Happy Thanksgiving!

She fell asleep like that. 

Shooters

I want this blog to be real. I want other new moms to read it and go 'oh good that's not just me.' Because there is so much you're not warned/told about. Like how the soundsleeper app is God for babies who like white noise. How your baby may start drooling like a St Bernard an indefinite amount of time before that first tooth (we've been drool-ridden for about 3 weeks now- no tooth) and how it's okay to be okay with the drooling and totally not be wishing for that first tooth. I'm okay with my baby/St Bernard. Not sure how I feel about teeth in the mouth that gets food from my boobs. 

On that note, I will say it: my boob sprayed my baby in the face the other day. The things no one tells you can/probably will happen while you're pregnant...

I had climbed into the back of the car to

do a feeding before we ran into Wal-Mart because she was a bit fussy and my boob was a bit full. These things together resulted in Saoirse having that area between your nose and lip covered in milk as she fussed, not quite latching on and triggered let down with her crying and slight sucking when she had latched on for .025 seconds. As a result a small geyser erupted onto her face. It was both funny and a little mortifying. I did my best to target it into her mouth, and she finally latched on and settled down. She ate, then I snuggled her up in the baby k'tan and we went shopping. She slept through the whole experience until the check out line. 

Welcome to motherhood. Where boobs spontaneously erupt. 

Her toes painted with piggy paint. They happen to match her diaper. 

I was not compensated to name drop SoundSleeper, Baby K'Tan, or Piggy Paint. 

Saoirse is 11 weeks, 6 days old. 

High Lipase

Completely irrelevant to the post baby-cuteness. 

Looks like I got another awesome part of breastfeeding (you know, after thrush): high lipase activity.

I've been pumping since my milk came in (because, ow, my boobs, and she totally wasn't taking that much in at that point). I pump once every few days when a boob is full and she is completely content having finished the other one or if I have a moment free, I'll pump a bit. So it's not a huge stash (20-30 oz over 2.5 months), but it's something. Well, I've been reading about high lipase and decided to try my frozen milk.

Holy yuck.

Tasted gross to me. I managed to get her to take an ounce from a dropper with some acidophilus and Vitamin D last week but she looked none too thrilled about it and never latched on and sucked it down like she does with Gripe Water (which is mana from heaven, btw). I tried again today with a different bit of frozen milk. The faces she made were ones of disgust and roughly akin to that one makes when they get a mouth full of rank milk or durian (well, for most people). There was no enthusiam and the only reason any of it was going down was because I was lightly squeezing the dropper and all of it wouldn't roll out of her mouth. The milk I pumped yesterday that was still in the fridge tasted pretty gross too. I'm not throwing the milk I have out, I'm going to keep it for now for "emergencies", seeing as we can manage to get it down her throat, so if worse came to worst...

But for the newer milk, I'm going to need to start scalding. Given the small amounts of milk I tend to pump out (2 oz, roughly), scalding in a pot...well, I don't have a pot that tiny. Microwaving is not an option because it does even more damage to the milk than scalding alone. I'm going with the bottle warmer method. Which means I need to buy a bottle warmer. So I'm going to get one without an automatic shut off (so it can get to the requisite almost 180*) and invest in a stainless steel baby bottle at some point. The stainless steel bottle will allow me to heat the milk and quickly cool it in ice water without having to switch bottles. Until I get one of those, there may be some switching around, as I don't really want to heat plastic like that and glass going from 180* to ice water tends to not work out so well. Or it works out really well if you're going for wedding centerpiece decorations (like we did for my wedding- shattering off the bottoms of wine bottles to use for centerpieces, but that's a diy for another time). But I would like the glass to stay intact given the liquid gold it's holding.

But yeah, the milk was gross. And I have tickets to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert in Tulsa December 21, so Saoirse will be staying with Papa and Cheerio while her Daddy and I go to that, so I need to have a small valid stash for her to eat while we're gone for that. The pump will be accompanying me to the concert and hopefully my milk will stay valid from pumping until I get home and can scald it.



Saoirse is 11 weeks and 2 days old.

Sleepy Baby

Saoirse sometimes decides that, despite being very sleepy, sleep is the last thing she wants to do. Yes, at 2 months old, this is already happening. But anyway. She will periodically burst out into tears from her sleepiness and nothing but sleep will make such outbursts cease. Breast feeding, no. She pops off of the boob before it can work its magic, at least unless I go and lie down in bed with her. 

Here's where the fact that I have decided everyone should own a baby carrier plays in. One thing I have found that is guaranteed to knock her out is putting her in the baby k'tan and plodding my way around the block a few times. She's usually unconscious before we've gone 1/3 of the way around the approximately half a mile that our block is in length. She just nearly can't stay awake in the baby k'tan if I can keep moving for a while. Once she's good and asleep I can remain in one location for small periods of time. But too long being still and she wakes right back up. However, this makes shopping way easier than it would be otherwise. I put her in and start walking around Target and she's gone. And my trips are virtually never cut short by an upset baby. 

I value this while it lasts, as some day that most likely won't be the case.

It frees my hands as well, to do things like post to this blog while getting a work out of walking 1+ miles (sometimes we do more, but always at least 2 laps) with a sleeping, roughly 12 lb baby strapped to my front.

We've had a cold snap lately (it was 70 degrees Monday, there's a high of 52 today), so I'm having to think of more brilliant ways to keep her warm during these walks. Socks are a must. Not uncommonly fleece sleep n plays are brought into use, which removes the need for socks. I bought her a Carter's outfit yesterday largely for the hooded jacket both to keep her warm and to not force the use of short sleeves out of her wardrobe if we left the house. I'm thinking of going back to the kangaroo set up on the k'tan, as it keeps her feet and legs inside the fabric, as opposed to the hug where her legs hang out. She's getting to be big enough to push out, but she generally falls asleep and that totally wouldn't be an issue. Otherwise, she may shortly be piled into a too-big (6-9 mos, she still wears 0-3/3 mos) fluffy penguin footed warm suit thing. I'm pondering a poncho type thing for myself, largely to provide an extra layer between her and the elements as I have jackets and coats. But I have yet to find one that I would wear. I just want something else to hold the heat close to us, as we do these walks 2-4 times a week, depending on when sleepy time hits, whether or not she falls asleep on me and I can get her into the swing and whether or not we're getting into the car, as that will generally put her to sleep as well if she's tired. 

But hey, it makes me get out and walk at least a little. 

Thrush Part 2

A week ago, Saoirse and I visited a lactation consultant. I was tired of gritting my teeth through feedings, and I wanted someone to tell me it wasn't my latch. 

Well, it wasn't. Latch is fine. But the LC did confirm thrush. She gave me the name of a stronger "azole" drug, ketaconazole, to ask my OB for. Which I did as soon as I left the building. She also said Saoirse appeared to have a small amount of thrush build up on her tongue. She told me what I already knew from the World Wide Web- that Saoirse needed to be treated as well or we'd most likely keep passing this back as forth. 

Yay. Not. Nursing a baby shark is totally an experience I want to keep replicating. At least that's what it felt like I was doing. Or cutting my nipple off with a razor blade or a hot laser. But I digress. 

Called her pediatrician per the LC's suggestion. I am once again told that they won't give her nystatin unless she's showing symptoms. Well, she is. Well, apparently thrush on the tongue only doesn't count as symptoms and the risks of tummy troubles outweighs any benefit. 

Obviously, this nurse has never had thrush. 

I was told to call back if she developed white spots on her gums or cheeks. Another sign she had thrush would be refusing to nurse as her mouth would "hurt like the dickens". Okay, so you want to wait until my baby is miserable to treat her? Love you too. 

It's a good thing I like her pediatrician, even if I'm not digging their stance on nystatin. 

Fortunately, Saoirse has yet to show any symptoms aside possibly from her incredible gassiness. Lots of burps and terribly uncomfortable farts. She'll cry hard for a moment, fart, then settle back down. I feel bad for her during those episodes. 

I, for one, am grateful the ketaconazole seems to be doing what the miconazole wasn't. Getting rid of this. Nursing on my right side is now only mildly uncomfortable some of the time. So we're heading in the right direction. Thank god. 

I leave you with photographic evidence of my baby. 

This is her "determined" face. This was taken about 1 minute before she got pissed at her inability to crawl at 10 weeks old. 

Happy Halloween!

Almost a week late, here are our pictures from Halloween. I was a black cat and Saoirse was my pink kitten. My sister, Reese, was an angry bird. 

By this point in the night, she was not digging the hood. 

So we took the hood off. 

And here's Reese dressed as an angry bird (she's adopted from China- you can read all about that here: http://kaijinsbigsis.blogspot.com/ )

Saoirse had her 2 month old appointment on Halloween as well. She's now 22 inches long (20 in at birth), 11 lbs 6 oz (8 lbs 1 oz), and has a head circumference of 16 inches (13 inches). We've also decided to do a delayed shot series, largely following Dr Sears' schedule. She got the DTaP and rotavirus vaccines. At the beginning of December, we'll go back and get the Pc and HiB vaccines. This was a decision we didn't take lightly, and we did research on it. Ultimately she will be fully vaccinated. She's just not getting them all in one visit. We did decline the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, as no one in our family has the disease, so her risk of catching it is so ridiculously small. We will get her that series at some point later.