Well…if I hadn’t switched to the beta version of Blogger today, thinking it was a good idea at the time (I was swayed by the promise of more options. I like my options like I like my shoes–the more the better) you would be seeing a picture of the baby swing that we bought this past week (can I just say BEST $100 I have EVER spent?!!!) but apparently in the new Beta version of this, you can’t post pictures…at least not yet anyway. So that’s why you’re not seeing a picture of the fabulous Ocean Cradle Swing thing that is my new best friend.

We originally had held off on the baby swing because I just wasn’t sure that it was something we would end up using. However? Once the Boy didn’t have his days and nights mixed up anymore and was sleeping for 4 to 5 hours at a stretch at night, (Trust me, I am totally aware of how lucky I am on this one) he stopped sleeping during the day for any stretch longer than about an hour at a time. Which wouldn’t be a problem at all, except that yeah, I’ve got other things I need to be doing around the house and I was about to be ready to drive myself to the psych ward because I was thisclose to going around the bend from not being able to get anything else done around the house. Those people who tell you to just let the house go and just sit and enjoy your baby and that the housework will wait? Well, they’re stronger people than I could ever be. I love the little tyrant who rules the roost, but honestly, if my kitchen floor is dirty and in serious need of being mopped, I have to succumb to the urge to clean it or I develop some seriously unattractive nervous tics and twitches until I can get it done (just imagine Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man needing his daily Wapner fix and you’re pretty close).
The Swing (insert heavenly theme music here) has solved this problem and saved me from having to go on anti-anxiety meds strong enough to bring down a large moose. The Boy actually sleeps for THREE BLESSED HOURS AT A STRETCH (oh, wait, was I too excited about that?) in the swing at a time. Yesterday? I was able to mop the entire kitchen floor AND then? I DID THE DISHES. I know, not things you would normally get excited over, but really, it’s the little things that do it for me. I even had enough time left over before the Boy woke up to do a few ‘Me’ project related things as well. It is amazing what just a few tweaks and changes can do to make motherhood a little more enjoyable. After all, a happy well-adjusted (not medicated to the gills) mamma makes for a happy Boy.
Is it bad though, that I’ve figured out a way to prop up the Boy on a Boppy on my lap so he can nurse and I can type two-handed at the same time?

Saturday was the big 30 birthday which snuck up and bit me like a rattlesnake in the grass just waiting to sink its teeth into your juicy calf. I’m not thrilled to be 30 but it isn’t for all of the typical reasons. I don’t really care about being another year older and wrinkles and grey hair don’t bother me. Plus I figure that this is the part of my life where I’ll actually appreciate having oily skin–longer to get wrinkles, not that the wrinkles will bother me when they eventually show up en masse as well (no thanks to being really fair and all those years that I faithfully worshipped the sun without 45+ spf sunscreen…whoops).
I’ve really had to think about why turning 30 bothered me so much (a fact which my dear husband, who only turns 29 in less than a month, has made sure to remind me of multiple times. I respond by telling him that he’s going to die first and alot sooner than anticipated if he isn’t careful). I think that what it finally comes down to is that I don’t want my 30’s to go as fast as my 20’s seemed to. I don’t mind getting older, but it seems like life is on the fast forward button too often for me and I would like the chance to slow things down and savor them a little more than I currently do. I stil have so much that I want to do, to experience and all too often I feel like I’m not going to get to everything. I guess that’s my goal for the next decade–to remember that it does go too quickly and that I need to slow down and appreciate it. And that I’m liberal with the 45+ spf sunscreen if there will be sun involved. Better late than never.

The entire time that I was pregnant (and even before that really) it was always a given that I would breastfeed my children. I figured what better way to feed my baby–just attach the baby on to the nipple and away you go. We could bond while I nourished my baby. What could be easier (than not having to get up to fix a bottle of formula at 2am)? This was before I actually had the baby and before my entire self worth for the day would hinge on 2 ounces.
Don’t get me wrong-I really do enjoy breastfeeding and for all intents and purposes (depending on the day) I really am a happy lactator, happy to feed the boy on constant demand. Some days though I have to wonder if it wouldn’t have been easier on myself and the boy if we had just gone the formula route.
The groundwork for the stress had been laid in the hospital when the really intense lactation nurse made me feel that my child was going to waste away to nothing and that I needed to get nourishment into my child by whatever means necessary, even going so far as to try to pump my colostrum and feed it by syringe to the baby. Just having gone through the most intense, physically exhausting experience of my life and already feeling like I had been run over by a semi-truck or four, not to mention the fun mix of hormones coursing through my body and to receive information like that, well it just added to the already long list of things I had to worry about.
I think the guilt, stress and constant underlying worry about nursing really kicked into high gear when Owen was about a week and a half old. He’d been to his first Dr’s appointment where we found out that he had lost some weight, but the nurse and Dr were both very reassuring that it was completely normal. It was when, on a total whim, I decided to take Owen to the lactation center to be weighed because I was just positive that he had gained weight in the four days since his Dr’s appointment and I was curious to see how much he was gaining. When the same super-intense lactation nurse who saw me in the hospital weighed him and I found out that no, my baby wasn’t gaining and had in fact lost another four ounces (and when you only start out a little over seven pounds, you don’t have that much to lose anyway) I was just floored. Hadn’t I been doing everything right? I’d been feeding on demand, letting him nurse for as long as he needed–how could he not be gaining weight?
Its been a really hard almost first month. After alot of work (pumping up to eight times a day, supplementing the boy with 4 oz of breastmilk through an ng tube in addition to nursing every three hours whether he wanted to or not, smelling like celery from taking alot of fenugreek)the boy is finally up and just barely over his birth weight at three weeks old. I’ve been able to cut back on the number of times I have to pump in a day to just two (and a fun filled hour at night of ten minutes on the pump, ten minutes off the pump known as the power pump)and I still have to overcome the urge to cry and cry when I measure the amount of milk after pumping. Anything less than two ounces jump starts the worry all over again–am I losing my milk? Did I drink enough today? Will I be able to do this for a year? Not to mention that some days, when the boy seems to need to nurse every hour and a half, and then I have to pump on top of that, well, I just get all touched out and have to give my dear husband the evil death eye when he gives me the wink wink nod nod look after I’ve finally gotten the boy down to sleep.
I never thought that something that I regarded as so natural, simple and easy would leave me so drained and conflicted, sometimes forcing me to even question my own self-worth yet leave me so contented, like when Owen’s head lolls back from the breast at the end of a feeding, his eyes rolled back in his head and milk dripping down his face. I’m trying to focus more on the contentment and less on the stress. Some days go better than others.