Just one lonely thought this evening

The look on Jude's face when I pick him up from daycare;  the sheer joy and happiness that his Mama walking into the room brings him just makes it all worth it.

This is going to be a long, long week.

So, Jude's cold is a little more than that.  It's an ear infection.  Poor little man.  He's had a faucet for a nose since last week and he started running a fever.  Phil took him to the doctor today and it was confirmed he had an ear infection.  His first one.  Daycare has a policy where he can't come back until he is 24 hours fever free.  This happened on the worst week ever. 

Since I got my promotion back in January, I've been working on this huuuge project for our biggest client and I submitted it to them today.  Not only that, but I have to give a big presentation on a product enhancement to the company on Wednesday this week.  Sooo not the time for my little sweetie to be sick.  Thank goodness for family.  My dad will watch him for the morning tomorrow so I can at least set some things up in the conference room I reserved to go over my presentation. 

That's not all.  Phil rearranged his day to pick Jude up from daycare and take him to the doctor.  In his hurry, he slammed his middle finger in the front door of our house.  That was this afternoon.  Cut to this evening and the pain was pretty much unbearable, his finger and fingernail were black and it was swollen up to massive proportions.  He is currently at the ER.  I feel awful I didn't go with him, but Jude is in bed and we didn't want to wake him.  My mom is meeting him there to keep him company in the waiting room.  God love her.

So yeah, the first day of the week was a little stressful.  But, I got my project successfully submitted before end of business today, which is a huge weight off my shoulders.  Now I just have to breathe and relax about this presentation I have to give this week and again next week (to people in the company who know way more than I do no less).  And I thought dancing in front of audiences for years and years was nerve wracking.  No way, that was cake compared to public speaking.

Fingers crossed my boys pull through and are as good as new soon and that this week of stress flies by.

Eek. I take it back, I don't want to grow up!

Petri Dishes for Playmates

Jude has another nasty cold.

I thought we were maybe getting done with all this sickness.  I truly believed that his constant colds/illnesses were a combination of being so young, during the worst winter I can remember, combined with the fact that he goes to a daycare center and is around so many other young kids (or Petri dishes, as I prefer to call them).  The weather has just started to get warm and a sense of relief has come about that cold and flu season is nearing its end.

No such luck.

The first telltale sign that Jude is coming down with a nasty cold is eye drainage.  Ew.  It gets all green and gunky and seals his eye shut overnight.  Poor guy.  I have some drops that clear it up, but it's always the first sign that things are going south.  Congestion sets in.  Then the coughing.  Then the all night wakings.  At that point, our world becomes a sea of saline drops, nasal aspirators, cool mist humidifiers, and Boogie Wipes.
Our pediatrician has repeated over and over that the typical newborn/baby gets about 12 colds a year.  It seems like Jude constantly has one.  Hell, he was hospitalized for RSV for five days back in February.  I can't help but get sort of panic-y when he gets sick now.  Although the RSV virus was special, he ran a 102-103 degree fever the entire time and that was his first symptom before anything else.  He isn't running a fever this time.  Thank goodness.

I just hate when Jude is perfectly healthy and I go to pick him up from daycare and he is happily playing with a friend.  Then, the friend turns around to grin at me and all I can see is the river of snot pouring out of his nose and I know that Jude will have a cold in about 48 hours.  Ugh.

I guess it's the expected repurcussions in the glamourous life of a working mom who sends her kid to daycare.

He says "Ball"!

That's right.  He doesn't say "Mama" and the jury is still out on the word "Dada" (although Phil claims he's saying "Dad", it sounds more like "Datttt" and he says it to everything whether its his father, the dog, or the blinds in his room).  I thought I first heard him say "ball" ("bah") in church on Sunday.  He has this book that associates things with animals and on the first page shows a picture of a brightly colored ball.  The moment he saw the page he said "BAH!".  I thought maybe it was a coincidence and he didn't say it again when I showed him the page a few minutes later.  This afternoon, we were playing up in his room and one of his favorite toys is one of those cheap large plastic bouncy balls you see in giant bins in the grocery store for $1.79.  I'm sure it's manufactured in China using every questionable chemical known to man, but he just loves it so much.  Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I should search for a more earth-friendly, non chemical-laden one seeing as how he also loves to put his mouth all over it. ::cringe:: Anyways, he's learned that if he rolls it back to you, you roll it back to him and so on, and he just gets such a kick out of it.  I brought the ball down from the shelf to play with it and he grinned and said "BAH!  BAH!" excitedly.  Now, I wonder where the word "Mama" will be on this list.  Whenever I encourage him to say it, he looks at me like I'm crazy and then says "Datttt".  Sigh.

A Lovely Little Saturday

Let me just start off by saying that I most look forward to Saturdays with my little family.

Jude usually rouses for the day around 6:30/7 am.  Phil willingly gets up with Jude and takes him downstairs so I can catch up on some zzzzz's (since I'm the one that handles all nightwakings during the week).  Phil will then bring Jude back upstairs around 9 or so and we all catch a morning snooze in bed as a family.  It's glorious, truly.  We usually get up around 10, pack Jude and his accessories in the car, and make our first stop: Starbucks.  Now, since I'm breastfeeding, I try to limit my caffeine to one cup of coffee in the mornings and a soda in the afternoons.  Jude hasn't seemed to have any aversion to me drinking caffeine, but why push the envelope.  I used to be an awful caffeine junkie.  Seriously.  I couldn't function if I didn't have 2-3 cans of Diet Mountain Dew in the morning and at least 3-4 Diet Cokes in the evening/afternoon.  I can't even imagine that now.  I get a total buzz from my Grande White Chocolate Mocha on Saturday mornings.  It is truly the perfect ending to my week.  The first sweet sip of satisfaction.  Ahhhh.

Anyways, where were we?

Right, Saturdays.  So, after our fix of Starbucks, we'll run errands.  Usually Target is involved.  Sidenote on Target:  why is it that even if I stop in for freaking dental floss, I can never leave without spending at least $50.  Does that happen to anyone else or is it just me?  Ugh.  Target, why can't I quit you?

Well, this Saturday we were on a mission:

Get Jude an Easter outfit.

That's right, we were those people who hadn't yet gotten their little one a spanking new outfit for church on Easter Sunday.  So we headed to our favorite place in the whole wide world for children's clothing:  Village Pointe.  Where else can you find a Janie & Jack, Carter's, and Baby Gap all within a stone's throw of each other?  It's like a new parents' dream that actually came true!  If any of you know my husband, you'll know that I have a rare breed indeed:  one that LOVES to shop for kid clothes!  Seriously.  The man will drop hundreds of dollars in one afternoon if he were allowed to.  I wish I were kidding.  He gets this glazed look in his eye when he is coordinating outfits for the kid and doesn't even glance at the price tag.  Thank God he has the good sense to shop with me so I can reel him in, otherwise, I fear that we would be living on the streets.....but at least our kid would look cute.

As you can see, we had fun buying outfits for Jude and spending the day out in the sun as a family.  It's the simple days that are always the most poignant for me.  From kisses in bed for Mama to modeling some of the new couture out in the backyard at the end of the day, it was another Saturday I don't want to ever forget.

There really is no better way to wake up than your sweet baby nuzzling your cheek.

I don't want the paparazzi to recognize me if we lunch somewhere.  Oh, right, Mom's the paparazzi.  Nevermind.

Looking at hats (what else?) at Janie and Jack

Dad's..er...Jude's favorite store

Enjoying the outdoors

Surveying the sweater vests

Getting bored, but hanging in there like a champ.

Sale signs at Baby Gap never bode well for our wallets.

Carters, we salute you.

The workaholic checks the Crackberry.

Trying on a new shirt with his trusty cap.  It's all in a day's work.

Not too sure about this whole sitting outside in the grass thing. But, at least there's a cat!

Mama Bear

This week is dragging. I have three projects due in mid-April. Big ones. I’m at the point where I should be completely stressing out, but I’m strangely not. I think motherhood has calmed me down a bit. I’ve taken a more c’est la vie approach to things and I think it’s totally improved my outlook. Before Jude, these projects would’ve completely taken over my brain and life. Now, I’m able to put work and family into the two separate entities they are supposed to be and I think I’m the better for it. Granted, I bolted awake in the middle of the night last night thinking about a portion of a software upgrade that I felt I needed to work on asap. And then I looked over at my son (who was sleeping peacefully in between Phil and me since I didn’t have the energy for sleep battles last night. FAIL.) and stroked his downy, blonde little head and fell back asleep.


That’s not to say that I’m completely zen about everything. Motherhood has also awakened the mama bear that I apparently had sleeping within me. Convictions I never knew I had come out with their teeth bared whenever I feel Jude or any other child for that matter, is being threatened. When I hear stories on the news about poor, defenseless children being neglected or abused, I choke back the intense feeling of wanting to vomit and I just find myself wishing the worst things on the person that did this to them. Then I hug my baby just a little tighter. I can now spot an uneasy situation from miles away and can avoid it quick as lightning, no questions asked. I no longer have qualms about telling people that I still breastfeed and spouting off the million benefits whenever someone challenges me as to why he is still nursing (It’s amazing how I’ll talk about my breasts with anyone these days.) Or when I politely tell certain in-law family members who try to give my kid meat gravy and ice cream that they need to remove their fingers from my kids mouth before I bite them off. People who knew me before I became a mom knew me as the type of person that would totally let things slide unless I felt very strongly about them….then watch out. Now, I’m much more assertive when I initially feel that I need to be, rather than just waiting things out. I love the fierceness just one little angel baby can bring out in a woman.

All in all, Jude is making me a better, stronger person.

Knock On Wood

I really hate to even "say" this out loud, but here goes.  Jude has slept through the night TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW.  Now, if you follow my blog or facebook, you will know that this is something we've been battling for quite some time.  A quick background:  Jude has never slept for longer than four hours at a time consistently.  Sure, here or there he will go for maybe five hours, but these events are very few and far between.  As I've previously stated, when we brought Jude home from the hospital, Phil and I both agreed that we weren't going to let him cry it out.  I am not judging anyone who does, but we felt it just wasn't something we were willing to do, for multiple reasons.  I naively thought that Jude would definitely wake for the first 3 or 4 months, but he would eventually outgrow it and he would sleep peacefully through the night.  Wrong.

Once 8 months rolled around and I realized that Jude wasn't figuring out sleeping through the night on his own, I went to Borders (and didn't have a repeat breastfeeding/poopsplosion incident thankyouverymuch) and grabbed Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution (NCSS).  After Googling and reading what Dr. Sears (whose childrearing philosophies I have really gotten on board with) had to say, I decided this option would be the best for us.  It basically teaches to attend to the babies needs at night so they do not cry, but slowly wean them off whatever association the baby has with sleep so they can eventually fall asleep without it.  Jude had quite the perfect storm of elements needed in order to fall asleep.  I realized that I had set Jude up to have sleep issues when all I thought was that these things were in his best interest. 

First, Jude wanted to nurse before going to sleep.  He would latch on and his eyes would roll into the back of his head in pure bliss.  As soon as the sucking stopped, I would lay him down.  His eyes would shoot open and he would wail.  To replace my boob, I would put a pacifier in his mouth, which would suffice, and his eyes would roll back again.  Then, I would place his lovey in his hands and he would roll to his side and fall asleep.  Then, I would turn on his mobile that played classical music for twenty minutes and he would be out.  This was all well and good except for the fact that once the music shut off or the pacifier would pop out of his mouth or he realized that my boob was nowhere to be found, it was all over.  Sometimes this was two hours later, sometimes two minutes.  Oy ve.

Long story short, the NCSS did not work for us.  We tried diligently for a month.  The only thing that improved was that Jude started to sleep a longer stretch in the beginning of the night.  He went from waking up within the first hour to sleep for 3-4 hours and then waking up every 1-2 after that.

People with good intentions had all sorts of suggestions for us.  "You just need to shut off the baby monitor for a couple of nights so he can cry it out all night", "You need to stop spoiling him so much by carrying him around all day so that at night, he thinks he needs to be held then too", "Stop breastfeeding him and give him formula, you shouldn't breastfeed once they have teeth", "Put some cereal in a bottle and send him to bed with it".  Again, not judging what other parents have done because we all make parenting choices that are best for our own family, however, none of the suggestions people had to offer felt 'right' in regards to what would work for Jude. Therefore, I resigned myself to multiple night wakings until toddlerdom.

So this post doesn't turn into a full blown novella, I'm going to try to speed things up.  I decided to read Ferber's book, "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems".  The most I knew about Ferber was that his methods were associated mostly with 'crying it out', but someone told me that if for no other reason, pick up his book to read about all the information he has on infant sleep cycles and sleep associations.  So I did. 

Upon first picking up the book, I was surprised to see that he runs the Harvard Institue of Pediatric Sleep Disorders.  Okay, totally giving this guy a chance, he probably knows a bit about what he is talking about.  Holy moly.  I was floored reading about all of the cycles babies go through and that night waking is a necessity, ESPECIALLY in the early months since that is a main prevention of SIDS.  If a baby is sleeping TOO soundly and in a sleep cycle that is difficult to get out of, they can stop breathing.  It was nice to read an affirmation that an early infant sleeping through the night just didn't sound right to me.  Maybe Jude was more normal than abnormal.  Also, I didn't know that Ferber doesn't call for straight crying it out, but rather letting a child cry in intervals and then going in to check on him so he doesn't believe he was abandoned.  Ferber first states that you need to create the child's sleep environment into a sleep association- free environment.  The reasoning behind this makes sense:  because of the way a baby's sleep cycle is set up, they go through the multiple stages of sleep in shorter intervals than adults and have brief periods of waking.  Upon these periods of waking, adults are able to fall right back to sleep if everything is the same as when they fell asleep.  But say that you go through the brief wake period and sense that a light is on in the hallway that wasn't on when you fell asleep, you are instantly fully awake and investigate.  Same as a baby.  If Jude fell asleep with a pacifier in his mouth, with his music on holding his lovey and when he hits his wake cycle with the paci out of his mouth, music off and his lovey nowhere to be found, he is instantly awake because he feels he "needs" all three of these in order to go back to sleep.

Okay.  Get rid of sleep assocations.  We stopped with the music.  I nursed him before story time instead of right before bed.  I did lay him down with his lovey, but if he wakes up, he can easily find that so I didn't think that was an issue.  I also made sure to leave the room while he was still awake, without rubbing his back or anything since that would also be another sleep assocation.  It worked!  Well, for a few hours.  Basically, Jude would sleep from 7:30ish until about 11, wake up and want to nurse, nurse, nurse until it was time to get up at 5:30.

Cutting to a different topic that I think is the missing piece to the whole sleep mystery.  I think I'm starting to develop milk supply issues.  While Jude is at daycare every day, I pump 3-4 times a day at work to send breastmilk with him the next day.  I've been pretty proud of myself that Jude is almost 9.5 months and I'm still able to give him breastmilk 24/7.  (And it saves so much money!)  These past few weeks, I've gone from being able to pump about 16-20 oz in a day, and it has tanked to being able to pump 10-12.  I've done everything in an attempt to get it back up, I'm an expert.  No dice.  More to come another time.  By the time evening rolls around, I don't produce much since prolactin levels are the lowest in a body at that time.  I now believe that at least half of the issue is that Jude is seriously hungry in the middle of the night and since he isn't getting much milk before bed, he wakes up very often to "top himself off".

The last week or so, I've been giving him a 6 oz bottle of milk before bed and then I pump after he goes to bed.  This, combined with getting rid of his sleep associations has provided the breakthrough we so desperately needed.

Two days ago, I put little boy to bed at 7:15.  He briefly woke at 8, I settled him back down and he didn't wake up until 5:30 am.  WHAT?!?!  Of course, that didn't mean I got any sleep.  I was checking on him hourly convinced that something was horribly wrong.

Last night, he went to bed at 7:30.  Woke up briefly at 11:15 and settled himself back down and woke up at 4:30 am and I was able to settle him down again.  Not as great as the night before, but a SERIOUS, SERIOUS improvement.

I hope the trend lasts and that I didn't completely ruin things by talking about them.  I attribute this success to my education of sleep cycles for babies, getting rid of *most* of Jude's sleep associations, realizing my milk supply is starting to tank and finding alternatives for evening feedings, and the fact that Jude has cut 6 teeth in the two previous months and he is no longer waking up because of teething pain.

If you've made it this far, you're awesome.  I mostly just wanted to record our sleep story (so far, as the issue is clearly tumultuous) so I can show Jude someday just how much he put us through when I tell him he can't stay out all night - my sleepless nights thanks to him are in the beginning only.

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

What can I say?  The kid loves baths.  He loves splashing, shrieking, and giggling in the kitchen sink.  It's crazy to think of how I used to bathe him in an infant bathtub and couldn't fathom ever having a baby big enough to sit in the kitchen sink.  Now, his days are seriously numbered for baths in the kitchen before he's playing with sailboats in the bathtub.  Time really does fly.  But I'll save those thoughts for another day.  Let's just look at the pure joy that happens when you mix a baby with bathwater.

Adventures with nursing in public

Yesterday, we went to go visit some good friends of ours who have an adorable little girl about six weeks older than Jude, Avery.  Avery's mom and I grew up together (more to come on that in a later blog) and it's been fun getting the kids together.  Anyways, she and I both have plans to breastfeed for a year and were laughing last night at the many mishaps that accompany nursing a baby through their many stages.  I thought it would be fun to blog about one incident in particular where, really, what can you do but laugh?  Warning: if you aren't prone to a little TMI (too much information), you may want to skip this post and scroll down to older posts or wait for a new entry in a day or so.

Jude was about two months old.  I was still on maternity leave and actually enjoyed leaving the house for jaunts during the day- it made me feel human to go out amongst the living and actually shower and put on clothes that didn't consist of unsexy pajama pants and an oversized spit-up stained T-shirt.  At 2 months old, Jude and I had pretty much overcome our latch issues and I was somewhat proficient at getting him latched the first try.  As long as I had my nursing cover, I was totally okay with nursing in public.  I decided to go to Borders.  Jude rarely cried and if he started to get fussy, I figured I would just curl up on a loveseat with a book and nurse him.  Lo and behold, he started showing signs of hunger so I grabbed a book on cupcake recipes (so I could drool over the photos as sleep deprivation made it difficult to comprehend any reading material any more complicated than ones laden with pictures) and sat on a couch away from everyone.  Well, as luck would have it, a lady came and sat right across from me and a few minutes later another man sat cati-corner from me.  Jude was so tiny that they didn't even see any sign of a baby underneath my cover.  What I neglected to consider was that Jude loved to take a nice, loud poo immediately after or during nursing in the beginning days.  Now, if you've ever seen breast-fed baby poop, it really does challenge the laws of physics.  And I'm not talking just a quiet poop, but a wall-shaking, earth-shattering, incredibly wet sounding poo.  Not only did he let out one explosion, but three. In a row. I really wish I were kidding when I tell you that the sound reverberated all around the 2nd floor of Borders.  I'm not sure what was worse, the sound of the 'poopsplosion' (as we lovingly call Jude's early poos) or the even more deafening silence that followed.   I could tell that the two people were trying to pretend like they didn't hear it.  Then all of a sudden, I had a realization:  they didn't know I had a baby under my nursing cover.....and they probably thought it was ME!  I was horrified.  Then all of a sudden, the man couldn't hold it in and started turning red trying not to laugh.  That was it.  Jude was still happily slurping away underneath the cover, but I moved part of the cover to reveal his little feet and stated, "That was my baby, it wasn't me.  Just in case you thought it was."  The two 'spectators' started dying laughing and informed me that yes, they had assumed I was nursing.

It was somewhat of a relief to know that they didn't think I was sharting myself while reading a book on cupcakes.