Out of Avalon

July 10th, 2010 by Ascelyn

I haven’t updated here in months.  That’s because of a twisted combination of caring for an infant (e.g., my adorable, squishy little time suck) and being laid off from my job.  Unfortunately, the Rocket Factory didn’t see fit to provide me with continuing computer and internet access after my job got cut.  It’s hard to write with neither an extra set of hands to make sure the Moose doesn’t fall off the piano bench nor a web connection through which to send my binary bits of bloggy goodness

In summary:  Mini-moose is now nearly 9 months old, is sitting up like a champ but not yet crawling, loves hanging out with friends and visiting his fan club at the farmer’s market, has two bottom teeth, loves food, and has severe allergies.

Oh yes, the allergies.  We figured out two on our own:  cats and eggs.  Much of the eczema, spitting up, and constant stuffiness had been banished simply by avoiding cats, and a blood test confirmed our suspicions.  Eating the tiniest possible bit of scrambled egg resulted in three hours of inconsolable screaming, followed by hives, a hugely swollen left ear, depressed respirations, and his lips and fingers turning blue.  Not something I’d ever like to repeat, thank you very much.

To this list, please add dairy products, wheat, rye, barley, oat, peanuts, soy, and corn.  The good news is that all the fruits for which he’s been tested, as well as all non-corn veggies and all meats, are safe.  He might grow out of some of his allergies as he gets older, but in the meantime, the two allergy attacks in the last week mean that he probably has other which we’ve not yet uncovered.  I have to admit that it’s frightening, and I’m constantly worrying that someone will decide to “spoil him a little” and slip him something that could—fine, I’ll say it—kill my beautiful, bright-eyed son.

Eating the way I’ve always eaten, and eating out pretty much at all, is no longer possible.  On the bright side, this has finally propelled me into eating healthier and introducing a greater variety of foods into our diet as a family.  Whether I want to or not, very nearly everything we eat now has its beginnings in my kitchen as the most basic single ingredients.  Moose is eating better from his very first foods than I had in the first twenty-four years of my life.

Stay tuned.  As I delve deeper into this crazy new world of food allergies, I’ll be updating this space with what’s working and not working.  Recipes!  Reviews!  Reactions of a hungry little man and his finicky father!  Baking is looking to be a particular challenge, but I doubt it’s insurmountable.

If nothing else, I’ve lost ten pounds just by eating my veggies at long last and not gorging myself on tasty, tasty chocolate treats at work.  Care to join?

April 5th, 2010 by Ascelyn

And the Moose.  That’s kind of a given.

We’ve settled into a more acceptable pattern by now.  Mikey sleeps better than he did, and if you ignore a few additional weeks of sleep deprivation thanks to a fever and the havoc it wreaked long-term on his sleeping patterns, he rarely wakes more than once during the night.  In the morning, I get myself ready, wake him and feed him, then change his diaper.  By then, J is, at least in theory, ready to put him into his clothes for the day and insert him into the baby carrier while I finish packing his bottles into the lunchbox and, if necessary, his diapers and changes of clothes.  J takes him to daycare, I head off to work, and in the evening I pick him up and take him home.  J may or may not make it home at a semi-reasonable hour.  I wash clothes, cook dinner, pick up the house, or do other necessary chores while baby-wrangling, and J is supposed to wash and fill bottles and pump parts for the next day.  That doesn’t necessarily always work, and three bottles of sour milk have been cried over on Monday mornings when the lunch box has been forgotten and left unpacked over the weekend.  That’s something like two or three hours of work right there, people.  Empathize with me a little.

Moose remains the singular happiest baby I have ever met.  He has eczema we’d hoped could be attributed to a milk protein allergy, but cutting all dairy out of my diet hasn’t had any effect on that or several of his other symptoms.  It has, on the other hand, filled me with angst and misery by taking yogurt, pizza, grilled cheese, most subs, mashed potatoes made anywhere other than my house, mac & cheese, ice cream (ICE CREAM, people), and everything else that is good in the world and not made of meat off my plate.  Or bowl, as the case may be.  Did you see the part where I can’t have ice cream?

This insanity will end in ten days when the good and wise doctor who values his life informs me that I can return to my previous yogurt and cheese (and ice cream!) habits.

Michael, on the other hand, had his first solid food at his Grandma and Granddad’s house yesterday during Easter lunch.  Apparently he is fond of bananas.  After all, they go in his mouth, and he is quite enthralled with anything that can potentially be put in his mouth.  He’s been trying to grab our food and dining gear for a while now, and while I’d intended to wait until 6 months, he was only a week shy of that supposedly miraculous date.  I’m a little concerned because he seems to have inherited my allergies, but we’ll wait and see.  Not that I’m sure what would differentiate a food allergy from his typical rashy, congested self, but I guess I’m supposed to have some magical mom sense.

And beyond that, I’m not really certain what else to say.  My little guy, like most others, I suppose, isn’t a person easily summed up in words.  He’s bigger than that.  You have to experience him.  I think this is best accomplished via a good diaper changing, so make sure you schedule your moose-y experience in the near future.

February 8th, 2010 by Ascelyn

I am not going to complain.

I am not going to recount the last month or so, however long it’s been, of the baby’s life.

I am not going to spend the evening with my husband and child.

I am not going to do many things.  Including sleep.  I’m too tired.  Well, not too tired to sleep, but instead I have to stay at work late, then go home and wash diapers, prep bottles for tomorrow at daycare, wash clothes for tomorrow at work, and doubtless many other things I just can’t think of right now.  I might finally get to bed by midnight, but I’ll have to wake up at least once, maybe twice, hopefully not every hour like last night, before getting up for good by six at the latest.  I’ll definitely get to listen to my husband complain about how tired he is.  You know, that guy who stays super late every night, goes to bed before me, wakes up after my day has gotten well underway, and doesn’t even notice when I get up to feed and change the baby.

So tired.

The house is a disaster zone.  I still have one very important thank you note to write, but because I want to do it right, it hasn’t been done at all.  The grandparents are whining because they don’t get to see the Moose enough.  I don’t get to see him enough.  Everyone says babies change and grow so fast.  I guess that’s true, but I haven’t been there to see it.

I hate being here, at work, and I hate the constant questions from my coworkers, acquaintances, and random strangers of why I’m not at home.  It’s the judgment in their eyes that gets me.  Looks from the females that say, I would do/am doing it differently.  From the males that remind me, My wife stays at home, because she considers our children to be more important than a career.  Because I know why I’m not at home, but it’s not a reason I ought to go into here.  I also know that it’s not going to change, and that makes me mad.  I wish I had the energy to be mad.  I wish I had help so I would have energy.  If I can’t have those things, I wish I at least had a job I would consider a career.  This is just a job.  It’s interesting work, but I’m not particularly good at it, and I have no real desire to move up and no real place to move up into.  Meanwhile, my son grows up, apart from me.  It makes me sad to keep telling myself that I can do Thing X in mid-February and Thing Y in April, when by then I will have missed months more that I’ll never get back.  Months where he’s growing so fast and changing literally every day.

Now I have SCA people poking at me and wanting to know why I haven’t signed up to help with various up-and-coming events.  I’ll do it sometime after I sleep.  And maybe eat.  I would like to eat again someday.  I would like to have clean pants to wear.  I would like to spend time with my beautiful baby boy.  But I’m essentially called a freeloader and told I must not value the barony because I don’t have time to come to meetings that are hours away on weeknights and because I don’t sign up to work all day in positions where I wouldn’t have a chance to leave and feed, change, interact with my Mini-moose.  Because my priorities apparently aren’t straight.

I said I wasn’t going to complain.  Trust me, this isn’t even the shade of a complaint compared to what I have stored up.

Perhaps later I will post happy things.  If I’m not too tired.

December 23rd, 2009 by Ascelyn

J has decided that Michael Needs. A. Stocking.  Right now.  This after he had originally agreed that we might as well wait until next year when (a) the kid would actually care and (b) I would have a functional sewing machine on which to make a rockin’ stocking.  Instead, we have to run around town two days before Christmas to find a stocking.  A stocking into which we have no stocking-y gifts to place.

The tree, on the other hand–the first tree we’ve had since we’ve been together–is decorated, and gifts have been placed under the care of its verdant limbs.  Unwrapped gifts, for the most part, since J’s gift is part his new grill and part a framed picture for his desk at work that may or may not be ready in time.  Mikey’s gifts are unwrapped and apparently “boring,” mostly consisting of books, useful items we’d need soon anyway, and three outfits.  We did get him two or three small toys, like a trio of soft stacking blocks, but nothing flashy.  Oh, and the baby signing kit I wanted!  That’s for both of us, I suppose, but I had to keep myself from opening it when it first arrived.

I guess I should eventually get around to putting away the boxes the ornaments were packed in.  The sheet the tree sat on needs washed, and the plastic netting trashed, and needles vacuumed.  Oh, and I need to get a picture of our baby into his first Christmas ornament instead of the default child that comes with it.  Ours is cuter.  Hmmph.

Tomorrow we got to J’s sister’s house for Year 2 of our Christmas Eve extravaganza.  I voted for moving it to our house this year, since C’s is teeny-tiny (as in, meant to be a two-person hunting lodge; you have to step over people constantly) and V’s is so new and shiny that it doesn’t really have anything in it yet.  We have space and stuff, including a twin bed and a crib for my nephew and niece, a nice TV for the movie-watching, and a decent kitchen for making the meal.  Oh, and a place for me to retreat and nurse the baby instead of having to go out to the car, since not only is there nowhere to sit at C’s and no extra rooms, but several people also get squicked out by the idea of breastfeeding and I can’t sew my nursing cover until I get my new machine.  Which will be a day later.

Still, it was a lot of fun last year, and I’m looking forward to continuing our turkey-eating tradition, a tradition which, unlike Thanksgiving, doesn’t involve any form of parents/grandparents or driving from one house to another and is therefore fun instead of stressful.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

December 18th, 2009 by Ascelyn

My first week at work is almost over.  Granted, it was a strange week–a half day Monday and Thursday off because Certain People who had promised to watch the baby ended up backing out for those times.  Still, while work itself isn’t too bad, I hate leaving in the mornings and am so sorry in the evenings that I missed having the time with Michael.

It made spending all day with him yesterday all the sweeter, though.  At least until this morning, when I fed him just before I left.  He finished and was grinning and babbling at me, but by the time I was on my way out the door, he was wailing.  I felt like I was abandoning him.  At home with J, he’ll have one-on-one attention and be held and cuddled.  At daycare, I’m afraid he’ll just be left in his crib alone all day.  I know for certain that he would at most of the places I checked; they told me that very plainly.  I don’t think he will be at the one where he’ll be going, but the prospect still worries me.

If I were to stop working here, I’d probably start watching another baby at home.  Sure, I wouldn’t make as much money as the people who are at full capacity, but I’d know I was taking good care of him or her, and I hope that would make the other parents feel comfortable.  One person can care for–not just have around, but actually care for–two babies.  I just don’t see how they can really take care of two infants and six preschoolers.  Then when the other baby and my own have both turned two or three and are out of diapers and not requiring super-constant hands-on care, I could start watching another child or two.

J’s been working like crazy, usually long into the night after we’ve gone to bed.  I’m really glad he’s getting to spend the next two weeks with his son.  He’s never been alone with him for more than the amount of time it takes me to get a shower before.  Honestly, though, it still worries me immensely that I have three CVD runs in the next three weeks, and that sort of a schedule is only going to get worse.  Who’s going to watch Michael while we’re away…all day, and possibly all night?  I wish I had a better idea of how things were going to go.  He shouldn’t be working that much anyway, and my schedule should have evened out years ago.

November 29th, 2009 by Ascelyn

We moved the pack & play out into the loft Wednesday so that it would be easier for me to do diaper changes in the middle of the night without turning on the light in our room.The light from the closet was sufficient while I could still use the changing table attachment, but now that he’s too heavy for it, I was having trouble seeing down into the bassinet part thanks to the shadows.

It’s much more convenient set-up.  He’s also started sleeping for five or six hours through the night, only waking once to eat.  At this rate, he’ll be down in his own room in the crib by Christmas.  Yay!

November 23rd, 2009 by Ascelyn

Our little Mini-moose will be six weeks old tomorrow.  Supposedly, I’m now healed up enough to return to work and he’s plenty old to be cared for by a complete stranger for the majority of the day.

Riiiight.

Dr. W wrote me a note giving me two more weeks off work since I’m not fully healed yet and can’t physically do my job, so I’m off until at least Dec. 7th.  I’m supposed to call the daycare centers we checked out today and let them know whether or not he’s coming and if so, when.  J is taking the weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years off to try to burn up some of his PTO before it disappears, leaving a two-week gap between my return and his being off until the beginning of January.  My mother can cover the second week of that gap, so if we could find someone to watch the baby for the first week, it would save us from having to pay for daycare for the weeks of Christmas and New Years even if he doesn’t go.

The question now is whether or not he’ll be going at all.

In a perfect world, I would get to stay home with him.  In a perfect world, I’d have the alternate choice of getting to work part time and be home the rest, keeping my foot in the door while spending plenty of time with our son.  Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and I’m not sure what to do.

I have a completely useless degree in biology, useless because there are no jobs in my field in this area.  I’m working as an engineering tech because at least it’s a science/technical job for which I’m qualified, though I’ll never be able to work as a full engineer because of having the wrong degree.  These are the times I mock myself for dropping the physics half of my double major when I transferred, thinking it would be useless.  There’s only one place in the area with any sort of technical jobs, and that’s the Rocket Factory.  If I quit now, will they ever hire me back again?  I certainly won’t be able to get a job down in my building, and since I pretty much despise the company itself, I don’t know if I’d want a job not with my current team.  They’ll have to fill my position as soon as I leave, though, so having a new position for a tech (of which there are very few on plant anyway) just when I’m ready to return would be close to a miracle.  I’d planned to continue working now basically because I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get a job locally when I wanted to return if I quit.

Then again, daycare, extra gas money (we’d have to drive separate to be able to drop off and pick up within the daycare’s allotted times, and the better of the places we’ve found that is currently accepting infants is half an hour away, adding about two hours of extra driving per day), meals out, extra bottles and bags for pumping, more expensive cloth diapers (pockets only vs. mostly prefolds here), and likely even more copays for doctor’s appointments when he gets sick more frequently…they all add up.  It would easily cost over half my salary.  I’d pretty sure I’d be working for less than minimum wage.  If we have another child before this one’s in school full time, I’d be working just to pay to have the two of them in daycare.  I’d have to quit, placing me right back where I currently worry I’d be with not having somewhere to go when I return to work.  Why wait a few years when it’s going to happen anyway?

All my dreams of having a child revolve around getting to actually be with him.  With J working insane hours (a 24-hour shift followed by three hours at home before having to return??) and my needing to do the same once the reactor’s running full time, someone else would essentially be raising him.  I don’t say that to bash normal daycare arrangements, but he’d be in someone else’s care the majority of the day.  I want to be the one to teach my child about the world, about right and wrong, not someone else.

Today we’re going shopping for Christmas gifts and decorations for our first “real” Christmas, but we’re also going to have to make a big decision.  I hope we make the right one.

November 19th, 2009 by Ascelyn

I’ve been meaning to post.  Really, I have.  I’ve had things to say, though they might just be sleep-deprived inanities.  But still.  They were things.

The baby’s one-month doctor’s appointment was today.  It was uneventful, except that the doc is suddenly wondering about the hematomas.  Yes, they’ve calcified.  Yes, they’re still quite visible.  You weren’t concerned when I tried to contact you about them while they were still growing rapidly, so I asked other people, and they’ve said this is normal.  Thanks a lot.

He’s now 10 lbs 4 oz and 22.5″ long.  That places him in the 50th percentile for weight and head circumference and the 75th for height.  He’s my long, lean baby boy.

I asked about his spit-up issues, and they immediately wanted to know how much I was feeding him at a time.  Like I know.  He’s breastfed.  They seemed shocked…kind of like the nurse filling out the questionaire at the ob/gyn on Tuesday, who wanted to know what kind of formula he was using, not whether or not he was using formula at all.

The most exciting thing that’s happened lately is his sudden ability to eat “properly,” without the shield.  One day he couldn’t, and the next he could.  My mom’s wonderful coworker, the nursing instructor for the maternity and pediatric classes at the college and mother of kids I used to babysit, helped me out.  I think he likes her.  I shouldn’t be so proud that I can finally feed my son at one month the way that most mothers can feed their babies at one day, but I really am.  Of both of us.

Other than that, there’s little to say.  He’s growing quickly, eating and sleeping and pooping like babies are wont to do.  I ordered the first of his cloth diapers a few days ago, and FedEx is reporting that they’re sitting on my front porch as we speak.  He got a sample pack of five one-size pocket diapers (bumGenius 3.0, Happy Heinies, Rump-a-rooz G2, Fuzzi Bunz, and Rocky Mountain), two Thirsties Duo Wraps, and a dozen DSQ Chinese prefolds.  That should get us started while I see which, if any, work best.  I’m planning to use the prefolds for daycare and at night and the covers and prefolds at home to save some money.  Hopefully I’ll miraculously learn how to sew and make some fitted or contour diapers myself, since they’re rather expensive.

Now if I could only heal properly, life would be excellent.  But that’s another post for another day.

November 7th, 2009 by Ascelyn

Fenugreek, anise, and coriander, among other things, should never be combined as a tea.

November 3rd, 2009 by Ascelyn

I haven’t written in a while.  I feel lame, since this is the time I should probably record more than any other thus far, but I’ve been a little busy.  Just a little.

Michael is three weeks old today.  He’s big and thriving, and other than the typical newborn stuff, he’s a very easy baby.  He loves being held, but he’s starting to be more and more willing to let us put him down.  Right now, for example, he’s sleeping in his bouncer while I rock it with my foot so that I can have my hand free to type.  For the first week or so, he refused to be put down in his crib, swing, bouncer, you name it.

I’m going to try to make a series of posts over the next few days to catch up, but I might as well start at the beginning, which is the end.  Of pregnancy, that is.  By the time 39 weeks rolled around, I was huge and uncomfortable and DONE with being pregnant.  By 40 weeks, I was getting a tad impatient.  I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move around properly, couldn’t get anything accomplished.  I was off work but could barely do dishes (my big belly kept me from getting close to the sink, so I had to lean over it, which hurt my back) and had to kneel on the ground to get clothes in and out of the washer and dryer.  By 41 weeks, Doc W was planning to induce, and I was starting to feel a bit desperate.  I had an appointment on October 13th at 11:30 to be examined and schedule the induction.  It would have been the 12th, but he had to go out of town for an emergency, so I was quickly seen by another doctor, rescheduled for the next day, and sent over to L&D for a routine non-stress test just in case.

I had been having very mild, very sporadic contractions all day, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up.  After all, I was still only dilated to 2, partially effaced, and the contractions barely showed up on the monitor.  The NST gave the baby and me a shiny clean bill of health, and we were sent home.  Jason wanted cookies, so I baked and made a mess of the kitchen while he wiped the hard drive on my laptop and reinstalled Windows.  I wanted to keep on my feet as much as possible just in case the contractions might someday amount to something.  I eventually read a book in bed while he played with the computer in our room.  He refused to come to bed until after midnight, so I was a tad irritated at not being able to sleep with the lights on and him moving around.

Sleep was difficult even then because I kept having to get up and run to the bathroom every twenty or thirty minutes.  That ended around 3:00, when the baby seemed to decide that my cervix was a punching bag and hit me hard five times, followed by the most intense, longest contraction I think I’ve ever felt.  My water broke quickly thereafter, and the race was on.

I jumped out of bed quicker than I thought possible and ran to the bathroom.  Eventually I changed into jeans and a t-shirt and started throwing the few remaining necessities into my bag.  By the time I got downstairs and managed to get shoes on my feet, my water broke a second time.  I was soaked.  Since that was my last clean pair of maternity pants, I ended up going to the hospital in bright red pajama pants, a polo shirt, brown work shoes, and socks that I didn’t realize until far too late were jacked up ridiculously high.  We arrived around 4:30 a.m.

Our hospital doesn’t allow women to preregister, so I had to attempt to answer questions and fill out routine paperowrk between contractions.  Did I mention that my contractions had been coming about a minute apart since my water initially broke?  The paperwork never did get fully filled out.  My plans to stay at home for a long time, take a nice hot shower, use the jacuzzi, and stay active didn’t quite materialize.  I went from 2 cm upon arrival at the hospital to fully dialated and pushing by 8:00–about three and a half hours.  The nurses went from laughing at me for refusing the epidural they’d already ordered and Pitocin drip they’d tried to set up to amazed.  I never even had an IV.  Things seemed to be going amazingly well.

Then labor came to a stand-still.  Pushing took as long as dialating did.  The nurses kept telling me that they could feel the head and would call the doctor after one more push, but for some reason they didn’t for hours.  When he finally was called, he came quickly and determined that Michael was facing upward and stuck.  He tried to turn him, but there wasn’t room and Michael wouldn’t budge.  The anesthesiologist was called back to the hospital and a room was set up for a c-section.  Thankfully, I love Dr. W for a reason, and he tried one last time to turn the baby.  This time, he was successful, and despite reservations that the shoulders might not deliver properly, Michael was born at 11:37 that morning–right on time for what should have been my appointment to schedule his induction.

Apparently the poor kid has inherited his parents’ tendency to wait until the last minute for everything.  Nothing short of an impending induction and c-section would get him out.

The pain was never close to unbearable, although my back hurt horribly and I wanted to cry when they kept making me try to lay on my left side to get him to move down more.  I assumed it was the same backache I’d had for weeks, from being so off balance, but I wish the nurses would have listened and realized that it was because he was turned wrong.  I wish they would’ve called the doctor much earlier so that he could’ve been turned higher, where there was more room.  I was more exhausted than anything and not even really feeling the contractions anymore.  I could ignore them because I was so tired.  I hadn’t slept in two days and had been pushing for three hours, so I guess it wasn’t an unreasonable complaint.

His Apgars were 9 at both one and five minutes, and he was pink and screaming from the moment he was born.  People in both L&D and the nursery commented on how healthy he looked–more like an older baby than a newborn.

I had a second-degree tear, so they took the baby to the other side of the room to get him cleaned up while the doctor stitched me.  Jason stayed with the baby, at my request.  He had passed some meconium, so they wanted to take him to the nursery instead of letting him stay with me like I’d wanted.  I’d not yet even had a chance to see him up close, so one nice nurse finally let me hold him for a few seconds and attempt to nurse.  Since a few seconds was literally all I had, total, it didn’t work out.  He was taken away, and when pressed, they told me he’d be back in about half an hour.  They didn’t even want to tell me that and kept saying that it wouldn’t take long at all, but I wanted a concrete estimate.

Two hours later, I still hadn’t seen my baby and was getting worried that something was wrong.  My parents and brother had come and left to see him, but I still hadn’t gotten more than those few seconds.  I had just been left, alone, in the delivery room.  My mother came back and then left again to see why they hadn’t brought him back, and eventually a nurse came in and told me to get a shower.  I wouldn’t get to see him until I was showered and moved to the other side of the floor, to the postpartum area.

I settled into my new room and waited again.  Finally, Jason wheeled Michael in and we were given a few moments with him, though my family was still in the room playing paparazzi.  I kicked my father and brother out after a few moments and my mom helped me try to nurse him.  I was only partially successful, but after an hour or so he seemed to be content, and I’d promised him we could both take a nap.  He’d been given a bottle of formula in the nursery because he blood sugar was slightly low, so he was still pretty full from that.  (I still want to know why they didn’t let me try to nurse him, since it wasn’t by any means an emergency.)  At that point, the first and worst of the bad nurses arrived.  She looked at my chart, saw I intended to breastfeed, and asked if I had yet.  I told her that I’d tried and had fed him a little.  She decided I needed to nurse again right then and rolled me on my side to make me try.  I told her I’d already fed him and just needed to sleep.  She kept pushing, and I eventually started crying and couldn’t talk.  She then picked the baby up, told him that apparently his mother didn’t feel like taking care of him right then, and left, telling the other nurses and students outside the door that I must not really want to breastfeed and that they might as well mark Mikey down as a formula baby right then.  Jason retrieved him from the nursery for me and I slept a while before feeding him again.  I was stubborn and refused to call to ask for any  help with anything until her shift was over.

There were okay parts and bad parts for the next two days, but I was grateful when we left.  I asked a few times for help feeding him, but no one ever came.  He would latch on fine, suck two or three times, and then pull away.  This would go on and on, frustrating us both.  Finally, I ambushed a nurse who came in for something else, and she determined that he was pulling his tongue back in his mouth instead of laying it flat because of when they’d suctioned his mouth out after birth.  She brought me a nipple shield and helped me latch him on.  Unfortunately, she didn’t tell me that you’re only supposed to use it for a minute or so, then take it off and try without, so I’m still trying to wean him off the shield.  Don’t even get me started on the one and only lactation consultant in the area, who works for WIC (tell you something about our town?) and only wants to repeat her four or five points of info that I already know instead of listening and helping.  Everyone in an official capacity just wants to tell me that it’s okay if I have to use it, and please don’t stop using it if it means he doesn’t eat!!  Duh.  I haven’t.  That’s why he gained weight back so quickly.  But it’s annoying to need to carry it around with me, has promoted a lazy latch in my baby, takes much longer to nurse using, and apparently is known to cause women’s supply to drop off long before they want it to.  We’re working on it.

The first few days at home were both great and hard.  I think I pushed myself too hard, especially when we had visitors, and I backtracked in my healing.  I could barely walk and had to sleep downstairs in the baby’s room, away from either the internet or my books in the basement when I had questions.  At three weeks, I’m still not healed anywhere near where I think I ought to be, but I can do steps again, pick things up off the ground, and don’t need a stool to climb into bed.  I’ll get there, I guess.  I just wish that day would come sooner.

Our little moose is waking up, so I’ll go feed him and try to figure out where J is so I can start dinner afterward.

October 13th
11:37 am
8 lbs 15.4 oz
21.5″