Only Monday?

I wouldn't say it doesn't feel like a Friday, but I'd swear it feels like a Thursday. At the very least, a Wednesday. But the calendar tells me it's only Monday, and Blogger tells me it's been many moons since I was last around here. I've got a quiet night so it's about high time I caught up.

The kitchen is coming along. At this point, we're just waiting for the countertops to be fabricated and installed - all the tear-out is done and the lighting is finished. I hear through the grapevine that the countertops will be in on Thursday, but last week it was supposed to be tomorrow, so I'm not hanging all my hopes on that. While I still don't have a working kitchen, at least I no longer have workmen in my house until Countertop Day.

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Julia is evening out a little bit. Her sleeping has gotten a bit better and the "tantrums" are calming down.

I have to put "tantrums" in quotes because they're truly just about 30 seconds of screaming and crying - not bad by toddler tantrum standards. I'm responding by getting physically accessible to her (getting down on her level, holding her, etc.), using very very short sentences to empathize with her ("Play with stove! I know! Fun stove buttons!"), then waiting for her to calm down a little and redirecting with an explanation as appropriate ("No stove. Stove hot - ow! Look! Phone buttons!"). It's roughly based on the Happiest Toddler On The Block book, and thus far it seems to be working alright. I like that I take the time to empathize and be emotionally available for her without compromising my position or authority. Do I have any idea if this is more effective than any other approach? Nope. Do I have the patience to do this every time she doesn't get her way? Absolutely not. My other tactic is to ignore her, which I do when I feel like screaming right back at her. But I'm trying. I'm also getting better at seeing a conflict before it happens and heading it off.

She's also been doing some adorable things lately:

• When she sees that I'm making her a bottle, she'll run to her room and lay down on her floor where we usually feed and change her. From a child who used to hate laying down, this is hilarious.
• She'll pick up her play phone and make this big fake laugh into it. "HAH HAH HAH!" Is that what I sound like? Yikes.
• When my phone rings, she always goes, "Dada!" because R is my most frequent caller and his picture pops up when he calls. 
• When we go somewhere in the car, I give her a book and she sits in her carseat and reads her book to me. I can often tell what she's looking at based on the sounds she makes, but it's looking back and seeing her reading quietly on her own that really warms my heart.
• Still very little in the way of actual talking, but she makes signs for food, water, basement, butterfly, gorilla, frog, help, please, airplane, cat, and cold. She knows a few more when I make them and she's understanding more each day, but between the signs she knows, and pointing and shaking her head "no," she can communicate pretty well.
• She still loves Scrappy. LOVES Scrappy. Loves to pat her, scratch her, hug her, kiss her, and bring her toys to play with. (Scrappy is a dear, patient dog who doesn't get enough credit in our house.)

Guess who was here first and who decided to join?

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Being pregnant sucks right now. I'm pretty pissed off about it. I'm happy about New Baby but the thought of being pregnant for ANOTHER FOURTEEN FIFTEEN WEEKS makes me cry inside. Nothing's physically wrong, and I remain grateful for that, but mentally this one has been tougher on me than Julia's, for a variety of mundane reasons.

And those are my major updates. More details, probably on all of those subjects, later this week.

Not too much is new.

It's been busy here, but with nothing special, really. I've just got a few things to report:

1. Julia's rash continues to get better. It's looking very different down there, meaning the old rash is clearing up and it looks like a new one is coming in. I'm hoping it's just irritation from all the anti-fungals but I'm not ready to call "success!" on the rash just yet. However, she's a lot more comfortable, that's for sure, and we still have six more days of the oral medicine to go.

2. I'm twenty weeks today - halfway through this pregnancy - woohoo! It feels good to hit a nice solid milestone, which balances out the fact that I feel really pregnant now. Sometime last week, maybe the baby shifted positions or had a growth spurt or something, but just one day it felt like I gained twenty pounds and got huge overnight.

I'm also feeling Braxton-Hicks on a fairly regular basis, which is weird for me since I never noticed them with Julia. My OB's office says to not do anything that causes more than four in an hour, which means I may not be able to walk the dog the rest of this pregnancy. Not that I'm too torn up about missing those walks in the freezing winter, but I'm a little worried about not having the chance to get any exercise. I know rotting in my own baby fat for the next 20 weeks is just going to mean a rougher pregnancy and delivery and recovery.

But, I'm healthy and baby is healthy, so I have no real complaints.

3. Julia got her photo taken with Santa today. It did not go well, but we got a really hilarious picture. I feel like an awful mom when I do, but I just keep looking at her photo and laughing.

I think that's all I've got. Time for me to buckle down and try to get through some more Christmas cards. Despite my best efforts, they're making no moves to send themselves.

Breastfeeding: where we've been, where we are, where we're going (plus some nitty gritty)

Since I need something to do to feel productive while I sit here and eat salt & vinegar chips on our brand new couch avoid the stack of Christmas cards in the dining room relax for a few minutes in front of the tv, I figured I'd write the breastfeeding post I keep writing in my head lately.

Where we've been:


I exclusively breastfed Julia until we introduced solids about a week shy of six months. She had about two ounces of formula the first night home from the hospital when she was starving and my milk hadn't come in yet, but otherwise, it was all me. She did not nurse exclusively, though. Around week two or three, we introduced a bottle, which she took just fine. We ended up doing about a bottle a day and she never had any trouble switching back and forth.

We had two trips away from the baby during those six months, so I pumped like a crazy person and went to these extreme measures to make sure she still had breastmilk while we were apart. In retrospect, it would have been better to have just given her formula, but I was hell-bent on exclusively breastfeeding, and didn't really understand how to incorporate an alternative, so that's what I did.

Everything went smoothly, for the most part. I got mastitis once, which ended up drastically reducing my supply on one side, but I was still able to produce enough for the babe. After awhile, we got into the habit of giving Julia a bottle before bedtime, then I would pump later in the evening for the next night's bottle. That ever so slowly decreased my evening supply to the point where I wasn't pumping enough for the next night's bottle. After my freezer stash was used up - built up for and during those trips - we ended up adding in formula around eight months. I agonized over this, but despite being attached to the pump for hours in the evenings I was coming up shy, and the sanest choice was clearly to supplement with formula.

Then, we went on vacation and I decided to stop pumping in the evenings altogether. This was AWESOME for my personal life but bad for my supply. I was going from about 3:00 in the afternoon to the next morning without feeding or pumping, and my body couldn't seem to balance that with the rigorous feeding Julia was doing from morning to afternoon. In retrospect, it would have been better to have spaced out the nursing sessions more evenly throughout the day - maybe give a formula bottle in the afternoon and nurse again at night.

Right about this time, my supply started to really tank. I remember worrying to Robert the week I stopped pumping about whether I was making the right choice, since it looked like it was a slippery slope for me - a little drop in demand seemed to be rapidly snowballing.

Turns out, I was also newly pregnant...

Breastfeeding while pregnant (nitty gritty):

My supply started to decline right away. Some women don't seem to notice a change until much later, but I definitely noticed - even before I knew I was pregnant. In all the reading I've done on breastfeeding while pregnant, the one conclusion I can draw is that it's totally different for everyone. Some people are affected more than others, but the range of normal is huge and varied.

For me, I noticed the initial supply dip, then another much stronger dip around 14 weeks. After the initial dip, Julia mostly lost interest in all the nursing sessions except the morning one. She would usually just get up and leave after only a minute or two. I'd give her a cracker or something and she'd happily munch on that instead. So, we weaned down to just the morning session painlessly and fairly quickly (over two weeks or so). I did supplement with formula (she was only 10 months at this point) in bottles. I know some women choose to power through it but for the life of me I don't know how - I was so exhausted with first-trimester fatigue that I felt all my life force draining out of me when she nursed. I just couldn't imagine keeping my body running and sustaining three people. Plus, it's not like formula is evil - she's done just fine and she's doing just fine and it's so much nicer to have a well-nourished baby.

I also called the lactation consultants at the hospital at which I gave birth. Their opinion was that there wasn't much I could do to increase supply while pregnant because the pregnancy hormones supersede pretty much anything you can try. The usual galactagogues aren't safe to take during pregnancy so my only potential option was to pump more to increase the demand on my body, which may or may not work for a little while. Um, no.

(Dad, if you're still reading this, skip this paragraph:) It sounds like many women (i.e. those that post on online message boards) experience nipple soreness in the first trimester that gets better around week 14. I had the opposite - almost none the first trimester, then weeks 14-16 it really peaked. It was toe-curling when Julia latched on. No worse than the toe-curling of the initial week or two of breastfeeding, but kind of a shock nonetheless. It's eased off a bit by now but it still makes me flinch for a second or two when she latches.

Where we are:

So, now I'm at 19 weeks pregnant and she's still nursing once in the morning. I think she's getting very little actual nutrition, though: if we give her a bottle or a cup of milk right after the session, she pounds it away, so I think it's mainly for comfort and just-waking-up cuddles. I can still hand-express a very little amount so I know I'm still making something, but I just can't believe it's very much. (And I'm not digging out the pump to see how much is in there.) I feel no let-down at all and even right before nursing, I don't feel full at all like I used to either. They say colostrum production starts anytime between now and the end of pregnancy, so I'm curious whether either Julia or I will be able to tell when that happens.

It feels like uncharted territory now. Like I said, there's not a whole lot of information out there on what's normal in similar situations. I'm so used to researching the heck out of every single parenting step I take (can I blame law school for this?), so it feels really weird to be truly winging it. It's also kind of nice and freeing - whatever happens, it'll be the right choice for our family and that's really all that's important.

It IS clear, however, that breastfeeding while pregnant is perfectly fine as long as the pregnancy is normal and healthy, and there are no indicators of premature labor. So far so good. My OB knew I was breastfeeding at the beginning of the pregnancy and didn't seem incredibly supportive, but she's apparently forgotten by now and I haven't seen any reason to bring it up again so far. My body will make milk tailored primarily for the new baby - hence the imminent colostrum production - so New Baby won't be missing out on anything, and anything Julia gets is just bonus good nutrition for her.

Where we're going:

I don't know.

I certainly never imagined I'd be in this position. It feels like such a hippie thing to do - be pregnant and breastfeed, but it's truly been a very natural progression for us. I've cut back here and there for my sanity but we both overall enjoy breastfeeding and there just hasn't been a compelling reason to stop. Julia is 13 months and she is still such a baby to me. That morning session clearly brings her comfort (and I die every morning for the chance to just lay in bed with my eyes shut for another 20 minutes) so it's really working for us now.

Maybe she'll lose interest down the line as it becomes clear there's a cup full of chocolate milk available immediately afterwards. Maybe she'll dislike the taste of colostrum when that change happens, and decide to stop then.

Maybe she'll keep at it for the whole pregnancy and I'll end up nursing both my newborn and my toddler. I have no desire to nurse my toddler the same amount as my newborn, but if Julia wants to pick up an extra session or two during the day, I can understand. I have no idea how she's going to react when she sees another baby partaking of "her" buffet, so if tandem nursing minimizes conflict during the tough transition, I'm okay with it.

Basically, I'm going to wing it. And not be afraid to set boundaries with Julia if I start to feel completely overwhelmed or too much like a milk factory for sanity. My goal is to nurse the newborn for six months, and then re-evaluate and see what I feel like doing. But if I don't hit that, I'm okay with it. (Well, not 100% okay, but mostly okay. It is my goal, after all, and I prefer to achieve them.)

And I kind of like that we're doing something unique. Not in a "I'm a better hippie momma than you" or "GOGOGOGOBREASTFEEDING!" way (you moms know exactly what I mean), but I've enjoyed navigating these (fairly) uncharted waters - and the uncharacteristic chilling I've been doing exactly because they're uncharted. And I like knowing I'm doing what works best for my family right now even if it's a little unconventional.

Which is why I'm blogging about it in such detail. I'll update as it becomes relevant but for now, we're going to just keep on keeping on. The human body can be such an amazing thing.

The announcement everyone already knows about

I assume that pretty much everyone who reads this blog is either a facebook friend or knows me in real life. So, everyone already knows this but I'm still feeling a need to make it "official" on my blog.

We are expecting our second little nugget in late April of next year. :)

I am 18 weeks pregnant and while this time around has been fairly similar to my first pregnancy, physically, it's been quite different for me mentally and emotionally.

I am much more acutely aware of all the positive and negative emotions (particularly negative) that someone else's pregnancy can evoke in people around me. I speak specifically to those with losses or trouble conceiving. Before Julia, I was happy with our lives, thought getting pregnant was just the next step for R and I, and never really comprehended the emotional enormity that a baby-sized hole can be in a life or a marriage. I still don't, having been fortunate enough to have never experienced this, but I certainly now understand the emotional heft of a child. It's not a next step or a new job or a new house or a pet. Obviously. Of course. But I know this now like I didn't before.

And consequently, I was very public with our news about Julia. I couldn't wait until week twelve to tell the world. I was browsing maternity clothing and baby clothing and strollers and bedding WAY before remotely necessary. I kept a daily calendar by my bed and marked off every.single.day of that pregnancy before I went to sleep at night. I thought every little thing was new and magical and of course no one had ever experienced it before like I was. I put belly photos up on facebook and probably annoyed everyone around me with constant baby talk.

This time around, I've enjoyed keeping it quiet. I even waited a few days to tell Robert. We're thinking this is the last time I'll be pregnant, so I've really treasured the private knowing and the quiet moments when I think, "We're all here!" with my little family. I'm a little disappointed that I've started to show (although it's nice to get out of the "Is she fat or is she pregnant?" phase) because I like not sharing the news with every stranger I meet on the street.

I also spent the first couple weeks freaking out about having two children eighteen months apart. I know people have siblings close in age, and our plan all along was to have our children close together, but... that was quick. Quicker than I expected. A blessing, of course, but... am I going to be able to handle that? I've hit my stride with Julia, but adding an infant to the mix feels overwhelming already.

So, anyways, all that adds up to this pregnancy being almost halfway through before I felt comfortable blogging about it. We do know it's a little girl, and we're excited about the prospect of sisters. I feel good and so far it's shaping up to be another easy pregnancy (knock on wood). I actually have a lot to say about it, now that the floodgates are open, but... a little at a time. I have time. Twenty-two more weeks. :)