March for Babies Update

So far, I have two walkers on my team. Unfortunately, the Navy is moving one of my walkers before the walk. Argh. If anyone is in the Jacksonville area and would like to walk on my team please let me know. I would love to have you!! If you would like to sponsor me, please click here.

New Years Resolutions...

I guess you could call them resolutions, but I'm not really into making New Years Resolutions. In my experience, that's a good way to guarantee they don't actually get done. All that to say, over the past year, there were two things I really wanted to do: March for Babies and Race for the Cure. Well, during the March for Babies I was somewhere between seven and eight months pregnant, and my mom pretty much forbade me from walking five miles (Yes, I still listen to my mother.). When the Race for the Cure came around, I was still dealing with what I can only call "New Mother Syndrome." In other words, my world was still turned upside down from the arrival of my bouncing baby boy in June.

All that to say, this year I'm going to do both. Practically speaking, I'm hoping that the knowledge I'm going to have to walk five miles in a few months will inspire me to start walking more now and help me get rid of those few extra pounds Caedmon left behind. From a more heartfelt place, here's why I'm doing this:

March for Babies...it doesn't take much explanation. On June 8, I was blessed with a healthy, happy baby. But for the nine months that he was in my womb, I thought about all that could go wrong. And I thought about all the moms, dads, and babies who face these challenges. And it made me want to do something.

Race for the Cure...I have a cousin who has been fighting breast cancer for so long I can barely remember a time when she wasn't in this battle. She is a daughter. She is a sister. She is a wife. She is a mother to two beautiful children. She is the kind of person who lights up a room and brings out the best in people. She is the most positive person I know, and she remains this way through the struggles of cancer. I want to be a part of the race for curing this terrible thing that takes so many wonderful women (and men) from our lives.

So there you have it. Those are my goals for this year. Oh, and one more. I'm going to try to write on this dang blog more often. :-)

Caedmon Update

Rather than reply to everyone individually, I thought I'd just post what's going on. For the past month, I've been working overtime trying to get Caedmon to gain weight with breastfeeding alone. We've been having problems with this from the beginning (thanks to the Naval Hospitals very liberal policy on supplementing and this anxious new mom's inability to tell them no), but it resurfaced at his 4 month well baby check. He was a whopping 10.5 pounds. So I went to a lactation consultant, where we fixed his position at the breast, started supplementing (myself, not Caedmon), and I started doing some pumping (but I hate pumping and I had a single pump, so I wasn't very vigilant about it). At four and a half months, we had a weight check where he lost an ounce and a half. I had ordered a better pump, so we give that two weeks. So I went to pumping after (almost) every feeding and giving him the pumped milk. So the big results day was yesterday. He gained half an ounce. So to sum it up, he actually lost an ounce over the last month. So now we're supplementing, and I'm slowly processing. I now it's not a huge deal, but when I started I wasn't even planning on giving Caedmon bottles...of anything. And while I don't plan to stop breastfeeding, I don't really see the point of continuing all these efforts to increase my milk supply when we haven't seen any real change. My plate is already full. I need a break. I need a glass of wine. I read in one of my breastfeeding books that there is nothing better than the feeling of watching your baby thrive on your own milk, but they never said anything about what happens when they don't.

Anyway, his next check is in two weeks. Everything else with him is well. He is getting longer, meeting his milestones, and continues to be a little bundle of energy and personality.

Note: Please, please don't let my story discourage you from breastfeeding. I am a rare case, and I'm pretty sure that my case is the result of some poor decisions made by a mediocre healthcare system during the first days of Caedmon's life. Breastfeeding is still the best; it's why I've worked so hard to continue. If you have any questions about breastfeeding, please email me or get in touch with your local La Leche League.

The Scoop on Poop

Caedmon pooped on me yesterday. But when you spent the first two weeks of your baby's life putting suppositories up his bum to get him to poop, you really don't mind if he gets poop on your clean jeans. :-)

Breastfeeding Day

It feels like today has been a holiday for breastfeeding or something. La Leche League meeting in the morning. Lactation consultant in the afternoon. I'm too tired to go into any details, but we're back on the herbal supplements and trying to get the supply up. After listening to Caedmon scream in the backseat during all our travels. I need some quiet time.

Milk Connoisseur and other thoughts...

Caedmon is a milk connoisseur. He prefers his milk fresh from the source and anything else makes him downright pissed. Part of me is proud of this. I think, "That's right. My baby's smart enough to know the good stuff, to know what's best for him, and to accept no substitutes." But then I hear him screaming from two rooms away as I am heading for the church nursery, buzzing parent pager in hand. I know some folks (I just said folks. I think I've been listening to too much Sarah Palin) would say it's the way I parent him, but I just don't agree. Babies are babies, and there's not much you can do about that. They have their own personalities, and they're too young to understand that sometimes you have to bend a little. For example, Caedmon really doesn't understand when I tell him, "Hey Buddy, Mom's going to take you out of this car seat when she gets to Publix in ten minutes." All he knows is that he doesn't like the car seat (for whatever unknown reason that I wish I could fix). I could point out families that have more than one child or multiples, and the fact that they are all raised the same way, yet some are easy and some are high-need.

Which brings me to another point. I have been guilty of this before but I try to watch my wording. So-called "good" babies aren't "good" they are simply easy. Because if those babies are good, that makes my baby bad. And my baby isn't bad, he is "high-need."

Well, I didn't really mean for this to be such a long drawn out post that got into my personal parenting beliefs and philosophies. All I really meant to say is that I have mixed emotions about Caedmon's displeasure with the bottle. Mommy would really like to be able to get leave you with daddy and go get a massage some Saturday, don't cha know?

On a lighter note, love this video...



Note: I guess I should have clarified since my own mom thought that was me and Caedmon in the video above...this is a funny video I ran across on YouTube.

Fisher Price and the ED Stricken Dragonfly

A few reasons why I won't be buying any more Fisher Price products:

Last month, I did something I almost never do. I saw a picture of something in a magazine, decided Caedmon had to have it, read some reviews (I hadn't completely lost it), and went out and bought it all in the same day. That product was the Fisher Price Rainforest Jumperoo. Since I am trying (trying being the operative word) to take a minimalist/natural approach to this whole mothering thing (i.e. wooden and cloth toys rather than plastic and only what we need), I felt really guilty even as I was standing in line to purchase it. Well, it turns out the people in the reviews must have much larger 2 month olds than I did (not surprising since he is in the 40th percentile for length and 10th percentile for weight) because he was way to small for it and just flopped around. But that's all beside the point. Here's where my issue with Fisher Price comes in...the following is from a post I made to the June Firefly group on iVillage not long after I bought it:

The picture on the box of the jumperoo shows the dragonfly standing straight up. When I got it home and assembled it, it just flopped over. Thinking I had a defective firefly, I called Fisher Price. They informed me that they just made it stand up for the picture, it's supposed to flop over. Now, I know this is a small thing, but isn't that false advertising. The firefly looks broke just hanging there, and when you pay as much for a toy as the jumperoo costs, you should get what they advertise it as. I'll be a bit more leery of Fisher Price in the future. For the price they charge, their toys seem a bit cheap looking. Anyway, I hope this helps anyone considering it. I may have bought it anyway, but it would be nice to have known before hand.

Here's what it looks like on the box:



Here's what it actually looks like (by the way, that look is Caedmon wondering why his semi-crunchy mom bought him this obnoxious piece of crap that is probably full of phthalates and BPA):



So there's my experience with Fisher Price. But I've also read more and more that they won't disclose their ingredients and instead try to convince parents that there is nothing wrong with phthalates and BPA (both known hormone disrupters). Here's a link to a blog I read that pretty much cinched my decision to not give any more money to Fisher Price (at least until Caedmon starts asking Santa for the newest Tickle-Me-Elmo...dang you Sesame Street and your combination of educational value and childhood nostalgia):

SafeMama: Boycotting Fisher Price

And that is all I have to say about that.