Ode to Blake's New Loves (and a Nursing Update)

Oh, my bird, how I love you! I grab you.

And my tag toy, how I love to suck you! I suck until you are all squishy and wet.

Hungry caterpillar, I love your big fat tail.

And glow sea-horse, I suck your cute button nose, I kiss your glowing belly.

My love groweth for thee all! Come, let me chomp you, my teething companions!

Some updates on nursing...Thanks, everyone, for your feedback!

Here is what I tried, and what helped:

Drinking more water - Sounds basic and obvious, but I wasn't drinking as much as I needed. I think this really helped (and I felt better). A friend reminded me that I needed to drink at least as much as I was putting out, and I am trying to drink at least a glass of water each time I nurse.

Eating more - I think drinking more had a more substantial impact, but since I often "forgot" to eat, I knew I needed to be more intentional about getting food throughout the day instead of waiting until baby was asleep to fill up.

Alternating sides multiple times in a feeding - I went back and forth so that he was eating from each side" at least twice. I found this to be very helpful, and much easier than pumping after I fed him.

Not feeding him 3 times in 3.5 hrs - Previously I was feeding him at 3pm or 3:30pm, 5pm, and 6:30pm and my body wasn't ready for that 6:30pm feeding. We have decided to put Blake to sleep earlier (5:30-6pm), so now I hold off and essentially skip one feeding. So he gets a full mama when he eats before bed, PLUS he isn't fussy for an hour before we put him to bed.

Fenugreek - When the above still didn't seem to get my milk supply to what Blake seemed to be wanting, I finally decided to try the herbal solution of fenugreek. I took this for 2 days (2 pills, 3x a day, and I was smelling like maple syrup like I heard I would) and noticed a substantial increase in my milk supply, so much that Blake would sputter and cough when my let-down occurred (which he never did before; before I could never even tell when I let down). I actually think I produced TOO MUCH milk and it aggrevated his reflux (I forget that smaller meals are better for his reflux). I stopped taking the Fenugreek right away, but I still think my supply is higher than it was, and I am able to pump more to re-stock my freezer supply.

What didn't help as much:

A beer a day - I didn't notice a difference with this.

Pumping after a feeding - This was discouraging because I didn't get anything when I pumped (and I at least wanted to get some milk for the effort!), and it never seemed convenient to do so. I much prefer alternating sides with the baby (and I think he preferred it, too).

Thanks, again, everyone, for your help with this!

Oh my, he is smiling!

The little boy is smiling! Big cheeses. They are hard to capture on film, since it is hard to hold the camera and the baby at the same time, but it is absolutely precious and melts my heart! Here is a picture I took of a "happy face" (not quite a smile, but still very sweet):

Also, we have recently begun a system of doing exactly the same thing to lull him to sleep for each nap - we hold him against our stomach, pat his back and wait for his little eyes to close. And a couple minutes after they do we lay him down. The crying is almost non-existant (sometimes he protests a little when we first start, but he quickly settles into the routine). He usually wakes up when we put him down, but we re-insert the pacifier and he quickly goes back to sleep. Ahh, this is so nice!  (We'll see how long it lasts!)

Blake Slept 6 Hrs Last Night!

That's right! Blake slept from 11 pm until 5am. Amazing. At 4am Mom was wide awake wondering what was wrong with him, and so I started a conversation with my sleeping/droggy husband about whether I should wake him to feed him since it had been so long. (Poor Mike wasn't able to get back to sleep and so he got up and left for work by 5:45am!) I decided to let him sleep, and he finally awoke at 5am.

How did this happen, you may ask? I think it was mostly due to two missed naps during the day, and the added exhaustion of crying for about an hour and a half before bed. Not great reasons, and not reasons I want to be repeated. So we'll see if it happens again.

My pre-baby hopes of being able to perfectly apply "Baby Wise" to our little one have been met with a dose of reality, and I have moved on to other methods/philosophies. He is not a good sleeper, and misses naps frequently (if he becomes over-stimulated, in which case he might be happy but awake, or because of an upset tummy, in which case he is screaming).

I think he has recently become generally over-tired. It didn't make sense to keep waking him up (per the schedule advised in the Baby Wise book) after he finally got to sleep. So now I'm trying the recommendations of the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and NOT waking a sleeping baby. It resulted in a three hour nap yesterday and another three hour nap today. I am grateful I had been waking him for the first 5 weeks or so, to get breast-feeding well established and to make sure he was gaining weight appropriately in the early weeks. But now that is not as much of a concern as his lack of sleep.

Also, I've stopped the CIO method for now. (Yah, it only lasted about 1 day!) Except for those couple of times I wrote about, he doesn't seem to calm down once he gets all upset (and then he won't sleep at all). Healthy Sleep habits advises not trying sleep training until at least week 6 (after due date), and possibly later. So for now I am often letting him fall asleep in my arms, or at least get very close to asleep before I put him down. And I "put him down" in the bouncy-seat just about every time, because for some reason he has decided not to sleep in his crib during the day... But that's another challenge for another time. First step - get the little boy to sleep. Next goal, work on the where and how of it!

First Bottle!

Our little boy is getting so big!  Yesterday he had his first bottle, and he took it eagerly and drank ravenously!

We were waiting until at least week 6 to introduce the bottle, so that breast-feeding would be well established. We had read that mom should be out of the house, so that baby wouldn't smell her, and baby should be hungry but not starving. We didn't pay attention to most of these recommendations, and instead offered him the bottle after he had already nursed one breast, and mom was hovering around with the camera...



Dad was so excited to be able to serve his little boy in this way! Mom has mixed emotions. I think breast-feeding is one of my favorite things, as it give us such special time together. I hate to think that I can be so easily replaced by some frozen breast milk and a plastic bottle! But, nonetheless, it will be a blessing to have the flexibility to be gone for more than 2 hours. Pumping is still a challenge - I can't quite figure out how to give him a full feeding AND pump AND be ready to feed him again in less than 2 hrs. So now the limitation is only how often I can pump a full bottle. To our surprise he drank 1.5 from the bottle oz after he had already drank one breast-full from mom!

Dad is doing a great job, and Blake clearly loves his time with Daddy!

"CIO" and other notes on sleep

In Babyland "CIO" is the politically correct way of saying "Cry It Out." It is a method for letting babies settle down for a nap, and there are various theories of how, when, and why to do this. The ultimate goal is to help the baby get some much-needed sleep. Cry It Out sessions can last as long as 45 minutes (or longer - eek!), until they conk out on their own, or mom or dad can intervene at various times to offer some comfort and then proceed to let the baby "CIO" again if he/she cries after being comforted.

Well, I am a wimp when it comes to CIO. I think Blake is too little, and I am not quite sure if/when his cries are due to gas pain. I really don't want to just put him down when he is crying because of gas. Another part of the trouble is that, especially during the morning naps, Blake is inclined to lie there happy and content and not cry, in which case we need to figure out how to get him to fall asleep so that he doesn't miss the nap altogether and get overly tired. But that is a slightly different topic on getting him to sleep soon enough that he isn't over-stimulated and I don't miss the window of opportunity...

It seems that just recently (maybe around week 4-5) I noticed that Blake was not so quickly comforted and soothed to sleep by just my holding him and rocking him, and at the same time Mike was reminding me that I really should start letting the little man cry if I actually wanted to try to implement the Baby Wise philosophy. After a short but painful trial period of a couple days (when Blake seemed to need to learn that we would, in fact, let him cry!) it now seems that Blake's cry/sleep pattern involves less than 5 minute of crying. Meaning, when I put him down and let him cry (if he is not experiencing gas pain) he will only cry for 5 minutes or less. Might change tomorrow, of course, but that is what I seem to be finding, and it is a great mercy to a mom who would be quite happy to rock her baby for hours rather than hear him in fit of rage! Generally when I put him down he is happy/quiet, and then in a few minutes (typically when the nuk falls out) he will gradually get fussy then start to cry. Then I start to implemement CIO, which, while I HATE to hear him cry, because his crying time is so brief it isn't as painful as I thought it would be.

This pattern doesn't exactly hold in the evening, when most babies are said to be at their most fussy and Blake is starting to show the same/common fussy symptoms when we try to put him down for his evening (8pm) nap. One night (and one night only) he CRIED (good, strong, Mama-hurting cry) from 8pm - 12am, with breaks in there for feeding every 2.5 hrs. Other nights he has been calmed with "Happiest Baby On The Block" techniques, particularly side-shushing. But that is only when he isn't troubled by gas, which we can usually hear rumbling inside of him. And I am very sad when I can't do anything to help his gas pain!

On a slightly diffferent topic, the past 2 nights Blake has slept 5 hours, from about 11pm - 4am. Praise the Lord! I have just started to let him sleep until he wakes up - through week 4 I had been waking him up every 4 hours to nurse if he didn't wake himself up earlier. And he has already stretched his sleep time to 5 hrs!

All in all, I'm learning. And Blake is excessively patient. What a beautiful, gentle, sweet little boy! I am so blessed. Here is daddy holding Blake in the "side shush" position, in his swaddle. Notice the big grin on the little boy's face! (He wasn't actually being shushed in this photo - Daddy and Blake were just hanging out.)

Our Growing Boy!

I took the little man in to the doctors to get input on what to do for his congestion. They weighed him and the little guy is now a whopping 7 lbs 14 oz. And yesterday was his one month birthday. While he weighed 6 lbs 3 oz at birth, he only weighed 5 lbs 10 oz when we took him home, so this means he has gained a smidge over one ounce a day, right on track!

He still looks long and skinny - no rolls yet - but if he keeps this up maybe he will get those chubby chunker cheeks that Dadda wants to sqeeze!

Yeah, Blake!