Nearly instant gratification

My nursing tanks are in transit and out for delivery!  Whee!  I love internet shopping - it's like you get the pleasure of shopping twice - one time selecting the stuff, the second time opening the packages when they arrive. 

The littlest one had a rough beginning of the week - lots of gas and crying and  unhappiness.  However, I changed the way I fed her, and now she is doing quite well.  Sleeping 2-3 hours at a stretch during the day and two 4 hour stretches at night.  I have oversupply, and so changing the feeding so that she only nurses from one side at a feeding, not both, really helped to decrease her irritability and unhappiness.  With the Bisousette, who was generally irritable for no particular reason, nothing really helped.  But with the littlest one, it was 100% clear her distress was related to unhappy tummy (poor thing would cry, grunt, pas gas or poop, then visibly relax and be her happy self again.)  With oversupply, if you feed from both sides, you can sometimes get a "foremilk imbalance" with the first milk being low in fat and high in lactose.  The baby will not get enough fat, eat more often, sleep less, and be more irritable, and be more gassy with mucousy poop (ew).  Once I changed the way I fed her, she was instantly back to the happy little one she had been the first three weeks, before the oversupply issue became such an issue.

Amazing how sometimes the advice you glean will work for parenting, and sometimes not at all. 

My littlest one will be one month old tomorrow.  And the Bisousette is so very close to two years.  Amazing how time flies when you aren't working...

 

 

Busy bee

I'm making a crochet penguin mama and baby for the toddler, and taking care of the brood at the same time.  And I'm losing weight, which mostly consists of worrying, being okay with a little hunger (but not too much), and fretting about how I can't really exercise yet (frankly, the milk bar is too heavy for any jumping, and I'm still two weeks away from being allowed to do serious core work).  I've lost, I think, around 37 pounds in 29 days.  Which is a lot, when you look at it.  But on the other hand, I'm still quite overweight, distressingly so, and I'm nowhere near fitting into my clothes.  So.  Hopefully we will keep on going.  I really need to fit into my clothes, more or less, in a month when I go back to work.

I'm reading some books when I get a moment - the first one "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan (basically - stop fretting about protein and carbs and vitamins blah blah blah - none of that will make you healthier.  Eat Food.  Real, whole, food.  Cook for yourself.)  After that I'll read "The End of Overeating"  Kessler  (Skwigg's latest entries in her blog rave about that book, and I saw the interview on either the Daily Show or Colbert Report, and Kessler seems like a sensible fellow).  Hopefully they will get me in the mood.  It is hard to cook, though, with a baby on one arm and a toddler yanking on your shirt from the back.  But it can be done!  

We're all out of wine, so I'm shopping instead

Seriously.  The sister-in-law came over on Sunday and used a tumbler for wine and we have none left!  Okay, so we only had about half a bottle at that point.  But this is Massachusetts - you have to go to an actual liquor store to get more wine, for some odd reason you can't pick it up at the grocery store.  And it used to be you couldn't get it on Sunday, but we're only a 15 minute drive from another WHOLE STATE so screw you, Massachusetts weird laws.  But anyway, I refuse to drive to another state for the sole purpose of wine.  I'm pretty sure that would make me positive for one of the CAGE questions. (okay, I did that once, but we were having a Sunday dinner party!  Really!) And I hate liquor stores.  Maybe because I am ALWAYS carded even though I am of advanced maternal age.  So I guess we'll go without.  That's fine.  The couple of bottles we had were actually leftover from before I got pregnant in the first place.  

Enough about wine.  As I said, the cupboard is dry, so I took out the credit card and went to Glamourmom.com to buy some nursing tanks.  I like the tanks for every day wear - that way you can have a zip up or button up shirt over it, and then you can nurse the little one without flashing a bunch of flabby belly.  I bought a bunch of nursing tanks last time around, but the only ones worth a damn were the glamourmom ones.  So it is worth a little expense to have some comfort.  And you have to wear something 24/7, so it better be comfrotable.

Hey, look, sleeping baby!

Trial

Oh, and Mr. Bisous is going to a party tonight, so for the first time I will manage the newborn and the toddler alone while both are awake (yes, I've been spoiled - first the parents were here, and 4 days a week I have the nanny for the Bisousette, and Mr. Bisous and I are both on maternity/paternity leave still).  How does one accomplish this task? 

a) fortitude

b) wine

c) curious george movie

d) all of the above

Losing weight like a man

I still hate the post-pregger body, BUT these past couple of days I've actually decided to watch what I've been eating a little.  This was after about three days of not losing anything, which was beginning to freak me out, because with the Bisousette, I had a steady six weeks of losing every day.  So I cut out the ice cream (that's it, really), and then lost 5 pounds in two days.  I still have a long way to go, but the more it falls off like this, the better I feel.  I'm fitting in smaller maternity pants, and hopefully in another month will be back in my larger regular pants. 

Hopefully.

Two milestones

Today I was able to put on my wedding ring again.  And yesterday on the scale I dropped down to another decade - I'm 34 pounds down total.  I'm also wearing one of my normal (and not a maternity) hoodies, all zipped up. 

These are the small triumphs in my life right now.  Which is to say, besides laundry and getting through another day with newborns growing and toddlers toddling, not much is going on.  I'm almost looking forward to going back to work (at least half time, which is how I start).  I will feel a little more accomplished at that point.  And next week will be four weeks, so I'll start to lift a little weight instead of doing only lower body standing bodyweight exercises.  

And I'm catching up with Ugly Betty and making more little crochet animals.  

Yep, that's pretty much it.

some more pics

Bisousette at the zoo, and the littlest one in Grandma's lap, with that facial expression that means "I want milllllk."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Argh umph
The littlest one has not been sleeping well the past few nights.  Her little face scrunches up and she screams, or she wants to nurse, but as soon as he pesky milk comes, she gets very angry, and of course she won't take a pacifier.  It eventually works out, and with the nanny I do get a chance to get a nap, but I find myself looking forward to 3 months, when the kid is cute and stretches out her legs and smiles and laughs instead of not being able to lift her head and seeming so confused with the muscles and the world and digestion all the time.  It must be very hard to be a newborn.

Even numbers

My parents returned to Austin today, but they were quickly replaced by other inlaws, who came by for a long afternoon visit.  But now they are gone, the house is ours, the toddler and infant are sleeping.

I'm exhausted.  It is nice to be able to nurse the baby without a million people loitering about.

However, this morning when Mr. Bisous went to mow the lawn, I had my first taste of two kids v. one mama.  It involved a lot of lugging baby around and making lunch one-handed for the Bisousette.  Also some tears (not mine) and jealousy (Bisousette tried to shove the baby away from me because Bisousette wanted me to pick her up).  

I had two glasses of wine this evening (baby did not sleep well today with the inlaws visiting, and she is in the middle of a 4-5 hour evening nap as we speak) and I have a headache.  These alcohols are not for the inexperienced.

 

Another week nearly gone

into the ether.  Time flies with a newborn and when you don't add in the daily work grind (like it or not, work slows down the week in its way). 

Also, Mr. Bisous' computer is virus-infected, so my father, Mr. Bisous, the Bisousette and I are all duking it out for computer time on my laptop.  The Bisousette usually wins - those youtube videos of Thomas the Tank Engine and Jack Johnson's Curious George song from the movie are very engaging for a two year old.  She is also playing Babysmash (a free program I downloaded on a tip from the Elkridge Hollerer) from Lifehacker.  

The littlest one had her two week check-up.  Not surprisingly she's another superbaby - all >90%.  She weighs 10 lbs 3 oz.  I've lost 30 pounds in the 16 days since she was born.  I still don't fit into any but my largest clothes, and I'm living in Mr. Bisous' button-down short-sleeved shirts (the wardrobe for a plumped up nursing mom is entirely different from a grossly pregnant working mom, but this stage (hopefully) is too short to warrant its own separate wardrobe, so I borrow Mr. Bisous'.)

The double chin, though, is almost gone.

Sigh.

But hey, it is nice to be able to have a grown-up glass of wine every now and again.