Still Sick

Breastfeeding every three hours and pumping and recovering from surgery and taking care of two kids can be rough.  Doing it while sick just sucks.   I got a sore throat and a cough last week sometime, and I’m still fighting it off.

I’m exhausted.

Quite the Cow

I started pumping today.  I want to build up a decent supply of breastmilk in my freezer, so I want to start pumping every day.  So, about an hour after one of Hazel’s feedings, I pumped.  And let me tell you–there is nothing sexier than double pumping.  It’s way more effective for gettin’ the milk out, but awkward!  It would be handy to have a third arm–so that I’d have one to hold each pump thing, and one to flip the switch.

So, I pumped.  And at Hazel’s next feeding, Conner gave her her very first bottle (which she took to like a champ, which made me cry), and I pumped again.

Welcome to the age of the cow.  Ahhh, the good life.

Earth Hour

We participated in Earth Hour this evening!

At 8:00 we lit candles and turned off our lights and kept them off for an hour.  We had some friends over (they cooked some delicious pork and beans), and ate over candlelight.

I’m glad we did it, because it mostly showed me how keeping all of the lights off for an hour or so is both totally not a big deal, while simultaneously making you wonder how you live without electricity.

Makin’ a List

I’m working on a list of things to do in New York City with small children.  We’ll be there for three months this summer, and I want to do fun stuff and try to get out of the house every day.

If you have any suggestions, let me know!

Because I think she’s cute

Receptionists

In recent months I’ve been wondering: is there a requirement that in order to be a receptionist at a doctor’s office that a person has to pass a ‘surly’ test? And an incompetence test?

I feel like every doctor’s office I go to, the receptionists are rude, mean, and inconsiderate. When I was first pregnant with Hazel, my OBGYN’s receptionist implied that I would lose the baby before my next appointment. At Hazel’s pediatrician today, Hazel was crying bloody murder, but the receptionist kept interrupting me while I was trying to make her follow up appointment… interrupting me to talk to the other receptionists. Finally, I said I’d call to make an appointment and left. I wanted to ask her if she realized that when a two week old is crying like that, it means she’s probably hungry. So my milk is letting down. I’m probably stressing out because my newborn is crying. The last thing I want to know is the gossip of what ‘the girls’ are doing later. Give me a break!

The receptionist at my dentist’s office was one of the ones who was berating me about getting a second c-section and not trying for a VBAC.

So, is it a secret rule in the receptionist manual?

Moby D

One of my splurges when I was pregnant with Hazel was to buy a Moby Wrap–specifically, the Moby D in lilac.

I am so glad that I got it.  I wear it all the time–it’s so nice to just be able to hold her right up against me.  The fabric is really soft, but strong as well.  It’s easy to use, and I like that I can potentially, theoretically nurse while she’s in it (I haven’t had the courage to try that yet… I plan on waiting until breastfeeding is a little less painful).

I wore it to the doctor’s office today for my post-partum incision check, and I got a TON of compliments on it.  At least four people asked me where I got it, and at least five or six other people told me that it looked awesome, that it was so pretty, etc.  And I really can’t sing its praises enough.

I love that it can hold a child up to 35 pounds.  That means that I could carry Oliver in it (assuming I was allowed to carry Oliver at all right now, which I’m not).  I like that it can be used as a front carrier, a side carrier, or a back carrier.  It’s machine washable.  What could be better?

gDiaper Experiment

Conner and I are concerned about the environment.  And with two babies and LOTS of poop, we’ve been concerned about the impact the disposable diapers have on the environment.

We bought some cloth diapers, but since even at our best we never wind up doing laundry more than once a week, and hand washing the diapers never really worked out, we were back to disposables.

Then, one evening, Conner said there has to be another alternative.  So we Googled environmentally friendly diapers, and found gDiapers.  GDiapers are flushable diapers.  Yep, you heard it right.  There are three layers–a cute cloth outer layer, a waterproof (and washable) inner layer, and a flushable insert.

We decided to buy the starter package and try it out with Hazel.

Day 1: I put the diaper on wrong, so when she peed, it leaked.  The website gives very clear instructions for how to put on the diaper to help avoid this, but I didn’t pay good enough attention.

Day 2: I tried again, after having read all of the instructions.  Success!  The flushable part got all the gross stuff, it flushed pretty easily in our toilet.  We were able to rinse out the waterproof liner since it hadn’t gotten dirty.  And the cloth part was certainly fine to  reuse without washing.  The website claims that you don’t typically have to wash the cloth cover more often than regular laundry (they might have been thinking about people who wash clothes more than us, but still, that’s much less frequently than cloth diapers).

Day 3: Blowout!  Actually, it was partly my fault.  Hazel was still, um, going when I changed her diaper (I didn’t realize), and she apparently puts some g-force into her movements.  So, when I was attempting to put the new diaper on her, poop shot across the room.  All over me, all over her, all over the diaper, all over the carpet, all over everything within three feet.  No kidding.  So, that diaper wound up in the laundry.

My current opinions and observations about gDiapers:

1. They’re more expensive than disposable diapers.  40 flushable refills cost about $14, 160 cost $52.  On Amazon, a package of 40 size 1-2 Huggies diapers (my brand of choice) costs $14.99.  Babies R Us has a 192 count package of size 1-2 Huggies for $32.49.  Plus, there’s the initial cost of the cloth diaper layer for gDiapers.  My personal opinion?  It is worth the extra money to be environmentally friendly.  I don’t think it’s an unreasonable extra cost.
2. They’re super cute.  They have a lower case “g” on the backs, so when the baby has tummy time/is crawling/etc, they will look adorable.
3. They take a bit more time to diaper and use.  You can’t just fold up the diaper and toss it–you have to remove the liner and flush it.  In the middle of the night, that’s not as much fun (last night, I just left it till morning, because thankfully breastfed baby poop doesn’t smell that bad.  I think that the best way to combat this is to have a number of diapers (more than the 2 we’re currently working with) and have them all loaded and ready to go, and have part of the daily routine involve reloading them with the liners.

Overall, I think that they’re worth the effort.  It makes me feel good to know that I’m not putting 10-20 diapers into landfills every day with my two kids.  Probably in the next couple of days I’m going to be ordering some more of the cloth liners for Hazel, and a starter pack to try out with Oliver.  I’m a bit concerned that Oliver won’t like switching diaper types at this stage, but as I don’t anticipate him potty training in the next couple of months, I think it’s worth a try.

Baby Blues

Except, they don’t seem so ‘blue’.

I’ve been experiencing the emotional roller coaster that goes along with having a baby, but it hasn’t really made me sad.  It’s made me cry a lot.  Mostly I’ll look at my beautiful family, and just cry because they’re all incredible.  I have this fantastic husband who is so sweet and thoughtful, and who just loves me so much–even when I’m not so lovable.  I have my little boy who is growing up to be such a cool little kid.  And I have my beautiful daughter who is just precious beyond words.

I did have some rough days, but those were mostly due to the pain of initiating breastfeeding again, I think.  In any case, I am glad that I haven’t had to deal with anything more serious than it has been, and even though I have to restrict my reading to non-emotional suspense novels, and will cry at the slightest provocation, I know that it is so much worse and harder for others.

Co-sleeping?

Apparently a controversial issue, co-sleeping wasn’t something we really tried or did with Oliver.  In his first week or so at home, I think we slept with him in bed with us a handful of times, but Oliver has generally been happier to sleep by himself.  When he was an infant, I used to take naps with him, which I found decadent, sweet, and which I wouldn’t trade for anything.  There is nothing quite like snuggling up to your little one, feeling and smelling their sweet breath in your face, being able to just hold onto them.

Nowadays, there’s not a chance that Oliver would sleep with us.  If he gets into our bed, he thinks it’s time to play.

Hazel, on the other hand, sleeps incredibly well when she sleeps in bed with us.  We try to put her down by herself in her playpen, but she won’t go for too long before she’s fussing.  And when we have to get up at 6:30 in the morning with Oliver, we just don’t really have the will to fight her to sleep by herself–sometimes you have to declare yourself in survival mode and move on.

So, we are becoming one of the many families who choose to co-sleep.  We’re doing it safely–practicing the safe co-sleeping measures I’ve read about.  And we’re getting more sleep than we would be.  And Hazel is such a sweetie.

One thing I wanted to make sure of is that if we brought her to bed with us, that we did it as a conscious, informed decision.  And so far, I’m glad for the arrangement.