June 04 Mammas!

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june mama here too.
no pacifiers or bottles over here- i'm too paranoid that the artificial nipples will cause problems.
i pumped once and she drank from a cup just fine.
i don't shower unless dh is home- you are lucky
been tempted to buy a swing to keep her calm during our dinner- could probably use that during shower time. i hope.
speaking of showering...
see you later

I had to pump from the beginning as K was in the NICU, so he's had a few bottles, though I had them use a feeding tube for the first week or so until I was confident in his latch. I've got several bottles in the freezer that were left over, so we can use them if we ever need it. He does nap in 2 - 3 hour stretches so I'll probably just nurse him to sleep just before I leave if we have to leave him at my mom's at any time. He also had a paci in the NICU, since I couldn't be there all the time. We haven't used it but for a few minutes in the car since we got home on Monday; he's getting better at finding his thumbs and we let him suck our fingers when he can't keep control over his hands.

K also smiles in his sleep, he's been doing it almost from birth. It's too cute, he gets a big ole' dimple.

DS1 has been super sweet with the baby, but he's very sensitive to noise and the crying hurts his ears. I think that might be a good thing in the long run because all we have to do is remind him that if he wakes up the baby there will be screaming and he gets really calm and quiet, lol! He hasn't actually been behaving any worse htan he has for the past 6 months or so (3.5 was very rough and he hasn't quite gotten out of that phase), so we figure he must be adjusting pretty well.

Hi! My DS can't stand the baby's crying either. Luckily she doesn't cry much, mainly when she's getting a diaper change. Unfortunately we've had to drive home about 15 minutes with screaming a couple times, I just couldn't get her to calm down.

She's been nursing pretty much constantly for the last few days and I had forgotten what a challenge that can be. I spent the last 3 years advising new moms that even though it seems hard that it's such a short time and you should enjoy it but am finding it difficult to take that advice. I'm having trouble too because not only is the baby hanging off of me 24/7 but DH and DS are around me 24/7 too! I was thinking about trying to take DD on an excursion all alone today.

I'm so excited that we seem to be figuring out the sling! I wore her in it this morning and actually got to fix and enjoy my breakfast. I mananged to nurse her in it just now, yay! I'm still having a lot of trouble nursing in public, just can't get her latched on discreetly but I know we'll learn soon enough.

Yesterday I found myself fantasizing about a pacifier. I really don't like them and thankfully, don't know where one is in the house right now but there are times when I think it would help me feel less crazy.

I sure do miss reading and posting more often, ((hugs)) to everyone!!

hah, even if you could find the pacifier, no guarantee it would help in the least. my boy rowan is outraged at the very idea. i try to wear him in the sling since i can't put him down for long but he only wants to nurse if he is in the sling. he wants to nurse so often and doesn't want to lie down at all, i have been wondering if he has reflux! but probably he is just a high-need baby and after a mellow baby, and a mellow baby ten years ago, this is still kind of surprising me.
and i, too, have been telling women confidently and kindly for years in a professional capacity to keep nursing no matter how often, and pontificating on the needs of high-need babies, and here i am! though actually i am kind of glad in a way to have a higher-need baby (at least this is how he is looking at almost three weeks) because everyone said i could only AP my daughter because she was so "easy." like any baby is "easy." i had my evenings of despair with her, too.
i have gotten over my superstitious fear about naming the baby after our stillborn baby a few years ago. he wasn't named "after" that baby but that was the name i had picked out and really it was still there in our minds for this one. it was taking us forever to name this baby. my husband didn't want to bring it up but when i did said he had been thinking of it too. at first i was afraid it would be unlucky but decided that rowan is simply the name our next child was meant to have, boy or girl (as i had decided two years ago). we only named that baby because it was 23 weeks and we needed a death certificate. a friend remembered (most people including our family don't remember) and said it was nice for them to share that name. another friend who travels in asia a lot said it is quite common to do so, so i no longer feel worried about it. i'll have to watch "the wicker man" again now, though. has anyone else seen it? it's wonderful. i first saw it ten years ago and if my daughter hadn't already been born she might have been the one called rowan.
he is fattening up already! already that precious newborn face is moving into baby. he looks like pictures of my daughter except when she was a little older, as he was two pounds heavier at birth! he also started to roll over today, which simply can't be. but he got from his back to his side by kicking his leg on the ground beneath him. weird. he has also started migrating around the bed! on his back, of course, but as he perks up in alertness he is also getting more active. my husband picked him up when he came home last night and got in his face and said, hello. and the baby looked at him and gave a laugh and smiled. my dh doesn't much care for babies, though of course he loves his own, so this was a very good thing. newborns can be so inactive from a father's perspective these things help that bonding process.

i am thinking of tying off this bit of cord at the base to help it leave. it is a smoothly rounded protrusion, though, not part of the cut end- that came off two weeks ago. so i am reluctant, like what if it's meant to stay there, or something else altogether? mothers can get irrational about spots and weird things on their babies.
is it true one has to be careful about people at the doctor's office retracting a foreskin prematurely?

I made a birth announcement myself in photoshop. I can't believe it's taken me 3 weeks to get it done but I'd love for you to check it out!
http://img7.photobucket.com/albums/v...ncementweb.jpg
Now I can't find the addresses of the people I want to send them to, urgh!

Vivian's napping in the sling right now We took her to the park and the mall today and finally she put her foot down, flipped out and wouldn't nurse. Then later this evening I got her to nurse in the sling and DH couldn't even tell what I was doing!

that's really cool tamara! i addressed envelopes last month- but my baby didn't get named (rowan) until he was ten days old and *then* we discovered the design i drew on our announcement (a rowan tree and all our info in purple and green, our favorite colors) got chopped off by the printer's arrangement as well as had a border added. went to office depot to see if they could print it without these failings and no go. so i have to draw my tree differently so the border won't look funny. -sigh- there are people i am too tired and crazy to call, who don't know we have a baby yet! so you are not the only one! i was about to give in and do one with photoworks but really like my tree and the hand-lettered look, so i am going to plod through. when i finish living out this birth announcement saga i will post ours here. some people we know (mostly friends of m-i-l) didn't give us their presents until we gave the baby a name! i designed coordinating thank-yous, too, with the tree and faux-illuminated lettering that i used to do all the time. must print these too.

i remember when my daughter was born i thought i'd get right into the swing of things and while i did, to a large degree, i remember looking at my desk when she was three weeks old and realizing those three weeks had gone by without me once thinking about the work still sitting on the desk since i went into labor..! and though i have been up and around and out doing errands and cooking and cleaning and homeschooling as much as i can, i am still amazed three weeks have flown by and "nothing" has been done.

the other day i said i hadn't gotten much done and my husband said, you're nursing a ten pound baby around the clock. i said, yes, that is something i have done- he said, it's more than i could do! sweet.

your announcements, again, are really cool!

Hey Girls! I keep forgetting to check out the Life w/ babe section. Things are going well here! Dh went back to work full time this week and so far so good! I haven't had to cook dinner yet so we'll see how it goes once I have to feed my family too!! I have great friends that have fed us for hte past two weeks it's been so NICE! The food has been really good too!!! I feel blessed!

rubelin- I thought of you the other day when I got my copy of Mothering. THeres a whole section on birthing breech babies.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Hey! Don't know how I missed this thread...glad I found you all!

DD is velcro baby today. She will NOT let me put her down at all. I snuggling her but man...today has been exhausting. She's snoozing in the baby bjorn on my chest right now.

My DH is working insane hours....12+ hour days all week. The poor guy is barely standing by the end of the day. It's been hard on both of us. But luckily my mom is 20 min. away and has come to my rescue several times when I just can't do it for another minute and it's still another 3 hours before DH will be home.

I'm totally eating my words about not using a swing or bouncy chair. They have been lifesavers. Yesterday I took my first shower by myself (I mean when I'm the only one home) and put DD in the swing next to the shower. I must have peeked out at her 100 times in 5 minutes and each time I kept feeling like...wow...she's happy...I'm happy! This is great.

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Me too!

No pumping or bottles here. I'm using a nipple shield on one side (inverted nipple) so I don't want to introduce anything extra. So far she's had NO problems switching back and forth between the shield and my nipple. Yesterday she latched for the first time on my inverted nipple without the shield! I've been trying a few minutes each nursing session and do it until she gets frustrated then I put the shield on. Hopefully in a few weeks she'll pull the nipple out enough that I can toss the shield!

Anyone doing anything for the 4th? I think we are going to be hermits. We need some family regrouping time after this week.

~Erin

i am shopping for a baby bjorn right now! the newer kind - and most$$$ of course - you can breastfeed with. i don't mind velcrobabe but my back hurts and i am getting nothing at all done. i have realistically low expectations as a pp mom but, really! i need to be able to move about, too, and the plants are dying.

Hello! I'm excited to be back in this forum! :LOL Is that strange or what?!

Anyway, I'm just jumping on to this thread. I've got to get going now, Rivkah's in a funny position on my arm and my hand is starting to fall asleep. :LOL

Hey mamas! How's it going?

We've had a rough couple of days sleep-wise. Lily sleeps and nurses really well during the day but at night she's been fussy...popping on and off and wanting to eat every hour. Oh my goodness...mommy is tired.

Friday night I moved her cradle into our room. She has been sleeping on my chest or in the crook of my arm since she was born but I've been getting a little nervous because I am just SO tired. A couple of times I've woken up and she is latched on and I have no idea how she got there or how long she's been there. (I realize that a lot of people co-sleep for just this reason but I don't feel comfortable sleepwalking through the night with a newborn.) Anyway...we tried the cradle but she SCREAMED so we snuggled in bed and several times I got up and rocked her or walked her around the house.

Saturday morning I woke up (well...I guess I didn't actually wake up...I just WAS up) and my whole body hurt right down to my bones. I told DH that there was no way I could get out of bed so he brought me breakfast and then Lily and I slept until almost noon.

Saturday night was another rough one....our cumulative sleep debt really starting to catch up with us.

But last night.....AHHHHHHHH....last night....

She nursed really well around 9:30. Then again at 11. At 11:30 my head was bobbing so daddy changed her diaper, swaddled her and put her in the cradle next to our bed. For a few minutes I just lay there watching her. It felt SOOOO weird not to be wearing her or snuggling her but I really felt in my heart that the best thing I could do for my baby was to get some much-needed sleep.

At 2 o'clock I heard her starting to squeak. That was 2 1/2 hours of SLEEP (in any position I wanted)!! It was awesome.

I brought her into bed and nursed her then went and changed her diaper. When we got back to bed she was still acting hungry so I laid down and latched her on side-lying. I fell asleep and when I woke up at 5 o'clock she was still latched on but sound asleep! Yay!

OMG - I feel SO much better just from having one night of decent sleep.

How are nights going in your house?

~Erin

UGH! I've been fighting mastitis for the past few days. It's my own fault because I was being lazy and just pulling my bra over instead of unsnapping it. Anyway I've been sleeping and nursing as much as possible. LAst night and this morning were the worst. My WHOLE body ached and I had a low grade fever. I feel a little better now just wiped out. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be much better!

Hope all the new babies and mommies are doing well.

For the most part, sleep goes well. I seem to have strained my incision, probably when I started moving furniture last week, and it's a little bit red and inflamed now in the middle. I'm also really irritated by my clothing, and wish to offer advice to anyone having a baby: make sure you have at least one pair of pants/shorts that come up over your belly! If you do end up with a c-section for some reason, the under-belly styles will be very uncomfortable until it's fully healed. This is something that never occured to me at all, not only because I didn't think I'd be having a c-section, but because I never really thought about the ramifications of said surgery.

At any rate, Rivkah seems to sleep all the time, for as long as 5 hours a night. I wake her up enough to latch on if she sleeps more than 4 hours, but she rarely even opens her eyes though she will nurse for a bit. She sleeps best flat on her back and swaddled, just like you're "supposed" to put them down. :LOL It's funny, I had to stop and consciously remember that Eli also slept this much as a newborn. When I think of Eli as a baby, I don't think of the new, sleep-eat-poop baby who doesn't do anything; I always picture him between 2 and 6 months old, with a big baby grin on his face. :LOL

My own sleep is fine too, but I have trouble getting comfortable because of the incision and a little bit of trouble getting out of bed in the morning because I'm a bit stiff in the ab-region. Even so, I'm more comfortable sleeping and waking up now than I was 9 months pregnant, by a long shot. :LOL It's so nice not to have heartburn when I lie down!

***Somewhat depressing stuff ahead... please skip if you're easily bummed out right now.***

Rivkah is growing, but she's still tiny, and I find myself concerned about her. While I was pregnant I had an ultrasound where they couldn't find one of her kidneys; since her birth she's had two ultrasounds, both of which showed that both of her kidneys are small and the left one is much *much* smaller than the right and somewhat malformed. At her one week appointment, her doctor wrote an order for some bloodwork (creatnine levels, a test of kidney function) and we scheduled her next appointment for one month (another ultrasound and her regular one month WBC). Well, we had the blood drawn right away and this morning I got a phone call from the doctor's office. When the secretary said where she was calling from, my heart about fell through the floor-- they never call when the news is good, you know? At any rate she said that they want another creatnine drawn this week, because her level was elavated.

I have no idea what to think or do. One of our first nights home, I started crying because I felt like I was subconsciously avoiding bonding with Rivkah on any deep level because I was worried that she wouldn't be long for this world. I felt like I was just going through the motions of attachment, talking to her, holding her, nursing her, but all the while maintaining a sort of emotional distance. It all just really got to me, and I told Mike about it. He said that we don't get to decide how long our children are here, but we do get to decide how good their lives are while they're here. Kind of sad, but it made me feel a lot better, and broke the "block" I had that was keeping me from really bonding with my little girl.

Right now, I'm not even properly worried... I feel somewhat resigned to ride this out to whatever conclusion it comes to. I wonder what will happen, and I really hope that Rivkah is healthy and fine, that it's something simple to correct or that there's some mistake somewhere, but for the most part I feel eerily calm about the entire situation. Perhaps it's denial, perhaps it's me distancing myself from my fears; perhaps I can't get truly worked up without regular access to the internet. I don't know. What I do know is that I love my daughter, and I am, for now, content to love her for as long or as short a time as we have together.

Oh Rynna I will be holding you and Rivkah in my heart.

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That's really beautiful and a good reminder for all of us!

please remember kidney problems are usually easily fixed, even, god forbid, with a transplant, and people can survive just fine on one kidney or even with kidneys that aren't quite usual. I have at least one example in my own family, and my mother has three kidneys! Newborns heal remarkably well, so please also remember that this is the best time for any such problem to be diagnosed and corrected, if necessary. Your milk is the best thing she could be getting, so relax and give her some good lovin' with it.

We are not sleeping so well. Actually last night was better but the first two nights after the fire weren't great. Rowan has caught his sister's cold and has some snot way back in his nose; when lying down for long it rattles but I can't suction it out and trying makes him scream anyway. I have been so tired from the stress of the last week (and how dare certain people try to spoil this precious time for me! ) I have even taken a while fully to wake up and realize he is not nursing because he needs his diaper changed. I just keep trying to get the boob in his mouth. I think it will be better now. I am working on not thinking of certain people, and focusing on all the nice friends we do have and getting my daughter to play frequently and enjoying our baby. The class she signed up for this summer has been cancelled and everything else is full; the schools start Aug 10 here so there's nothing else we can do. We are actually still finishing the last calvert test for the school year, so it will be mid Sept before we start next year. Hopefully we will get home to NY for a bit this summer (though we now have to find somewhere new to stay, which is not such a bad thing).

We also still have this cord weirdness! I am trying to get to see the mw- should have seen her last week but was keeping my schedule free for the inlaws- they kept cancelling on us anyway so I should have just done everything I put off until this week. I also made an appt with the pediatrician we met in May- he was so super cool. His receptionist freaked when I said we could wait until July 20 to see him- "the baby needs to be seen," she said. No he doesn't, said I. She kept putting me on hold. -sigh- he is the renegade in his office so I shouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't bother seeing him but I want my kids signed up with him, he was so great, so that if god forbid we need him, or need to go to the hospital, we have a relationship with someone already. *He* even said just bring the baby in the first few months! My only fear is being on guard so his foreskin isn't messed with.

It is SO hot here. Keeping the house at 80 degrees makes it seem like an icebox.

Rynna- to you! I'll keep you and your little girl in my thoughts.

I will keep Rivkah in my prayers, Rynna - and I promise they'll be hippy-dippy inclusive liberal Christian prayers

James also likes to nurse more frequently during the night, and he won't even CONSIDER going in the cosleeper. During the day he does the swing, the bassinet and even the pacifier (which I've used from birth with no ill effects), but nighttime is all about snuggles and booby. I'm OK with that, as I am getting enough sleep to stay alive.