One month appointment

Seriously, the doctor's first comment:

"Your baby is one month old?"

Yeah, she's huge.  Enormous.  Gigantic.  12 pounds, 23.5 inches long. Good-tempered - allowed the doctor to listen to her without any issues.  I totally lied and said she was sleeping in her bassinet in our room, when actually she tends to sleep between us in the bed.  My goal had been to have her sleep in her bassinet at 4 weeks, but the littlest one sleeps so well that I don't have all the chances to try to put her in the bassinet that I did with the Bisousette.  Bisousette woke up 3-4 times a night for months and months - so I had her trained for the bassinet by putting her back in time after time after time.  This one generally wakes up once between 10:30 and 7am if she sleeps in bed with me, but always wakes up within about 15 minutes of putting her in the bassinet, day or night.  So in the day she sleeps on the boppy on the couch (which will have to end very soon, as she is getting more mobile), or in her swing.  But I might switch over to the miracle blanket at night for a better shot at bassinet sleeping, now that we don't have to change her diaper 20 times overnight.  Of course, she might not fit into the damn thing at this point.

This baby will also sometimes get to sleep when she is put down "drowsy but awake."  I always thought it was dipshit advice to put a baby down drowsy but awake so she will learn to sleep on her own - that kind of thing NEVER worked for the Bisousette.  But it might work for the little one.  Hey, she might actually "sleep through the night" by 3 months.  I thought that was a myth, and parents who said their young baby sleeped through the night were lying.  Really.

(I'm kind of figuring out that Bisousette was basically a tough, cranky, fussy, sleep-depriving baby - it's a good thing we had her first when I didn't know any better.  My husband always said his first daughter, who is now 13, was a quiet, amenable, happy baby who wasn't fussy and slept well and blah blah blah.  I thought he was lying about her too :)

But 12 pounds at one month.  No wonder I'm worn out.  

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.