Hmmm, first bottle attempt not successful, but not a total failure either. The teat seems to be too big for her and the flow too fast, so she gags on it. She wouldn't really latch on but she seemed somewhat interested in mouthing it a bit. I guess I'll try again tomorrow.
picked a day to go back to work. mom agreed to watch babe if hubs & i can't get alternating schedule we want. hyperventilating.... not ready to rejoin the outside world yet!
holding wiggly baby w/ one arm.
snowflake, any luck w/ botttle yet?
picked a day to go back to work. mom agreed to watch babe if hubs & i can't get alternating schedule we want. hyperventilating.... not ready to rejoin the outside world yet!
holding wiggly baby w/ one arm.
snowflake, any luck w/ botttle yet?
When are you going back?
I haven't been able to try again with the bottle yet. I went to three different stores trying to find a slow-flow nipple and couldn't get any. I have one more store to check out today, so fingers crossed they'll have some.
I'm ridiculously tired today. I can barely think straight.
This forum has gotten so slow, and Jenny hasn't been online in a month to let me get into the Facebook group. Oh well.
Erigeron, I hear you! I was right with you with DD1. Lydia is forcing me to move at a slightly quicker pace, but I wouldn't be ready to hand her over to someone else! I hope your transition is a smooth one!
Snowflake, is your babe letting you sleep at night? Both my bunchkins seem to want to get up at 7, but they are doing pretty well at night. Lydia sleeps beside me and nurses once or twice, but I barely stir to give her my breast and we both fall back to sleep. So peaceful.
I finally started the GAPS diet on Monday. I have been meaning to do it for a year now. I wish I had started it earlier, as Lydia might not have the issues she does. But my hope and prayer is that by doing this diet, we can heal enough that she can have a fairly normal life. Already, her diapers are normalizing (she has had slimy diapers rather than the white curds for over a month now) and I will have to lower my thyroid meds! It is a lot more work in the kitchen making grain, starch, and sugar free items to eat all day, but we're doing well. I am loosing weight (I can stand to loose a bunch), but I am working hard to get lots of good fats into DD1 and make sure my milk supply stays up. I am trying to tell myself "this is the beginning of the rest of my life" so I can get into the mindset of a lifestyle change rather than a temporary diet, but it is a bit overwhelming to think of being on this diet for years.
I just sent Jenni a FB message. She's on there a lot so hopefully she will get you added to the group soon.
I'm going back to work September 19. The same week as my husband, blech, but I didn't want to go back sooner or later. Upon reflection I realized that will be four years to the day since I started pharmacy school, so I guess it's a good day to start my new life as a pharmacist (assuming, of course, that I pass the board exams, but I don't really see why I wouldn't).
Law exam is tomorrow. Ugh. I've been studying all these stupid minutiae for weeks and will be glad to have it over with.
I'm going to try to start charting again. I don't really trust lactational amenorrhea, especially since I don't totally follow all the rules (we use pacifiers, occasional bottles, and will be more when I go back to work).
I don't really trust LAM OR charting until I get my first PP period back. I didn't regain my fertility until 16 months PP with DD, which at the time I thought was awesome, but this time I'm half-hoping to get it back much sooner so I can start reliably charting again. (Only half-hoping, though...) Miles does sleep for way longer stretches than DD ever did, so he's probably not feeding every four hours; I'll be curious to see how that impacts things.
My life at the moment is consumed by MONEY, or the lack of it. I'm frantically scrabbling round trying to find a job - never thought I'd be doing that with a 10-week-old baby. :( I'm looking either for a part-time night-shift job (10-2 or 4-9ish), or - vastly preferably - a daytime job in little chunks, so I can leave the kids with DH for an hour or two. I have a few options I'm pursuing: two mystery shopping gigs (pittance I know, but I could use the odd free treat!), a survey company (they don't mind me bringing along Miles in the mei tai - woot! - but I still need to apply with a CV and cover letter), invigilating at end-of-year school exams, tutoring Uni students, and tutoring younger kids (probably 3-7). Also being an overnight babysitter for night-shift workers (I'm advertising at the hospital), and trying to convince one of my editors to let me write a humour column in her magazine as well as informational articles.
Hopefully at least two of those things will pan out. DH's business MAY pick up any time soon - in fact, he got another contract today, which is fantastic - but it also may not, and I don't want to get as close to the bone again as we did this week. Plus, as long as I can make it work with the kidlets, I think it might actually improve my mental health a bit. Well, not night shift work... but tutoring might. I'd like to feel useful.
In the mean time, we're being super frugal with meals. I found all sorts of stuff in our freezer - sadly, some of it had expired, which makes me furious with myself. I need to keep some kind of list on the freezer detailing when stuff goes in and when it will expire. I keep finding half-loaves of homemade bread I froze ages ago, all freezer-burnt and nasty. And there's some gurnard in there which went off last year.
The good news is, DH is somewhat reconciled to the frugality - especially after he did his taxes today and realised he actually DID make a lot of money last year, but it all disappeared. He still basically refuses to eat legumes, but we made a meal plan last night and he okayed cauliflower cheese... so that's something. In return, I found some steak on special.
Good luck on your law exam, erigeron!
My "wee" baby has grown!! He is 2 months old today and over 15 lbs. He went to bed in a 6 mos sized sleeper that fit him perfectly.
Smokering, wtg on getting hubby to at least start seeing the light on budget stuff :)
I trust LAM but after a few a months I'm always wondering if this is the month LAM stops working. I went 15 and then 20ish months so I should be okay for a while but it's always in the back of my mind.
Glad dh is getting more on board with budgeting! I hope you can find something suitable for work. I was planning to do before and after school care, but now I think I might waitress 2 shifts a week. Not excited about either option.
Thanks, Erigeron. I hope to be in the FB group soon! BTW, how did your exam go?
Smokering, I hope something works out for you! I have to say, I admire your resourcefulness and creative thinking in job seeking. It bothers me sometimes that even though I have a four year college degree, I don't know what I could do to realistically support our family if I needed to. I was reading about being a medical transcriptionist, though. Maybe if worst came to worst I could try that.
Holly, that's amazing growth! He's so chubby and adorable! I love it!
I don't get the results of the exam for about another week. I felt pretty unprepared despite having prepared a lot, but there is really just no way to know at this point.
I wouldn't trust LAM just because I would ALWAYS be wondering if this was when it would quit working! I want another kid, but not just yet.
I'm starting to think that having my parents watch Amelia once a week or once every two weeks might be a good. My mom will watch her if needed once we go back to work, but right now they want to see us at least every week so they can see her, which I'm just meh about and my husband is starting to get kind of fed up.
I looked into medical transcription, but they tend to use "proper" staff for it here, not SAHMs. A pity, because I think I'd quite enjoy it. DH just got another contract, plus he figured out his taxes and we have a few thousand in that account (he set aside more than he had to - so he's not totally clueless!); so that buys us a bit of time. So I'll work on my "funner" job ideas before I fill in the overnight supermarket shelf-stocking application. :p I've talked to a few people about tutoring, and gotten some good ideas about where to advertise and stuff. I think I'd be happy doing that, and not getting up at 4 in the morning would be a definite plus...
Poor wee Miles is sick - phlegmy, coughing until he projectile-vomits, and a runny nose. He's still pretty cheerful, though! He's taken to pooping all up his back. Great fun. He's rolled over twice, but he was on a slight incline both times so I don't think it counts!
DD is currently driving me nuts with her eating habits. She eats SO. SLOWLY. If we're watching something while we eat (we have a projector and often watch Star Trek during dinner - classy, I know) she'll get distracted and just stare at the screen with a mouthful of half-chewed food (which is, incidentally, gross). She also takes tiny, tiny bites. We've tried feeding her without anything to watch, but apparently she can get just as distracted by the ceiling. We have to prod her to finish every bite. Then she eats a miniscule amount and claims her "tummy hurts" (which can't be true, because she's running around happily and asking for treats five minutes later), or that she "doesn't know how" to eat and we have to feed her (which our flatmate was doing until I made him stop - she's perfectly capable of feeding herself).
It's driving DH, in particular, mad. Two nights ago she took an hour to eat about a quarter of a tiny ramekin of cauliflower cheese (which she likes), with nagging the whole time; so he decided she couldn't have anything else to eat until she'd finished that. It took her nearly twenty-four hours to finish it, and it wasn't a big portion at all. She had a few more bites at breakfast, a few more at lunch, all under duress... finally said she was hungry at 5, then whined about having to eat it, and only finished up because we were having guests for dinner and she knew there'd be chippies. She ate a fairly good dinner after that (homemade hamburgers)... I'll be interested to see how she goes today.
Any ideas? I know I should just mentally dissociate and keep giving her the same food until she eats it, instead of snacks between meals. But I'm having a hard time letting go of the searing rage when she just sits there picking and whining "I'm EATING!" whenever we prod her. The only thing she voluntarily eats in quantity is carbs - if we have soup or bread we have to ration the bread and make her eat X spoonfuls of soup between, or she'll just devour the bread and leave the soup. Even foods she really likes, like fried eggs... if it's eggs on toast, she'll fill up on toast and then say she's too full for the egg. I do make moderately nutritious bread, but I don't want her getting most of her calories from carbs.
Arrrgh. There are times I feel really guilty because, in their current developmental states, I like Miles a lot better. :(
I think I already commented on FB, but he's so cute, Holly! I have some progress pics too, with DD next to a doll. In the first they're nearly the same size, and it the second she's about 50% bigger. It's amazing how rapidly they grow at this age. They're little weight-gaining machines.
Good luck with your results erigeron!
Smokering - sorry to hear Miles is sick. :( DD2's been sick too. It's funny, it took DD1 a full two years to get her first cold, and DD2 only 2 months. Oh the joys of having a grubby-fingered older sibling touching the baby all the time!
Regarding the eating, all I can suggest is to take a deep breath and give yourselves permission to just let it go. It's not worth your sanity. It's your responsibility to offer her food, not to make her eat it. Ellyn Satter has some pretty sane advice: http://www.ellynsatter.com/how-to-feed-i-24.html
Poor DD1 has really been missing my mother since she went home. She keeps coming up with various schemes for getting money so we can afford to fly to Australia (her best idea: "Let's BUY more money!"). It makes me really sad too. It's been more than 6 freakin' years since my last visit, and that visit was only 10 days for my father's funeral. I have various older relatives pushing 90 and I know they won't be around for much longer. My BFF is getting married in October and I'll miss that too. :( I hate being so broke. We need to win the lottery.
Snowflake, I love that link! It is giving me really great support for helping DD1 eat without making "rules" about it. Food is still a tricky road. My brother is so picky about food, it MIGHT be classified as a mental illness. I, on the other hand, have really no strong aversions and will eat just about anything without qualm. So who knows.
This place is pretty quiet over here. I am really enjoying the new FB group, but I am sad for those who haven't moved over. :( PLEASE come, Smokering. Just make a false FB identity. No one else need know you're on there! MaryElizabeth-- you too! We miss you!
helllllloooooooooooo
is anyone still around?
We're all on Facebook! ;)
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