food

Angus is eating 3 non-breast milk meals a day. Jarred food - I use Earth's Best. I feel mildly guilty about the fact that I fully intended to cook some of his food - but have yet to do so. I bought the damn baby cubes and everything. I think I will make it a goal this week to at least cook SOMETHING for him. The jarred stuff is just so eeeeeeeeeeeasy, and the Earth's Best has no added junk. I do have some slight mistrust of them though. They falsified some info with their formula a while back, and I wonder about their jarred food. I do like the flavors though, and so does Angus - as long as those flavors aren't green. Ha! I am a little stressed out about 10 days from now when he's going to start getting finger food. Actually I'm more stressed out about after that, and for the next 18 or so years when I am the one responsible for feeding him balanced meals. I can barely feed myself a balanced meal. It's going to kind of suck to think about food groups and iron and protein and all that stuff. That seems like a full-time job to me! I think I'm going to have to spend some quality time reading up and learning more about this so I can not worry about it and have some meals in place. I guess that's still a ways away> in the meantime, I look forward to giving him tiny tiny pieces of food! Kiwi, Watermelon, cantalopue, cheese, fun times!

catching up

I feel like I'm always so behind on blogging and that every time I blog I apologize for not doing it often enough. I hope that's a given. Anyway.....Angus is almost 8 months old and he's changed SO much! 1) He's crawling! 2) He has 5 teeth and a 6th arriving any day! He is SO much fun. It's just amazing to let him crawl and decide where he wants to go and what he wants to do. He has his own little mind and personality. It keeps us on our toes - it's a while new ballgame! Gone are the days of us putting him somewhere and having him stay there! He is constantly on the go. We're going to have to get in shape and do a lot of working out in order to keep up with him.

Otherwise - we're doing well - I'm still managing to exclusively breastfeed (he's eating baby food of course). I pump 3X a day at work and my supply has been pretty consistent and I haven't had to unfreeze any bags in a while.

Angus had his first night without me or Johnny last night. Johnny went to Toronto for the film festival and I had to be at a wedding in Vermont, so I dropped him off with the in-laws on Saturday morning. It was very lonely without the both of them and while I enjoyed the thought of sleeping in, and uninterrupted sleep, I was uncomfortable for some reason and I woke bright and early anyway. It was a quiet trip. Driving alone up and down to VT was nice and peaceful. Pre-baby, I spent a fair amount of time alone - walking in the city, or just vegging out. It was nice to have a little taste of that, but the niceness didn't make he miss the boys any less. Angus survived his stay and was happy to see me and seems unscathed! We did have to use a bunch of my frozen milk stash, and that is what's it's for. I still have a few bags left in the freezer, and I pumped a ton this weekend - probably about 6 bottles worth. I actually ran out of medela bottles to put the milk in, so I emptied out an unopened water bottle. It was so funny to see that bottle half full of milk - my milk that I made! I travelled with a big cooler and cooling supplies so that I could pump on the way. I pumped milk on the highway! I was really dreading leaving him with the in-laws, but I am glad it went well and I knew they would take great care of him, but of course I'm going to worry. I'm glad it's over!

SLEEP Part Two

So...sleep training week. We started on a Tuesday - kinda...it was "lite" sleep training. My goal was to fix the problem of Angus being put to bed whilst deeply asleep. He never learnt to go to sleep! So...I merely fed him until he was almost asleep, and then brought him his crib, making sure he was aware and that his eyes were open. He fussed the first couple of nights a little, but that was the start of the training. He still woke up, but not as often, but I did pick him up and bring him back to our bed when he woke up around 2am or so. On Thursday we had a doctor's appt for him, and his pediatrician's office is known for being big advocates of sleep training. Normally I don't think this is a doctor's place, but given that we were trying to figure it out, I gladly listened to their advice.

The advice, was pretty much what we already had read/researched ourselves - 1) no swaddle, just pj's 2) put him down awake but drowsy 3) if he cries, allow him to cry for 5 minutes, then go in for 1-2 minutes max and talk to him, and soothe him, but do NOT pick him up 4) if he's still crying, wait 10 minutes beore returning 5) if he STILL cries, wait another 15 before going in 6) cap it off at 15 minutes, so keep letting him cry in blocks of 15 minutes max.

The first official night of this, probably at the 25 minute mark, he went to sleep. He then woke up at 3am and 5am and we repeated the above process. Around 6 I allowed him to be up. The next night was easier all around. It hardly took him any time to fall asleep, and he only woke up at 5 and then went back to sleep. It's been pretty smooth since then! He went to be tonight quite awake, and he just hung out and fiddled around in his crib for 5-10 minutes and then lay on his side and went to sleep. Last night same thing...no tears at all, and he slept until about 5, when he woke up probably 3X for about 2 minutes each time and put himself back to sleep. I picked him up at 6:30. Magic I tell you! I was SO surprised that this was so easy, and that it wasn't complete torture. He thankfully didn't cry for very long at any point, so it could have been a lot worse. It's also working for naps too! I have noticed that he's a happier baby - less cranky and fussy - not that he was much of either of those things at all, but I am VERY thankful that we did this when we did. I was turning into a zombie! YAY ANGUS!!!

SLEEP Part One

So...I've written here previously that Angus stopped his marathon sleeping sessions a couple of months back. He went from sleeping 10 hours straight, to waking up once, to waking up numerous times. Initially I would just feed him and put him back in his crib. Then I would just bring him to bed with me and let him nurse all he wanted. I would sleep on my side, he would sleep facing me with constant access to the boob. I guess it would be like sleeping on a buffet table! Needless to say, we weren't progressing well. I loved him sleeping next to me all snuggled up and cosy. My husband however, retreated to the couch at the height of this.

We also suffered from a few other problems. #1 - I did what I dubbed "boob to sleep" ie: I would breastfeed him to complete deep sleep and then transfer him to his crib. He would get 30 minutes on one boob, then a burp and a swaddle and singing of twinkle twinkle, then switch to the other boob until he pulled himself off and was in a deep slumber. This was a big problem since he never learned to put himself to sleep. The other issue I believe, is that we were still swaddling him - so it was hard for him to self-soothe using his hands should he so desire. And of course at this point, he should know how to do all those things, plus he no longer requires a nighttime feeding.

So - for some reason this week became sleep-training week!

To be continued....

Breastfeeding on Sesame Street

How amazing is this! We've reverted in acceptance of public breastfeeding for some reason. I don't think this would EVER get on Sesame Street today! Weird, right? Anyway - I should have posted this last week, as it was World Breastfeeding Week, so a little late - but in honor of that, here's an amazing video from Sesame Street in 1977.

executive decision

For the past few months, I have been setting an alarm and getting up to pump in he middle of the night. This was not a problem when Angus was sleeping 10 hours straight, as I would go to bed at 10, wake up around 1 or 2 to pump and go back to bed and still get 3 hours of sleep. Unfortunately for about a month + he has been waking up anywhere between 1 and 4. Most days it seems that I get up to pump, and he either wakes up while I'm still pumping, or a short time after I go back to bed. I'm exhausted. It's really catching up with me. I have made an executive decision to not set an alarm to do this while he's not sleeping through the night. I will probably start again once he starts sleeping better, but right now it's not worth the sleep loss. So... I'm going to stop torturing myself!

WOW. I haven't posted in ages. Does adding my twitter stuff count? Well, it's been a bit nutty. We had a little New Jersey shore beach vacation, and my mom has been in town. Hopefully things will start to improve! Oh yeah, and Angus is still waking up every night (knock on wood as I say this - it's 3am, I am pumping and he is still asleep!). I've been very tired and it's been hard to focus on life, let alone blogging!

Anyway - let me try to catch you up.

Angus: I don't know if it's a growth spurt (he'll be 6 months very soon), or if it's his teeth (has bottom 2, maybe more are coming?) , or if he's just hungry (he is very distracted during his feedings). Whatever it is, I hope it stops! Last night I put him down and he woke up within that hour and then again within the next hour, then at 2am and then I gave up and brought him to bed with me and just let him nurse. I don't mind the "co-sleeping" but sometimes I get scared and worry that he's going to get smothered or something. I try to remain mostly awake and aware of where he is and position any sheets or blankets away from him, but there's always that part of me that worries - but I guess that's good. I am being careful!

Beach: The New Jersey shore is no place for a baby. Actually it was fine...maybe it's no place for a husband! Actually Angus is just way to little for the beach. He needs to be held all the time since we didn't really have anywhere for him to sit and it was windy, so any flat surfaces were very sandy, and I just didn't want to deal with that. (SIDE NOTE - HE'S WAKING UP! I HEAR CRYING!!! OH CRAP). I have to end this here!