipple pain. Yes, there will be some. Especially if you’re like me and you don’t hold your baby’s little body tummy to tummy like you’re supposed to. No, like an idiot I was letting preshus lay flat on his back which caused his turned head to put weird pressures on my nipples, causing them to HURT. Eventually my right nipple deadened to the pain (after about the first 3 weeks), but my left nipple was in so much pain during each feeding it wasn’t uncommon for me to literally cringe in pain during the entire feeding. Now, first let me say that all newly breastfeeding moms will feel some pain. The nurse in the breastfeeding class told us that for the first few weeks the first 10 sucks or so at each feeding will induce toe curling pain, and boy she wasn’t kidding. But really once your boobies adjust to being working girls, the pain pretty much goes away. Unless you’re not properly latching, like I was. But, after a meeting with dr google I promptly learned that preshus’ body is supposed to be tummy to tummy with me while nursing and let me tell you how it was like night and day. All the pain was gone. Mommy and baby = very happy. Now-a-days all I feel is the letdown response which isn’t so much painful as it is very tingly.
my preshus rockin his Slayer onsie
It’s 5am. Been awake for just over an hour. He’s fed and dry and sleeping. It’s pitch black in the room except for the glow of my blackberry screen. I’m bored. Have caught up on twitter. Decide to take random photos of my preshus. It takes 7 wild shots in the dark to get one good one. I’m surprised that the blinding flashes don’t wake him up. Good thing hubby is in the bathroom. Not sure how I would explain this crazy randomness to him.
The breastfeeding debate started when I was pregnant. Well, it wasn’t so much a debate as it was me telling everyone who asked that I would be breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months and not introducing bottles until at least 3 months, and anyone related to me on the Nigerian side looking at me like I was insane for not wanting to plug my baby into a formula bottle asap.
I don’t want to dwell on the negative, but I’ll just say briefly that my mother and others like her in my family who came from a generation of child rearing where you had to go back to work within 6 weeks and as a result had to wean off the breast and formula feed their children, they can’t understand why I wouldn’t want to do the same.
Let me first say that I don’t disagree with formula feeding. My personal choice is to breastfeed. Nuff said. They don’t like my decision, can’t understand it in fact. They poopoo me and shake their heads in disappointment and confusion and tell me that if I would just give my son formula then I’d be able to get more sleep at night. My response: Um…you want me to feed my son formula just so I can get more sleep at night? Yeah, that doesn’t sound selfish at all.
I breastfeed because I can. Because it’s good for him. And because isn’t that what these giant boobs are for? If not I would have had them reduced a decade ago.
If I couldn’t breastfeed for whatever reason then of course I would use formula. I’m totally down with that. The stockpile of free sample cans of formula in my closet (just in case) are proof of that.
But I can breastfeed.
And I do.
And his giant breastfed cheeks are totally worth it.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
I was going to write posts about heat rashes and breast feeding today but things have been a little crazy. I just can’t get over how fast time seems to fly by. I’ll try again tomorrow. Today, I’m tired. Going to bed early. Will probably be woken up within the next two hours by an angry hungry baby.
