5 posts tagged “breastfeeding”

February 8 and 9 Sean and I went skiing. I didn't offer the boob when I got back, and Dora didn't ask, so there you go. Of course, she's been sick since then. I think we're pretty lucky that she wasn't on any antibiotics until she was 14 months old, but unfortunately she inherited the gene from the women in my family whose bodies decide that if anything funny is going on, like say antibiotics, or snot, or OH look that cloud is shaped funny, then it's time to be constipated. Poor girl. I have to say that I have never been so glad of seeing the last medicine in a bottle gone. It was WAY worse than the double ear infection.

Speaking of skiing (weren't we?), I am an old, old, decrepit woman. And out of shape. That is all.

In the realm of tmi, I offer the following: I had a period on January 21st (very heavy) and another on February 22 (very light). For those of you playing along at home, that is exactly one normal cycle. Or, well, you know, normal-ish. Odd. Very odd. So I guess we are entering into the realm of BabyWatch 2.0 (henceforth known as BW2.0). You'd probably be well-advised to tune out now. Things could get stupid.

The Dora update is that besides being sick and constipated for most of February, she is delightful. Picking up new words and new games at a rate faster than I can count. She pretended she was nursing this morning. She pretends to 'drink' out of toys that kinda resemble cups. She tries to fool us into believing she has 'kat-sis' (glasses). Also? The cuteness is kryptonite. Resistance is futile. Maybe I will get off my ass and post a picture to prove it, but don't hold your breath.

When you think the most stressful part of your day is going to be Christmas shopping, and you end up being wrong, you know you have had a no good very bad day. December 21, 2007, was Dora's 1 year checkup. Even knowing she was going to have to get 5 shots and a finger stick, I still thought finishing up the Christmas shopping was going to be the worst part of the day. I was wrong. The pediatrician heard a heart murmur. She didn't want me to worry, because everything seemed to be fine, but she wanted me to go RIGHT NOW to the hospital to get 2 chest x-rays and an EKG. Follow-up appointment with the heart specialist February 14th. The week following that checkup, we attended six Christmas's including the one at my house, and hosted a dinner party for thirteen. I think I can officially say I'm tired of 2007. Bring on 2008, and a cheery message at the heart doc's. (I really, truly don't think anything is wrong, but trying to convince my internal worrier to stop is pretty well futile.)

In all, I have to say 2007 has been one of the best years of my life. I've watched Dora grow from a lump on the couch to a walking talking little girl. People are right, you just can never understand what it's like to have a kid until you have one. Wearing your heart outside your body, indeed.

We've been slowly working towards weaning, with nursing only happening first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The nighttime feeding is mostly for her comfort, so it will probably be the next to go. She has even skipped it a time or two. The morning nursing, however, allows me to doze sometimes as much as 2 hours after Dora wakes up because I bring her to bed with us, so that's going to be a tough one to cut. Getting up at 5:30 continues to hold no appeal to me. Yea olde left boob never gets engorged anymore, even if it's more than 24 hours since she's used it, so I think it's probably not producing much milk at all. She never was the work horse of the deal anyway. Rather unmotivated I'd say, but still hanging in there for thirteen months, so we can't give her too much flak.

My cycle still hasn't returned, despite a rather abrupt dropping of all daytime nursing. I did feel rather PMS'y for several weeks earlier this month, so it's only a matter of time I think. I suppose then we'll have to start worrying about the next pregnancy, but all in all, it's been a fine twenty-two (22!) months of not bleeding (except for the post-partum business). Hopefully I can get back on my infertilty story soon and get it all caught up before we start Infertilty Version 2.0.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and are planning a fine new year.

Seems like I only check in on Vox when I'm doing my monthly Dora updates. Bad blogger. In the meantime, I missed a very important announcement over at still's place. (They're expecting a baby!)

This has been a big month for little Dora. She's sitting by herself, and she cut her two top teeth. She got her bottom two when she was only three and a half months old, so now she has four! She's doing this horrible grinding thing now that she has teeth that match up, and I'm really hoping she gets over that soon. It makes a sound akin to fingernails on a chalkboard, which makes my spine tingle. The good news is that we're giving her some table food, and she is LOVING it.

We had Dora Christened last Sunday, and all the family was in. I think 24 people ate lunch at the house that day! And my baby was beautiful in her gown, not to mention pretty good in church. That's the first time she's made it all the way through the sermon without going to the nursery

Flower

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Tonight my younger brother-in-law's band (Pants Mandolin) is playing in Amarillo at the Golden Light. I'm really excited about going. I haven't been out in months. The momentous event that will accompany this is Dora's first night at Grandma and Coco's house. I know she will be fine, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be zooming down there as soon as I wake up in the morning. Also, if you hear of someone getting arrested for pumping breastmilk in a bar parking lot in Amarillo tonight, don't worry, I'll find a good lawyer.

My four day a week schedule is AWESOME. The days are long, but I really love having the three day weekend. My stress level has come down considerably since starting this schedule. Now I have a day to run errands, a day to clean, and a day to actually take a freaking break and enjoy my daughter!

Both of my brother-in-laws have been at my house this week, and it's really been nice. The older BIL is helping Sean cut wheat, and the younger one has been keeping Dora during the day except when they need an extra hand in the field. He is SO GOOD with her, and she just loves him.  Whoever ends up parenting with him can thank me for the training! HA! The sad part about all this is that Sean has just had no time at all with Dora lately. When I left this morning the two of them were snuggled up together, though, so maybe he got some time with her this morrning. Such is the life of a farmer.

In other breaking news, I quit taking my pills the day Dora hit 6 months old, June 11. That's the earliest my doctor said it would be ok for my body to get pregnant again. Of course, with all the breastfeeding, I'm not even cycling yet. That's good, because I'm really not ready to dive back into this whole thing again. For a normal person, this would mean that I'm not ready to be pregnant and have another kid, which is pretty well true, however, the thing I'm really not ready to deal with again is infertility. Which is another post altogether.

The tiny baby, she isn't so tiny anymore. Today Dora is 5 months old. 5 months! Holy crapoly batman! This weekend I will be buying her some size 3 diapers. If you'd told me when I brought this tiny munchkin home that she'd be in those HUGE diapers in a mere 5 months I would have laughed. Disbelievingly. In your face. And then some more in my heart, for good measure. She is working VERY hard on sitting up and crawling, but has mastered neither. She is a champion roller-over-er, and she is very good with her hands. She can grab a hold of your neck and remove your trachea, especially when she's hungry. Does anybody remember that Mortal Kombat game that was all the rage when I was in high school, and there was the trick move where you could rip somebody's head off, and their spinal column dangled from it? Yeah, she's working on that, and I think if she held the A button down, she'd have it. Seriously, though, she can reach out and grab something these days without the faltering around that has presiously been accompanying that task. I can see her eyes light up when she figures out some cause and effect thing. She figured out something I didn't even know the other day, about pulling on a toy and it playing a song (Why does EVERY child's toy play the Twinkle, Twinkle/ABC tune?) and now when I lay her under that toy arch, she remembers and pulls on that toy to play the song. It's really amazing to see all of the things she's learning. It seems like her long term memory is starting to enter the game, too. For a while she was having to re-learn something everytime she encountered it, but these days it only takes a few (or in the case of the toy, one) times for her to remember something permanently.

Enough gushing about the baby, let's talk about me. I'm back into my skinny jeans. YAY! However, I fit into very few of my shirts. The upside of that is breastfeeding and pumping are still going very well. Dora hasn't had any formula so far, and it would be nice to avoid that very costly aisle in Wal-Mart, thankyouverymuch. She has started on some rice cereal, and she really likes it (see picture), but she doesn't seem to care whether she has it or not. It doesn't affect her sleeping or how often she eats. Is that weird? Oh wait! Back to me! I also talked to my boss and am going to start trying to work four 10's rather than five 8's at work, so I have Friday's off. I'm looking forward to that Friday off thing, and I'm hoping it sustains me through those rather grueling 10 hour days. Anybody have any tips on that?

And also? My baby gives kisses. Granted, it's while she has both of my cheeks in a death grip that reminds me of nothing so much as the fact that it's been exactly 11 days since I cut her fingernails, but still. Kisses. From my baby. I never knew baby drool could taste so sweet.

I was driving home from my mom's house a few weeks ago. It's about an hour drive and halfway through it Dora started fussing. As any mom can tell you, 30 minutes in a car with a fussing baby gets pretty old, but it's close enough to home that you hate to stop. So I did what I could, which happened to be stick the end of my right pinky finger in her mouth (I've since put a pacifier in my ashtray). She sucked on it and was happy. I, however, was getting a dead right arm trying to reach around the infant carseat to get to her face. No biggie, at least she's not fussing. Then my husband calls. I manage to get to my cell phone without any crying or wrecking. So now, I'm using my right hand to take care of my baby, my left hand to take care of my hubby, my right foot on the accelerator to keep me moving forward, and my left leg to steer.

Taken metaphorically, there's not much of anything left to do my job with. I've been at work full time for 2 weeks now, and I'm finally beginning to feel like things might be ok. Of course, I have the hard core mommie guilt over not being the perfect mom, wife, housekeeper, and employee right now. And I still want to cry everytime I leave Dora at the babysitter, but I have hope that I can handle all of this. I guess when you get right down to it, hope is all I've had for quite a while about anything baby-related, so I should feel like an old pro. I don't.

The good news is at her 2 month check-up she was perfectly healthy, and growing fast, so at least I know the boobies are working!