Dealing With Pregnancy Brain Ramifications Months Later

Last year at some point, I got my monthly bill from BGE and it was huge. When I opened it, it said I hadn't paid the previous month. I was embarrassed and confused because I don't screw that kind of thing up. But it was during pregnancy and a stressful time, so I decided I just messed up, paid it, and went on my merry way.

In seemingly unrelated news, I recently got a bill from the Baltimore Sun and it made me realize I hadn't seen a bill from them in forever! It seemed a little high for the short period it covers, so I went back into my online bill paying history to see how often the bills come.

Turns out, I paid the BGE monthly amount (it's a set $ because we're on budget billing) to the Sun last year. So I apparently pre-paid for months of newspapers/coupons and accidentally didn't pay BGE that month. Because BGE is in the bill paying system as Baltimore Gas and Electric.

Wow, I feel dumb! :)

Mother's Day

I was a little nervous leading up to Mother's Day. For the last few years, it's been a hard day. Ours wound up being pretty much like a normal day. My husband got me a lovely baby birthstone gift and did the first bottle in the morning so I could lay in bed for an extra hour. That part was great. :) Then we hosted his family for the afternoon. I was feeling a little ragged because first we had to spend the morning cleaning the house. Then, while hubby grilled and then half-napped in exhaustion on the couch and the relatives passed the baby around, I did laundry because it just piles up. The only time I got to see the baby between lunch and dinner was to clean up a spit up/pee/poop explosion and I was feeling very grumpy about it. Basically I was like dude, it's Mother's Day, and everyone is having fun except me! But I worked really hard at trying to remind myself that it's Mother's day ... and I'm doing mother things. Dealing with bodily fluids and never-ending laundry is being a mom.

I started reading this blog awhile back, when we started the IVF process... the point where we were 2 cycles away from knowing for sure if our kids were going to be biological or not. She was then in the process of adopting, and now her little guy is home with her. She has better words for how I was finally feeling by last night.

http://www.addingaburden.com/2013/05/mothers-day.html

A Final Decision

Last night, just after the 48 hour point where the pedi said we'd start to see symptoms if he couldn't handle my milk, I thought I saw some issues. We weren't 100% positive, and figured if there were issues they'd continue to show up. That was our mistake, waiting until morning. Because by this morning he was in lots of discomfort and crying and a generally unhappy (and tired from not sleeping) baby. So the decision was made for us to switch to the formula all the way.

He was perfectly fine switching, especially since he did 10 days of bottles. He didn't even bat an eye. Thankfully he was happy most of the day because I am a little under the weather today and then Mike wasn't feeling well when he got home, either.  Hoping that we all feel better tomorrow!

2 Months ... A little late

Size: At his 2 month appointment, he weighed 11 pounds 3 ounces and was 24 1/2 inches long. That's only the 40th percentile for weight, and the 98th percentile for length. Guess he doesn't know that he has short parents! We're not sure that he really weighs that much, because (how can I say this delicately?) his belly was FULL when he was weighed. The next day at 'baby breakfast' he only weighed 10 pounds 8 ounces, and his belly was very very EMPTY. So I'd guess he weighs somewhere in the high 10's in general.

Clothes: He's completely out of newborn clothes now. He's so long and thin that lots of the onesies we have in the 0-3 size are barely snapping, but are still super super wide. He's in size 1 diapers, but they still leak around the legs sometimes because his legs are so thin!

Eating: When breastfeeding, he eats about 12 times a day. Some long meals, some shorter. In the late afternoon/evening he eats almost every hour. During formula week, he ate 4oz when he woke up the first time, 4 more a few hours later and again for lunch. 4 after his long nap and at bedtime, but in the afternoon it was 1 ounce every hour or so, like he was mimicking nursing. Luckily he doesn't seem to care what he's eating, the temperature, or delivery method. We started using a pacifier when he was on the bottle because babies this little have a strong need to suck for comfort. We don't want him hooked on it, but it worked really well when he finished a bottle because we could tell if he was hungry and really needed more, or if he just needed to suck. (He'd refuse the pacifier and scream if he was still hungry, mellow out and suck on the pacifier for a few minutes and then gently give it up if he just needed the sucking motion.)

Sleeping: When breastfeeding, his long stretch is still about 5 hours on a generic night. Many nights on formula he did 7 to 8 hours, woke up for a bottle, and then slept another 3. We are trying to move bedtime back. We got it to 10:30 or 11 which means a middle of the night feed when nursing but it will help in the long run. During the week of bottles, we worked hard on getting him to sleep, since he was used to nursing to sleep. It was hard and took a lot longer, but it got better as the week went on. I'm more aware of it now that we're back to breastfeeding just in case our experiment fails and we have to return to the formula. He is not yet doing his big nap in the crib. That's a future-but-soon goal of mine. He sleeps really well in the swing or buzzy chair even if he's in the same room as me, but I'd like to get him good at sleeping in both the pack n play and crib in the afternoon.

Physical: He still does tummy time and his neck is getting stronger. I can hold him with one arm sometimes now because he can hold his head or prop it on my shoulder! He recently learned to bat/punch dangling toys on the mat. He also loves sucking on his hands. That used to be purely a feeding cue, now it seems like he does it just because he can.

Facial: Lots of smiles! At us, at toys, at the baby in the mirror. Unless the camera is out!!! Sometimes he'll mimic our facial expressions, and he's been iffy with that since between 3 and 4 weeks, but usually he seems to think we're just making funny faces and then he smiles at us.

Crying: Often means hungry, especially when waking up. Was also meaning bellyache for awhile. He rarely cries at bath or diaper change anymore, unless he is hungry and we're quickly trying to squeeze it in.

Vocal: He is SO vocal. Cooing, happy noises, mad noises, hungry noises, whiny noises, and a hilarious squawk that seems to mean, "hey people you left me here just FYI!" because he uses it when he's in the pack 'n play while I throw out a diaper and wash my hands, or when he's done batting the owl and turtle on his mat. It isn't really an angry noise, but he seems to use it for attention.

Activities: After several days of picking up his hands and making him bat the animals on the rainforest gym, he started accidentally doing it himself. Then a few days later we realized it wasn't an accident anymore because when we moved him, he moved his hands to make it keep happening! He spends 2 or 3 sessions a day on his mat playing with "his friends" the owl and turtle.

Me: In several ways, I am healed. I can lift the car seat with him in it now pain free. I lifted a box of litter to fill the box pain free, too. But I can't sit for too long still or wear tight clothes. I've lost all the pregnancy weight (and I think more, but I don't own a scale and haven't been weighed in 3+ weeks at my dr's appointment) but mostly because of being on the soy and dairy free diet. No easy snacks means much less eating during the day or just less eating in general!

Chugging Along...

Rather than update constantly during the horrible last week, I decided to subscribe to the "if you can't say anything nice..." philosophy. And so here we are, at "next week!"

On Monday at his 2 month appointment, we got the go-ahead to try ditching the formula with the decision that if the symptoms came back, we'll be going to Alimentum full time. We're 48 hours in and we think we're ok, but it's so hard to tell at this point because the transition to and from formula makes things confusing. He doesn't appear to be in distress, so that much is good and we're using that as our guide at this point.

If this experiment fails and the symptoms come back, we'll be bummed but we're not willing to just randomly keep throwing things out of my diet in a rash attempt to figure it out. I'm eating so few things right now that it will worry me a little about future allergies if he does react, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

More Books

#5 - The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult - I read her books as they come out each spring. Some I like, some I really like, occasionally there's one that is just OK. My favorite is My Sister's Keeper, but it's possible that I feel that way because I read it first. Like all of her books, there are multiple narrators telling the story. Unlike her other books, a GIANT chunk is told uninterrupted by one narrator during the holocaust. In many ways it is just another holocaust book, but I still enjoyed the story. All of her books are based around a big "what if" and this one falls under "What if a friendly neighbor/teacher/upstanding community citizen told you he had been a Nazi?" It's an interesting question indeed.

#6 - Six Years by Harlan Coban - I read this because I saw the guy on the Today Show one morning early on in baby time. It was just fine. Possibly one step below fine. The narrator and the love of his life break up suddenly and she marries another guy as the narrator watches from the back. Years later, he sees the guy's obituary and decides to seek out the love of his life in her time of grief. But when he gets to the funeral, the grieving widow isn't the girl he knows. (dum dum DuUUUUUUUUUM!)

General Hospital

Yes it's a soap. But seriously. Back in Nov, a character became a surrogate/gestational carrier for another couple on the show. Of course then she miscarried, had sex that day because she was so distraught, and got pregnant again.

Because it's a soap!

But this week someone is snooping in the medical records and we got a screen shot.

Confirmed pregnant 12/24
Miscarriage 1/2
Confirmed pregnant 1/18

Um, that's impossible!

Books I've Read Lately

I've been trying to put effort into reading more lately. Granted, my life has a little less reading time than it did previously, but I have gotten through 7 since the baby got here! (Granted they're not all adult length novels.) It was a little easier when I was nursing 7 hours a day, because I could read on the ipad and turn the page by tapping with my pinky. It takes more hands to pump and bottle feed so I haven't been reading during meals, however, I did read this weekend while I was pumping and Mike took care of meals!

#1-3: The Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie - This was another future, dystopian, teenager story that I'm sure was loved by readers of the Hunger Games or The Giver.

#4: Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham - I got this from NetGalley purely because it was written by Lauren Graham. Lauren was on Kelly & Michael earlier this week and they mentioned she had received a good review in the Washington Post. I'm a little surprised, because while it was OK, it didn't thrill me. Good for her though.