Ketchup with Peach

Armondo and I have been putting off getting Peach her first round of shots. We could blame it on being busy but I think the truth is that we were just stalling, 'cause it really sucks to hurt your little baby!

Today though, we had to do it. There's an exceptionally long weekend coming up with Easter, and we weren't sure we'd get another chance before Armondo ships off again. And I really wanted to do it while Armondo was actually home 'cause it would be hard to get someone to watch Cherry.

So, today was the day, and at first, I had Armondo all ready to take her in, but I decided that I would buck up and do it myself 'cause it would probably be nicer for Peach to have her mom and her mammaries close by for comfort.

Peach had been very sleepy so far during the day, and hadn't done much interacting up until the point when I sat down with her in the nurse's office. She looked up at me and gave me one of her cute gummy smiles, just as the nurse gave her her first poke of four. That was the last smile I saw from her all day. She cried quite a bit, but settled down in the waiting room where Daddy and Cherry were playing. Once we got home, all four of us took a nap, and then after we awoke, Peach cried for an hour and would cry out again each time we touched or moved her legs. Poor kid. When I put her to bed this evening, she went down without much of a fuss, but her eyes were puffy from crying, and she didn't do any of her normal cooing. Peach doesn't normally cry. Honestly. She's one of the smiliest, quietest, happiest babies ever, and maybe cries a total of five minutes a day. So, today was especially hard. On all of us! Cherry was a bit extra whiney too today, as she's never happy when her DeDe (baby) cries. I sure hope Peach is feeling better by tomorrow!

The nurse today said that Peach was a little on the smallish side. Tonight, I looked it up, and she's almost three months old, and using the percentiles for that age, she's between the 50th and 75th for length, and she's at the 25th for weight. (24inches, 11 3/4 lbs). I'm not too worried about her size though, 'cause she seems to eat well, and she's quite strong, so I think she's pretty healthy. I could have sworn though, that she was bigger than Cherry was at the same age, but looking back at Cherry's records, she was actually right around the same size. It seems to me that she's growing out of clothing faster than Cherry did. Maybe it's 'cause I wanted Cherry to grow fast and reach each milestone faster, but with Peach, I want to savour and enjoy each little baby moment. I have to say, it is a lot easier to enjoy Peach's baby moments as she's such an calm baby. It wasn't until Cherry reached 2 1/2 months that she finally started to break out of her colicky stage. (The age that Peach is now.)

I will be having more time to blog and relax now, 'cause Peach is starting to develop a sleep routine. She'll go to bed around 7pm, which is the same time as Cherry, and will only wake for feedings during the night and will sleep well past 10 am if she is fed quickly and is not let to wake up completely. At least this is what's been happening for the past few days. It would be really nice if it keeps up, 'cause I have missed my evenings! Before Peach was born, I'd relax for a bit after Cherry went to sleep, then I'd do cleaning, and I'd either watch TV or blog. Since Peach was born, I'd have to choose between cleaning or blogging, or neither if she didn't go to bed until really late. Currently, I put Peach to bed in her crib and then I will bring her into my bed when she wakes in the night. I will probably keep this up until she needs less feedings at night, or she starts to move around a lot. With Armondo being gone most of the time, it's not much of an issue to have her in the bed. When he IS home, if the bed gets too crowded, I'll either move Peach to her crib or bassinette, or kick Armondo to the couch.

Besides that, there's not much to report. She's cute, she's smart, she laughs, she rolls over, and she's sleeping well.

Breast Feeding.. Again.

What? Time for me to blog? It's amazing! The house isn't a complete disaster today, and there's not much good TV on tonight (except for American Idol, but that can just play in the background), so I have a few minutes to sit and type!

I want to touch again on breast feeding, just so that the saga is complete.

It's going well. It's working now. I'm so glad I stuck it through!

One side is still better than the other, and once in awhile there's a touch of pain, but NOTHING like it was before. And, to tell you the truth, I'm actually enjoying it now. Peach is awesome in that she just eats when she's hungry-fills her tummy, then stops. She doesn't dawdle on the n!pple, nor does she use nursing as a pacifier. (Loves her sucky though!) It's purely for nourishment for her, and I'm glad for that. If it stays this easy with her, I could probably feed her for longer than I originally intended. (Wow, things change fast!)

And, I'm becoming a pro with public feedings. I'm of the "discreet nursing in public is acceptable" line of thinking. I don't think that women should be ashamed or should hide if they're feeding in public, but I don't like it when a woman takes her whole breast out of her shirt to feed and flashes everyone. It's just not necessary! I don't believe in blankets over babies' heads if they don't like that, though, I DO believe in covering the top part of your breast with a blanket if the breast has to be removed from your shirt. In reality, only a few square inches of your breast needs to be exposed to feed, and if you're showing more than that in a location other than your own home, then you're being inappropriate. Period. However, I also believe that if a woman feels like she HAS to show off her whole breast, then whatever, she can do it. I just feel like they're making a statement that's equatable to high school punks with pink Mohawks yelling "What are YOU looking at?!" at the passerby at the bus stop. I think that they're trying to make a statement that is unnecessary!

Anyway, sorry for my mini-rant. MOVING ON!

This kid is seriously a cutie. Just ignore the baby acne. It's almost gone.

Dressing your kids in matching clothes is SOOO awesome. More pics on flickr.

Blog entries to come: The conclusion of my relationship with my mother. A few of Cherry's favourite things. Peach's birth story. And others. Soon, I promise.

So much to write, so little time!

A completely posed photo. They don't really get along this well! More on Flickr.

~Ok, so I don't know how to deal with RSS feeds, but I checked and one out of three of my feeds is working, so, if you want to, you can delete my feed then re-subscribe to the working one.

~I have like 6 posts in my head, but no time to write them. I'm spending too much time hanging out with my kids and the TV. And currently, Armondo has been taking a few days to work casually as a painter, which means I'VE BEEN HOME ALONE WITH THE KIDS FOR THE WHOLE DAY NOW FOR TWO DAYS IN A ROW! (and I have to do it again tomorrow.) The whole experience has been scary, but we've been getting through it just fine. Besides me accidently closing Cherry's fingers in the sliding door. But we won't talk about that.

~Breast feeding is getting better. No pain at all on the one side now, but we're still working on mastering the other side.

No time to write any more, enjoy the photos.

Breast Feeding Continued.

Wow, you are all so awesome. Thank you all for your support and the tips on my last breast feeding post. Things are getting better. They're not great or pain free yet, but they things are getting better.

I had to keep Peach off of that one particular nipple for two whole days while it recovered, and I was able to express about 6 ounces a day from that side. Of course, I wasn't making enough milk from the non-bleeding side, so we had to give her more bottles. I really don't think she's got nipple confusion at this point. Maybe she did for a day or something, but I think she's got the latch thing down now. The big problem though is that she's just so darn strong. Like Armondo said, it's like she's giving me h!ckies on my nipples.

It seems like we'll be able to continue to breast feed, and that it won't be too horrible, but it seems as though I'm in for some more pain, at least in the short term. The worst part of knowing each time that it's going to hurt is the whole being tentative thing, and sort of stalling a bit each time I try to get her to latch on. This has caused more than a few cranky outbursts from the little one!

But, breast feeding difficulties aside, holy crap, this baby is easy! And cute! And so strong! She can already hold her head up for several seconds at a time, and if she's sort of propped up with her arms supported, she'll put almost all her weight on her feet and will push to a standing position. (Almost, it's not a perfected thing by any means!)

One of those pictures I'm going to get in trouble for posting when she's older!

"What IS that furry thing I see walking by?"

Breast Feeding-the early days.

I never understood why women would get so upset if breast feeding didn't work out for them and their babies. I've heard many stories of babies who didn't latch properly, women who didn't have enough milk, and babies who couldn't tolerate the proteins in their own mother's milk. To me, it didn't seem like a big deal. I mean, just buck up and buy some formula already, what's the big deal?

I understand now. Peach is a good eater. She's been getting plenty of milk, and had surpassed her birth weight by several ounces in less than a week. She doesn't, however, quite have the latch down yet.

The other day, she ripped one of my nipples to shreds to the point where I stopped nursing her on that side and just expressed and froze the milk so that that nipple would have some time to heal. By the end of the day, it seemed to have healed enough to try again, and we had a successful day and a half using both breasts.

This morning, my midwife came for a scheduled visit and we discussed the latching problems. She observed, and saw that Peach's mouth was wide enough open, and that she seemed to have a good latch overall. I could see this as well, and thought that maybe we had it all worked out. My midwife went on to suggest switching up on different nursing positions in order to change up the spots where the most stress was, as well as showed me some ways to utilize pillows better to keep Peach's latch. When the midwife left, I was feeling confident that from there on in, Peach and I would have this whole nursing thing down pat.

That is, until early this evening when I looked down while she was feeding and watched as the blood pooled around her mouth and my nipple and ran down my belly. She got me good. Real good.

Right away, I took her off the breast and started to thaw out some expressed milk so she could have a bottle. For the past couple of nights, I've been giving Armondo bottles to feed her so they could have some bonding time while I got things done, like shower.

I told my midwife about the bottle a night thing, and of course, she told me what I knew already: feeding a young baby a bottle can cause nipple confusion and can lead to latching problems.

So, after I took her off the breast and handed her to Armondo to hold while I thawed out some milk, I couldn't help but start crying. Here I was, making her a bottle so that she's not ripping my nipples to shreds some more, because she has a bad latch, but in making her drink out of a bottle, I'm making it harder for her to learn how to latch properly. It seemed like a bit of a vicious circle, and at that particular moment, as I took Peach back from Armondo, and started feeding her the bottle, I could not see any way of resolving this issue. Armondo was finishing up giving Cherry a bath at the time, and I sat in the living room feeding Peach with tears running down my face.

I had calmed down significantly by the time Cherry's story time came around and all four of us went into her room to take part. Cherry was drinking her last bottle of the day as Daddy read the story, and I had Peach in my lap and she was drinking her bottle.

Well, Cherry finished her bottle first, and wanted Peach's bottle. She has never shown any interest or want for the breast (she was weened at five months), but when she saw Peach sipping at that bottle, Cherry wanted it. NOW. She started tantruming, so I handed Peach to Armondo, and they made their exit while I tried to calm Cherry down and explain to her how the milk was different, and that she had already finished her bottle anyway. Yeah. She's 18 months. I'm pretty sure the whole concept flew over her head. So she screamed. And screamed. She wouldn't let me hold her, she wouldn't get into her bed, she would not let me help her calm down. So, I turned off the light and left her in her room. Then I went to the couch (Armondo was in our bedroom with Peach), and I sobbed by myself for the next 15 minutes while Cherry pounded on her door and continued to tantrum about the injustice of it all.

So, now, not only was I failing Peach by giving her a bottle, and further ruining any chance of getting this latch thing down right, but I have also upset Cherry, who otherwise had had a pretty tantrum-free day.

I felt like a pretty crummy mother.

See, being a mother is all about nurturing, right? I mean, it's about hugs, and kisses, and love and giggles, and it's also about nourishing. And as a mother with plenty of milk, I should be able to nourish my little one, and that is being threatened, and it scares me.

I can't completely articulate what it feels like, but I'm sure it's sort of akin to a man with impotency problems.

But really, what's the big deal? I mean, just buck up and buy some formula, right? Well, that feels like giving up. It feels like failure.

And part of the whole problem is in my head too. And I think that in itself is making it harder for Peach to latch on. I KNOW it's going to hurt when she gets her grip, which makes me tentative, which makes it harder for her to get a good latch. (I'm having the same problem with another bodily function in that, I KNOW it'll hurt my stitches when I sit down to take care of business, which only makes me dread it, which, in turn, is causing constipation, which in turn, makes the whole business even MORE painful.)

The funny thing is, I don't even like nursing. I don't like the feeling of my breasts filling up, I don't like the heaviness, I don't like the leaking, or the sweatiness that goes along with it. I don't like having to sit down and stop what I'm doing in order to find a comfortable position and location to pull up my shirt and feed my child.

But I like the IDEA of it.

I like the idea of nourishing my child from my own body. I like the forced closeness (Cherry stopped cuddling when she was weened, and really hasn't been much of a cuddler since.). I like that there's no waste involved, in that you don't need bottle liners, you don't need to wash nipples (except in the shower once a day, but you know what I mean), you don't have to heat the milk (not that you really have to with formula if you don't want to, but just stick with me here). And that it's "natural". You're feeding your human child human milk instead of formula derived from a completely different animal.

And, being that I'm a mother, I'm SUPPOSED to be able to feed my child.

And that's what's bothering me the most.

I'm not giving up yet. In fact, I still have one nipple that's still usable for the time being, so I have fed her with that one since the bloody incident, and have expressed a bit from the injured one. But I am thisclose to switching to formula. And that bothers me.

Size.

We went out today.

My feet fit in my shoes! They were snug, but they fit!

My ring, however still does not fit, so it still hangs on my necklace.

My b00bs? The size of cantaloupes. That's why we had to go out today. To buy bras. To hold up my boulders. My shirts look really funny. I'm more than a little disproportionate.

My belly is still quite large. I'd say I look about four months pregnant. It's gone down though quite a lot since I gave birth. I left the hospital looking about five months pregnant.

All newborns lose weight after they're born. Peach was no exception. I can't remember off hand how much she lost, but it wasn't too much, and in the last two days, she's re-gained SEVEN OUNCES. They're supposed to gain 4-8 ounces per WEEK. Yeah, I've got milk. And she's quite the little eater. And my n!pples really hurt.

Cherry was an absolute doll today! It was a welcome change. Hopefully she'll be happy again tomorrow. It was nice to have her "old" self back, even if it was only for a day.

And, of course, since you're all really here just to see cute pictures, here you are: