On super suckers and awesome mamas

Your special guest blogger this evening is Dr. JT! Bridget is busy feeding a wild animal baby. She does this sometimes at night after Bridget takes a bath - she'll eat, but she'll protest and wriggle and writhe around the whole time. It's pretty funny really, and we'd love to show you, but, well, breastfeeding and the internet.

The good news is that Maren is doing MUCH better since the last post. She had her tongue tie corrected on Monday afternoon, and we saw some small, but immediate, improvements. A few days later, however, was the high point of our stress, when 1) Maren wasn't eating well, 2) Bridget was alternating pumping and feeding every 1.5 hours, 3) I was supplementing her with bottles of expressed milk, which 4) she would sometimes explosively vomit. So we called the lactation consultant again, and she visited us Friday morning, and showed Bridget one more little trick to encourage Maren to suck well, and BOOM - she was eating so much better. It was like she had been building some skills in the background, wondering when we were going to give her the chance to show them. Since then she had been eating well much of the time, and pooping up a storm, I get so excited when she fills a diaper I break into song - many 80's top 10 hits have been altered to allow for poo worship.

So Bridget has been hogging our little one a lot since Friday. Mom and Maren have been lounging out on the rocker for most of the day, so that Maren can snack as much as she wants, and also for further mouth retraining (she still has some work to do). I get her for diaper changes and during bath time, so she gets intense snuggles during those periods. Overall,life is much, much, much calmer around here, and we are happy. It is so nice to have the support of all of our friends near and far during these crazy days.

With stress levels down, Halloween decorating has resumed. I feel that it is critical that Maren understand the importance of Halloween, so she needs the full display even when she is a little wee one. I'll snap a photo on Halloween so that Bridget can post on here!

Oh, and did you know that Bridget is the best mama that ever lived? It's no word of a lie! She is so loving, sweet, and nurturing. I love both of my girls!

Tongue tied

This will be a super short post. I have had some concerns about Maren's breastfeeding from the beginning - shallow latch, long feeding times - but was reassured by several nurses that all was well. Last week concerns were raised about her rate of weight gain - not terrible, but not ideal. We finally called a lactation consultant, and found out on Friday that Maren has a tongue tie (frenulum is keeping her tongue held in a position that makes effective feeding impossible). So now in addition to feeding her every two hours during the day and every three hours at night, I am pumping after each feeding to protect/improve my milk supply. It is like feeding went from being one full-time job to two, and we are quite sleep-deprived. We have an appointment to correct Maren's tongue tie tomorrow, and hopefully next blog post I will have time to say more!

Grandma, baby wearing, unpredictability

We are settling in to life with Maren.  For the first week and a half that we were home, my mom was out visiting from Oregon. It was incredibly helpful to have her here, and she helped with baby holding while also cooking dinner for us every night and helping with cleaning and laundry. We were fortunate to have help starting immediately when we got home.

She left very early on Friday morning, and we are now learning to take care of everything with just the three of us. Fortunately I am starting to feel better, and recovering from the birth, although I am definitely still not at 100%. The sleep deprivation is also starting to catch up with me a bit, but in general things are going well.

One thing that we are finding very helpful is baby wearing. We currently have a borrowed Boba wrap that Jeff has been using, and a Baby K'tan wrap that I have been using. Maren generally sleeps while one of us is wearing her, and Jeff has been going out for walks with her in the wrap, and I have been practicing wearing her around the house.

I think that this will be an extremely useful tool for us to be able to get things done while keeping Maren close. However, so far it only works for me if she is very sleepy to start with, because otherwise if I put her in that position (held close to my chest) she just wants to nurse. As we get used to this arrangement I imagine I will be able to use it in more situations.

We are starting to understand the unpredictability of life with a newborn. For example, Maren has had some incredible nights of sleep, and some quite poor nights. The night before last she slept for a five hour stretch, was up for about an hour for feeding and changing, then slept another three hours. We were incredibly well rested yesterday. Then last night she had a bout of projectile vomiting probably related to eating more than her little stomach can hold, and gulping down a lot of air. We have been diligent about burping her, but sometimes apparently this projectile vomiting of copious amounts of milk cannot be prevented. After that, she was hungry and restless most of the rest of the night, so I slept very very poorly.

We are working on strategies to manage this, and Jeff is insisting that when I am not sleeping well I wake him up. I have been working under the idea that if I can let Jeff sleep then at least one of us will be well rested, but I think he is right that sometimes it makes sense for him to wake up and take the baby so that I can get a bit more sleep. We will figure it out. In the meantime, we are managing quite well, and still  totally loving being parents :-)

One week old

Maren is now one week old and it is hard to imagine that there was life before this. We have been home from the hospital less than a week, and it seems like no time at all has passed, but also that this has been our life forever. We are so far incredibly lucky in that she has a very sweet temperament and is very easy to soothe. She rarely cries, and when she does it is for a specific reason – she doesn't like diaper changes or having her clothes changed, she cries when she wants to nurse but I am not immediately available, etc. We are getting much more sleep than I thought we would (bedsharing, which I know in controversial but we have taken many precautions and it is working well for us), and although there is plenty of waking in the night, we are figuring things out and it gets more and more manageable and easier by the day.

I have not read or responded to emails, text messages, or Facebook messages since she was born. I will get around to that eventually, so I am sorry if you have been trying to get a hold of me and I have been silent. But I can't imagine wanting to stare at my phone or computer when I could stare at my baby instead :-)

Fashion show - wearing the sweater that I knit just to see if it fits