8 Weeks

Miss Kate is 8 weeks old today! It's amazing how time flies. For the last several days now she is napping much better! It's amazing! I'm actually having to wake her up from naps for fear of letting her mix up days and nights. It's nice to have a little bit of free time during the day, but that has meant that she's not sleeping through the night anymore. She's getting up around 3:30 am, but it's not too bad, she eats and goes right back down. So I'll take it. Here's a little mini photo shoot I did today, she's so cute and smiley!








I bought some Fenugreek today to try to help with my milk supply. It hasn't been TOO bad, I seem to need one bottle of formula every 2 days or so. So hopefully this will be the added edge I need to keep up with her, and also begin to rebuild my freezer stash.

Two Videos

Here are a couple videos of Kate yesterday and today being really cute, talking, and smiling. Be warned, though, that the second video involves spit up! :)

Slowly Figuring it Out

What a rollercoaster this last week has been. Last weekend was probably the roughest time I've had since Kate has been with us. I learned that oversupply certainly was NOT my problem. For whatever reason, my milk supply just completely dried up Friday and Saturday. I did some reading on it and they say the best way to regain your supply is to basically constantly nurse, so that's what I did. Boy did that suck. By Saturday night, Kate was crying because she was starving and not getting anything, and I was crying through every feeding because it hurt so badly. That day I fed her everything I had in the freezer stash I had built up, but unfortunately I had to resort to giving her a bottle of formula. I cried through that feeding too. But I had no other choice, I wasn't producing enough for her. We gave her a bottle of soy formula because I still had dairy eliminated from my diet, so I wanted to keep that experiment going. Man, I feel sorry for any of you moms who have/had to feed soy. That stuff is NASTY. It smelled awful before it was even consumed, much less how bad it was coming back up! It really makes me appreciate how little breastmilk spit-up stinks. I was in so much pain that I had to take a break from breastfeeding Sunday, and pumped milk every 2 hours, as also suggested to try to increase your milk supply. I did that all day and I only had enough milk that she had to have 2 bottles of formula. But I kept it up, and both Monday and Tuesday I had pumped enough to keep up with her except for one bottle of formula both days. Yesterday, I had enough for every feeding!!! Hallelujah!! I know formula isn't the end of the world, but I'm very committed to making the healthiest choices I can for her, and I will continue to give her breastmilk as long as physically possible.

So, through this whole journey, it made me think about her "symptoms" of a milk protein allergy, and I think it was from hunger. She was crying through every feeding because she wasn't getting enough out of me! So starting with her Monday formula bottle, I gave a milk-based formula. It went great, no problems at all! So I started eating dairy again. YAY!! That was SO hard to go without for a week!! It's amazing how much dairy we consume. I've noticed she is a bit more gassy when I eat dairy, but she doesn't seem to be in pain from it. So I'll try to take it easy on the dairy, but for now it looks like I don't need to cut it out.

It's still stressful trying to get my supply back and all the work involved with pumping every two hours, but it's worth it to know she can get my milk. She has seemed less fussy in the last couple days too, although she isn't napping overly well. I think I've accepted the fact that she's just not much of a napper. She is sleeping GREAT overnight though. She's averaging 7 hours straight, and on Monday night it was 7 hours, 45 minutes!

I have another experiment to run on Kate though. I came over to my parents' house for the day because Jeff had softball, and I had Kate's swing set up for her naps. Amazingly, she took a 2 HOUR nap! I thought I died and went to heaven. When she got up from her nap, she felt nice and cool. At home, she always feels hot when I get her up from the swing. We noticed that where I set it up here at their house, it was right underneath some A/C vents, and where the ceiling fan gets her. At home, the swing sits sort of in a dead spot, underneath a window where the morning sun comes in. I'm going to move it to a cooler area of the house, I haven't figured out where yet, and see if that helps at all.

So I feel like we're slowly starting to figure things out. Everything with a baby is SUCH trial and error! But it's very rewarding when you start to get it right. This last week, or really the last couple weeks, were so stressful though, I just want to decompress for a while. I really look forward to the weekends when I can just be home with Jeff and enjoy Kate together.

A Couple Pictures

I don't have much to report, but I wanted to come post a couple pictures we snapped tonight. I'm on day 3 (or 4?) of no dairy, so far it is going well. I haven't noticed a change in Kate, but as they say, it can take up to 10-14 days to notice a difference. My appointment with the lactation consultant went well, but basically all we diagnosed is that we have problems... Lots of them. I think it's a combination of about 5 different things wrong with both her and me. She gave me some therapy games with Kate to improve her function, so hopefully those will help.

Anyway, we got the first smile Kate let us capture on camera tonight.



Such a cutie! And because it's so rare that I'll actually do my hair and makeup lately, a picture of the two of us.

Cutting out Dairy

I've had several people (thanks Elin!) Suggest that Kate's problem might be dairy related, so now that she's been on the Prevacid a week... and while we've seen results, there are still definite problems going on... I'm moving on to dairy. This is going to be HARD. Dairy is in EVERYTHING! It's not going to be fun, but I just want poor little Kate to feel better. Some others have suggested that it might be an oversupply/overactive letdown problem with breastfeeding, so I looked at the symptoms of both, and here's what I found:

Oversupply / overactive letdown:

* Gag, choke, strangle, gulp, gasp, cough while nursing as though the milk is coming too fast CHECK
* Pull off the breast often while nursing CHECK
* Clamp down on the nipple at let-down to slow the flow of milk MAYBE?
* Make a clicking sound when nursing CHECK
* Spit up very often and/or tend to be very gassy CHECK
* Periodically refuse to nurse
* Dislike comfort nursing in general

Symptoms of a food allergy:

If a breastfed baby is sensitive to a particular food, then he may be fussy after feedings, CHECK cry inconsolably for long periodsCHECK, or sleep little and wake suddenly with obvious discomfortThis is the BIGGEST red flag for me, this is SO her during the daytime. There may be a family history of allergies. Other signs of a food allergy may include: rashShe has red zit-like bumps on her chest... is that rash?, hives, eczema, sore bottom, dry skin; wheezing or asthma; congestion or cold-like symptomsShe's been congested since 3-4 weeks old; red, itchy eyes; ear infections; irritability, fussiness, colic; intestinal upsets, vomitingShe used to vomit daily until we started Prevacid.. Now she hasn't vomited since., constipation and/or diarrhea, or green stools with mucus or blood.

So many of the symptoms overlap! How on earth are you supposed to know which one it is?? I'm glad I have an appointment with a Lactation Consultant tomorrow. She should have some helpful information for me.

I really hope it's not a dairy thing - I can't imagine giving up dairy for a year! It's a staple of my diet!

Kate crashed last night around 10 pm and slept until 5:30 am. While that was nice, I'd gladly give that up and get up in the middle of the night and have a happy baby who will nap during the day. Today is shaping up to be much like yesterday - I just got her down for a nap, but she's already awake again 30 minutes later. AARRRGG!

Another Bad Day

Kate is refusing to nap again today. I can tell she's overtired, and the only thing that's pacifying her is nursing. Which isn't going to cut it. We are stuck in a vicious cycle. She wants to eat, so I let her, but she falls asleep on me, I lay her down, she wakes up 20 minutes later wanting to "eat" again. She's using me as a pacifier, which I need to stop right now. Today, she's been nursing every hour and a half or so, which I KNOW is too much. There's no way she's hungry. I'm not sure what's wrong, but at our last "feeding," she SCREAMED every time I sat her up to burp. It was at that point I swaddled her, put her in her swing, and walked away. I can't take it anymore. Thankfully she's not crying right now and just sitting in her swing calmly, but who knows how long it'll last. I just don't get why she won't sleep. She'll take the pacifier sometimes, but others she wants nothing to do with it.

I talked to the Pediatrician yesterday about how Kate's reflux symptoms are improving, but only slightly, and they said I could increase her dosage, so today is our first day of the higher dosage. I hope it makes her feel better. She's spitting up a little bit less, but not much... But the biggest improvement is that she hasn't projectile vomited since starting the Prevacid. But several times a day I can tell that she's in pain from the reflux - crying, coughing, gagging, arching her back, etc.

We are going to see a lactation consultant on Thursday. For about two weeks now we've had a problem with Kate's latch. I've been trying different things to fix it, but I haven't been able to, and don't know what else I can do. So hopefully they can help me fix it. Maybe they'll have some suggestions for me as well on how to break Kate's cycle of overeating and not sleeping? Who knows.

My First Smile!

This was a big weekend - Kate's first overnight trip, and my first smile from her! We spent Saturday night at my parents' house. I figured it would be a good first overnight trip because they live in town and we wouldn't have to travel too far, and would be close to home in case it was a disaster. All in all it went pretty well! It's nice to have that big hurdle out of the way. I'm scared to death of a trip any further than their house though... Because her patience in the car seat lasts about 45 minutes to 1 hour, and then she has had ENOUGH and lets you know. I'm not sure how I'd deal with a couple hours of her screaming. But we'll have to cross that bridge later. Maybe the older she gets, the more tolerant she'll become??

Anyway, for Father's Day I dressed Kate in a new outfit she hadn't worn before. It is SO cute! And.. Big girl, it's a 3 month outfit!





Here is Kate with her Daddy on his first Father's Day!



Then, best of all, yesterday afternoon we had Kate lying on the floor while I was running around the house packing up our stuff to go home. My mom was laying on the floor with her. Then I came over, and kneeled over her and started taking to her... And then she SMILED at me!!! At first I thought it could have been a fluke, but then she smiled 2 more times as I talked to her. I totally teared up and melted.

Then she turned her head and looked at my mom, and gave her a smile!! My mom ran and grabbed her camera and we actually got one on video!

They say babies can have their first social smiles at 6 weeks, so I guess she's right on time!