Busy Busy Bees...

Phew!!! Having 2 kids is EXHAUSTING, but I'm loving every second of it. We've all been getting into a pretty good routine since Steve has gone back to work. I know that if I had tried to actually set a schedule that it probably would have blown up in my face, so I really lucked out when a schedule happened to emerge on its own. Especially since it usually involves both kids napping at the same time in the afternoon, or at least having their naps overlap for a bit so I can have some down time to myself.

One thing that I'm looking forward to is that Steve is going to able to take 9 months off of work!!! One of the benefits of me being a SAHM for the time being is that Steve then becomes entitled to all 37 weeks of parental leave, so he'll be home with us from the beginning of September until the middle of May! I love that we'll have this time all together as a family. We're planning on taking a trip to Washington, DC to visit friends this fall and also will probably take a longer vacation in AZ in the spring to truly take advantage of not having to have any vacation time approved! Now I just have to get through the next 4.5 weeks on my own until Steve is home!

First off, here's the Quinn update! Today marks Q's 23 month mark. I can't believe that she's going to be 2 years old a month from now. The planning has already started for her birthday party (it's going to have an Elmo theme). The words that this kid is saying just blows my mind every day. Her sentences are getting longer and she is consistently having an easier time communicating what she wants or needs. This is going to be helpful when we start potty training her (that's a fall project).

Some of the new Q things:

she recognizes almost all colours now, including gray, white and black. She only mixes up blue and green, but when asked to "try again", she gets the colour correctly
she recognizes probably half of the letters of the alphabet (capital letters) when she sees them written down. Sometimes we can coax the letter out of her with a small cue. She has an alphabet puzzle that has each piece is covered with a picture of a representative object. So sometimes when she sees a letter written, for example a "P", she'll say "piano" because that is the picture on the puzzle piece.
she recognizes the following shapes - triangle, square, rectangle, circle, star, heart
she's working on recognizing numbers. She can pretty consistently recognize 3, 5, and 7.
counting to 10 is child's play for her now, and she can sometimes get to 13 before messing up or throwing in some letters
she asks to "listen Elmo" in the car (I have an Elmo album from iTunes)
she always gives Cole a kiss on the head goodnight and will say "love you Cole"...this just warms my heart every time! She also says "s'OK Cole" to him when he fusses and she's my lookout when we're in the car - I'll ask her if Cole's sleeping when it's quiet and she lets me know :) Although sometimes I'm wondering if she's actually telling the truth or not (since she's not so reliable when we ask her if she'd pooped or not...but we can smell it)

Cole is doing great! We've definitely had our share of breastfeeding stress though. With Quinn, we had some issues with engorgement, syringe/finger feeding, and having to use a nipple shield before things really clicked and I successfully nursed her for a year. This time, with Cole, I unfortunately got mastitis when he was 5 days old. I tried to kick it without meds for 48 hours - tried "airing out", cabbage leaves, potato slices, ibuprofen, breast compressions, frequent nursing, etc. When that didn't work, I began a course of antibiotics and things cleared up completely within the next 48 hours. The really unfortunate side effect of having mastitis was that it really negatively affected my milk supply. Cole stopped gaining as much as he should have been gaining, even though he was eating every 3 hours. My milk just wasn't giving him enough fats. So first I went to a breastfeeding drop-in to see a lactation consultant. She noticed that Cole had a lip tie (this can sometimes affect breastfeeding), but that his latch wasn't too bad. She gave me some pointers and I left the drop-in feeling confident. That confidence lasted about an hour until we saw the doctor and she said that she was concerned with Cole's rate of weight gain. She asked for us to come back to see her 4 days later to check his weight again.

I spent the next 4 days trying to stay positive and feeding Cole every 3 hours, at least. When we went back to the doctor, I wasn't confident that he had gained enough and unfortunately, that was the case. Our doctor suggested that I supplement every feeding with formula to top him up after I nursed. This was a huge blow to me because it made me feel like my body was letting me down, even though the doctor said that it was just temporary and that it was because of the mastitis affecting my milk supply.

Our doctor gave us a sample of ready to use formula (8 bottles) to go through. When I first tried to top Cole up with formula, he acted like I was trying to feed him poison laced with knives or something...he just wouldn't take the bottle! He'd only want to nurse...which is all well and good, but I was willing him to get fat! One of my "June Mommies" (more on them in a later post) suggested that I pump and add some breast milk to the formula to see if he'd take it. That seemed to do the trick! So now on top of taking 40 minutes each feeding to nurse, I also had to pump about 10 minutes before hand to get some milk to add to the formula and then feed Cole the formula-milk mixture until he was full. And even when that was all done, he'd usually want to nurse/suckle for a few minutes and then fall asleep. So the feedings almost doubled in time! And even then, sometimes he'd be full after just nursing, so I'd try to get him to stop nursing just so that I could feed him some formula. And after all the formula prep (3 oz of formula + 1 oz breast milk), he'd only ever drink an ounce of it! Frustrating!!!

I had been researching how to get babies to take more of the hindmilk vs foremilk and ultimately it all pointed to how the baby was latching. I decided to contact the lactation consultant that I had seen at the drop-in, and who also had helped us during our time with Quinn, Beth MacMillan - www.bethmacmillanlbclc.com. She came to the house on the 3rd day of supplementing to check everything out and help me with his latch. I had been watching videos on YouTube of Dr. Jack Newman (he's THE breastfeeding guru) to try to help me out and actually was having more success with getting Cole to latch better. When Beth got to the house, she weighed Cole pre-feed and said that then we'd get him to eat and weigh him after to get an idea of how much milk he was getting. She was wanting to rule out Cole "tricking us" by looking like he was swallowing a lot, but maybe he really wasn't. So ahead we went with the feeding, and she helped me with latch issues along the way...luckily there weren't that many! After he was done eating, we popped him back on the scale and he had gained 100 g over the course of the feed (which is roughly equivalent to 3 oz ingested)...and that was exactly how much he should be getting based on his age at the time. I was THRILLED!!! Not to mention that he was weighing in at 10 lbs 14 oz that day. Beth said that I could stop supplementing since he was obviously getting enough milk and that I should see what the doctor said the next day. She also said that I should continue pumping and not stop cold turkey to just make sure that my supply stayed up.

The next day, we went back to the doctor for another weigh-in and got the OK to completely stop supplementing. Woohoo!!! Let me just say that I'm not against formula feeding babies. Breastfeeding isn't for everyone and it's definitely a learning curve that requires a lot of commitment. As long as babies are fed and thriving, it doesn't matter the source! I just knew that I wanted to try everything that I could to continue breastfeeding since I enjoyed it so much with Quinn.

OK, so after that novel of a story about breastfeeding issues with Cole, we are now in a great place! Last week Cole weighed in at 11.4 lbs and is doing great! I only pump once a day now (after his morning feed at breakfast time) and I'm able to get 4 oz in a very short period of time. I'm getting a good freezer stock! Cole also has started smiling, although Steve is much better at getting the smiles than I am. :P

I'm thinking about taking this blog in a different direction - I'm going to keep posting updates on the kids for sure, but I'm going to also post "opinion" posts and other info posts I think. Just basic "Mom Stuff". :P So bear with me while I transition to this new version!