The Miracle Chair

I recently went back to my hometown and spent 10 days with my parents. They were in heaven getting to spend so much time with their new grand daughter. While I was there, we asked my sister-in-law if we could borrow her kids' bouncy chair for my baby to sit in while we were in the pool ... so she brought it over. It has since been dubbed The Miracle Chair.

Why? It's an instantaneous calmer! My baby LOVES to move. She wants to be walked, or bounced, or shook ... as long as she is moving she is happy (usually). This chair has a little vibrating feature and quite a nice bounce to it. So whenever we put her in it and turn on the vibration and rock her (rather a lot harder than I would think she'd like ... but she loves it!), no matter the problem, 95% of the time she is calm as can be in less than 30 seconds. If I had actually paid for it, I would say it's the best money I had spent on a baby item.

Battle of the Bottle

So far my baby has been exclusively breast fed. She's never had a bottle of pumped milk (although we have some stored). Well my husband and my anniversary was yesterday and we wanted to go out to dinner so we got grandma to babysit. We knew she would have to take a bottle so we started prepping her for it yesterday ... not really expecting any problems. Unfortunately, she had no interest in it. She just screamed at it and got angry. So we tried again later that day (it was never me feeding her) and we had the same result.

Last night I looked up some ideas about how to get her to take the bottle. Many people said that it's easier if she's not actually hungry yet. So my husband tried that earlier today and she did suck on it, and apparently drank some (though we couldn't tell) but not very much. So we ended up heading off to dinner not knowing if she would eat while we were gone.

Well after dinner we called home to see how she did because we wanted to take a walk around the city but not if she needed to eat. Fortunately grandma immediately said to us "guess who drank a whole bottle!!" Yay!! I'm so proud of my little girl!! Now I know I can pump and not have to worry about her starving if I need to stay away for a bit.

And dinner was fantastic, too.

Exercising Momma

I exercised for the first time today since having my baby 5 weeks and 5 days ago. I am seriously out of shape!! It is amazing just how much. I walked on a regular basis up until I had her (in fact I walked 5k the day before my due date) and yet when I take walks with my husband now ... I struggle! Well I was very happy to exercise today and while it was much more tiring than I'd like ... it felt good. I was using the Wii Active that I was given for my birthday and so far I highly recommend it! It's definitely way better than the standard Wii Fit game.

Right now we are watching Baby Einstein for the first time. She has basically slept through the whole thing. And when she was awake ... she wasn't paying any attention to it. Perhaps I'll try this again when she hasn't just woken up from a nap. The one we are watching is Language Nursury and I find it interesting that the images shown seem to have nothing to do with what is being said. I know the pictures are just to keep the baby interested but I would think that would be somewhat confusing if they ever did figure out the words ...

She just woke up and seems to be actually watching the tv now. We'll see how long it takes before she gets fussy.

Getting Things Done

I'd say ... around 3 weeks post partum I started being able to function on a semi-normal basis. When I was pregnant I NEVER guessed that my recovery would take so long. And physically it didn't. I felt fine ... everything was healed. I was just exhausted. I didn't count on being quite so sleep deprived. Or maybe I should say I didn't count on caring that I was sleep deprived. And I also didn't realize just how much time I would NEED to devote to just staring at my baby's adorable little face. :) So at about 3 weeks I started getting my act together again. And now at 5 weeks I think things are going pretty smoothly. Since I met with the lactation consultant, the feedings are going better and I no longer dread them. I still have to base my trips out of the house around that but I'm getting better at doing that. And I've learned to get things done while she's sleeping during the day (which she has started to do less of). I manage to get a few chores done every day provided that I keep myself organized enough to know what needs to be done. And next week I'll be able to start exercizing again!! Another thing to work into the schedule ... but one I'm very excited for!

Breast Feeding Should Not be Painful

This is something I heard many times. But I heard even more times that it was ... for the first couple of weeks anyway. And so it was for me, and I thought that was normal. I thought that just the lucky few managed to have a pain free experience.

But four weeks into this ... it still hurt (at least on the left side) and I was beginning to think that maybe it wasn't so normal. So I finally called the lactation consultant from the midwife center where I had my baby and we met yesterday. She told me that it should NOT be painful. The only pain I may experience is from the initial latch when I first start breast feeding (as in, back when she was born). She said that the myth that it IS painful is so widespread that people take it as truth and then don't try to get help until they've really damaged their nipples.

Fortunately my case isn't that bad. I'm a bit damaged but not too far gone. She showed me that I was actually holding her wrong and lo and behold ... when I hold her correctly, her latch improves. It's going to take some practice to get good at holding her correctly, though. I'd gotten used to the way I did it before. Now I'm back to feeling like I need an extra arm. She also told me that as soon as it starts to hurt on my bruised side, I should stop and switch her to the other side. It made me feel better that she was giving me permission to do that.

And so if you find breast feeding to be painful beyond the initial latch ... then you're doing it wrong. Get help. It's worth it!

Taking Care of Momma

I am somebody with an extremely strong immune system. I rarely get sick ... and I've been this way my entire life. And yet, since I've had my baby 4 weeks ago I've gotten sick TWICE. Why? Because I'm horrible at taking care of myself!! I realized that it was because I'm now keeping such strange hours with my daughter that I forget to eat. I'm devoting way too much time to sleeping (and ending up not getting very much at all). But during all the "night" hours I don't even think that I should be eating something. In reality, if I am awake and trying to take care of her from 11pm - 6am then I should most definitely be eating.

I know I'm not the only one. I've talked to other new momma's who've also gotten sick shortly after giving birth and I wouldn't be surprised if it were for the same reason. So here's a lesson to all the new momma's out there ... really make sure you take care of yourself because being up all night with your baby is hard enough when you are healthy. When you're achy and feverish ... it's even harder.

On the bright side ... both times it's only lasted about a day and a half and tylenol was a big help!

Co-Sleeping

Back before I was a mom I had some grand ideas about what kind of a parent I would be. There were some things I was so certain about. Like that I would let her cry it out, and I wouldn't co-sleep. Ha!! These things went out the window after about 2 days.

The reason I was anti co-sleeping was just because it seemed unsafe to me. I was afraid that my husband would roll over onto her while he was asleep and I didn't want to put her on the outside of the bed. What I didn't realize that in many cases, co-sleeping is more about the parents' sanity than the baby. They sleep better when they are with their parents. And sometimes, when you just can't get them to sleep any other way, and you are about to pull your hair out from fatigue and frustration, it suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea to let your baby sleep with you ... as long as it means they will actually sleep.

I'm also lucky in the sense that I'm a very light sleeper. I don't even move around without waking up. So I just lie on my back, with her on my chest, and we both sleep like that. I don't have to worry that I'll roll over and knock her off. I hold onto her so I know she won't fall off on her own (and as she's only 3 weeks she doesn't really move around much either). And I know that my husband won't squish her since she's on me.

So I guess my point is just that sometimes it doesn't work out quite how you planned. But it's all good!! I'll re-visit the crying-it-out thing once she's a bit older. For now I scoop her up almost immediately.