tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14526215494341699412024-03-19T03:24:24.710-07:00Heart of LightRachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.comBlogger1185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-23930347259947707202022-05-06T17:07:00.000-07:002022-05-06T17:07:09.349-07:00Happy Mother's Day! <p class="MsoNormal"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->It is Tuesday afternoon and I am driving, still slightly out
of breath from my sprint to the parking structure, and I am watching the clock
as I sit in traffic and mentally calculating how long it will take me to get to
daycare and if I’m going to make it on time, and my phone is pinging with
emails that I didn’t get to before I left work, and I’m remembering that I need
cupcakes for my son’s birthday the next day, and I am listening to someone on
the radio talk about the debate over whether I should even have the right to decide
to be a parent and I want to fucking scream. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On a purely physical level, this decision, whenever it comes
down, does not impact me. I live in California, for one thing. More
importantly, I had a tubal ligation during my last c-section and I will never
have to think about being pregnant again and let me tell you, I didn’t realize
how much the possibility of pregnancy impacted my life until I could stop
thinking about it for the first time since puberty. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And yet it feels deeply personal, one more chisel chipping
away, one more reminder that my body is up for debate, that it is not entirely
mine. As women it feels like we are taught to care for our bodies but we never
fully own them. We are expected to maintain them and present them in a specific way,
to guard them from threats both real and imaginary. We are told that virginity
is somehow sacred, that our bodies are easily violated and rendered less
valuable. We are vessels. I don’t believe any of this anymore and yet it’s
still a constant process to escape it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fundamentally, I believe that people have a right to their
own bodies, even if they make choices that we are deeply uncomfortable with. You
don’t get to control anyone else’s body, which probably feels pretty hard to
accept for some people who are used to getting to control just about everything.
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I believe that everyone has a right to abortion, that they
don’t need to justify it, that they don’t need a sad story to earn it. I also believe
that there are a lot of sad stories, and many of them stem from the fact that
women’s bodies are valued as commodities, are not seen as their own. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you have the time and energy and love children, maybe
channel that into agitating for subsidized childcare or universal healthcare or
raising the minimum wage or more money for schools or better sex education, literally
anything that actually might benefit children. I am very privileged person and a
lot of the time being a parent in this country still feels like drowning. Our daycare
bill for two kids under five is the equivalent of 87% of my take home salary
every month and it’s not because our daycare providers are overpaid. And yet I
couldn’t quit my job even if I wanted to because our healthcare is tied to it. Our
daycare is open from 8am – 5pm and my commute is 45 minutes each way (not unusual
for LA) which means that it is physically impossible for me to get in a full 8
hour workday and still manage drop off and pick up on my own. Again, I’m privileged.
I have a partner and we can split our days so that one of us does drop off and
one of us does pick up. We both have the ability to shift our days around to
some extent for doctor’s appointments, etc. But being a parent is relentless
and there is basically no support and you absolutely cannot mandate that
someone take this on. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To be clear, even if the government was paying all my
childcare expenses and providing me with housing and a stipend, I still wouldn’t
think that they had the right to force me to bear a child against my will. But
it would at least make more sense logically. If their goal is to convince
people to carry pregnancies to term, maybe they should try making it just a
little bit more appealing. If their goal is to remind women that they don’t
give a fuck about us, congrats! You are succeeding. But also, we were already
well aware, thanks. </p>
Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-55170364967604052072021-10-01T10:45:00.000-07:002021-10-01T10:45:15.592-07:00Fall feelings<p> It's a Friday morning and I am taking 15 minutes to write. I don't write that much anymore, unless you count the essays I compose by talking to myself out loud in the car on the way to pick up my kids from daycare. I do count these, kind of. I miss writing, but I also miss a lot of other things. I miss cooking, the real kind, where I can stand in the kitchen for a couple hours with a glass of wine and not have anyone interrupt me. I miss running, not the process of getting good at running, which is terrible, but the part where I'm already good and can jog along in the crisp fall air and just enjoy the time to myself, the satisfying heaviness of my limbs when I'm done. I miss sitting in a very clean, very quiet house with a candle burning and reading a book, quietly. </p><p>I miss being alone. </p><p>We are starting to find our footing as a family of four, and it feels a little more manageable every day, but a 1.5 year old and a 3.5 year old are a lot, even on the most manageable days. This is not my stage, I think, and then I worry that I'll never find my stage, that I'll spend the rest of my life feeling like I'm drowning under everyone else's needs. I don't believe that, really, but the worry is there all the same. </p><p>I knew that having two kids would be more work, but I pictured it as the work of one child, doubled. Two bodies to feed, bathe, clothe, rock. Two sets of knees to bandage, two pairs of hands reaching for me. I didn't realize that when you have a second child there is a third being brought into the world - the relationship between your children occupies a nearly physical space and there are days (many of them) where managing this relationship is more work than taking care of either child. I am exhausted almost all the time. I can't figure out how to stop being exhausted, but I think it has less to do with sleep and more to do with tapping into the parts of myself that have been buried. <br /></p><p>We are 19 months into this pandemic and I am immensely privileged. I'm working from home for a few more months, my kids are in daycare (barring the sick days that seem to pop up every couple weeks lately), we own a home, which I never thought would happen. </p><p>So why do I still feel like I'm under water most of the time? Every day I tell myself that I'll write up a schedule, block out windows for chores and work and myself, I'll maximize my time. And every day the minutes slip away and then I'm not sure what I have to show for it. A pile of work emails sent, too much time scrolling on my phone, the frantic feeling of another day wasted. </p><p>Maybe the problem is the maximizing. The sense that I need to use all these precious minutes in the best way possible. I have spent my whole life trying to maximize my time and all I want to do right now is curl up on the couch without a clock running, reminding me that my hours are limited. </p><p>But honestly my hours are limited so instead I'm making a list of the things that make me feel human, remind me of myself. What matters to me, what do I want to do, what will energize me? How can I fit those things into my life? And should I block out time for lying on the couch, even though that seems like a very bizarre activity to schedule? <br /></p><p>This morning I told myself that I would light a candle and sit down for 15 minutes and write something, anything. And here I am (45 minutes later but who's counting?) and I have this shapeless, meandering essay to show for it but I also feel a little lighter and a little more resolved. <br /></p><p>Fall is blowing in, which always feels like a fresh start to me. I hate the phrase self care but I'm not sure what else to call it. The hardest part about caring for yourself is knowing how to do it, especially because it changes all the time. I don't think that forcing yourself to muscle through a list of activities is how you care for yourself, but neither is letting go of everything (I have tried both, with mixed success). I think about how I care for my toddlers, how I set a schedule so that they know what to expect, knowing they find comfort in the predictability but also delight when we break the routine, how I have already learned so well how to listen to them, not their words but their expressions, their tears, the motion of their bodies, so that I know when they are hungry or tired or need to be held. Can I learn to listen to myself this way, after all these years of trying to rationally decide what I <i>should</i> need at any given time? Maybe I can. Maybe this is a start. <br /></p>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-65155192118905022592021-05-04T15:18:00.001-07:002021-05-04T15:18:44.865-07:00One year<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn-O_8hGrHM-LSkB882rRUjLMLCPALJpVkEM0OluBMVt_iT187l-uvYPU3e943y_4NOCglT8JEswgF6vYraRVHxUX68p-fziwGTSMNgwEyVITtjRXqdrgekTmdMaahe4ZTLwEUftYACjwa/s2048/IMG_1062%25282%2529.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 1em; padding: 10px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1535" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn-O_8hGrHM-LSkB882rRUjLMLCPALJpVkEM0OluBMVt_iT187l-uvYPU3e943y_4NOCglT8JEswgF6vYraRVHxUX68p-fziwGTSMNgwEyVITtjRXqdrgekTmdMaahe4ZTLwEUftYACjwa/w300-h400/IMG_1062%25282%2529.JPG" width="300" /></a></div> It feels unreal to say a year has gone by. Last week I prepared for our small celebrations - cupcakes and balloons for daycare, a morning outside at the park with our immediate family. We helped Adrian choose a gift for Ian and let her look at party decorations options on my phone (she chose "cars" as his theme). <br /><p></p><p>And then last night I was surprised by the sadness that hit me like a wave right around 9pm. I've had a year to recover from Ian's birth but the memory of it still bites into me. I scrolled through my photos and texts from that night, and thought how strange it is to have this concrete, time stamped documentation to overlay my own recollection. I can't decide if this is good or bad. I don't feel tempted to delete anything, although I wonder if my memories, left to their own devices, would start to round off, become fuzzy. I hate that I look back at those newborn photos and don't feel any joy, but why would I? His birth was the loneliest and most painful experience of my life. <br /></p><p>So how do I move forward with this day? This day that belongs to Ian but also to me, and where I need to celebrate the fact of him while also being confronted by my own grief about how he entered the world. I don't really know yet. </p><p>I'm grateful that as my PPD has receded I've been able to bond with Ian. There is so much to take delight in - his love of music, his determined crawling, his ability to climb on anything, his ready laughter. I hold him in my arms when he wakes up every morning and I memorize his face. Ian is not his birth, even though it's taken me the better part of a year to untangle my emotions on that point. </p><p>I tell myself I can separate this day into two boxes, hold them side by side in my mind. I can celebrate Ian's growth and appreciate this milestone, and I can also give myself space to grieve, to acknowledge that this birthing experience and the months that followed took away pieces of me that I'm still trying to recover, somehow. </p><p>I'm hoping that this year is the worst, that as he grows and the birth
recedes that it stops feeling so sharp. I feel sure that this is true,
maybe even by next year it will feel like a distant memory. But I'm also trying to let go of the guilt that I feel about this sadness. I am not my feelings, and if I need to take a moment for myself on the eve of his birthday for the rest of my life, we'll both survive.<br /></p>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-51750473507068073452021-02-08T13:50:00.000-08:002021-02-08T13:50:20.024-08:00Postpartum depression during a pandemic<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitPw7-D0ectgAR0T41VjoN86Ixs6g-rDh4S2_XtoUDb5MAG5VehLtgDT6b7diw97uIOd_jqoSVW90yG-XnZeVjv3VQBdTRGq9nGUJQrsh9gJehyphenhyphenMvfxLiMHq7Gx1-reQ264lZaa5CpWSRj/s800/50021543092_f6155fbe63_c.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 1em; padding: 10px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitPw7-D0ectgAR0T41VjoN86Ixs6g-rDh4S2_XtoUDb5MAG5VehLtgDT6b7diw97uIOd_jqoSVW90yG-XnZeVjv3VQBdTRGq9nGUJQrsh9gJehyphenhyphenMvfxLiMHq7Gx1-reQ264lZaa5CpWSRj/s320/50021543092_f6155fbe63_c.jpg" /></a></div><p><br /><i>Here’s what having two kids feels like, for me, a lot of the time right now - it feels like failing, over and over again. It feels like never being enough for anyone, no matter what I do. It feels like wanting to kick something, throw something, break something, leave the house and never come back. It feels like needing to yell “fuuuuck” at the top of my lungs but holding it in because even when I hate my life I love my kids and I don’t want to scare them. It feels like my ears echoing with sound all the time - straining to hear my toddler talking over the sound of the infant crying, three different sound machines running all night until I start to think they are driving me insane, like I’m hearing things in the white noise.</i></p><p>I wrote those words back in August, when I was still struggling to accept that I was experiencing postpartum depression. I touched on this in my sleep training post, but I've been wanting to write a bit more about my experience with PPD after Ian's birth. One of my big fears about having a child was the risk of postpartum depression. I've experienced both clinical depression and anxiety in the past, which I knew put me at higher risk. After my first birth I <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/08/surviving-maternity-leave.html" target="_blank">actively made a plan</a> for myself in the hopes of lessening my chances, and I was lucky and didn't experience any PPD/PPA symptoms, which was a huge relief. I did end up regretting my decision to take so little maternity leave, and I wished I'd had more time to just enjoy her and relax, but the stress I experienced was pretty run of the mill working + parenting stuff. <br /></p><p></p><p>For my second (and last) pregnancy, I planned to do things differently. I researched my maternity leave options in much more depth. I decided I was going to take off two weeks before my due date and just sleep, get a pedicure and a massage, see friends, cook some freezer meals - basically have a luxurious vacation while Adrian was in daycare and try to set myself up as best I could for the newborn exhaustion. I was going to take a full 12 weeks off after the birth and then work part time for a couple months to ease back in. Knowing this was my last baby, knowing I would be stretched thinner with toddler care, I wanted to fully enjoy that small window of time. </p><p>And then there was a global pandemic. Our daycare shut down in mid-March, and I spent a month working full time from home, scrambling to adapt to an online environment, while caring for a toddler full time, while 8 months pregnant. Dustin and I were both doing everything we could and it wasn't enough. I cried every day, I stayed up at night trying to catch up on work, I had panicked phone calls with my OB trying to stay on top of all the changing hospital regulations around my birth. I still took off two weeks before the due date, but wrangling a toddler full time is not exactly what I would call relaxing or luxurious. And there was the constant pandemic stress. The worries about what would happen if I tested positive for COVID when I was admitted, because at that time they were recommending taking the baby away for two weeks, the stress of how to get milk for Adrian, which sounds so ridiculous and mundane but ended up being a weekly source of anxiety as we tried to stay super isolated the month before the birth, the guilt about being away from her for any length of time, when her world had suddenly been reduced down to just the three of us, the uncertainty of how to plan for childcare when it become clear that daycare would still be closed when I gave birth. </p><p>I hated myself for being pregnant, I desperately wanted to be able to narrow my focus and just take care of her. I was terrified of going to the hospital, scared I’d get sick, that I wouldn’t be able to come home or that I would come home and then get us all sick. I just wanted to not do it.</p><p>I tried to come to grips with the situation and I made plans as best I could, I even managed to rally some optimism and a semblance of peace in the days before my scheduled c-section. But then I went into labor early and the <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2020/05/giving-birth-during-covid.html" target="_blank">birth experience was traumatic</a> and when we came home nothing felt the way I'd expected.<br /></p><p> I hoped that when he arrived I’d be struck by instant blinding love, but I was so traumatized by the birth and so exhausted that I struggled. I loved him, but the feeling would come and go, and I had so little time to appreciate him. He spit up, constantly. I was changing my shirt six times a day. I had to bulk order bras just to keep up. My attention was pulled in two directions constantly. My whole plan for this time period had hinged on Adrian being in daycare. She would have a safe, unchanged space where she could go every day and get her energy out. I would rest and focus on Ian during the day and then be able to give her quality time in the mornings and evenings. Instead we were all together 24/7 without any of our usual weekend activities - no parks, no museums, no play dates.</p><p> I didn't feel that magical heart expanding love that people talk about. A lot of the time I felt more like his babysitter than his parent, and there wasn't ever time to focus on him or soak him in the way I had with Adrian. I was still having nightmares and intrusive flashbacks to the birth, and at my six week follow up my OB referred me to therapy, suspecting both PTSD and PPD. But how would you even know if you have PPD in a global pandemic? Isn’t everyone depressed right now?</p><p>My plan to work part time for a few months had been based on the idea that I would just be keeping things on track at work over the summer, but the pandemic meant that instead I was reinventing the wheel every week. It was impossible to stick to a part time schedule. We sent Adrian back to daycare in June, after a lot of anxious waffling, but the hours were reduced a bit to allow staff more time to clean, so we had less than eight hours a day toddler free, and we were both working full time with an infant (who refused to EVER nap in his crib). Unsurprisingly, these circumstances didn't facilitate bonding. <br /></p><p>We were already on fairly rocky footing when Ian started going through the usual sleep regressions. I could feel whatever tiny reserves I had evaporate. I could hold it together during the day, mostly. But at night I fell apart. Adrian would fight her bedtime or Ian would throw up
on me right after I’d showered and the rage I felt was all out of
proportion. I wanted to cry or scream or quit. My anxiety would ramp up as evening approached, as I anticipated yet another sleepless night. At 3am frantically pacing the living room and attempting to get Ian to stop crying, hoping he wouldn't wake the toddler or the neighbors, I hated him with an intensity that took my breath away and made me grit my teeth. I wanted to throw him across the room. I wanted to run out of the house and drive away and never come back. I couldn't see a way out, and I hated my life. As the weeks went by I alternated between rage and numbness. It wasn't exactly unrelenting - sometimes we'd have a decent stretch of sleep and the next day I would feel more like myself, but those days felt fewer and further between. We ended up putting Ian into daycare in October as originally planned, despite my reservations. It didn't feel like we had much of a choice, as my work was about to ramp up significantly and we were barely surviving as it was. <br /></p><p>I was speaking to a therapist on the phone semi-regularly, but in a lot of ways it made me feel worse. We'd talk about strategies and she'd urge me to try to figure out what I could take off my plate. But in 2020, a lot of the solutions you might use in normal times felt impossible. We couldn't even have someone come over and hold the baby for a bit and the repeated suggestions that I "remember to make time for myself" only made me more angry. I felt like I was failing at being a mother <i>and</i> failing at therapy, because I could never manage to follow through on even the simplest suggested actions, like taking time to call a friend or getting outside for a walk. They sent me the link to a virtual postpartum support group multiple times and I never even opened it. The unread mail sat there like a silent rebuke every time I opened up the app. I had gone to a breastfeeding support group after Adrian was born and I remembered discussing struggles with bottle acceptance and tummy time strategies and debating the merits of different carriers. How could I go to a bunch of moms I'd never met and tell them that I hated my baby and I wished I weren't a mother? How could I explain that I was sometimes so angry that I had to step outside of our apartment because otherwise I might scream at my toddler? </p><p>At my lowest point I started wondering if it was possible to give Ian away, convinced that he deserved a better parent. I was afraid to even tell my therapist how deeply broken I felt, because my depression brain was convinced they'd separate me from my family. And here's the shittiest part - the thought of being away from my children didn't even sound that bad in the moment, but I was overwhelmed with guilt at the thought of leaving Dustin stranded alone in this situation. We were barely surviving with both of us doing everything we could, and I couldn't imagine how one person could handle it alone. So I pushed on, doing my best at going through the motions of daily life, feeling increasingly disconnected from the world around me. <br /></p><p>The therapist gently suggested medication, and I kept refusing. I'm still not sure where my reluctance came from, other than my strong belief that most of my rage stemmed from exhaustion. I think it's also possible that my resistance was simply a symptom of my depression - I felt so hopeless and I didn't feel like I deserved the help, since I was failing at doing anything to help myself. It's hard to explain this feeling but it was something like "Look, you can't even get it together to take a fucking walk or do the sleep training, so why do you deserve medication?"<br /></p><p>I want to be perfectly clear here - this is not my actual stance on medication! I am <i>strongly</i> in support of medication, or whatever other interventions can help. I've taken meds for depression/anxiety for a few years at a time twice in my life, and I know they can be life changing. I look back on this experience and wonder if/how things would have been different if I'd accepted help sooner, if I'd truly explored all my options. And I feel guilt about that. I wish I had put a plan in place before birth, maybe had a defined cut off point where I told myself that I would do xyz (sleep train, take medication, etc) even if my depression brain was telling me it wouldn't make a difference or I didn't deserve it. I wish I hadn't let myself get so deep into it that I couldn't see a way out. <br /></p><p>As I wrote in the <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2021/01/sleep-training-again.html" target="_blank">sleep training post,</a> I was also resistant to starting sleep training, even though it had always been our plan, even though I wanted to believe that getting more sleep would help me. I couldn't really visualize my life improving, and I was so terrified that sleep training wouldn't work. I finally agreed to do it after a particularly bad evening, when I was going on three days with almost no sleep and it was my turn to put Adrian to bed. She was playing around and being mildly uncooperative and I was so tired I could feel myself losing it. I forced her into her pajamas as she became increasingly angry and then I just roughly dumped her into her crib, turned out the lights and left the room while she screamed frantically for me, confused and scared. I felt trapped inside my body and the need to escape was so strong that I ran out of the house, down the street, away from her cries. Every part of me was vibrating with anxiety and frustration. But there was nowhere to go. I couldn't even go for a real walk because I'd hadn't grabbed my mask. So I turned around and came back, and listened to Dustin soothing Adrian and getting her settled. I thought about how I didn't recognize myself anymore, and now I was losing the ability to even keep a veneer of functionality intact. When he came out I cried and said yes, let's do the sleep training. </p><p>The process was hard, but I was amazed by how different I felt after even a few nights of sleep. The fog started to rise, and even though life with a baby and a toddler in 2020 was still not ideal, I was able to start seeing moments of joy and brightness. The sleep helped put me on the right path, and the kids also moved towards an easier age. Over the winter break I looked over and noticed that both kids were playing independently for a few minutes, while I sat on the couch and drank some tea. It felt huge, and I could suddenly imagine a time in the near future when life would seem more manageable. Two weeks after we started sleep training my depression index score was so drastically different that my therapist initially thought it was an error in the system. </p><p>To be clear, we are still in year one with two small kids. I'm still tired a lot of the time, I'm still sick of being isolated, I still feel stretched thin. But the difference is that I feel like <i>myself </i>feeling all those things, and I can clearly visualize our life gradually continuing to get better. I feel hopeful again, most days. And I can see Ian for the first time, it feels like. The exact shape of his smile is finally imprinted on my brain, I can take delight in the rolls on his thighs. I still sometimes think about our pre-pandemic decision to have a second baby, and I can imagine how much simpler our life would be right now with just one kid, but I don't regret the fact of Ian anymore, and I'm looking forward to seeing how his little personality, already so distinct, develops over time. </p><p>I'm still very vulnerable to PPD and it can come in waves. In fact, last week, after I'd written the first draft of this post, we had a rough few days where Ian was getting four teeth at once and Adrian had a couple 3am wake ups, and I could feel myself spiraling down again. The fact is that I'm living right on the edge of enough these days, in terms of sleep and time and energy. I'm trying to build in little bits of joy for myself - a quick walk outside at lunch, a cup of tea on the couch after they go to bed, a shower where I've actually taken the time to put away the bath toys first so I'm not stepping on plastic buckets while being serenaded by baby shark (possibly the <a href="https://www.target.com/p/baby-shark-bath-toys-daddy-shark/-/A-76374916">best/worst bath toy </a>of all time). I'm hoping that these moments will be enough to shore me up. This is what I can do right now. <br /></p><p>As I've started to recover, I'm also able to grieve the new baby experience I had imagined for myself. I feel guilty that I didn't learn to love Ian until he was nearly 8 months old, that I don't have many sweet memories of snuggling him when he was tiny. I have to let that guilt go. Ian is fine, he is loved. <i>I</i> feel the pain of those first months deeply, and it is a real loss, but when Ian sees me he reaches out his arms for me. Despite being deeply imperfect, I am still his home. We survived and we'll keep surviving. </p>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-25840488625134269272021-01-12T14:16:00.004-08:002021-01-19T12:04:49.484-08:00Sleep training, again<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center; padding: 10px"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZOzLvTcJ6GpM6MhKpqPsAd-wEjbFE9HHxlxNJcEHkBnkpfA7lw4Ca5le301EHQrFrplTRasiZxCCli_kyVRdX2BWbs7ILLm64GZY_OtgwDFSTPjZGQC1gn0VLHbsWmjRYSPXgD91dlY_0/s2048/50828788818_a1892a7e99_k.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1373" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZOzLvTcJ6GpM6MhKpqPsAd-wEjbFE9HHxlxNJcEHkBnkpfA7lw4Ca5le301EHQrFrplTRasiZxCCli_kyVRdX2BWbs7ILLm64GZY_OtgwDFSTPjZGQC1gn0VLHbsWmjRYSPXgD91dlY_0/w269-h400/50828788818_a1892a7e99_k.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>I always like to start baby sleep discussion with a HUGE disclaimer - all babies are different and all families are different. You should be doing what works for you (baby + family). If what you are doing is working FOR YOU then why would you change? I'm a huge fan of sleep training because it saved my life, but I don’t believe everyone needs to sleep train. Some kids are good at sleeping, some parents are more able/willing to live with less sleep, etc. We <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2019/03/sleep-training-at-9-months-happy.html" target="_blank">sleep trained Adrian around 9 months</a> using the Happy Sleeper method, and it was the best thing we did for our family. I swore that if we had a second baby I wouldn’t wait until I was desperate.<br /><br />Then we actually had a second baby ...<br /><br />Ian had pretty normal sleep, for a newborn. We knew a little more this time around, and we purchased the <a href="https://takingcarababies.com/" target="_blank">Taking Cara Babies</a> newborn course, and he actually did better than Adrian had initially. But a four hour stretch doesn’t go quite as far when you’re chasing a toddler around all day and can’t ever take a nap or even just veg out on the couch. We broke down and bought a used Snoo at 6 weeks, and it did help but as he went through the normal ups and downs, and the four month regression, we were getting progressively more sleep deprived, and I was falling apart. We have a two bedroom apartment, so Ian shares a room with us and I swear he could smell me. He started waking up every time I would creep into the room or when I'd roll over in bed. <br /><br />I’ll probably get into this more at some point in the future, but the first several months of Ian’s life were incredibly difficult for me. I had given birth, alone, during a pandemic. We were isolated, trying to care for a toddler and a newborn without any of the social outlets or help we had planned for. I don’t know if it was circumstances or just the luck of the draw, but I was hit <i>hard </i>by postpartum depression. I was trying so hard to be a good mom, a functional partner, a productive employee, and I was just white knuckling it through each day. I felt like I was watching my soul walk away from me down a long hallway, like I was dematerializing, like I might suddenly just dissolve in a puff of air. I cycled between rage and apathy and guilt, but the constant was regret. I regretted this baby. I resented the fact that I wasn’t even able to enjoy my toddler, who used to be the light of my life. All I wanted was to be alone, in a huge white bed, where I could sleep and no one would bother me. The thought of it consumed me.<br /><br />We had said we would sleep train at 6 months, and Dustin was ready but I was so tired that I wasn’t sure I could do it. And there was this strange barrier for me - sleep training was my one hope. I kept telling myself that if I could just get some regular sleep that I would be myself again. I held onto that idea so tightly and it helped me keep going. But it also held me back because I was so afraid that sleep training would fail, and then I would have nothing, not even hope. I was convinced that if sleep training didn’t work my life would be over.<br /><br />I was speaking to a therapist for my PPD and we talked about how this was ridiculous (not her words) thinking. Because if the specific method of sleep training didn’t work, we would try something else - a different method, a sleep coach, something. We would not just give up and accept never sleeping again. I knew this, but I still delayed.<br /><br />By 7 months it was clear even to me that we had no choice because I’d hit a pretty brutal breaking point. In order to give me enough rest to get through the process, Dustin slept in the bedroom with Ian for a few days while I slept on the couch (something he'd been begging me to do for the last month but I'd felt too guilty to actually do it). I felt so much better after just a couple nights of rest that I knew this was the right decision for us. <p></p><p>We share a bedroom with Ian, and will until it feels like he's sleeping well enough to move in with Adrian, so we set up a little bit of separation by finding the narrowest mini crib we could (the Bloom Alma Mini) and fitting it into our smallish closet. I hung a blackout curtain in the closet doorway, so that we can keep it dark for him. We have a portable noise machine under his crib. We had stopped swaddling when we moved him out of the Snoo, and now he uses a regular sleep sack. During the initial sleep training process we slept in the living room for two weeks, so that we wouldn't risk disturbing him. <br /></p><p>We decided to go with the same method we used for Adrian, following <i>The Happy Sleeper</i> book. It's a modified Ferber method, which means you do let your baby cry but you do timed checks to reassure them that they aren't alone. We had already introduced a consistent night time routine, so it was really just a matter of accepting the crying. Ian is very vocal, and very stubborn, so I was dreading this. When we sleep trained Adrian she cried for a little over an hour for a full week and I didn't know how we could do it again.<br /></p><p>Well, Ian cried for over <b>three hours</b> at a stretch, and then woke up and cried again later the first night. I was in agony, in a very physical way, just listening to it. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, I wanted to quit. But what was I going to do? I was a shell of a person, I still hadn't managed to bond with my baby, I needed to sleep. So we kept going. We stayed committed to the method, we stuck with the timed checks and the scripts. He cried for two hours the second night. Then on the third night, we laid him down and he babbled to himself for 10 minutes and then fell asleep and slept through the night without crying. And every night since then he's gone happily to bed. After the first two weeks we moved back into the bedroom and it's been fine, although I do think that we probably wake up more often than we would otherwise, because I'm aware of even his small wake ups where he rolls around for a few minutes and goes right back to sleep. <br /></p><p>The difference I felt was immediate. I actually had a follow up appointment with my therapist two weeks after we started sleep training and she always has me fill out a depression index survey, and the improvement was so huge that she thought there was an error in the system. Nope. It turns out that yes, massive sleep deprivation will absolutely make it hard for you to function. We are coming up on two months now and I feel like myself again in so many ways, and I've been able to bond with Ian. At night I can enjoy reading him a book and feeding him, knowing that he'll go to sleep and I'll have an hour or two to clean up the house or relax or (gasp) watch an episode of something. In the morning I'm excited to get him out of his crib and I appreciate his toothy grin so much more. <br /></p><p>This isn't to say that he never wakes up! He's still a baby, he still wakes up, we are still tired a lot of the time. When he's popping a new tooth he'll need extra snuggles and help sleeping. If he's going through a developmental spurt he'll have trouble with waking up at night. We feel pretty confident handling those situations at this point, and I just trust my gut for the most part when deciding whether to let him handle it or to step in. He got sick over winter break (did you know that the roseola virus lies dormant in your body and you can periodically shed it and infect your baby and send yourself into a tailspin about how your baby could possibly be sick when you didn't even see family for the holidays?) and we did a lot of rocking and holding and comforting for a few nights. </p><p>We had originally planned to drop all night feedings because his weight gain was good and he was drinking so much milk at daycare. That worked well for a couple weeks but recently we noticed that he was struggling with waking up around 3-4 am and having trouble going back to sleep. We tried watching his daytime wake windows, making sure his naps were the right length, etc. After a couple weeks we decided that maybe it was an indicator that he wasn't really ready to drop all night feeds. This might be because his solid food intake has ramped up and he's less willing to drink milk during the day. So for now we are back to one night feed if he wakes up around 3am. We'll adjust that when it seems like the right time for us. Adrian still did a night feed most nights until 17 months, when she gradually dropped it on her own. You can absolutely sleep train even if you don't want to night wean. </p><p>Managing two kid's sleep schedules is still much more exhausting than one, but I am so grateful that they both have a solid sleep foundation. The weird upside to the pandemic for us is that we're both at home for evening routine, which was never the case in the past because we worked offset schedules. So for now we get to handle bedtime by alternating nights, with one of us putting Ian down around 7pm and the other one putting Adrian down around 7:30/8pm. Whoever puts Ian down comes out and handles the dishes/tidying, so by 8pm we generally have a fairly clean slate for the next day. </p><p>Sleep training does not necessarily give you a kid who sleeps 12 hours a night without fail. I don't think that either of our kids is a naturally good sleeper. Even at nearly three years old, Adrian still has phases where she struggles with being awake for a few hours in the middle of the night. But because she has that solid foundation and feels comfortable putting herself to sleep she gets through most of it on her own. I will sometimes turn on the monitor at night and catch her rolling around, looking at a book, or playing with her stuffed animals. We leave her to it unless she calls out for us but if she needs us we'll come in and take her to the bathroom or offer some milk or just give her a hug and remind her that it's still night time. </p><p>Big sleep transitions we'll be looking at in the coming year - moving Adrian to a toddler bed (insert scream emoji, I am not mentally prepared for this), moving the kids in together and getting them on a single bedtime routine. I'm not looking forward to these things, although I will really enjoy not having to creep into my room in the dark every night. But I feel confident that we'll somehow get through it, because I know that the kids are capable of sleeping independently most of the time. <br /></p><p>Do I still sometimes dream about getting to sleep/read/sleep without interruption for a full weekend? Absolutely. But for now I'll take this. <br /><br /><br /></p>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-31570263811568639082020-05-15T13:28:00.002-07:002021-01-19T12:06:50.616-08:00Giving birth during COVID
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m a little reluctant to share my birth story because I think there’s enough panic out there right now for pregnant women, and there are so many people who are having perfectly normal births despite the circumstances. When people ask me how it went, I tell them it was hard but we’re fine. And we are fine. I’m usually a results driven person, so I tend to focus on the outcome and not the process. So it’s natural for me to tell myself that it’s fine because in the end I am here and I have a baby and we are okay. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I’m also not okay. The actual birth was a perfect storm of circumstances that led to the worst few hours of my life. It’s going to take me a while to process it, but right now I’m just accepting that it was scary and I can feel angry about it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was scheduled for a c-section on Wednesday, which I knew was pushing my luck because Thursday was my due date. But Adrian had been a full week late and I really wanted to schedule with my own doctor, so I decided to do that thing where you trust in the universe and just believe that it will be okay, which is very out of character for me. I told myself that this baby would wait, I visualized a smooth hospital experience. I knew Dustin wouldn’t be allowed in the actual OR with me, due to the COVID precautions, but he would be there as I was prepped and he would be there in the recovery room. We asked my mom to self-quarantine for two weeks prior so she could come up and watch Adrian for the day. Our back up plan was to drop Adrian off at her in-home daycare, which has been closed since mid-March, but had offered to watch her during the hospital stay. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">On Sunday I packed a small hospital bag, and typed up an obsessively detailed explanation of Adrian’s schedule, food options, and stuffed animal preferences. I got in bed around 9pm, feeling peaceful and truly believing that this whole trust exercise thing was working, looking forward to our last couple days as a family of three. And then my water broke. Thanks, universe. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The contractions started right away but they were still 10 minutes apart. I talked to the L&D nurse and she said to monitor for an hour. I called my mom and told her I was pretty sure this was it. I showered and washed my hair and got dressed. By 9:45pm the contractions were 3 minutes apart and I knew we couldn’t wait to go to the hospital. My mom got in the car and we called a friend who lives close by to come sit with the baby monitor until my mom could arrive. We were at the hospital by 10:30pm. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was prepared for the screening at the hospital entrance, where they check your temperature and ask a few questions to assess COVID risk. But when Dustin tried to pass through they stopped him and told him that partners weren’t allowed in L&D until the patient was actually admitted. I tried to explain that I was having a c-section and was definitely going to be admitted, but they told him he’d need to wait in the car for the time being. I was so desperate to get upstairs that I accepted it more quickly than I might have otherwise, but I remember standing in the elevator alone as the doors closed and just crying. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I went through the intake process and got settled in a triage room by 11pm. A frazzled young doctor came in to check on me, apologizing and saying that they were really busy that night. I was 5 – 6 cm dilated and having contractions every 3 minutes and he confirmed that my water was ruptured. The next hour is a blur. I was in a lot of pain, more than I remember from my labor with Adrian. The contractions were starting in my lower back and wrapping around my abdomen and I was feeling like I couldn’t manage them. A nurse came in and put in an IV, the doctor came back and swabbed me for COVID. I have never come closer to hitting a medical professional than when he reprimanded me for not holding still enough while he was reaming my brain out through my nostril and I was having a contraction. By 11:45pm I was starting to panic. The anesthesiologist was still busy, the pain was increasing quickly and I was starting to feel like I needed to push. With Adrian, I’d managed the contractions by having Dustin watch the monitor and tell me when a peak was coming and talk me through it as it eased off. I tried to do it alone but everything was hazy. I was distracted by pain and couldn’t figure out which monitor was tracking the contractions and which was tracking vital signs. All I could hear was the baby’s heartbeat, thumping and speeding up and down. I wanted to get up and move. I called out for the nurse and told her I needed to get up and go to the bathroom. The doctor came in and asked if I was saying I needed to push and I told him I didn’t know but I couldn’t sit here. He sighed and said he’d check my progress, telling the nurse as he was gloving up that he was only checking because I said I needed to push. And then he said what you probably least want to hear when someone has their hand inside your body, which is “Oh shit.” He told the nurse to get me into the OR immediately, that I was over 8cm dilated and they needed to move. The nurse reminded him that the anesthesiologist wasn’t free yet and the doctor said they’d get him to meet us, and if need be they’d just put me under general. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">At this point I freaked out. Looking back I realize it wasn’t totally rational, because I was at a good hospital about to undergo a routine surgery. But I was suddenly terrified that I was going to die. I didn’t trust the doctor, there was no way I was going to agree to general anesthesia when I was alone and had no one to advocate for me or the baby. I was in so much pain, and I thought about bailing on the whole surgery but I knew that if I did I would be having a completely unmedicated birth, possibly alone, and I was in no way prepared for it. I’m not sure I can really communicate the level of desperation I was feeling in that moment, when it just seemed like I didn’t have any good options and no one was listening to me anyways. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was in the OR by midnight and the luckily the anesthesiologist was the kindest and most reassuring presence I’d encountered since I got to the hospital. I was sobbing and telling him I wasn’t sure I could hold still for him to place the spinal block. My contractions were coming every two minutes and they felt like they were ripping me apart but somehow he managed it and as the pain from the contractions eased up my mind started to clear a bit. The surgeons came in and there was some consternation over the fact that my COVID results hadn’t come back yet and they tried to figure out what to do because they didn’t feel like they had enough time for everyone to get the additional PPE needed if I did have COVID. Just as they were deciding to move forward as is, the results came in negative and everyone cheered. The rest of the c-section was uneventful, and pretty similar to Adrian’s, except that I was alone and the surgeon was less communicative and I cried a lot more. Ian was born at 12:39am and we were in the recovery room by 1:30am. I thought Dustin would be allowed up but they told me that he’d have to wait until we were actually taken over to our hospital room, so I held Ian and just luxuriated in the knowledge that we were both alive and safe. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was moved into a room around 4am and Dustin was allowed up. They reminded us that he was allowed to stay as long as he wanted but once he left he wouldn’t be able to re-enter. We were already prepared for this and knew that he would be staying for the day and heading home in time to put Adrian to bed. We were worried about how she would react to both of us suddenly disappearing when we were the only two people she’d seen in two months. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I still don’t know if that was the right decision. The first night alone was incredibly difficult. Ian was having trouble regulating his blood sugar, and they needed to test him before every feeding, and then they wanted me to triple feed him each time (breastfeed, hand express and feed with a cup, then give formula). At this point I had been awake since 7am on Sunday morning, nearly 48 hours without any sleep at all, and I was starting to feel like I was losing my mind. He cried most of the night, and instead of being able to just feed him on demand I’d have to call and wait for a nurse to come in each time for the blood sugar checks and they kept reminding me that if he didn’t get three good readings in a row they’d take him to the NICU and I wouldn’t be able to see him. I was struggling just to be able to sit up with the c-section incision, and having to get up to change diapers and walk him around the room felt like a brutal physical endurance test. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">On Tuesday morning when the doctor came to check on me I just couldn’t stop crying. Physically I was okay, and able to move around, but I was deliriously tired and missing Adrian so much and just feeling like I couldn’t take much more. The doctor told me that she’d be willing to discharge me earlier than normal, as soon as Ian was cleared to go home. And then Ian miraculously got a couple decent readings in a row and the pediatrician agreed to discharge him. We were out at 1pm on Tuesday and I have never felt so relieved. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first week at home was hard, of course, with a very active toddler and a newborn and the c-section recovery, but I did much better than with my first one, probably because I was more aware of how careful I needed to be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In our second week we’re settling into a routine and just missing the presence of family and friends. I’m so grateful for how well Adrian has handled the transition. She’s excited about her baby brother and just loves seeing him. It makes my heart ache to not be able to lift her up, but it isn’t as bad as I was expecting. We explained to her that I have a boo-boo and in a few weeks I can lift her again, and in the meantime she can always snuggle with me on the couch and I’ll read to her. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7K0z8fxf8abcH8gCUGOMEnW6FagNg1gMydoACcq2rm_sgz_v6cYInv7NaKHHOmq7VI-O-628cZeQTISUj95S2txvxiJ6Xmx5KawnKbd7ChoBxB1St7Ngk6G2EXi9e1UiK7-fUWJs_57bO/s1600/49898238796_12e28e678c_c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="601" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7K0z8fxf8abcH8gCUGOMEnW6FagNg1gMydoACcq2rm_sgz_v6cYInv7NaKHHOmq7VI-O-628cZeQTISUj95S2txvxiJ6Xmx5KawnKbd7ChoBxB1St7Ngk6G2EXi9e1UiK7-fUWJs_57bO/s320/49898238796_12e28e678c_c.jpg" width="240" /></a>In retrospect I would have scheduled the c-section for 39 weeks, I would have gone to the hospital immediately instead of waiting for an hour. In short, I would have trusted my own instincts and not just hoped for the best. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Again, I don’t think that my situation is representative of giving birth in this time. My labor was moving quickly, there were way more patients than usual which spread all the staff thin, and it would have been a stressful and painful situation even if everything else in the world was normal. The only difference COVID made is that it was a stressful and painful situation that I went through alone (and that’s huge – I know that it would have been so much better if I’d had D with me to talk me through it and help advocate for me). I am grateful that everything worked out, and I’m also allowing myself to acknowledge that the process was really fucking hard and it’s okay for me to not feel okay about it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you’re pregnant right now and feeling anxious, I will say that the L&D department felt safe, so the precautions do seem to be helping. Every hospital has different restrictions and they change as the current situation changes, so I think the only thing you can do is keep in touch with your doctor as the birth approaches so you know what to expect. And if it’s at all possible, I would recommend having someone with you. I thought (and still think?) that I probably could have handled the scheduled c-section on my own, if I had my own doctor and I wasn’t in labor it would have been hard and sad but okay. But laboring alone was terrible, although I admit that I’m not the best candidate for it, since I had an emergency c-section pretty early on with Adrian and was not mentally prepared to labor with this baby. Right now, I am just very grateful to be home with my family, and the birth experience gets a little further away each day. </span></div>
Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-81189820526032520362019-10-16T06:09:00.000-07:002019-10-16T10:16:45.092-07:00Loss and closureSummer 2019 was a whole thing.<br />
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I got quarantined by the department of public health due to possible measles exposure and wasn't allowed to leave my house (thankfully lifted after a week when they were able to run additional tests and confirm that I had immunity but it was a whole bunch of drama).<br />
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Dave died at the end of July, almost 11 years after <a href="http://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2009/11/health-issues-personal-and-public.html" target="_blank">the accident</a> that made him into a totally different person. The actual death was sudden, although it feels strange to describe it that way when really it feels like it happened in slow motion. I used to mark the anniversary with a post each year but I stopped after <a href="http://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2014/11/year-six.html" target="_blank">year six</a>, when I realized that nothing about that situation was fixable and I needed to spend some time working on acceptance. What that really meant, for me, was accepting that Dave was gone in most of the essential ways. I never was able to let go of the resentment I felt for the new person that took his place. I've tried to stop feeling guilty about that. If we're being honest, the new person was generally an asshole. That wasn't Dave's fault, and it wasn't the new person's fault, but it wasn't my fault either and it was the truth. It's hard to keep loving someone who is more often than not, obstinate, irrational, and mean. In many ways, I still resent that person, because I feel like the last decade has slowly stolen even the memories of Dave away. If he'd died in the accident, it would have been sudden and horrible and we would have grieved deeply but he would have been frozen in time at that moment. Instead, the memories of Dave pre-accident are all buried and mixed up with years of resentment and ambiguous grief. Now that he's truly gone, I'm hoping I can slowly let go of the anger and try to remember him as two separate people. Brain injury is complicated and individual and it'll probably take all of us years to process this experience. I feel like this paragraph reads as cold, a strange, dry ending to what was a huge chapter in my family's life, but that's where I am right now. I have some work to do, clearly.<br />
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Moving forward to unambiguous grief, our beloved Circe died in August, and we're still missing her feisty presence every day. At 14.5 years old, she'd been dealing with complicated health issues for a while, and we'd finally gotten a definitive diagnosis of Cushings disease just a week before. That Saturday I'd put Adrian down for a nap and I was freaking out because we'd just noticed the telltale red spots that signal hand, foot and mouth disease, and I was anticipating all the misery that would entail. So I was standing in the kitchen feeling stressed when Circe walked in, stumbled and then collapsed on the floor. I panicked, cradling her in my arms and shouting for Dustin. She was alert but not able to stand, so I rushed her to the vet's office, crying the entire way. They ran tests and checked her out but nothing was "wrong" - other than the clear fact that she couldn't walk and seemed to be getting less responsive. She was peaceful and didn't appear to be in pain so I decided to bring her home and let her pass in her own time (although we did call a vet who could come out to our house to euthanize her, in case she started to seem uncomfortable). It was a bizarre day, because we were hosting a family birthday party and everyone arrived just minutes after I rushed to the vet. So I came home, with a dying dog, and we just took turns holding her all day and eating cake while watching Adrian's spots get progressively worse. Circe finally passed away in our bed, early Sunday morning. We took her to back to our vet's office because I couldn't stand the thought of having her taken away by strangers. Our vet was there when we arrived (she doesn't work on Saturdays so we hadn't seen her the day before) and she hugged us and cried, and told me she'd reviewed Circe's chart first thing that morning and she felt sure it was a stroke, which was what I'd suspected as well. I'm still struggling to adjust to not hearing her little nails click as she walks around the house, to not having her snuggled up against me at night.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/26894930684/in/photolist-GYBxTs-GYBwkh-HKGwwN-HKGwUw-HKGvGb-HKGx7W-GYByQ7-HKGx3C-HtZLeC-HtZLmb-BFPpdz-qy13Qq-qgw4wt-qgCBfh-pjWisi-pZ9cZj-qgCGC1-pZ8isU-pZ9dcJ-qgFZGt-pjWj36-qepNcQ-qepQBj-pjGPpS-pjGScL-pZ9b2S-pjWjav-pZfGv4-qgCBVq-pjGSoY-qgG4Lk-pZh2pH-pT3826-pArDui-nRXntP-o9rVuX-nRXp6r-nNTJJM-ktMFQw-kmGgAw-ktNsH7-ktLwYr-jY4usR-kgwhZc-kgvFsx-jyCWhc-jyEXQS-jj3aT6-iTLiE5-j2kARR" title="circe + squirrel"><img alt="circe + squirrel" height="426" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/7406/26894930684_1491f1be57_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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And yes, I know it's strange to post about losing a person and losing a dog in the same breath, and I realize that I'm grieving Circe far more than Dave right now. That's where I am. Missing Circe is uncomplicated, pure grief and it's easier to process. She was such a constant presence in our lives, and I'm grateful that she was happy right up until the end, and I feel lucky that she had her stroke on a Saturday because I don't know how I could have handled the irrational guilt if I'd come home from work to find her there alone.<br />
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Loss comes in so many shapes, and my struggle is always to accept it, to let myself feel it and to stop trying to rationalize it.<br />
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P.S. - Adrian did indeed have a raging case of hand, foot and mouth, and I can say with authority that having to wake up multiple times a night to slather cold yogurt all over your hysterical toddler in the bathtub (because you read somewhere that maybe, possibly, it could help) provides a bit of temporary distraction in the midst of grief, or at least makes you wonder what the fuck you did in a past life to deserve this.<br />
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P.P.S. - I know I keep promising posts to people and then forgetting to write them. I'm sorry! If I promised something and didn't do it, let me know! I have a bunch of drafts that I'll try to revisit and polish up when I get a moment (although my moments are few and far between these days).Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-44001327867416311682019-08-15T09:54:00.002-07:002021-01-19T12:07:35.329-08:00Traveling with a 16 month old<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/48539636421/in/datetaken/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 1em;" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="400" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48539636421_8042e883fe_z.jpg" width="300" /></a>I was super nervous about our first cross country trip with a toddler. Adrian is an extremely active (read: rarely sits still) 16 month old and I was dreading the 5.5 hour flight. We didn't get her a separate seat because we are cheap and I knew we'd be spending more money getting to and from the airports.<br />
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For this trip we were flying into NYC and spending five days there before taking the train down to DC and staying there for three days. We were visiting friends, so we didn't have a crazy long list of places we needed to see and we tried to balance out activities we'd enjoy (museums, happy hours) with things she'd enjoy (splash pads).<br />
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I am definitely not an expert but I wanted to share some of what worked for us on this trip, in case it's helpful to anyone else.<br />
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I know I should probably break this post up but all I have time for right now is a brain dump. I'm sorry!<br />
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<b>Packing </b>- I tried to keep it light but there's a certain amount of baby gear we just needed. This is what we packed (in addition to clothes and diapers).<br />
<ul>
<li><i>Travel crib</i> (Baby Bjorn) - I like this one because it's pretty lightweight vs. a pack 'n play. You can almost always find them on Craigslist, which is what I did. </li>
<li><i><a href="https://www.slumberpod.com/" target="_blank">SlumberPod</a></i> - this was a game changer. I can post a more in depth review if people need details but let me just tell you, this magical black out tent + the exhaustion of vacation somehow got her to finally drop her middle of the night bottle and sleep straight through. I had been dreading the process, and hoping that she'd just decide to do it on her own and guess what - avoidance totally worked! This time. Not sure I can recommend it as a general life strategy. (Heads up - this product is still fairly new, and I had zero luck finding one used so I had to suck it up and purchase it full price. It was worth every penny.)</li>
<li><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Z7QQUK" target="_blank">Hatch Rest</a> </i>- wanted to keep her sleep environment as familiar as possible. </li>
<li><i>Baby monitor </i>- I know it seems over the top to travel with it but I really prefer being able to see what she's doing in there. </li>
<li><a href="https://amzn.to/31DYec6" target="_blank"><i>Travel stroller</i> </a>- I bought a Summer Infant 3D Lite because it folds up fairly compactly but still reclines. I found one on Craigslist easily. We ended up not doing many on the go naps but did use the recline if she needed a little time to chill out.</li>
<li><i>Baby carrier</i> (<a href="https://ergobaby.com/" target="_blank">Ergo</a>) for getting through security and making it easier getting on and off the plane. </li>
</ul>
We opted not to bring a booster seat or high chair and it was fine for us.<br />
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<b>Transportation </b>- getting to and from the airport is so much more complicated with a baby because of the carseat issue (and the extra luggage, ugh). I really, really didn't want to take a carseat with us, because I knew we weren't going to rent a car on our trip and we were already lugging around a travel crib and a stroller. We do own a lightweight carseat (Cosco Scenara) which is a good option for travel but still a large thing to haul around if you aren't going to use it every day of the trip.<br />
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<i>Driving/parking at LAX</i> - I used a <a href="http://laxparkingcurbexpress.com/" target="_blank">valet type service</a>, where you swing by and pick up a driver on your way to the airport, get dropped curbside in your own car, and then they park the car for you and pick you up when you get back to town. It was pricier than self-parking (about $30/day vs. $12 per day) but so worth it. No waiting for a shuttle, no transferring your luggage. It saved us at least 45 minutes and a lot of schlepping on each end, which doesn't sound like a big deal unless you're traveling with a tired baby.<br />
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<i>Getting from Newark to Brooklyn</i> - I sucked it up and hired a car service and I was so grateful. The ride ended up only taking 35 minutes and they had a comfy, very clean car seat installed. I used <a href="https://www.empirelimousine.net/" target="_blank">Empire Limo</a>.<br />
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<i>Getting from Brooklyn to Penn Station</i> - Lyft with car seat (this is an option in NYC). It's also legal to go without a car seat in the city but personally I wasn't comfortable being on the expressway without one.<br />
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<i>Getting to the airport in DC</i> - Uber with car seat (Lyft doesn't do car seats in DC, weird).<br />
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<b>Surviving the flight </b>- I think the best advice I read while I was preparing was to just accept that at no point during travel will you get to relax. I went into it with that mindset and it was better than I expected. Adrian doesn't like sleeping on the go, but I did manage to coax her into taking a one hour nap on the way over, so we felt like we got a little bonus break. Other than that we were definitely ON the whole time and she did pretty well. Our seatmates on both flights complimented her traveling skills, which was nice because I'd been so stressed out in the week leading up to our trip.<br />
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We prioritized flight scheduling over all else, which is why we ended up flying into slightly inconvenient airports. On the way over we took a 7am flight, which did mean we had to wake her up a little early but also meant she was more likely to take a nap on the plane, and ensured we'd be all settled in before bedtime. On the way home we took a 4pm flight, which meant that we landed just before bedtime. She fell asleep in the car on the way home and we were able to transfer her to her crib and she slept right through the night. We avoided red eyes because we both hate them anyways, and because we knew Adrian would struggle to sleep well in an exciting environment. I'd rather deal with a toddler who skipped a nap than a toddler who only got a couple hours of overnight sleep.<br />
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For the flights themselves I did pretty much all you can do, which is to pack new toys and books and slowly bring them out as the flight progressed. We also packed snacks but A is not super food motivated, so that was not as useful to us. What worked for us:<br />
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<i>Window clings (monsters)</i> - these were the biggest hit and totally saved us. They held up really well to multiple uses and we'd stick them all over the wall of the plane and on us and let her peel them off and restick them. I did NOT stick them on the back of the seat in front of us, because I knew that wouldn't end well. We did our best to pretend the seat in front of us didn't even exist so she wouldn't start touching it. I am completely failing at finding the exact ones we bought, but searching for window clings will turn up a million good options.<br />
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<i>New board books </i>- Adrian loves books so I will find any excuse to pick up a few new ones.<br />
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<i>Pill box full of small snacks</i> - I read this tip somewhere. I got a one week pill organizer and put blueberries in each slot (plus some for refilling). She enjoyed opening and closing all the slots and we'd get 15ish minutes out of each session. My one hesitation with this was that it's probably a bad precedent, teaching her to eat things out of pill organizers. But then I realized that if she manages to get her hands on a pill container she is 100% going to eat whatever is inside of it, regardless of whether she's done it before, because she's one of those kids who has to put everything in her mouth and we always have to be incredibly careful about what we leave lying around. Soooooo I'm still on the fence with whether or not this is good idea, honestly.<br />
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<i>No mess marker book </i>- not a huge hit. She hasn't really hit the coloring book stage yet, and this didn't hold her interest. I just grabbed a random one from Target but apparently the Melissa & Doug Water Wows are the ones you want, FYI.<br />
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<i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Z2TvPz" target="_blank">Buckle toy</a></i> - semi-interested? She loves the buckle on her backpack but wasn't as interested in this toy. Maybe a couple months too young for it.<br />
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<i>iPad </i>- we packed my iPad and downloaded a couple things from Netflix as well as the Petting Zoo app but it wasn't a huge success. We haven't started giving her screentime at home yet (I'm not against screentime but we both work full time and only have a few hours with her each day, so it hasn't felt necessary/helpful) and it just doesn't hold her interest right now. On the way home they still had the little TV screens in the seat backs and for some reason she was way more interested in that, so we put on some kids movies and they helped distract her a bit. Have to say, I am really looking forward to the day when we can just put on an in-flight movie and she'll be fully absorbed for a few hours. <br />
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Other stuff we had on hand that we didn't end up needing - crayons + paper (didn't use them), post it notes (apparently kids like to play with them but I think the cling films served the same purpose), bandaids (ditto).<br />
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<b>Things we did NOT do: </b>Use our tray tables. Allow her to walk in the aisle (or get out of the seat for any reason other than one quick diaper change). We know our kid and I'm 100% sure that if she knew the tray table existed she would want to open and close it a million times and there would be angry tears when we told her no. Same with walking the aisle. For me it's just easier at this age to not let her know things are a possibility vs. trying to enforce reasonable boundaries/limits, which are incredibly hard to explain to a stubborn toddler. I don't mind working on limits at home but I wasn't willing to do it while trapped in a flying metal tube with a hundred strangers.<br />
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<b>What I wish I'd done:</b> Remembered to grab a steamed milk in the airport before take off. I meant to but got distracted with gate check stuff and that sucks because it would have helped her nap more easily on the plane. There's no milk on board the plane. On the flight back I had some shelf stable milk cartons which was great for the flight but hell for security. You're allowed to bring fluids for babies but because the cartons aren't clear they have to open them for testing OR one of the parents can opt for a full pat down. Thanks to D for taking one for the team but the delay sucked. Next time we'll definitely just buy milk in the airport.<br />
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<b>Handling the time change:</b> The joy of traveling west to east on vacation is that we didn't have to change her sleep schedule. So she slept from approximately 10pm to 9am, with a nap from 3 - 5pm. She'd been slowly transitioning from two naps to one nap for a couple months, vacation was actually a great way to fully move to one nap because she was so distracted in the mornings. The later bedtime (and wake up) was lovely because we could eat dinner at an adult hour and then sleep in a bit in the morning. We had initially thought she might nap in her stroller if she needed a morning nap but we quickly realized that she was doing great on one nap, so we just made a point of always getting home by her nap time. She took a cat nap in the stroller once, but that was it.<br />
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<b>Random tip: </b>When we got to NYC we picked up some shelf stable milk cartons at Whole Foods (same kind I keep in our earthquake kits) so that we'd have them available in the diaper bag. Adrian doesn't normally drink milk while she's out and about at this point, but all the excitement and distraction made it harder to get her to settle down and eat real meals, so she'd sometimes get overly hungry and having quick access to milk was a lifesaver. Yes, you can buy milk cheaper in a corner store but that doesn't help when you're trapped on the subway due to a train delay. We only had to use the cartons a few times but I was really glad to have them.<br />
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It was definitely a different type of vacation, and required so much more planning and strategizing, but it felt incredibly special to get to show her some of our favorite places with some of our favorite people.<br />
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<i>{hanging at the Met Breuer, formerly the Whitney, perpetually our fave}</i></div>
<br />Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-82126323293676272322019-06-11T19:30:00.000-07:002019-06-11T19:30:01.061-07:00Parenting, one year in<i>Apparently I wrote this post back in April, then forgot that I wrote it and recently started a new post that I titled "Parenting at 14 months" (clearly, my post titles are very creative) and then ignored that post, and then just logged back in and found both of them. So I'm just going to publish this one and then maybe update again later? It's funny that this is two months old and already feels out of date. </i><br />
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Honestly, we were nervous about having a kid. I was particularly worried because I'd spent most of my twenties doing a lot of caregiving for my parents and while I wouldn't have done it any other way it was both emotionally draining and meant that I'd already been trying to balance my career with a fair amount of family leave. I was worried about voluntarily signing up for a lifetime of taking care of another person. We were both worried about upending our lives, about losing all our free time, about never being able to spontaneously go out to a bar with friends on a Wednesday night.<br />
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And here we are, one year in, and it's true - having a baby has completely taken over our lives, and we are very tired, but somehow it feels amazing.<br />
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She's the center of our world right now, and 90% of our conversations are about her and it isn't boring (to us). We still haven't figured out the babysitter thing so we haven't been out alone in a year, other than sneaking out after bedtime for a couple hours the night before Thanksgiving when my sister was staying with us, and while I'm sure it will be great to have a date at some point it doesn't feel like we're trapped. Once we got bedtime mastered it felt like our world opened up again because we get a couple hours alone in the evening most nights and right now that feels like enough.<br />
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I think the hardest part for me is feeling like almost nothing is optional anymore. I always tried to be an adult and make sure that we had a meal plan and laundry and a clean house and we managed most of those things, most of the time. But in the back of my mind there was always an option on any given night (or week, or month) to just let things slide. I could bail on the cooking and the dishes and the laundry and just lie on the couch after work and watch Netflix. In fact, after my dad died, I did that for months. I'm not saying it was healthy, but it was an option.<br />
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But the daily life of being a working parent to a baby feels like a treadmill. Our weekdays are so scheduled and there really isn't much room for error. If I don't do the dishes tonight then there will be twice as many tomorrow and I'll have to stay up late, or D will have to do them in the morning and he'll be late to work. (He usually does the morning dishes and I come home to a clean kitchen and then I do the evening dishes so we have a fresh slate for the morning)<br />
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I wake up around 5:30am, shower and start getting ready for work and making coffee. I listen for Adrian because I'll breastfeed her as soon as she wakes up, hopefully right around 6am. D takes over after he showers and I'm out the door between 6:30 and 6:45.<br />
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I work until 3 or 4 pm, usually don't take a lunch. If I make it out by 3pm I have one precious hour and I can do a chore (at least one day a week I go grocery shopping) or take a walk outside before I pick up Adrian.<br />
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I pick up Adrian between 5 and 5:30pm, depending on traffic, and take her home. We get inside the house, and I usually try to start dinner immediately (pre-heat the oven or start rice) and then I'm going back and forth between playing with her and prepping dinner. If she's having an independent day where she's mostly interested in playing alone then I'll let her do that and I'll take advantage and start putting her lunch dishes in the sink and her daycare clothes in the laundry. If she's having a day where she wants me to focus on her I'll bail on the other chores and play with her on the kitchen floor, and hold her on my hip while I make dinner (my version of "cooking" these days is ridiculously simple because I don't want to count on having any uninterrupted time).<br />
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Ideally I have dinner ready between 6 - 6:15pm and we eat together (if D is coming home on time that night I'll just have a small portion as a snack to keep her company).<br />
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In the bath between 6:30 - 6:45pm, then pajamas, breastfeeding, a book or two, and into bed by 7pm. She usually falls asleep within minutes after I leave the room.<br />
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I go back out and watch her on the monitor to make sure she's settling and then I clean up the house, run Roomba, do the dishes, pack her lunch for the next day. This stage is so hard on clothes that she goes through a couple outfits a day so twice a week we need to do a load of her laundry. I also check back on my work email and deal with anything urgent that came in between 5 and 7pm.<br />
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D usually gets home between 7:30 and 8 pm and we eat dinner together, catch up and then he often has a little more work while I get ready for bed.<br />
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It sounds like such a grind and sometimes it is. But it's also pretty joyful. She's started getting excited to see me when I pick her up from daycare and that is the sweetest. And there are moments, totally mundane and unimportant, especially when we're all sitting on the kitchen floor on a weekend and the light is coming in and it's warm and I just feel like nothing has ever felt this right in my life.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-88228800599676830582019-04-09T05:06:00.000-07:002019-04-16T08:46:16.635-07:00One year<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/32623838527/in/photostream/" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="480" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/7861/32623838527_9f9e91ff0f_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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My baby is turning one this week and every single thing I can say right now is a total cliche. I marvel at her every day, I can't believe we get to do this, that she's ours. I love her little face so much that sometimes I scare myself. She is walking and has a few words (agua, mama, dada, baba - which could refer to Circe, her pacifier, or my boobs, we're having trouble figuring that one out). She is just the sweetest.<br />
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Also, I'm exhausted a lot of the time. Sleep training was a godsend for us, but we still have bumps here and there and let me tell you, it is SO much harder to recover from a couple nights of truly bad sleep when your average sleep is still not that great. I usually feed her once or twice a night which means my best case scenario these days is generally one 4 hour stretch plus a shorter stretch. And then she basically refused to sleep for a couple nights the week she took her first steps and things got dark quickly. I know I'm probably going to need to night-wean for my own sanity at some point, but it feels so hard to take that step!<br />
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We decided not to do a big birthday party for her this year (read: we waited so long to decide that we ran out of time) but we had close family over for coffee and donuts on Sunday, in honor of her favorite book <i>Please, Mr. Panda</i>. Also in honor of our lack of time, because this was pretty much the easiest party ever.<br />
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Did I want to run with the donut theme and make it adorable? Hell yes. Did I have time for that? Hell no. The week before I "designed" an invitation using Instagram stories and then texted it out - the whole process took up 15 minutes of her morning nap, leaving me nearly an hour to browse donut themed party items before realizing nothing was going to arrive in time anyways (okay, I did cave and order a bag of two dozen plush donuts, figuring they'd look cute and we'd get a lot of play out of them after).<br />
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We scheduled the "party" for right after her morning nap and ran out to pick up a ton of donuts (plus some bagels) first thing in the morning. I had kind of let myself believe that I might have time to make some pickled shallots and cucumbers to top the bagels but that definitely didn't happen and it was fine.<br />
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I did give in to my desires and made it pretty by putting the food on platters and using our real plates and cups instead of buying paper. It was a little more work to clean up at the end of the day, but it wasn't too bad and it made me happy. I managed to snap a couple photos right before people arrived but then failed to get any photos of the party. Luckily our guests were on it and sent us plenty of photos afterwards and I had so much fun looking through them after we put her to bed that night.<br />
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The stars aligned and Adrian took her naps exactly on schedule that day, which meant she was wide awake and happy for the whole party - we scheduled it based on her usual naptimes, but that's never a guarantee, so this was a happy surprise. We had some simple activities set up for the kids (crayons and paper and books in the living room, a small borrowed ball pit in the nursery which was a big hit, a bubble machine and sidewalk chalk in the backyard). Adrian was in her element, crawling and toddling all over the house and yard, watching the big kids and checking everything out. She got super excited when she saw the panda with plush donuts and immediately started trying to feed him. We took the easy route and skipped the birthday cake, figuring that the donuts were good enough. Adrian was very curious about the candle but was not super into the actual donut, so she only took a couple little bites.<br />
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My favorite part was her big birthday gift. They have a little Schoenhut piano at daycare that she's obsessed with and I really wanted to get her one but they were way above our budget. I stalked Craiglist for months, hoping to find one used but nothing was coming up. And then three days before her party one popped up in perfect condition for $40 and I nearly cried. D had to drive 30 minutes south on a Thursday night and pick it up in a Walgreens parking lot off the 405 and I was a little afraid he'd get murdered but he didn't so it was all worth it. We were so excited to give it to her but kept reminding ourselves that baby reactions are unpredictable and she probably wouldn't be nearly as enthusiastic as we were. But when we showed it to her she totally got it and her little face lit up and she immediately sat down to start playing with it. It was the best moment of the day, feeling like we had really understood what would make her happy and had been able to give it to her. Heart bursting. We love this girl so much, and I can't wait to see what the next year brings.<br />
<br />Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-24689762271922312812019-03-15T05:27:00.000-07:002019-04-16T08:47:48.153-07:00Sleep training at 9 months - Happy Sleeper methodI feel like I've thought more about baby sleep than anything else since this kid was born. It just becomes all consuming. Even when she was tiny and I was home and we had zero schedule my brain suddenly turned into this nap calculating machine - how long has she been awake? how long before she needs to go to sleep again? how long did she sleep? (Side note - learning about <a href="https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/are-you-keeping-baby-awake-too-long/" target="_blank">age appropriate awake times</a> was hugely helpful to me early on and our days improved immensely once I started paying attention to them)<br />
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My sleep philosophy is to do whatever is (safely) getting everyone the most sleep. Every baby is different, every family is different, and baby sleep goes through all kinds of stages. I have zero loyalty to any particular method. So in her short life, we've used <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/06/snoo-review-first-two-months.html" target="_blank">the SNOO</a>, we've done <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/08/snoo-review-sort-of-months-3-4.html" target="_blank">bedsharing</a> (on and off starting around 11 weeks), we did <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/08/soothing-ladder.html" target="_blank">gentle self-soothing training</a> to get her in her crib around 5 months, we went back to bedsharing during a sleep regression (in her room this time, so that we could at least take turns getting decent sleep), and then we realized it was time to sleep train for real.<br />
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Why did we decide to sleep train? This decision is so polarizing, because I know plenty of people (people I love!) who fall into fairly extreme camps on this, either feeling like the baby should never be allowed to cry themselves to sleep because they'll end up traumatized, or those who sleep trained their baby super early and never looked back and think the rest of us are crazy for not doing it.<br />
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At around 5 months, it became clear to us that bedsharing wasn't working for us anymore. Before that, Adrian would happily curl up against my chest and instantly fall asleep, and sleep well for long stretches at night. But once she started rolling over, it fell apart. I think she needed more space, and when she woke up at night she'd notice us and then instead of falling back asleep she'd get excited and want to play. So we did some <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/08/soothing-ladder.html" target="_blank">gentle self-soothing training</a> and it worked! She transitioned to her crib, and sleep was up and down but overall decent for a while. She even occasionally slept through the night without waking up to eat. I could set her down in her crib at night awake and she'd quietly roll over and get into a comfy position and then just pass out. It was amazing.<br />
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And then 8 months hit and we regressed, big time. She wasn't falling asleep on her own at night anymore, and we had to hold her for a long time to get her to sleep and then half the time she'd wake up as soon as we set her in her crib and we had to start over. The other half of the time she'd sleep for an hour or two and then wake up, and the only way we could get her to sleep was by lying down with her (and then staying there all night, because she'd wake up multiple times and look for us). This was slightly bearable on the nights when she actually slept decently with us, but on many, many nights she would be awake from 1am - 4am babbling non-stop and trying to play with us. A babbling, smiling baby is adorable, but not at 1am. NOTHING IS ADORABLE AT 1AM. And when we'd refuse to wake up and play with her, the babbling would eventually turn into disappointed (and exhausted) crying that could go on for an hour or more. I can't describe the level of frustration we were experiencing. When you are doing everything in your power to comfort a baby who just will not stop crying, when you are willing to feed her and hold her (all night!) and that still isn't enough somehow - on hard nights it would get so bad that we'd sometimes just have to tap out. I'd reach this breaking point and I'd have to set her down in her crib, still screaming, my teeth clenched so hard I thought my jaw might break, and D would come in and take over and we'd just trade off every few hours until morning. We both work full time, neither of us is getting any naps during the day. The only way we were functioning was by trading places each night, with one of us sleeping with her in the nursery guest bed and one of us getting a full night's rest in our bed (unless it was one of those really bad nights in which case neither of us slept much and we both wanted to die). Since D gets home around 7:30pm, there were lots of nights were we didn't even get to see each other, because I was already trapped in the nursery for the evening by 7pm. I was starting to get depressed and a feeling of hopelessness would ramp up each evening, as I wondered if I'd get enough time to wash my face or shower or eat something before I had to go to bed. I tried moving her bedtime up, then pushing it back, I obsessed about the length and timing of her daytime sleep, her milk intake, etc. - nothing made a difference.<br />
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This was when we knew we needed to sleep train. None of us, including her, were sleeping well.<br />
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We had to wait a couple weeks to start because she and I both got a cold that seemed to last forever, but once she'd recovered we dove in, using the Sleep Wave method from the <a href="https://amzn.to/2Hhnpu1" target="_blank">Happy Sleeper</a>. Basically, you come up with a bedtime routine and a reassuring script and then you lay them down awake. If they cry, you go in at 5 minute intervals and say the script, then leave again, no touching. There are a lot more details, you definitely want to read the book before attempting. (Also worth noting - this method doesn't require that you night wean, if you want to keep your night feedings which was important to me since she'd struggled with weight gain).<br />
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It was <b>hard</b>. I heard all these stories from people who said it was heartbreaking to hear their baby cry for 20 minutes but by the third night it was all worth it! Well, Adrian cried for over an hour, for a freaking week. She wouldn't even lie down, she'd just sit up and wail, and then eventually pass out while still sitting up and then finally fall forward and that would wake her up and it would start over. By the third night she understood that our bedtime song meant crib time, and she'd start getting agitated while we were singing to her, spitting out her pacifier and trying to climb out of our arms, crying before we'd even set her down. I can't really describe how heartbreaking this was. I felt like a monster, just writing about it makes me want to cry again. But I also felt trapped - I knew that if we stopped we'd just go back to not sleeping and I couldn't handle that either. We decided we'd stick it out for two weeks and then try a different method, but it was slowly killing me and I was worried that we were just breaking her spirit. The book even says that most babies adjust by five days. But then it started gradually getting better and by day 8 she would lie down and settle herself with barely a protest and she no longer seemed agitated or upset at bedtime.<br />
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For the first month I was a crazy person and actually made us track her exact timing (when she was put down, when she would cry, when she would wake up, how many times we would go in). I also refused to ever discuss how sleep training was going, because I was terrified I would jinx it.<br />
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But we're now at 11 months and bedtime has gotten easier and easier and I honestly think this was the best decision we could have made. Our bedtime routine is short and sweet and I can lie her down wide awake and she calmly plays with her pacifier and lovey for a few minutes before falling asleep. She almost never cries at bedtime unless she's overly tired and even then it's usually just a brief protest wail before she conks out. She will cry out a few times a night during light sleep cycles but she barely even wakes up, just feels around for her pacifier and puts it back in, often not even opening her eyes. She usually wakes up to eat once a night, which is pretty manageable for us since she goes back to sleep immediately after.<br />
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I don't expect that this means we have a perfect sleeper on our hands for all time, and we've had small regressions when she's teething or not feeling great, but honestly, just knowing that we can do this, and that D and I can eat dinner and talk about our day and then actually get some sleep, is worth it, even if everything changes in another couple of months.<br />
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<b>Things that helped:</b><br />
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<b>Have some words of affirmation ready for yourself</b>, to get through the crying. The main things that helped me were knowing that a) she used to cry like this in her carseat and now she's usually content in there b) we had gotten to a point where there was a whole lot of crying each night even when we were actively trying to soothe her, so that wasn't working either. There was going to be crying and frustration either way. I'll be honest and say I'm not sure I would have made it through the process if we hadn't already gotten to this point, where I knew we were in for at least an hour of inconsolable crying around 1am if we didn't sleep train.<br />
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<b>Have both people on board. </b>D came home from work early for the first week, so that I wasn't doing it alone. We'd run through the routine, put her down, start a timer because she'd immediately cry, and then pour ourselves a drink and then take turns going in for the 5 minute checks. We wrote our script on a piece of paper and taped it up on the nursery door to be sure we were saying the exact same thing.<br />
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<b>Have a video monitor.</b> This helped us a lot because not knowing what she was doing in there was too hard. If she was quiet, we didn't know if she was lying down asleep or just sitting up and hanging out. If she was crying, we couldn't tell if she had her leg stuck through the bars or if she was just protesting. On the other hand it's heartbreaking to watch them at first when they're crying and reaching towards the door hoping you'll pick them up. But watching how cute she is when she comforts herself by picking up her lovey and rubbing her face with it and then using it as a pillow helps. Seeing her sleep process has really helped me realize that she's a much better sleeper without us, our presence actually makes it harder for her to sleep now, not easier. We got the <a href="https://amzn.to/2Tiq5yR" target="_blank">Infant Optics monitor</a> because right when we were trying to decide what to do there was that story about someone's <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbajqd/hacker-talks-to-arizona-man-directly-through-his-iot-security-camera" target="_blank">Nest cam getting hacked</a> and it turned me off all wifi options.<br />
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<b>Decide how you're handling night feeds.</b> We're not ready to stop feeding her at night. Her weight gain is still slower than it should be, and while I try not to stress about it I worry anyways. The book has instructions for night weaning, but is also totally supportive of not dropping feeds and has a couple different methods. You can preemptively dream feed, based on their schedule, or you can feed on demand but only if enough time has passed. I chose to feed on demand because I want to follow her lead. It worked out for me, because during the sleep regression she'd been eating every three hours at night, like clockwork. But as soon as she started sleep training she cut it down to once per night naturally, which was amazing for me. I keep a three hour interval, because I know that if she wakes up before three hours she's unlikely to actually be hungry. So if she wakes up, and it's been at least three hours since she's eaten, I'll go in and feed her (no 5 minute interval checks, although I always wait a couple minutes before going to her, because she wakes up several times a night and resettles herself within a minute or two). I know her pattern now, so if I see that her milk intake was low at daycare, I know that she's probably going to need two nighttime feeds, but if she eats enough during the day she only wakes up once per night and she will occasionally sleep straight through. I think I'll let her self-wean, but we'll see how it goes. The main thing here is knowing your baby, I think. Adrian isn't huge on comfort nursing and she's usually really good at self-settling when she wakes up at night, so I feel fairly confident that she's actually hungry when she wakes up and sits up and doesn't lie back down. There's no real rhyme or reason to her timing - if she wakes up to eat it's usually any time between 11:30pm and 5:30am, whenever she gets hungry.<br />
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<b>Figure out the right bedtime. </b>We're still playing around with this a little, but we tried putting her down as early as 6pm and as late as 7:30, and what we noticed was that when we put her down earlier she'd usually fall asleep around 7pm, regardless of when exactly she was set down. So now we aim to set her down just before 7 and she is usually asleep within a few minutes. She tends to wake sometime between 6 and 7am, which works pretty well with our schedule (I mean, it would be absolutely perfect if she slept until 7:30am, but my natural wake time is right around 6am so I wouldn't be surprised if this is just her schedule).<br />
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<b>Side note - NAPS </b>- we still haven't tackled naps and I have no idea if/when we'll do that. Honestly, I just can't get up the energy to care. She naps at daycare just fine but at home she wants to be held. If we hold her, she'll sleep like clockwork for 1.5 hours twice a day, and she rarely fights a nap. I just sit down on the couch with her and she drifts off to sleep, no rocking or singing or cajoling. Since that's working for now I just use it as an excuse to sit down and read and get some snuggles in. If it starts feeling frustrating or difficult, we'll figure out how to change it but right now we get so little time together that it's actually pretty sweet.<br />
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<b>Other side note - sleep aids </b>- you'll notice in the pictures that we didn't cut out sleep aids, as most sleep training methods recommend. She uses a lovey and a Wubbanub (we have three of each - one for home, one for the diaper bag, one for daycare) to sleep and they really do help her. If she wakes up at night she immediately reaches for them and soothes herself back to sleep almost instantly. She has a strong sleep association with them because we usually don't let her have them during the day (unless she's sick or having a really hard day). Will I regret this? Who knows? We did have a mild panic last week when she discovered it was fun to throw them out of her crib in the middle of the night and then she'd cry hysterically when she realized they weren't coming back. We didn't want to go in and replace them right away, since we were afraid she'd decide it was a fun game. Instead, we'd let her cry for 5 minutes and then go in, pick her up, sneakily put them back in the crib and then change her diaper (which she does<i> not</i> love) so that when we set her down after her diaper change they were just there. This seems to have worked (fingers crossed) and we haven't had any throwing incidents for a few nights.<br />
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Do I wish we'd done this earlier? I'm honestly not sure. As I said above, I don't think I could have gotten through the crying if we hadn't already gotten to a place where she was crying a whole lot in the middle of the night. On the other hand, maybe if we'd done it a little sooner she would have fought it less? There's really no way to know, and I don't really care at this point.<br />
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I'm mostly just posting this to say that you are not a monster if you need to sleep train your baby (conversely - if you are getting decent sleep while bedsharing, this isn't an indictment of your method - I loved bedsharing, until it stopped working for us). I'll update this in 20 years if she turns out to be a serial killer because we traumatized her, but right now I'm feeling pretty good about it.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/46463995095/in/dateposted/" title="Standing!"><img alt="Standing!" height="449" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7845/46463995095_cf341dd7d9_z.jpg" width="640" /></a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-49372079302039254892019-03-06T06:14:00.000-08:002019-03-06T09:14:25.191-08:00My breastfeeding experienceWhew. Breastfeeding is such a huge topic. I honestly hadn't given it much thought while pregnant. If people asked about it (and they did, surprisingly often!) I would just say that I planned to breastfeed but I wasn't going to go crazy doing it. I've seen the full gamut with my friends, from people who had it come really naturally to people who struggled desperately. But nothing really prepared me for the intense emotions that you get caught up in when you're in that zone.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/40603257585/in/datetaken/" title="Sleepy girl"><img alt="Sleepy girl" height="446" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/802/40603257585_65d2b33e63_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>{5 days old}</i></div>
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So I'll say it upfront. I don't really love breastfeeding. I hadn't given any thought to whether or not I'd enjoy it, I'd only considered whether or not I could physically do it. I assumed that if you were able to breastfeed without massive struggles, that it would be a lovely, bonding experience. And for lots of people it is, which is wonderful. But it's also okay to just .... not love it, or to feel a little trapped by it. Once we got over the initial hump (which is a very mild way to describe an incredible blend of tears and pain and guilt and frustration) and settled into a routine it became bearable and even sweet at times, but it's still not my favorite thing.<br />
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I feel guilty saying this, because so many people desperately want to breastfeed and can't. But there it is. My experience is probably colored by the fact that my baby doesn't seem to love it either. She's almost always all business, eating fairly quickly every 3 - 4 hours and then wanting to get on with doing something else (other than in the first few months, when cluster feeding was real).<br />
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I did struggle in the beginning and somehow I wasn't fully prepared for that. My colostrum came in the night before I went into labor (I was a week overdue, not sure if that has something to do with it) and my milk had come in by the second day, but I still struggled to get her to latch in the hospital. It hurt, so much. The hospital lactation consultant came by regularly to check on us, but she just kept saying that if it hurt it meant she wasn't latching right and so she'd pop the baby off and we'd try relatching, but no matter what position we tried it always hurt and I'd finally just say that it felt fine because I was so damn tired of trying. I ended up hand expressing in a tiny cup a few times and we tried to feed her that way. I cried a lot. After 48 hours I was so stressed about it that we called to make an appointment with an outside lactation consultant for the day after I was released. This ended up being a great decision. Seeing someone in a private setting felt really different from the hospital and for the first month she would call regularly to check in so we felt like we had support. She did pre- and post-feeding weights, checked the baby's latch, showed D how to help get the baby in position, and told me that my postpartum bra situation was an actual travesty that needed to be remedied ASAP (shockingly, the $10 bralette I purchased from Target was not cutting it). It was a splurge (about $200) but well worth it and it was FSA eligible.<br />
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I never did find a magical way to make it pain free right away or get the perfect latch, even with that help. There were a lot of tears in the beginning. And I didn't fully believe all the people who told me that it would get so much easier, if I could just hang in there. I told myself that my goal was to make it to six months, and then if I got that far I'd try for a year. I just kept trying and it did get easier and easier and around three months I noticed that it had become pretty effortless for us. She had gotten bigger and stronger and better at latching. The evening cluster feeding had started to ease off.<br />
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There have been lots of ups and downs since then, and things got really interesting around five months, when she started getting more easily distracted and we went through a long phase where I could only get her to eat by sitting in a silent, dark room. We struggled with weight gain, which took up a whoooole lot of my mental space for several months (discussed a bit <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/07/hatch-baby-grow-review-my-new-favorite.html" target="_blank">here</a>, the good news is that everything seems to have settled out - she was just taking longer to find her curve). But I also credit breastfeeding with really helping out her immunity during her first winter in daycare, which happened to also be a pretty vicious cold/flu season. And now that we're at 11 months it actually does feel fairly easy and sweet for us.<br />
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I'm not an expert but if you're in that place, where you're lucky enough that things are (mostly) working physically but the whole experience is feeling more challenging than you expected, here's what helped for me:<br />
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<b>Get outside support.</b> If you can afford an LC visit, that's amazing. A cheaper alternative can be a breastfeeding support group (I did this as well), or a good online community.<br />
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<b>Do what you need to do to get through it </b>(especially the evening cluster feeding sessions). In the early days, I would watch Netflix and simultaneously play Candy Crush the whole time. My sister's (male) doctor told her that you won't properly bond with your baby if you multitask while breastfeeding, to which I say - spoken like someone who has never had to sit alone and feed a baby for 45 minutes out of every hour, for weeks on end. Also, fuck off, sir. In my (limited) experience, there are so many ways to bond with your baby. For me, breastfeeding was stressful, but babywearing was amazing. I spent hours every day wearing her in the Solly wrap and it was the sweetest experience. We bonded just fine, thank you.<br />
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<b>Eyes on the prize.</b> If you can do it without losing your mind, there are real benefits to breastfeeding that might make the initial struggle feel worth it. I mean, sure, the health benefits to baby and mom are the main thing, but you know what was more motivating to me in my post-baby state? Dishes. And time. Boobs do not need to be sanitized or scrubbed, beyond a shower. They do not need to be pulled out of the fridge and heated up in the middle of the night. By the time I went back to work and was dealing with the reality of bottles I was so grateful to be able to breastfeed at night, just because it was so much less work. And the immune benefits have definitely helped during this first winter in daycare. She recovers so much faster than I do from each cold we share, and that is amazing.<br />
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So here we are, just one month shy of my one year goal. I'm not 100% sure how things will transition in the next few months. I sometimes feel a pang when I feed her right before bed and realize that these days are numbered, but for the most part I feel pretty relieved that we're close to being done and that pretty soon I won't have to think about the pumping/feeding logistics. At this point, I plan to stop pumping at 12 months, but I'm going to try to follow her lead as far as breastfeeding goes. In my dream world we would just have a night and morning session, and then taper those off, but I'm willing to see how things progress.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/41455203912/in/dateposted/" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="800" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/864/41455203912_863bb931ab_c.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<i>{first Sunday at home}</i></div>
Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-70780625618849518202019-02-22T06:00:00.000-08:002019-07-03T12:55:53.556-07:00Pumping and workingOne of the biggest mysteries to me when I was planning to go back to work was how people handled pumping logistics. And of course it turns out people do whatever works for them, which varies widely depending on your work situation and your baby's needs, but I found reading about what everyone was doing helpful for me to get ideas so I'm sharing here (I took notes at each stage, otherwise there is no way in hell I would actually remember all this). This is a super long post, and will be incredibly boring if you aren't in the throes of pumping. Sorry!<br />
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I'm not going to really talk about breastfeeding here because that is it's own separate (long) post that I'll get up sometime soon.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/39965898873/in/dateposted/" title="Annotated"><img alt="Annotated" height="480" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7914/39965898873_be978a207a_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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First of all, I'm super lucky because I got to work from home for a bit, so I didn't need to start really pumping on a schedule until 5 months. During this time I was able to build a decent freezer stash by using the <a href="https://amzn.to/2UuDoZe" target="_blank">Haakaa silicone pump</a> during my early morning feeding, when my supply was highest. Adrian pretty consistently only nursed on one side in the morning, so I'd feed her and just use the Haakaa on the other side at the same time and I'd generally collect 4 - 5 ounces with minimal effort that way, which just went into the freezer in storage bags. The Haakaa is amazing, I highly recommend it. We're at almost 11 months and I still use it almost every day. It's so low effort, and so easy to clean.<br />
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When I was ready to go back to work I was also lucky, because I was able to plan it out so that my first week back was a bit of a soft start. Adrian was in daycare but I had a flexible week at work where I knew it would be okay if I had to work fewer hours. That let me practice pumping at work without feeling super pressured or stressed, and I figured out what I needed in order to make it feel easier.<br />
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<b style="background-color: yellow;">Pumping at work set up - supplies</b><br />
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<i><b>Spectra S1</b></i> - Hugely thankful for my Spectra S1, which holds a very decent charge (about three hours!), so I can pump while I'm getting ready in the morning and not be chained to an outlet. I've also (many times) had to use it in a bathroom stall when I'm working away from my office. Do you know how hard it is to find a private space <i>with a plug</i> when you're out in public? I got this pump for free from a friend (I just replaced the <a href="https://amzn.to/2sVDOMk" target="_blank">tubing, flanges, valves, etc</a>), but it would 100% have been worth the purchase price for me and I've heard that you can use the 20% off coupons at <a href="https://www.buybuybaby.com/store/product/spectra-baby-s1-plus-double-electric-breast-pump-in-white-blue/5045592?keyword=spectra-s1-breast-pump" target="_blank">Buy, Buy, Baby</a> which would help. The S2 is a little less expensive and doesn't hold a charge. If you're debating between the two I think the extra $40 for the S1 is beyond worth it. (Also, if you are using a Spectra I found <a href="https://livingwithlowmilksupply.com/how-to-use-spectra-s1-breast-pump" target="_blank">this post super helpful</a>)<br />
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<i><b>Hands free pumping bra</b></i> - I bought an attachment (<a href="https://amzn.to/2WswDsx" target="_blank">Bravado pumping bra panel</a>) that works with most nursing bras, rather than getting a pumping specific bra. I have two so I can rotate while they're in the laundry. For bras, I use the <a href="https://amzn.to/2DLjQu9" target="_blank">Bravado body silk yoga bra</a>, which is more supportive and feels a little like a sports bra, and the <a href="https://www.wearlively.com/products/the-mesh-trim-maternity-bralette-soft-pink?variant=47645249868" target="_blank">Lively mesh trim maternity bralettes</a>, which provide basically zero support but make me feel less claustrophobic. Both of these work with the pumping panel.<br />
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<i><a href="https://baggu.com/collections/reusable-bags" target="_blank"><b>Baggu</b></a> </i>- I thought about getting a nice bag designed to hold a pump but ultimately couldn't handle the price tag on something I'd be using for less than a year. This is fine. If I had to travel more for work I would probably have decided to get the bag. I did try to DIY an insert with some dividers for it, using cut up insulated bags and some hot glue and it kind of worked? I mean, it's falling apart but at least there's a little cushioned spot for the pump to go.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.ecobags.com/Drawstring-Produce-Bag-Cotton-Half-Size-Set5?sc=2&category=35" target="_blank"><b>Cloth produce bags</b></a> (from Ecobags) </i>- I already had these and I realized they are amazing for pumping. Instead of washing my pump parts between sessions I put them in the cloth bags and stick them in the fridge, then bring them home and wash them each night. Another option would be to use a plastic or glass tub and just wash it out each night but this takes up less space. I also use the bags for holding the clean, empty bottles I bring to work.<br />
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<i><b>Bottles</b></i> - It took us a while to find bottles the baby liked and we settled on the <a href="https://amzn.to/2FZasoL" target="_blank">Nuk Simply Natural</a>. I bring empty, clean bottles with me to work, fill them up after I pump, and then drop them off at daycare when I pick up the baby each day. They give me whatever she used that day and I wash them at home. Side note - if you're trying to get your baby to take a bottle we found that we had to try several different bottles but also had to test different temperatures. It turned out Adrian would only take a bottle if the milk was very warm (about 104 degrees, which is the max recommended temp) - she would reject the bottle over and over again if it was cool, but if we got it up to her preferred temp she'd happily down the entire thing very quickly. Babies are weird.<br />
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<i><b>Storage bags</b></i> - I prefer the <a href="https://amzn.to/2S2iuDR" target="_blank">Medela bags</a> personally (less floppy than the Lasinoh bags) so I use those. I always keep a supply in my pump tote, because there are multiple days when I've forgotten to pack bottles. The Target ones are my runner up.<br />
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<i><b>Masking tape</b></i> - I label the bottles with a strip of masking tape with the date when I fill them. I also align the top edge of the tape with the liquid level of the bottle. This was a game changer for us, because we like to track how much she's drinking but it's really hard to remember to write down how many ounces are in a bottle before you give it to her, especially when she's hungry and you're just in a rush to get her fed.<br />
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<i><b>Sharpie</b></i> - For writing on the tape. I keep one in my drying rack at home and one in my tote.<br />
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<i><b>Insulated lunch bag with freezer pack</b></i> - For transporting bottles and pump parts back and forth. Maybe not strictly necessary if you're just going straight from work to daycare, but I like it for peace of mind. Also very handy for the days when I've had to work off site and need to keep stuff cold all day without a fridge. I don't have a specific one to recommend, I just grabbed something on sale from Target.<br />
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<i><b>Bottle drying rack</b></i> - We don't have a dishwasher, and I don't want her stuff jumbled up with our dishes. The <a href="https://www.buybuybaby.com/store/product/boon-patch-countertop-drying-rack/1042091127?keyword=boon-patch" target="_blank">Boon patch</a> is cute and fits well on our small counter. I also have a couple of the accessories (started with the flower, ended up with the twig and cactus) to give me more drying space for small parts.<br />
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<b><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2TluGfv" target="_blank">Bottle brush</a></i> </b>- I resisted this for months because it seemed unnecessary and I regret waiting so long. It works so much better than our little hipster wire scrub brush and makes bottle washing go way faster every night. I don't know that the brand matters, probably anything that is specifically designed for baby bottles works well. We have the Munchkin ones and I like them.<br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>Pumping schedules:</b> </span>For reference, I go into work early so I usually pump at 6am at home because the baby doesn't consistently wake up (or eat quickly enough) for me to wait for her. I decided I'd rather pump than wake her up to eat at 5:30 and hope that she'd go back down. If I left later then I would just feed her instead of pumping first thing.<br />
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<b style="background-color: yellow;">Schedule at 5 months</b> (pumping 3x a day at work, feeding/pumping at least once per night). Note - for me this schedule would also have worked at 3 months, her eating habits didn't change all that much in that time period.<br />
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<b>Pump at 6am</b>, put the milk in a bottle, leave it on the counter for D to give the baby when she wakes up.<br />
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<b>Pump at 9am, noon, and 3pm</b> (ish for all these times, +/- 30 minutes). I set alarms on my phone to remind myself. At each session, I pumped for 10 - 15 minutes, transferred the milk to a bottle and labeled it, then put the pump parts (in a cloth bag) and the bottle in the fridge. At the end of the day I'd transfer all the bottles to my insulated bag. If I was working somewhere without a fridge for the day I'd just keep both the pump parts and the bottles in the insulated bag.<br />
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<b>Feed the baby before putting her down (~6pm)</b>. In theory, I would have fed her at daycare pick up as well (~5) but she is way too distracted to even consider it. If she's there, she wants to play.<br />
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<b>Feed on demand at night </b>- at five months she would wake up once or twice a night to eat, depending on how much she would take in at daycare (usually about 9 ounces during the 8ish hours there, but as little as 5 oz and as much as 12 oz).<br />
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<b style="background-color: yellow;">Dropping my middle of the night pumping:</b> By one month in, it was clear that I was not cut out for this level of routine sleep deprivation. D wanted to help by giving her bottles at night but that didn't actually help because I would still have to wake up to pump if I didn't feed her. I had a breakdown at 6 months when I realized I hadn't slept for more than 4 hours at a time since her birth, and my average was more like 2 - 3 hours, once you factor in how long it takes me to fall asleep after being woken up (lifelong insomniac here). I decided I had to cut out the night pumping for my sanity, so that we could alternate night duties and I could actually sleep through. I wasn't sure how to do this so I just tried stretching out the night interval based on my comfort level. I'm very lucky and my boobs adjusted quickly. In the beginning I could go from 11pm to 5:30am, but within a few days I was able to stretch it out to 9:30pm to 6:00am (everyone is different! check with an LC if possible, and be careful because mastitis is definitely a risk when you're dropping feeds/pumps). Starting around 6.5 months, D and I alternated nights on duty*. This was a huge help because we were each guaranteed a full night of sleep every other night. I would pump right before I went to bed just in case she slept through the night. This almost never happened but the few times it did were pure bliss. Personally, I found that my supply wasn't really impacted by dropping the night feeds - if I'm on duty and feed her at night, I usually pump 4 - 5 ounces at 6am, whereas if I sleep through I pump 8 - 10 ounces at 6am - that's stayed pretty consistent even to this day (10.5 months). Storage capacity is hugely individual, though.<br />
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After that was well established I also decided to cut my work pumping down to twice a day. I felt comfortable doing this because I had a good freezer supply and Adrian had reduced her milk intake after starting solids at 6 months. By 7 months she would rarely eat more than 9 ounces per day at daycare, often less, and with three pumping sessions I was routinely pumping 12 ounces (plus pumping more in the morning and pre-bedtime sessions). I knew some days I'd fall short if I cut back but I was willing to take that risk for the payoff of fewer pumping sessions. Surprisingly, this didn't end up affecting my supply as much as I expected. I had a small dip in the beginning, but then my body adjusted and between the two pumping sessions I would produce 10 - 12 ounces, which is almost the same as what I was getting out of three pumping sessions.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: yellow;">Schedule at 7 months</span> </b>(pumping twice a day at work, sometimes skipping night feeds):<br />
<b>Pump at 6am,</b> at home.<br />
<b>Pump at 10am and 2pm </b>at work.<br />
<b>Feed at 6pm</b>, at home.<br />
<b>Pump at 9:30pm </b>and either sleep through the night, or take my turn getting up and feeding her.<br />
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We're at 9.5 months now and I'm still using this schedule. As we approach 10 months I think it's time to modify again. Adrian now eats less than 5 oz most days at daycare (although it varies! the day before yesterday she ate 2 oz and then yesterday she ate 12 oz, insert shrug emoji here), as her solid food intake has increased. I'm considering reducing down so that I'm only pumping once during the workday. The fear of losing supply is so real that I'm super nervous about doing it, even though realistically I know we have a good freezer stash and I'm routinely pumping over twice what she eats while I'm at work which is a clear indicator to me that we're out of sync. So I'm probably going to try the new schedule once we hit 10 months, I think I just talked myself into it. I'll report back.<br />
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<b>UPDATE: </b>I didn't get this posted when I planned to, and I did adjust my pumping schedule right before we hit 10 months. I'm three weeks in (four weeks in? who knows?) and this is what my schedule looks like.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: yellow;">Schedule at 10 months</span> </b>(pumping ONCE a day at work, sometimes skipping night feeds):<br />
<b>Pump at 6am,</b> at home.<br />
<b>Pump at noon </b>at work.<br />
<b>Feed at 6:30pm</b>, at home.<br />
<b>Pump at 8:30pm </b>and either sleep through the night, or take my turn getting up and feeding her. We've split up our nights differently now, since she usually only wakes up once and goes back down easily. If she wakes up before midnight then D handles feedings (since I just pumped) and if she wakes up after midnight I handle feedings. Most nights she wakes up once but there are nights where she sleeps through, which is lovely.<br />
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Reducing down to one pumping session has lowered my supply for sure - I usually get 5 - 6 ounces during that one session (whereas I was getting 10 - 12 over two). But actually I think this is a good thing for me! My supply and her demand are better synced up so we have fewer frustrating weekend days where my boobs are dying and she isn't interested in eating - I rarely pump on the weekends anymore, other than my pre-bedtime session. I've also found that with a lower supply I can stretch out my night time a little more, so I pump at 8:30pm and can make it until 6:30am if need be (goal is to get to the point where I can just go from her last feeding until morning without needing to pump and we're getting closer). It's tough figuring out how to adjust to match her needs when we aren't together most of the day, but we're fumbling towards it.<br />
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Right now my plan is to stop pumping at 12 months but continue to feed on demand until she's ready to wean (hopefully within a few more months but I'm happy to follow her lead on that). As I mentioned, I'll also post about our breastfeeding experience, which was not really what I expected (spoiler - I feel like an evil person admitting it but I just don't love breastfeeding).<br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;">UPDATE! </span>I intended to stop pumping at exactly one year, and I was so excited about it, but it ended up taking me a couple weeks and it was bumpier than expected. I thought that since dropping down to one pumping session wasn't a big deal that dropping that last pumping session would be easy-peasy. It was not. The first day I gleefully left my pump at home I was brutally uncomfortable by 3pm and I was frantically texting daycare and asking them not to feed her so that I could feed her the second I picked her up (early, because I was dying). So I backed off and starting pumping again. At first I was going to gradually reduce the time but my body was so accustomed to the pump that even reducing to 5 minutes didn't change my output much (which really made me feel like I'd been wasting time with my 10 - 15 minute sessions). So I would set a timer and pump for just 1 - 2 minutes, watching to make sure I was only getting a couple ounces, juuuust enough to take the edge off. I did this for a week, then the next week we went on vacation so I was feeding on demand, and then the following week I quit pumping but still brought my pump to work every day, just in case. Driving home on Friday after my first full week with no pumping I realized I was feeling ragey/weepy/anxious for no apparent reason (other than the fact that the political world was a dumpster fire). I think I was having a hormonal adjustment, and I felt a little like I was losing my mind for a couple days. For me, it cleared up quickly and I felt back to normal the next week. I decided to keep breastfeeding on demand and allow A to set her own pace for weaning, and we ended up breastfeeding until 14.5 months(ish). I think my supply took a massive hit when I stopped pumping and within a couple months there just wasn't enough milk at our morning and evening sessions for her to be interested. She weaned gradually, cutting down to one session per day on her own, and then she started going a few days at a time without asking, and then it was the last time (which of course I didn't realize, at some point I thought about it and it had been nearly a week since she'd asked and I was like, whoa, I guess we're done). I'm glad that it was gradual and comfortable and felt natural for both of us.<br />
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* This post is already sooooo long, but I feel the need to insert this here because it drives me nuts. Inevitably, if I say that D and I alternate nights someone will tell me how lucky I am (and I understand that! I'm not mad at the people who say it, just at the weird cultural norm that dads get to sleep more or are somehow less responsible for baby care). And my stance on this is that I am NOT lucky that my partner, with whom I jointly made the decision to have a baby, takes responsibility for caring for that baby. I mean, D is amazing and he's a wonderful partner for so many reasons and I feel lucky that he's in my life, but honestly, I think taking care of OUR baby should be a default, not something extra special and nice that he does for me. It blows my mind that there is some expectation that one partner will do all the night wake ups when both people work full time jobs, have the same sleep needs, and the baby is okay taking a bottle. Okay, rant over.<br />
<br />Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-50503362229387544342018-12-09T10:35:00.003-08:002019-03-06T14:50:04.108-08:00Joy and grief<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/32374188598/in/photostream/" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="480" src="https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1966/32374188598_34d2728405_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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It's Adrian's first December and I'm struggling with the fact that I feel like this is supposed to be my most joyous Christmas ever!!! ™ and instead it's feeling like the hardest holiday season since the first one after my dad died. My dad's birthday was on Friday and I held it together all day and then listened to Gary Jules' <i>Mad World</i> in the car on repeat while I drove home from work and I cried. A lot. It was one of the last gifts we gave him - the album with that song. He heard it in our car and told Dustin he loved it and now I cry every time I hear it, thinking about him, thinking about death. This year is particularly emotional for me. I say my dad's name a million times a day now, since my daughter is named after him, and I feel like he has never been closer to us, or further away.<br />
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I had a resurgence of grief while I was pregnant - I didn't want to tell anyone about the baby, because every time I told someone it just reminded me that I couldn't tell my dad and stepmom. But I guess I didn't fully expect this December to be so hard. I thought that now that she's here I would be overwhelmed with joy and experience the holidays in a whole new way. (No pressure, right? Most joyous Christmas ever!!!)<br />
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And there <b>is</b> a lot of joy. Adrian will be eight months on Monday and I feel like I say this about every stage, but this is the best. She's crawling like a champ, and it's so much fun to be able to walk around the house with her following along. She loves being mobile and she's just delighted by everything and we're constantly discovering that she understands more than we think she does. It's amazing, she's amazing.<br />
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On the other hand, I'm coming off a particularly exhausting quarter at work, and combined with the sleep deprivation (I've just accepted the fact that she'll be continuously teething for the next two years) and the fact that my body is always fighting off daycare germs and my house is a mess because I never get past the bare minimum of tidying, every day feels like a crazy repeat of pumping and dishes and baby meals and I never seem to get ahead. I'm just worn down and it feels like my dad's birthday pushed me right over the edge because all weekend I've been crying, pretty much at the drop of a hat. For me, the holidays haven't been about gifts for a really long time. The feeling I strive for is peace. The quiet sense of calm when I would sit on the couch in front of the tree, with the whole house clean and a candle lit, the hours I would spend in the kitchen baking and then assembling boxes of cookies. I had a lot of time to myself, time to sit and think and remember the people we don't have anymore and feel grateful for the ones we do. I guess it was how I was coping, these December rituals, the hours I spent in my own head. And I'm realizing that it's going to be a while before the holidays look like that again. Don't get me wrong - I'm excited for this season of chaos, but I think I'm also having a hard time letting go of what it used to look like and I'm trying to figure out if there's some middle ground, where I'm embracing the insanity but also not living in a house littered with baby toys and abandoned cups of cold coffee (am I ever going to get to drink hot coffee again?). And beneath it all, constantly, is the grief, swelling up, brought so much closer to the surface because all my emotions are closer to the surface these days and it's scary but also kind of liberating and it's making me question the way I've handled emotions up to this point.<br />
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We are complicated beings, and I'm learning to sit in the middle of joy and grief and accept that I'll be feeling both, probably forever, but maybe not quite as intensely as I am in this moment. I'm probably going to cry a lot this month, and that's okay. The sweetness of watching my daughter gnaw on Christmas tree ornaments doesn't offset the sadness I feel, but it does bring a new dimension to my life, and I'm grateful for this experience, for this love, for this fleeting period when everything is new and fresh and my emotions are spilling out everywhere.<br />
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But I'm also going to try to use the rest of her nap to clean the house because let's be honest, there's only so much chaos I can embrace.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw0mKAHwd03dEkPIrWMzEcDaU4GLgri_YBZPJLTFJcGkr5mHHN2A-h7cFzq8nfUewie-jCs1AGNiCeRA_5XCuhy2FTe1f5NvaTU55_zaoi5JkMiFyQI8GWQdtWBoIUgUGqnucC2ESY7bHK/s1600/jamie+street+photogrraphy+_+rachel+%2528147+of+148%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw0mKAHwd03dEkPIrWMzEcDaU4GLgri_YBZPJLTFJcGkr5mHHN2A-h7cFzq8nfUewie-jCs1AGNiCeRA_5XCuhy2FTe1f5NvaTU55_zaoi5JkMiFyQI8GWQdtWBoIUgUGqnucC2ESY7bHK/s640/jamie+street+photogrraphy+_+rachel+%2528147+of+148%2529.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
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<i>{photo of me and my girl, in front of a painting by my dad that hangs in her nursery - thanks to <a href="http://www.jamiestreet.com/" target="_blank">jamie</a> for capturing this for us}</i></div>
Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-62900917469128230212018-10-25T04:56:00.000-07:002018-10-25T07:50:52.131-07:00Life at 6 months<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/45488027212/in/dateposted/" title="Six months"><img alt="Six months" height="308" src="https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1938/45488027212_b6800c74e0_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
You guys, six months is so much fun. I thought that all the newborn snuggles were amazing, but watching her rapidly gain all these new skills (and sometimes getting to sleep through the night) is the best.<br />
<br />
Our lives at six months are crazy and it feels like we're in the weeds most weeks, but (most days) I actually love it and feel really full and content. I mean, don't talk to me after a night of teething related sleeplessness, when I hate the entire world with a fiery passion. I will admit to crying while driving to work just because I'm so exhausted and there's nothing to do about it. But there are other nights where she sleeps for 11 hours and then wakes up babbling and I feel amazing, like we're conquering the world. It's a lot of highs and lows but the highs seem to wipe out the memory of the lows pretty quickly.<br />
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I worked full time from home all summer while taking care of her, which was maybe the craziest decision I've ever made. I was so tired and done at the end of those three months. I felt like I was on call 24/7 and I was never sleeping and I felt guilty a lot of the time. Around 5 months she started to outgrow her willingness to take loooong naps in the wrap (the only thing that made this crazy scheme possible), which put my workday into a tailspin. She started daycare at just the right time (5 months + 1 week) and it was the best thing for both of us. I feel so much better being able to focus exclusively on work during the day and then shift to her at home, and she loves being surrounded by other kids and gets the biggest grin on her face when we hand her over to her caretakers each morning.<br />
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We're still figuring out how to juggle our lives as two working parents, but we're settling into a routine.<br />
<br />
I wake up just before 6 am, pump while getting ready (I have the Spectra S1 which holds a charge, so I can walk around the house while pumping and I don't know how I'd survive without it), leave a bottle of milk on the counter and then get out the door by 6:30. Adrian wakes up between 6 and 6:30 so some mornings I'm lucky and get to see her and others I don't (but then that means she's sleeping in, so lucky in a different way). D takes point in the morning Monday through Thursday (we switch on Friday due to my meeting schedule) so he gets her up, feeds her the bottle, gets her dressed and drops her at daycare by 8:30.<br />
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I'm at work by 7 am and I just plow through as much as I can. I rarely take a lunch break. I pump three times at work (9:30, 12:30, 2:30) for about 15 minutes each time. I'm incredibly lucky and have an office so I can just shut my door and keep working while I pump. In theory, I try to leave the office by 3 so that I have a little bit of time to go to the gym or run errands, but I think that's happened once so far. This is a really busy time of year for me, but things will settle down at some point and I'm hoping to reclaim that hour. The absolute latest I can leave is 4:30, otherwise I'm risking being late to daycare pick up because traffic is a total crap shoot. It can take me 30 minutes or an hour, who knows?<br />
<br />
I pick up Adrian by 5:30 at the latest, but usually closer to 5. We head home and she plays on the kitchen floor while I get her dinner ready, pack her lunch for the next day, and set up the bathtub and nursery for bedtime routine. Since I'm solo in the evenings I like to have everything staged before we start dinner. I set up the bathroom and put her towel on a baby bouncer so I have somewhere to put her when she's done with her bath. The first time I did bathtime alone I didn't do this and then I had a squirming wet baby and nowhere to set her down. I also start the kettle so I can quickly get a bottle ready in case she wants one before bed.<br />
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Depending on when she woke up from her last nap I'm aiming to put her in bed between 6:30 - 7:00, so I'll usually give her dinner around 5:45 pm, let her play with her food for 15 - 30 minutes (she usually has a bottle around 4:30 pm, but if she didn't then I'll breastfeed her as soon as we get home so she isn't too hungry at dinner). During dinner I don't multitask at all, I sit with her and talk to her and have a snack while she eats. We're doing baby led weaning, so she eats real food and I basically watch her like a hawk for any signs of choking (so far just plenty of gagging, which is healthy and normal). It's a really sweet time of day, because she's so excited about her food and also seems to think it's fun to watch me eat.<br />
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After dinner I carry her straight to the bathroom and she takes a quick bath, then I put her in pajamas and nurse her. If she's especially hungry I'll give her a bottle of pumped milk afterwards. She sometimes likes to tank up right before bed if she was having too much fun to eat much at daycare. We dim the lights, read a story, turn on the white noise and then I sing her bedtime song and lie her down. Most days she squawks to herself for 10 minutes then cries for 5 minutes, then I go in and soothe her a little and she falls asleep shortly after. Other days I have to go in multiple times. Once in a while we hit the timing just right and she falls asleep right away and I don't go in at all. We're supposed to put her down awake but if I've gone in multiple times I'll usually cheat and just nurse her to sleep because by that point in the day I'm really tired. I clean up from dinner (Circe helps with the floor) and wash all the bottles and pump parts and then pick up the house while I'm listening for her cries. She's usually asleep between 6:30 - 7:00 and I check my work email and handle anything that came in after I left.<br />
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If D makes it home by 7:30 then we'll catch up and eat something quick together (we're doing a lot of eggs these days because we just have zero energy for cooking), maaaaybe watch 30 minutes of TV and then I start getting ready for bed, take a quick shower (I'm so bitter on nights I have to wash my hair because it eats up extra time) and make sure I'm all packed up for the morning. I pump one last time around 9 pm, put my pump parts in the fridge for the next morning, and try to be in bed by 9:30 pm. I used to make sure I pumped or fed her every four hours at night, but that wasn't sustainable for me so around 5.5 months I started stretching it out and now I can go from 9 pm - 6 am (there are a lot of nights where she wakes up to eat once during that stretch, but if she sleeps through I'm fine too). It was uncomfortable for a couple days but my body adjusted pretty quickly.<br />
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Adrian is still inconsistent at night, so sometimes she'll sleep straight through, which is heavenly, but fairly often she'll wake up once in the middle of the night because she's hungry, I'll feed her and then put her back in her crib and she falls asleep right away. If she's teething or sick she'll sometimes have so much trouble sleeping that one of us will just go in there and hold her all night. It is not awesome but if it happens we alternate nights so that we at least take turns being zombies. This week she's cutting her top two teeth, so I had a really rough night with her on Monday, and D took over for Tuesday. If the pattern is the same as her first two teeth she'll only have a couple hard nights and then it will get better. We've tried Tylenol but it doesn't seem to make a difference, she just wants to be snuggled.<br />
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On good days this level of busy-ness feels pretty fulfilling and on tough days it feels like a grind and every once in a while it feels like I'm actually drowning, but I'm so aware of how short this stage is. Everything changes every few months, so nothing lasts for very long, good or bad. There's also a chance that she'll be our only kid, which makes everything seem very bittersweet because I know this might be the only time we get to do this and be in this moment, so I try to just sink into it and pay attention to the good parts and move past the hard parts as best I can. Easier said than done, but I feel so lucky to be here right now (can you tell I'm writing this post after getting a full night of sleep?). There are multiple times a week where I'm watching her and I'm just in awe that we get to do this. Even putting all the crazy mushy emotions aside, it is a huge privilege to get a front row seat and watch a human being develop. Does that make sense? Seeing her learn everything from scratch is just amazing.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-82205061326388666612018-08-30T11:19:00.001-07:002018-08-30T11:19:07.754-07:00"Soothing ladder" We are attempting pre-sleep training. I'm not sure what you're supposed to call it. Cosleeping had been going great then last week a switch flipped and after a couple nights of broken sleep we realized that Adrian was having trouble sleeping because she needed more space to roll around and our presence had stopped being soothing and started being exciting. I immediately ordered two sleep training books recommended by friends and we decided to start with the "soothing ladder" method from <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2N0VUrT" target="_blank">The Happy Sleeper</a></i>. We kind of dove into it and amazingly we were able to transition her into her crib in the nursery for the first time ever, which I honestly wasn't sure was possible. That's not to say it hasn't been bumpy. The theory is that at this age you only let them cry for a minute, so if she cries you go in and soothe her in the least intrusive way possible (i.e. stand there, if that doesn't work give her a paci, if that doesn't work, talk to her, then rub her back, pick her up if all else fails). Sometimes by some magic stroke of timing she's in exactly the right place for a nap and she just takes her lovey and rolls over and goes to sleep on her own with zero fuss. More often, we go through the soothing ladder a few times (or for an hour). Sometimes I have to go in there so many times that I'm about to decide I misread her cues and she isn't sleepy and she is never going to go to sleep again probably. That's often when she finally falls asleep.<br />
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In order for it to work I have to adopt this sort of zen mindset, where I just accept the fact that I will be walking in and out of her room every few minutes, possibly forever. I have to ignore the pressure I feel from the work that piles up while I do this during daytime naps and focus on radiating calm. I'm usually the opposite of a "woo" person, but I put so much focus into projecting calm and the sense that I have all the time in the world for this and I swear it helps. I spend a lot of time standing in the hallway, staring at the timer on my phone and trying to decide whether the noise she is making counts as "crying" (which you are supposed to intervene with) vs. "fussing" (which you are supposed to allow them to do). But it feels worth it because when she does go down she sleeps well, and she's learning to string together her sleep cycles on her own, which is pretty sweet to see.<br />
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This week I'm camping out in the nursery at night because the idea of her being in her own room that long is too much for me, so I get to see when she starts to wake up at night and then (like magic!) quietly fusses about for a few seconds before drifting back off. I just can't believe she's capable of this. Watching a baby develop new skills is just amazing, I can't get over it.<br />
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You guys, baby sleep is such a crazy thing. I knew that this was going to be one of the big challenges, but it's still mind blowing to me how much time and thought and energy you put into it. I'm trying to change my mindset, because I'm so type A and I like consistency and planning, so I'd been feeling really guilty about "failing" at baby sleep. Like, I purchased this super expensive bassinet and only used it for two months. We ended up cosleeping when that wasn't our plan. But I'm trying to flip that and tell myself that we're doing a great job reading and responding to her cues. The SNOO was a huge blessing during the first few months, when she was so tiny and we needed to feel that she was safe above all else. And she was sleeping 6 - 7 hour stretches in it! And then when she started to resist the bassinet but she would fall asleep instantly with me, we transitioned to cosleeping and it was best for all of us. And when she started to struggle with sleeping in our bed, we noticed and now we're showing her that she can self soothe and sleep alone. There will probably be a hundred other transitions with her sleeping, and I need to get over the fact that things aren't going according to "plan" because there is no plan with a baby.<br />
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Also, I've lost the ability/time to actually edit posts, so all this baby stuff just gets written out in a 15 minute burst and then slapped up here as is. It kind of kills me, I just do not have the mental capacity for any fine tuning right now. The hardest part is keeping posts to a reasonable length, instead of spilling out a million tiny details and sidebars that are currently occupying my brain. Also, not using emojis, because I definitely would add the sideways laugh/cry face here, which is slightly different from the straight on laugh/cry face because it would subtly indicate that my current mindset is not just funny/sad but also that it's slightly crazy. Okay, that's enough, I'm out.<br />
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<br />Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-58619203540851749312018-08-13T10:43:00.001-07:002018-08-13T10:43:34.771-07:00Surviving maternity leaveI really had no idea what to expect from maternity leave. I've always worked, even when I was in school. All my friends work, so it isn't like I could count on meeting up with people on a weekday. D took four weeks of leave, and that time passed in this lovely haze (mostly - the first week of c-section recovery is a special form of hell, but after that things got better). I mean, we were tired, sure, but we took advantage of the newborn stage and went out a lot. If there was an outdoor patio, we were there. And then he went back to work and I knew I needed some kind of strategy to get me through the next couple months. I have struggled with depression and anxiety in the past, so I was hyper-aware of my potential for developing postpartum depression and I wanted to do everything I could to try to keep myself in a good place.<br />
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I want to make it crystal clear here that PPD is not something to take lightly and I don't believe that you can pull yourself out of depression with sheer willpower. I was 100% prepared for the possibility of taking medication if necessary. I am incredibly lucky because I didn't develop PPD (yet - did you know it can set in months after giving birth? stay vigilant!) but I can't say that was due to anything I did. That said, I know that there are steps I can take that help keep me on track when I'm struggling, and I felt better when I had a plan.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/41787998480/in/dateposted/" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="640" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/835/41787998480_d976869fd7_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>{scene from my daily walk}</i></div>
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When D was getting ready to go back to work I sat down and made myself a list of categories that I needed to hit in order to feel human each day. These might be different for you, but for me it was:<br />
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<i>Social</i> - text, phone call, actual meet up with other people (I went to a support group once a week but that was often the only in person thing I did)<br />
<i>Self-care</i> - shower, brush teeth, change clothes even if it's just to a new pair of sweats, do a face mask<br />
<i>Get out of the house </i>- walk outside, or sit in backyard, or drive somewhere<br />
<i>Productivity</i> - laundry, dishes, vacuuming, grocery shopping, writing, etc.<br />
<i>Physical activity</i> - taking a walk or even just cleaning the house<br />
<i>Eating</i> - remembering to eat is a real issue sometimes, so I kept a good supply of decent snacks (mostly trail mix packets) in a visible location<br />
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The bar was suuuuuper low in each of these categories. I only had to do one of those things in each category each day (although I did try to shower, brush my teeth, and change my clothes daily). There were plenty of days where the only social thing I did was send a quick text to a friend, but it still helped. The categories can overlap too. Spending 20 minutes running around cleaning the house counts as productivity and physical activity. I made sure that I got a little bit of time alone each evening when D was home where I could just retreat to the bathroom and spend a luxurious 15 minutes washing my face and brushing my teeth to get ready for bed. The nighttime routine felt like a chore pre-baby and now it feels like a full on spa day.<br />
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I found that days where I followed this checklist were the easiest for me emotionally. I'm not saying I never felt sad, or lonely, or exhausted and isolated and confused about why this country doesn't take parental leave seriously, for fuck's sake. Ahem. But having goals made the time alone feel more structured and manageable and even enjoyable. The newborn stage is hard but it's also such a sweet time and I wanted to be able to be aware of it and savor it to whatever extent possible. I think I did a pretty good job and I'm grateful for the time I had to focus on her exclusively.<br />
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This all fell apart when I started working from home, FYI. I can't tell you how many times D gets home in the evening and I suddenly realize I haven't brushed my teeth or eaten all day, forget actually making it out for a walk. Trying to squeeze in work during every possible free moment is no joke and I'm not killing it in the balance department these days but it's for such a limited time that I'm just kind of surviving. It helps that my sister is here at least a couple days a week to help with the baby, but I still find that I'm crawling the walls by Thursday evening. I have never appreciated weekends so much, because even though I still have to use them to catch up on work I at least don't feel like I'm on call 24/7 and D is home to take care of the baby so I can focus. Sooooo ... note to self - maybe revisit the checklist and see if I can't do a better job of taking care of myself for the rest of the summer, as brief as it is.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-33223010090979373372018-08-10T16:40:00.001-07:002018-08-10T16:40:52.151-07:00Four months postpartumShe's turning into such a little person, and I can't believe it's only been four months.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/42159438080/in/dateposted/" title="DSC_4167"><img alt="DSC_4167" height="426" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/935/42159438080_42ede8c5cd_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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My absolute favorite thing right now is watching her work on her fine motor control. The look of absolute concentration on her face while she figures out how to make her hands do what she wants amazes me. This week she's started reaching out and gently running her hands over our faces while she stares intently and I just die.<br />
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Four months is an exciting time for her, and a weird time for me (what isn't weird about being postpartum? I have so many feelings about this stage of life). My hair abruptly started falling out last week. Not like "oh, that was a lot of hair to lose in the shower" but like "dear god, those are entire clumps of hair just falling out in my hands" - it was a horror show. I'm surprised I have any hair left at this point. I need to get it cut so that I feel slightly less frumpy but I feel like it's safest to wait until the hair loss hits a plateau, so that my stylist knows what he has to work with. Please tell me there will be a plateau.<br />
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I also threw my back out this week and had to go to a chiropractor for the first time. Apparently the c-section decimated what little ab strength I had (I've always hated ab work) and now my back is over it. So I need to work on that. The chiropractor asked what I do for exercise and usually when I'm asked this lately I lie and say I walk several times a week but I was just honest and told the truth. I do nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was walking daily until I had to go back to work and then I was still managing to walk a few times a week but then the weather got crazy hot and now I just do nothing. Is it any surprise that my back is failing? The chiropractor looked like no one had ever said that before. She even said "oh, walking counts" and then I had to tell her that no, I really meant nothing, no walking, nothing. Am I the only one in LA who doesn't exercise? I would love to say that I went home and took a walk but I just went back to working and then ate a bunch of cookies instead of getting lunch.<br />
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Last week I gave in and went to Madewell and got the highest rise pants that they had in a size that fits me comfortably. I don't know what I've done right in my life for mom jeans to come back into style just as I had a kid, but I'm very grateful.<br />
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I know that at some point I need to get my act together and start taking better care of myself but this summer is almost over and I just can't be bothered right now because all I want to do is eat cookies and watch my baby grab stuff. But I swear I'm going to start doing those postpartum ab exercises, because the back spasms are no joke.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/43968030671/in/dateposted/" title="DSC_4161"><img alt="DSC_4161" height="426" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/935/43968030671_500baa2575_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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P.S. You try making a baby smile without looking like a total idiot, it's impossible, I'm pretty sure.<br />
<br />Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-33932955987699309732018-08-09T12:08:00.001-07:002018-08-27T09:17:57.420-07:00SNOO review (sort of) - months 2 & 3First <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/06/snoo-review-first-two-months.html" target="_blank">SNOO post (months 0 - 2) here</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/42143434680/in/photostream/" title="SNOO"><img alt="SNOO" height="426" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/936/42143434680_674143f63e_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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So I should admit up front that I considered letting this series die a quiet death and never posting about baby sleep again because I feel like a huge failure. I basically gave up at week 11, which was my second week back at work (aka - no more naps during the day) and a wonder week leap, and I just gave in and started cosleeping*, which was never in my plan. But here I am posting this anyways, because even if it isn't really a review of the SNOO anymore, maybe it's still helpful to someone? Or maybe just acknowledging that babies are different and getting your sleep in whatever way works best for your family is okay? I hate to discourage people from the SNOO because it was so great for us during the first couple months, and I have heard from so many other people for whom the SNOO was a lifesaver. I should try reading those emails to Adrian to see if they can convince her.<br />
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Anyways, here are my notes from the last two months.<br />
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Week 9: 6/12 - 6/19 Started out strong, still getting those nice 6 -7 hour stretches in the SNOO at night. But it kind of fell apart towards the end of the week, probably a perfect storm of her getting all her two month vaccinations and being a bit fussy and me getting stressed about going back to work. We dipped back down to 4 hour stretches for a few nights.<br />
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Week 10: 6/19 - 6/26 My first week back at work and everything is kind of topsy turvy and we're trying to figure out a schedule. She decides she isn't into the bottle anymore (nice timing!) and we have a little regression on the evening fussiness. Still getting 4 - 6 hour stretches consistently at the start of the week, but shit starts to fall apart on Friday and then I realize we are entering a Wonder Week (since she was born a week late she goes through her leaps a little early, because they are based on due date and not birth date).<br />
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Week 11: 6/26 - 7/3 Wonder Week leap three in full swing, I'm not even attempting to get her to sleep anywhere but on me. We're actually relatively lucky because she mostly stays cheerful during Wonder Weeks (so far!) but she just cannot sleep on her own while she's going through a leap. She naps happily in the wrap during the day, but at night she hits a fussy wall and it takes a concerted effort to calm her down and get her to eat and fall asleep. Then if you try to put her in the SNOO she will sleep for maybe 40 minutes, then she's up and inconsolable. I give up and just accept that we're co-sleeping this week. It's crazy that she can be crying and refusing to sleep for ages and then falls asleep within two minutes if I lie down and hold her. I'm barely sleeping because I'm so aware of her, but knowing that there is an end date for this makes it bearable and even sweet. I'm hoping that she rebounds after this leap and maybe we'll even get a magical 8 hour stretch.<br />
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Week 12: 7/3 - 7/10 Things are still terrible. Did I ruin our baby by letting her sleep with me for a week? She is refusing to sleep for more than 15 minutes on her own, at any time of the day or night. I know that we need to suck it up and make a big push to get her back in the SNOO but we're both working and I just can't face even one night of waking up a million times to soothe her back to sleep. I tell myself we'll try over the weekend.<br />
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Week 13: 7/10 - 7/17 Yeah, that didn't happen. We had a crazy heat wave and all ended up camping out in the nursery, so she's still sleeping with us. The thing is that she sleeps so well that it's hard to motivate to get her back in her bassinet. Even though I don't sleep heavily when she's with me, not having to get up multiple times a night feels so good that I'm reluctant to give it up. I don't fall back asleep easily once I'm up, so I'm extra motivated not to wake up fully over and over again.<br />
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Week 14: 7/17 - 7/24 Why am I even writing this review? I feel like a failure because I haven't even attempted to get her back in the SNOO and our kid will probably be sleeping with us until she goes to college. At least we're pretty well rested? Her nighttime schedule is like clockwork now. We put her down around 8 or 9 pm, she sleeps solidly until 2 - 3 am, when I feed her half asleep, then she's back down until 6:40 am. I still sleep pretty lightly with her next to me, but I've stopped feeling quite so terrified that I'll roll over on her. We're both always in exactly the same position every time I wake up. I did put her in the SNOO for a couple of her daytime naps this week, which went over okay. She'll sleep for about an hour in the SNOO during the day, whereas I get 2.5 - 3.5 hours if I wear her in the wrap. She's always been a good daytime napper, and the only thing I do is adhere pretty firmly to the "awake times" theory, so I only let her stay awake for about an hour and a half at a time during the day, then I make a major push to get her down for a nap. Part of the issue is that I really NEED those long naps because I'm working from home and I need concentrated times when I can bang out a ton of work without interruption. So wearing her is worth it to me because she'll nap better and longer.<br />
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Week 15: 7/24 - 7/31 We're deep in Wonder Week leap four (which lasts for-freaking-ever) and she started rolling over for real this week and it made her completely crazy for a couple days. Cosleeping started to get weird because instead of staying snuggled up next to me all night she now wants to lie on her back with her arms spread out, which means that this 13 lb infant is somehow taking up 1/3 of our bed. She's also waking up more, and I don't know if it's the four month sleep regression or the rolling but I'm bummed.<br />
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Week 16: 7/31 - 8/7 Ugh, it's been a week of her waking up every 2 - 3 hours wanting to eat, or just being fussy. I'm exhausted. I know it's just a phase, but towards the end of the week, not having had more than 1.5 hours of sleep at a time for five nights in a row I told her to go fuck herself when she woke up at 3am and then I felt bad. She didn't seem to care either way so I guess we're still friends. She's still sleeping super sprawled out in bed and I'm thinking maybe instead of getting her back into the SNOO we'll just work on transitioning her to her crib. We'll see.<br />
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This is ending on a sad note, but I'm happy to give a spoiler and note that week 17 has started off really well, back to 7ish hour stretches at night the last couple nights. Fingers crossed this sticks for a bit. I am a way nicer person if I get at least one uninterrupted stretch of sleep at night.<br />
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* Thoughts about cosleeping - I've never been anti cosleeping, and I know plenty of people who do it happily and safely, but it always seemed like it wouldn't be the solution for us. Our dog sleeps with us, for one thing, and I like my space at night, and after 9 months of forced side sleeping I was really looking forward to being able to roll around to my heart's content. Initially, we "coslept" for short periods by letting her sleep on my chest while I was propped up, just to get a couple hours sleep during fussy nights. Once she was 11 weeks old it started feeling less scary because she was so much stronger, and she'd sleep alongside me, against my belly/chest with her forehead just below my chin. We followed some standard safety tips, like limiting bedding and pillows. Luckily it was summer, so we mostly just slept without blankets, or only pulled the blankets up to my waist and we already have a firm mattress. Circe kind of resolved the dog issue because she's been sleeping with us way less since we came home from the hospital. She gets annoyed that I have to get up to feed Adrian at night, so she started sleeping on the floor beside our bed instead, although she'll hop up and sleep on Dustin's side for some snuggles in the beginning of the night. I also got more comfortable with the idea of Circe and Adrian coexisting, because they spend a lot of supervised time together on the playmat during the day, and once Adrian started rolling it was pretty obvious that she's strong enough (and loud enough) to wake us up if Circe gets too close. Circe has also proved herself surprisingly tolerant. She chooses to lie beside Adrian during playtime, and waits patiently and stoically while I have to detach Adrian's death grip on her fur multiple times a day. If she gets too annoyed she'll leave the room, but in general she seems willing to put up with a lot, which I definitely didn't expect. But at night she consistently avoids Adrian, to the extent of not wanting to come over to my side of the bed at all, so I guess her tolerance has limits. Circe is pretty committed to sleeping.<br />
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Anyways, long story short, cosleeping didn't feel as scary as I expected it to once she got bigger, and even though I'm still hoping this is just a short phase in our lives (she starts daycare in another month and she has to learn to sleep on her own before that) it's been a surprisingly sweet one.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-66198251687764966992018-07-27T05:29:00.000-07:002018-07-27T05:29:09.312-07:00The giant pregnancy postSoooooo I wrote this just a couple weeks after having Adrian, then kept telling myself I'd come back to it for editing and to split it up into a few easier to read posts about specific aspects of pregnancy. But that isn't happening, and today I realized that it's the one year anniversary of finding out that I was pregnant, so I'm going to just dump it here as is. Otherwise I probably won't get around to posting this until the kid goes to college. Things covered in this post - body image, first trimester misery, (not) exercising while pregnant, discovering I had a defect in the umbilical cord (SUA), dealing with contractions from 28 weeks on.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/43661765151/in/dateposted/" title="pregnancy"><img alt="pregnancy" height="240" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/846/43661765151_60e8329bc9_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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By the time we decided we were ready to try for a baby, I wasn't all that worried about the actual baby. I'm incredibly lucky because I've been able to spend a lot of time and develop a close relationship with my sister's kids, and even the newborn phase didn't seem too intimidating because I got to stay with them for the first two weeks both times. I wasn't stupid enough to believe that this was the same experience as actually parenting, but at least I knew how to hold a newborn and how to change diapers and that sometimes when the umbilical stump falls off it is really freaking gross but that doesn't necessarily mean that anything is wrong.<br />
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But I was pretty anxious about the pregnancy. I was afraid I'd gain a million pounds, or that I'd be incredibly sick the entire time, or that I'd hate the feeling of sharing my body and that my anxiety would spike up. I worried about it a lot. I wanted to have a baby, but I just couldn't imagine myself pregnant.<br />
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And then (several months later) I was pregnant and it wasn't bad. None of the things I was worried about happened. Other things happened, things that I wasn't expecting and hadn't bothered to worry about, which is probably some kind of lesson that I should learn except that right now I'm pretty tired from carrying a human around for 41 weeks and so I'm not in the mood.<br />
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I'm sharing this not to say that hey, pregnancy is easy and there's no reason to stress! Everyone's experience is so different and there's no way to really anticipate how pregnancy will feel. I'm just sharing to say that maybe it's not worth stressing too much in advance because you can't predict how you're going to feel or what is going to happen. And each pregnancy can be different, so even being pregnant before doesn't necessarily mean you'll know how you'll feel the next time around.<br />
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Physically, I had a pretty easy pregnancy, for which I am super grateful. As soon as I got a positive pregnancy test I decided to kick into super healthy gear. I was going to eat protein and vegetables and drink tons of water! I was going to exercise moderately every day! I would be my best self and then I would have the world's healthiest baby!<br />
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This lasted for approximately two weeks, at which point morning sickness kicked in, which in my case was more like a 24/7 hangover of epic proportions that dragged on until I was 20 weeks along. I was lucky that I wasn't actively throwing up, but the nausea and lack of energy meant that I spent a lot of evenings lying on the kitchen floor in front of the refrigerator trying to convince myself to open the door and eat something, anything. Even in the moment I was aware of how ridiculously dramatic this was, but I honestly didn't feel up to anything else. I ate a lot of peanut butter for "dinner" during this time. I also had to force myself to drink water, for the first time in my life. And I had this lovely pregnancy symptom where my mouth tasted weird all the time, but especially after eating. That sentence does not adequately communicate how incredibly disgusting and frustrating this was. If anyone else is suffering through weird pregnancy mouth, I can say that I finally figured out that eating protein (mostly cheese sticks, in my case) didn't make it any worse, but any kind of carbs, especially sugar, was a nightmare. Also, chewing minty gum helped a little. I ended up eating zero sugar for two thirds of my pregnancy because of this (so at least I had one healthy habit).<br />
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Even once the morning sickness cleared up I had zero desire or energy to exercise. I can count on one hand the number of times I worked out during pregnancy. My only saving grace was that I committed to taking the stairs everywhere I went, even though I park on the fifth floor of the structure everyday at work. I told myself that this sort of counted, but in practice I was basically a land slug. I want to say that if I had another chance I would do it differently but to be honest I'm just not sure I was capable of it.<br />
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Surprisingly, I didn't gain a million pounds, and I actually ended up really feeling okay with my body during pregnancy. I was shocked by this. I've struggled with mild to moderate body image issues for most of my life and they tend to flare up when I'm stressed or dealing with major life events. At the time I got pregnant I was already at the heavier end of my personal weight spectrum and I thought that adding on extra pounds would raise a lot of issues. But I think I ended up being so busy and distracted that I didn't really think about it much (postpartum body image is turning out to be a whooooole other thing that I'm still in the early stages of figuring out). Once I got over the morning sickness I expected my appetite to rebound like crazy but instead it just went back to normal. I never felt overly hungry while pregnant and I think I mostly continued to eat like normal, although I did make an effort to keep healthier stuff stocked, so I snacked on a lot of nuts and yogurt. I wasn't perfect and I was pretty stressed at work, so I admit that I sometimes had a pretty sporadic daytime meal schedule. I would start out well (I ate the unsweetened Trader Joe's instant oatmeal with a sliced banana for breakfast every single week day of my pregnancy, because it was easy and I could do it at work) but then I was trying to cram so much work into my day that I'd realize I'd been sitting at my desk for hours and hadn't gotten up to go to the bathroom or eat. I vividly remember sitting in the grocery store parking lot one afternoon after work crying because I'd waited too long to eat and I already felt like a bad parent and this kid wasn't even born yet and what was wrong with me and why couldn't I get it together? Turns out that there are a lot of dramatic pregnancy moments that feel either hilarious or embarrassing in retrospect but are dead serious in the moment. Anyways, long story short, I thought I was going to be dealing with massive body image issues while pregnant, but instead I gained a totally normal amount of weight and felt surprisingly good about my body the whole time. I do credit part of this to switching over to maternity clothes pretty early. It's hard for me to feel good about myself if I have buttons or zippers digging into my midsection. Over the belly pregnancy jeans are basically leggings that look work appropriate. I'm honestly not sure why we don't all wear them all the time. I also found that I wore tighter clothes during pregnancy than in my normal life. I tried the beautiful hipster tunic-y or drapey maternity clothes and I looked like a house. I figured out quickly that I felt my best if I was wearing form fitting clothing that made it clear I was housing an actual baby and not just an extra large burrito, so I stuck with that. I mostly lived in maternity jeans and a few long sleeved maternity tops. Since I was pregnant during holiday season, I also bought a couple festive maternity dresses (I got a few pieces from both <a href="https://www.pinkblushmaternity.com/" target="_blank">Pink Blush</a> and <a href="http://us.asos.com/search/maternity?q=maternity&channelref=paid%2Bsearch&affid=12497&ppcadref=898162952%7C40355734530%7Ckwd-308828595756&_cclid=v3_c8d0cc1d-2f90-5f8e-9f01-51cf5842e14e&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz__81ZH32wIVR2p-Ch29JAW8EAAYASAAEgJeWfD_BwE" target="_blank">Asos</a> and found that at both places the quality is super mixed. The holiday dresses I got from <a href="https://www.pinkblushmaternity.com/" target="_blank">Pink Blush</a> look cute but they are seriously the cheapest feeling things. D asked if I was flammable after he felt the fabric on the dress I wore to his holiday party BUT multiple people commented on how amazing the dress looked, so it served its purpose and I just made sure to stay away from candles. On the other hand, the maternity workout leggings I got from Pink Blush are ah-mazing, and I wore them non-stop for six months - they don't seem to have the same exact pair anymore but they were similar to <a href="https://www.pinkblushmaternity.com/p-30658-black-active-mesh-bottom-panel-maternity-leggings.aspx?DepartmentID=1" target="_blank">these</a>. So I would say just order stuff and then return anything that feels cheap once you try it on.)<br />
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The parts of pregnancy I didn't anticipate were the hardest. At our 20 week anatomy scan we were so excited to finally confirm the sex of the baby, and instead we found out that I had an umbilical defect. Most umbilical cords have two arteries and one vein, but I had a condition called single umbilical artery (SUA). Five minutes of googling later and I was totally freaked out. An SUA can be isolated, meaning that it is just an anomaly and not associated with any other issues, or it can be associated with chromosomal abnormalities or heart or kidney defects. We found out on a Saturday and I was crushed and panicked. Everyone I talked to told me to get off the internet right away, and I tried to follow that advice and made it a full 48 hours. Then I talked to a friend and my therapist and they both told me that it was perfectly understandable to want to learn more about it and they reminded me that I had to advocate both for the baby and for myself. I understand why people tell you not to start googling, but how else are you supposed to know what questions to ask? I already spend a good chunk of time reading and discussing scientific articles for work, and so I went straight to the source and looked up every peer reviewed journal article I could find on SUA. At first it was pretty disheartening. Even if an SUA is isolated and not associated with any other issues, it can still lead to a higher chance of restricted fetal growth or late term miscarriage or stillbirth, presumably because the cord is more fragile and prone to damage. Dustin and I spent a pretty depressing night sitting up in our bed, surrounded by my stacks of highlighted articles. But after going through everything I felt confident that our doctor was following the best course of action. Given that the anatomy scan showed a healthy heart and kidneys, and that the prenatal screening and anatomy scan didn't show any signs of chromosomal issues, there was every indication that we had an isolated SUA and the only action indicated was closer monitoring during the third trimester. I'm not going to say that I was able to immediately let it go and stop worrying, but I did my best. The last month of pregnancy I was increasingly worried but the extra monitoring (two non-stress tests per week starting at 32 weeks, plus growth scans every 2 - 3 weeks) helped reassure me that she was growing just fine. And she was just fine, as it turned out! I did end up having an unplanned c-section, and the SUA factored into our decision on that. Her heart wasn't handling the contractions well but the doctor might have let me try to labor a little longer if they weren't concerned about the SUA already putting her at higher risk. I 100% do not regret that decision, even though the c-section was stressful and the recovery kind of sucked. I just feel so lucky that she arrived healthy and happy, after all that concern.<br />
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And then there were the contractions. At 28 weeks I had a particularly hard week at work and also felt terrible physically and then finally figured out that I was having contractions every five minutes. I spent two separate nights in L & D that week, but it became clear that the contractions weren't causing my cervix to dilate, so they told me to try to rest more and warned me that this might just be my baseline for the rest of the pregnancy. Ugh. I did what I could to modify my schedule, splitting up my work day between the office and home as often as possible. I found that I couldn't stop the contractions but with tons of hydration and lots of rest I could keep them to a manageable level. They weren't painful, just uncomfortable, so once I knew they weren't an indication of pre-term labor I was able to mostly relax and ignore them. Every single time I would go in for non-stress tests the tech would look startled and ask if I knew I was having contractions. YES. I KNOW. I was worried I wouldn't know when they transitioned into actual labor and that I'd have the baby on our bathroom floor. SPOILER - as uncomfortable as they are, those early contractions feel NOTHING like actual labor. I woke up with a contraction the morning I went into labor and immediately knew that this was the real thing. I can't even really describe how it was different, but I could tell it was. In the early stages the contractions feel similar, but with real labor they started getting painful and increasing in strength pretty quickly.<br />
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So that's a whole bunch of pregnancy stuff crammed into one post. Long story short, there is really no way to predict how a pregnancy will go, so my recommendation is to try not to stress (or build up big expectations!) ahead of time and then just roll with it as best you can when it happens. I know, I know. Easier said than done. I'm sorry! I guess my only real advice is to get into maternity clothes ASAP.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-7978100544254802202018-07-23T12:00:00.000-07:002018-11-06T09:52:56.522-08:00Baby gear for the newborn stage - what we needed and what we didn'tBaby gear is such a crazy subject. My first and strongest recommendation is to take the hand me downs, take all the hand me downs. Sure, it's nice to imagine one of those picture perfect homes where all your baby stuff is gorgeous natural wood and white linen and your baby is always wearing clothes that are perfectly aligned with your aesthetic, and maybe if we had unlimited funds I would have been tempted to go that route (110%). But you use the baby gear for such a short window of time, in my opinion it's better to just use whatever motley collection of hand me downs you can get and realize that you really won't care, partly because you're going to be tired and partly because your baby is going to be so cute that it won't matter what color her play mat is. You're going to have to pass most of this stuff along within a year anyways and then you'll probably barely remember it. If you don't have a network of friends desperate to unload baby gear (not exaggerating - bins of stuff started showing up on our porch as soon as we announced I was pregnant - people want that stuff out of their house) but you want to save money then join a local mom's group on Facebook or troll Craigslist.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/43548115522/in/dateposted/" title="baby equipment"><img alt="baby equipment" height="383" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/920/43548115522_ccd553f9c7_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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This post has affiliate links to Amazon, but if you have a good local store in your area (shout out to the <a href="https://www.pumpstation.com/" target="_blank">Pump Station</a>!) I highly recommend going there instead. Not only because you support them, but because it can be a huge source of support for you, and having someone to talk to and ask for advice is amazing in those first few weeks. That said, if your local options are limited or if getting out of the house feels unmanageable sometimes, most of this stuff is easily purchased online. I'm basically on a first name basis with the UPS guy now that I'm working from home and can't get out much.<br />
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We wanted to keep it fairly minimal, but here are the things we have ended up relying on:<br />
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Bassinet - they need a place to sleep. We use the <a href="https://www.happiestbaby.com/pages/snoo" target="_blank">SNOO</a>. We've also used the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XGYJ9NL/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B06XGYJ9NL&linkId=2514152d4640af01088de2307527c25c" target="_blank">Dockatot</a> a few times because we got one from a friend. If we hadn't gotten the SNOO I probably would have gone with a simple basket set up, or a bedside "cosleeper" option. I'm not an expert here, because she's been sleeping with us the last few weeks at this point and I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get her to sleep alone. (My <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/06/snoo-review-first-two-months.html" target="_blank">first review of the SNOO is here</a>, next update is due soon)<br />
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Car seat and stroller (duh) - we got a really nice infant car seat as a hand me down (only a year old) but I recently broke down and purchased a used car seat that was compatible with our stroller. Adrian hates getting in and out of her car seat, and it was making errands really hard. Being able to just pull the car seat out of the car and clip it into the stroller is amazing. I thought this was a luxury I didn't need, I was wrong. If possible, get a car seat that works with your stroller if you live somewhere where you're going to be driving a lot. We got the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MT11067/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01MT11067&linkId=709011d32eae399aa47193de3d46ebf2" target="_blank">Cruz stroller</a> (tip - look for the last year's model to save some money) and now have the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MT110N0/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01MT110N0&linkId=21e2b900958b21e24143ed13b0d5cdac" target="_blank">Mesa car seat</a>, which is great because you can wash basically all the cloth parts in the washing machine. If you're in a local mom's group on Facebook, car seats and strollers frequently pop up for sale. I wouldn't feel comfortable purchasing a used car seat on Craigslist (they expire and you can't use them if they've been in an accident) but I felt good about getting one because the mom's group is tight knit and I trust people in it.<br />
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Baby wrap - in the infant stage I find the wraps easier than the structured carriers, because it's more comfortable for wearing around the house. I got two of the <a href="https://shop.sollybaby.com/" target="_blank">Solly wraps</a> because they seem to be the most lightweight, and we use them constantly. I actually got the second one a week after the first, because I was having trouble getting a chance to wash the first one because we used it so much. I wear her for several hours a day, both in the house and when we go out. She loves it (luckily) and I feel like it's our best bonding time. We also have an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071W8BTSJ/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B071W8BTSJ&linkId=026e8fd02f4b39200dc56f8fc66c773d" target="_blank">Ergo</a> that we'll be using once she's a bit bigger.<br />
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Place to set baby down - our friend gave us <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0042D69XS/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B0042D69XS&linkId=04194af1812ef661ec6cd4aea80898d7" target="_blank">this bouncer seat</a> and it's been a lifesaver. She has no interest in sleeping in it like some babies do, but it's perfect for when she's awake and happy. She likes to sit in it while I work in the kitchen or shower. Side note - everyone raves about the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K7VHP90/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01K7VHP90&linkId=e0f48fce2628fb79b15d6f853f25cfbd" target="_blank">Rock N Play</a>, but I got one for free with points and she just isn't interested in it at all. Just a good reminder that babies don't all like the same things!<br />
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Changing pad with extra liners - we just used an old dresser as a changing table but we got a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009EDSWJA/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B009EDSWJA&linkId=f4be4fe729251e15f068c22a885951ba" target="_blank">changing pad</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M0L5DKJ/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01M0L5DKJ&linkId=4ed6b1b8bcde0561fc1b303f80e4d625" target="_blank">some cute covers</a>. I impulse registered for some of these <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017IRZT9E/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B017IRZT9E&linkId=6b9727f8a6a287f05cdb8960f76cc0db" target="_blank">changing pad liners,</a> which you lie over the cover to reduce how often you have to wash the cover, and then we liked them so much we ended up ordering another set. I still love our changing pad and I'm bummed that we ended up needing to switch to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072TRBZPL/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B072TRBZPL&linkId=33107826190be9fedda2e3eabc9520fb" target="_blank">Hatch Baby Grow</a> so we could have a scale (but I loooooove the functionality of the Grow - <a href="https://heart-of-light.blogspot.com/2018/07/hatch-baby-grow-review-my-new-favorite.html" target="_blank">see my full review here</a>).<br />
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Play mat - I didn't realize this was a thing, but our friends gave us their old one (similar to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0042RU2SW/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B0042RU2SW&linkId=307458d26ded87e8b58f8116724a1f29" target="_blank">this one</a>) and we use it all the time. It's nice to have a place for her to lie down and do tummy time and she really does love having her toys suspended above her.<br />
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Cheater swaddles - our bassinet comes with a velcro swaddle, so we use that. My sister used the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XYJ34CZ/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B06XYJ34CZ&linkId=e79666032a2d300b4559c95afcdcc69d" target="_blank">halo swaddles</a> with her kids and I liked those too. I know that it isn't hard to learn to swaddle them with a blanket, but I just have zero interest. I've already had to learn how to operate several bewildering pieces of baby equipment and that's enough.<br />
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Receiving blankets/swaddle blankets - despite not knowing how to swaddle I do use swaddle blankets all the time, mostly for breastfeeding or tucking around her when she's sitting in her bouncer. They are scattered all over our house, so I'm glad we have a lot in patterns/colors we are okay with. Personally, I prefer the swaddling blankets over the receiving blankets because they are bigger and lightweight so if I had to do it again I'd probably skip the receiving blankets. There are a million <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074CNYBWB/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B074CNYBWB&linkId=ffe3eae983a8467e968399426158ded5" target="_blank">cute options </a>out there, but you'll probably get a bunch as gifts anyways. If you want super soft and organic, we were given a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018T9UCL0/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B018T9UCL0&linkId=8d2c1cc48694cf1588e65bd49849883d" target="_blank">two pack of the Wee Sprout brand </a>and they are the softest, but you don't get the fun patterns.<br />
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Pacifier - opinions vary on this, but I was in tears during the first couple weeks of breastfeeding because we'd have 45 minute stretches at night where she was using my boob as a pacifier and I was in pain. I'd heard you had to wait six weeks to introduce the pacifier but our lactation consultant gave us the okay to go for it sooner. Of course, she didn't accept it right away but by four weeks it was my savior and I'm okay with it. She only takes it when she needs to go to sleep and it's easy to tell when she's hungry vs. when she only wants the pacifier. Our lactation consultant recommended using <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0045I6IAO/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B0045I6IAO&linkId=6d613985fa375826e628c7a7538457da" target="_blank">Soothies</a>, but initially she wouldn't take those and we found that the Mam pacifier was the perfect gateway. After a few weeks with the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B4DCZXM/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00B4DCZXM&linkId=2f6576edb70af0b5166df7dfe17a9e18" target="_blank">Mam</a> she graduated to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011D8MD98/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B011D8MD98&linkId=82ee46cf225d89a0eece0307eafa6ad3" target="_blank">Soothie</a> and now she happily takes it anytime she's feeling tired and ready to go to sleep. I also got a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M7PJ82C/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01M7PJ82C&linkId=423c926b48da9bcb079b86132a164b08" target="_blank">little pack of pacifier clips</a>, which are critical if you don't want to have to pick the pacifier up off the floor a million times a day. (FYI - the reason I didn't stick with the Mam is that I found it harder to sterilize. Water would get into the nipple and it didn't seem to fully dry and one day I saw mold growing in it. I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong, but yuck. The Soothies are all one piece, so there's nowhere for water to get trapped.)<br />
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Clothes - footie pajamas and a couple hats. If you wanted to go super minimal, I think you could get away with a few sets of pajamas and 1 - 2 hats for the first three months. We are obsessed with the <a href="https://www.target.com/p/baby-3pk-sleep-n-play-set-cloud-island-153-mint-oatmeal/-/A-52376061?preselect=52337465#lnk=sametab" target="_blank">Cloud Island footie pjs </a>from Target (pattern options change all the time, so that exact link might not work but just search their website). They come in packs of three, they're lightweight (pro for us, might be a con for you) and they have an inverted zipper, which is amazing for nighttime diaper changes because you don't have to fully undress them to get at their diaper.<br />
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Nursing pillow - I relied on <a href="https://amzn.to/2A3XHqR" target="_blank">the Brestfriend</a> really heavily for every feeding the first few weeks but by two months in I was mostly just using it during the day and by three months I've stopped using it almost entirely. It does make breastfeeding much more comfortable in the beginning.<br />
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Nipple cream - so critical during the first weeks, now only used sporadically. They sent me home from the hospital with a tube of Lasinoh cream but my lactation consultant recommended <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007CQ726/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B0007CQ726&linkId=002e1b35b4e0ddc26cec4cefb0fb2e6e" target="_blank">this option from Motherlove</a> because it's more moisturizing and I liked it better.<br />
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Hand pump - I got a free electric pump from insurance, but <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F8W7CF0/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01F8W7CF0&linkId=bceb441cad90a252d0cd3841d5b1922d" target="_blank">this Haakaa silicone hand pump</a> is amazing for night time feedings. Adrian only eats one side during her early morning feeding, so my routine is to pop her on one side, then put the pump on the other. It is a simple vacuum system, so there's no noise and I just massage a little to help it out. It's surprisingly effective this way, although the set up takes a bit of juggling (let's not talk about the time she kicked the pump off my boob and I spilled four ounces of milk all over the bed and myself). It's a single piece, so cleaning it is so, so easy. I've been able to build up a freezer stash of milk this way too. (I didn't get anything fancy for freezing milk, I'm currently just using our regular <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Z9484DM/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00Z9484DM&linkId=dcbe8f3325539657ea3bea757263d9e6" target="_blank">silicone ice cube trays</a> and then double ziploc bagging the cubes - <b>UPDATE</b> - I actually regret not just getting bags immediately. They are so much easier than the ice cubes and my daycare prefers them. I like the Medela ones best because they feel sturdiest and don't have weird flowers printed on them. We do use some of the ice cubes for teething but they're not convenient for bottles.)<br />
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Bottles - we started trying to get Adrian to take a bottle at 6 weeks, per the recommendation of our lactation consultant. It's been up and down. I've tried four different types of bottles and so far her favorite is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LX38PK7/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01LX38PK7&linkId=443f8702af780824c6151baffa2a73bf" target="_blank">Nuk Simply Natural</a>. She will also take the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004C053BA/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B004C053BA&linkId=99b4c052d12d013840bd324c558d80cf" target="_blank">Comotomo</a>, but those are three times as expensive and while I love how they look I hate how they tend to tip over. My only recommendation for bottles is not to register for a ton of one style, because you have no idea what your baby will take. If possible, borrow a variety from a friend, or just buy a couple to test out. We try to give her one bottle a day, in the hopes that she won't starve once she starts daycare. Some days are better than others, honestly. We don't use a bottle warmer, we just put some hot water in a cup and then swirl the bottle in it until it warms up. Works fine since we aren't heating bottles constantly.<br />
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Drying rack - I'm not sure if this is necessary but I like having a separate drying rack just for her stuff. Most of it is small enough that it would fall through our large rack, plus this seems cleaner. We got the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GUXARO4/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01GUXARO4&linkId=8078ca1481667e2c3da4cd19a55af006" target="_blank">Boon strip</a>, which takes up minimal space and I think it's cute.<br />
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Diaper pail - we got this fancy <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00821FLT4/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00821FLT4&linkId=e93c3f84e4fc2fc593c9988dd31d98d6" target="_blank">Ubbi diaper pail </a>and it does look nice and it works well. My sister happily used <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BBX3WPQ/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07BBX3WPQ&linkId=5ed6261612f12a677966a3a2c6e55d00" target="_blank">this much cheaper option</a>, and as she wisely pointed out "No matter how nice it is, it's still just a trash can full of baby poop." I also have friends who avoided the diaper pail altogether and just made more frequent trips to take the trash out.<br />
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We did register for other little things - a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XJ35FG4/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B06XJ35FG4&linkId=740378e2f4ca0e2d9829187b5799e640" target="_blank">forehead thermometer</a>, hooded towels and washcloths, baby nail clippers, some <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074BNQPT3/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B074BNQPT3&linkId=272a1eeace654b2d9c17243ca7e67a2f" target="_blank">rope baskets</a> that we use for toys and laundry (separately). I got t<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071GP88ZY/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B071GP88ZY&linkId=b412bc26e4ca6e2c3ef31a238a02f581" target="_blank">his back of the door storage organizer </a>and use it to hold diapers, burp cloths, and other daily essentials, the stuff that you want to be able to grab quickly but don't necessarily have counter space for. I got a bath sling because it was cheap and simple and it's fine (I have <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D9Q872K/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07D9Q872K&linkId=d05385b89ba237dd883c70a0158cfce2" target="_blank">this one </a>but it cost $6 in store). Having some high contrast cards and books are nice, and I love <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071X5K2TZ/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B071X5K2TZ&linkId=077c235420ee92053ad012df441d3d26" target="_blank">these Wee Gallery alphabet cards</a> in particular. A friend gave us this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B3J76NG/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hearto-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00B3J76NG&linkId=ea94b9837f39d1818bc0b573d2595405" target="_blank">Silly Tails crinkly book</a> and it's been a huge hit and I have to remember to take it with us everywhere.<br />
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What we realized we didn't need: a ton of clothes (as I mentioned, a few pairs of footed pajamas are probably all you need initially), a ton of toys, a full infant bath, a bottle warmer, a real changing table (dresser works fine). Probably a ton of other stuff that was on the recommended registry list that I'm currently forgetting.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-62685001210428864822018-07-06T12:59:00.004-07:002018-07-06T13:23:01.034-07:00Hatch Baby Grow review + my new favorite baby appWe've been having some issues with weight gain over here and I wasn't really prepared for the emotions that go along with that. Adrian was in the 80th percentile for weight at birth, but dropped to the 60th at her one month check and then down to the 30th at her two month (she's been steadily 95th for both height and head since birth). After we got the news at her two month appointment our ped suggested that if she was still falling lower on the chart in another month we would want to discuss formula supplementation. While I'm open to doing whatever we need to do to make sure she's getting what she needs, I immediately started feeling guilty and stressed about her eating. The thing about breastfeeding is that it's a total black box. All I could do was time how long she was eating but that doesn't really tell me how much she's eating. When we'd visited our lactation consultant back in the very beginning she would weigh Adrian before and after eating so we could calculate how much milk she got. It was so cool that when we were at the baby store and saw the <a href="https://amzn.to/2KVaVHx" target="_blank">Hatch Baby Grow</a> we definitely considered purchasing it, but we convinced ourselves that it was ridiculous and over the top and obsessive.<br />
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Hi there, week one us! This is two month us, and we are ridiculous and over the top and obsessive and we have zero regrets. Nice to meet you.<br />
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So yeah, we purchased a changing pad that is also a baby scale, so that we can weigh our kid obsessively and know how much she eats at each feeding. And I love it. We've only been using it for two and a half weeks (I will update this review if we have any issues down the line) but it's been amazing. And as it turns out I love the app that goes with it so much more than the previous one we were using (and you can use the app even if you aren't using the scale, so I'll give a little detail on it below in case you're just interested in that).<br />
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FYI - this is 100% not sponsored, I purchased it myself and the company has no idea I exist.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/28372045987/in/dateposted/" title="Hatch Baby Grow"><img alt="Hatch Baby Grow" height="640" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/919/28372045987_d4f25cce9e_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<b>Thoughts about the Hatch Baby Grow </b>-<br />
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They made an attempt to make it look modern, but honestly, I liked our regular old changing pad better because I could put cute covers on it and it was brighter. I feel like the grey is a little dark in our space. I can understand why they didn't go with white, but I kind of wish it was white or a super light grey.<br />
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The material is a soft-ish plastic foam. It isn't hard or slick but it definitely isn't cushy at all. Again, I prefer our conventional changing pad because with this one I have to be super careful to set her down gently or I risk bonking her head (which wouldn't injure her, this isn't a brick surface, but it does startle her). On the other hand, you can just wipe this surface clean with a wipe, which is kind of amazing.<br />
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The functionality of the scale outweighs these cons, though. I love the scale. There's no digital display, so you have to connect it to your phone via Bluetooth and use the Hatch Baby app. But it's super easy to use and I've only had issues connecting with it once. Basically, you open up the scale in the app, lie your baby down, and then tell the app if you want to record a weight or do a feeding. If you record a weight, it just saves the info for you. If you are starting a feeding, it takes a pre-feeding weight and then you come back after the feeding and weigh the baby again and it will automatically calculate the feeding amount and then save it for you. Being able to track her feeding amounts has given me so much peace of mind. I can see that she's a pretty consistent eater, taking in pretty much the same volume every day, and I can also see that all my efforts to get her to eat more often aren't really making a difference. I realize that sounds discouraging, but it's actually great info to have! Adrian naturally seems to want to wait and only eat every 3 - 4 hours during the day, sometimes even stretching it out to 5 hours if she's having an epic nap. If I go by her schedule and let her do that, she'll eat 3 - 5 oz per feed. If I try to encourage her to eat more and wake her up every two hours to feed her, she eats 1 - 2 oz per feed, and my daily total comes out the same, even if her total eating time is much higher. She also doesn't sleep any longer at night. Knowing this makes me feel so much more comfortable about letting her set her own schedule. (Standard disclaimer here - every baby is different, this is definitely not medical advice, and I'm consulting both my LC and my pediatrician as I figure out what works for us - we might still need to supplement with formula).<br />
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Technical stuff - it's accurate to 0.25 oz, which is good enough for our purposes, and it seems to be pretty consistent with our doctor's scale. Baby weight obviously fluctuates day to day, based on how many fluids they have on board, etc. I do daily weigh ins for her but don't stress about her being up and down on the day to day. If day to day fluctuations are going to stress you out, then weighing once per week is probably better. The weights you get for feedings throughout the day aren't meant to be weight checks, because you don't bother to undress or undiaper them for those. Just keep them consistent by not doing outfit or diaper changes. I weigh her in whatever she's in (with paci, if she's using it), feed her, and then immediately weigh her again before changing her diaper or anything. That gets you the most accurate weight.<br />
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Adrian is super wiggly and this scale still works well. If she's moving like crazy it won't get a reading, but I've found the leaning over her and talking to her gets her to smile and hold still long enough for the scale to capture the weight.<br />
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Max weight is 44 lbs, at which point I'm pretty sure Adrian will be way too big for this scale anyways.<br />
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The app calculates the weight percentile automatically. They use the WHO growth charts, FYI, which may or may not be what your doctor uses.<br />
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<b>Hatch Baby app </b>-<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/41431176000/in/dateposted/" title="Hatch Baby app"><img alt="Hatch Baby app" height="640" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/833/41431176000_0c8317479a_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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Even without the scale, I think I would still love this app. We aren't at the point where we're making any attempt to put Adrian on a schedule, other than trying to set bedtime for approximately 8pm, and trying not to let her stay awake much longer than 1.5 - 2 hours at a time during the day. But my favorite thing about the app is that it gives you a chart that lets you line up the last several days and see the eating and sleeping patterns. This has been awesome for me, because I can kind of see how she's developing her own schedule and it gives me an idea of when to expect her to be awake or asleep or hungry. The visual just helps my sleep deprived brain so much.<br />
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Other things I love about the app (we were previously using Baby Manager, for reference):<br />
You can easily navigate through it even while you have a feeding running. With our other app, if you were in a feeding you couldn't do anything else until the feeding was finished. This sucks because I like to be able to enter diaper changes, check sleep times, etc, while I'm sitting there feeding.<br />
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The feeding interface is nice because it times the overall feeding and also the time spent on each breast. You can just tap to switch sides, and the app will save which side was last and show you that info when you go to start a new feeding. My previous app showed each side as a separate feeding, which made it really complicated to add up how many feedings she'd had that day, since she sometimes eats from both sides but sometimes only eats from one.<br />
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Cute little detail - you're prompted to upload a photo for each day and it's just way cuter to scroll through your data this way.<br />
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Things I don't love - no place to enter head circumference, which we had previously been tracking as well. Sometimes the app is a little glitchy about letting me delete entries and they reappear (this only seems to happen with the auto entries from the scale, so it might be an issue specific to that). I also wish the visual distinguished between wet and dirty diapers. You can see that info if you are looking at the list of diapers, but it would be nice to see it in the daily summary visual. At some point we'll stop tracking wet diapers and then it will be more clear, but since we're still worried about her weight gain I'm trying to make sure we're tracking everything.<br />
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Random thing that only a parent would ever request - I wish there was an app that let you attach photos of your diapers to the diaper entries. I realize this is disgusting and before I was a parent I would never have imagined that I'd want to request a visual, timed record of shit. Now, I want a shit slideshow, with dated entries, so that I can figure out what is normal and what is weird and pull it up later without having to scroll through my entire camera roll. I can't be alone here, right?Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-63191615314314852632018-06-11T10:01:00.002-07:002018-06-11T10:01:39.200-07:00SNOO review - the first two months<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/41406520345/in/dateposted/" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="429" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/898/41406520345_7ed1f826fd_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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First things first, if you want to judge me for purchasing a <a href="https://www.happiestbaby.com/pages/snoo" target="_blank">very expensive robot bassinet</a>, that's fine. As someone who has a lifetime of experience with periodic insomnia, I place a really high value on sleep. Which isn't to say I didn't have qualms about this big ticket item. So many qualms. But I read a million reviews and then they had a big Black Friday sale and we decided to go ahead and order. If you're considering a purchase, keep in mind that they frequently have 30% off sales, last year the Black Friday sale was 40% off, AND you can select your desired ship date to coordinate with your due date (critical, since they also offer a 30 day trial period in case your baby is not one that loves the SNOO). I also feel pretty confident that I'll be able to resell it when we're done with it in six short months (yes, it's only intended for the first six months or so, which I realize makes the price harder to swallow).<br />
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<b>This is a completely unsolicited and unsponsored review, just in case that wasn't clear.</b> Along the way it kind of turned into a sleep diary of the first two months, so there's a lot of detail in here that doesn't necessarily relate directly to the SNOO. Also, some of these notes I wrote as we were going through it and some I added later on, so the tense is inconsistent throughout and guess what? The baby is waking up right now so I've decided to I'm not going to fix it because otherwise I don't know when I'll get a chance to finish this. Sorry.<br />
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<i>If you don't want to wade through my week by week thoughts, here is my summary after two months with the SNOO: </i>There isn't any way to say exactly what is making a baby sleep, but I do think the SNOO is contributing to better sleep, especially as we get her acclimated.<br />
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PROS: The SNOO is good looking, I looooooove the app which gives me a really clear picture of her sleep patterns, and the SNOO swaddles are amazingly easy to use (you can also <a href="https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/sleepea" target="_blank">buy their swaddles for standalone use</a> if you don't want to get a SNOO). By week 8 we are consistently getting 6 - 7 hour sleep stretches (knock on wood) and we can even sometimes lie her down drowsy but awake and she'll put herself to sleep with the help of the SNOO. The customer service is great and they are happy to talk through your situation and troubleshoot with you on sleep issues (see my notes from week 6, when I broke down and asked for help).<br />
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CONS: It's really expensive and they usually grow out of it by six months. However, they have big sales regularly and I think I'll be able to resell it pretty easily when we're done. The only other con I have is that you can't see through the sides of the bassinet, so in the beginning I would get up a lot to see if her eyes were open. I've thought about clipping a little camera on the end of the SNOO so that I could check on her from my phone but at this point she's sleeping longer stretches so it doesn't feel as critical anymore.<br />
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Okay, deep breath. If you want allllll my sleep deprived thoughts about our first two months with the SNOO, read on ...<br />
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<i>Initial thoughts: </i>The SNOO arrived exactly the day we asked for it to be shipped, a couple weeks before she was due. I went with the earlier arrival time because our doctor told us there was a chance she'd have to be delivered early. Ha! She hung out until 41 weeks and the SNOO just sat there taunting us. It's super easy to set up (based on my observation - I watched D do it while I lay on the couch) and it's very sturdy (also heavy). It fits right in with our blend of midcentury modern and Ikea furniture. It comes with one fitted sheet and one swaddle sack in each size. I went ahead and registered for an additional sheet and an additional sack in each size, assuming we'd need to do laundry.<br />
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Critical - the SNOO can be operated without the associated app, but you really want the app. It's beautifully designed and lets you control the SNOO from the comfort of your own bed, but the real advantage is that it keeps a log of your baby's sleep times, and how often the SNOO has to step in and soothe the baby. This is amazing, especially in the blur of new baby craziness. I love being able to look back and see how she's sleeping (bearing in mind that in my case, I do wear her a lot for daytime naps, so I don't have any data for that). Every morning we check the log and I realize that my sense of time is not great at night - sometimes I think she was awake forever and it turns out it was just 30 minutes, other times I'll think we had a decent night and realize that I spent 2 hours rocking her at 3am. In the app, the light blue represents peaceful sleep, while the dark blue shows where the SNOO steps in and comforts her by increasing the motion and the white noise. Most of the time she isn't anywhere near fully awake at these points, she's just going through a light sleep cycle and struggling to get back to a deeper sleep. If she fully wakes up and opens her eyes, we can usually tell within 30 - 60 seconds that she isn't going back to sleep without our intervention, and then we just take her out and soothe her ourselves. The SNOO has a time out function, but we have only ever let it time out once early on. We learned pretty quickly how to recognize when she needs us, vs. when the mechanical comforting is enough.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/40927320220/in/dateposted/" title="snoo logs months 1 - 2"><img alt="snoo logs months 1 - 2" height="441" src="https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1738/40927320220_d8de201e05_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>Example nightly logs from SNOO (I just picked out a few to show the general progression of her sleep during this time - the light blue shows her sleep, the dark blue is where the SNOO is soothing her)</i></div>
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Week 0: 4/10-4/17 We started her in the SNOO the first night we brought her home, and we were getting 2 - 3 hour stretches within the first day. We didn't count on the SNOO to rock her to sleep, so I would usually feed her, hold her a bit and then put her down. The SNOO swaddle sack is super easy to use, even when you are exhausted. The only concern we had is that it's super light and breathable and partly mesh, which will be amazing in summer but we were having chilly nights. It's not a huge deal because you can just put them in warmer pajamas. The sack slides into guides to secure it in the SNOO, and you can't operate the SNOO unless the sack is in place. We alternated between putting the sack in place in the SNOO and setting her down and zipping her in vs. getting her settled in the sack, rocking her to sleep and then setting her down and securing the sack into the guides. Either way, the moment of transition is the awkward part when you have to be super careful not to wake her up. By week 5 we'd realized we could improve our odds of success if we gently pre-heated the mattress by placing a heating pad in there on low and then pulling it out right before putting her in. The last day of week 1 she slept for almost 7 hours straight and we nearly broke our hands patting ourselves on the back for our genius purchase (spoiler - this was an anomaly in those early weeks!).<br />
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Week 1: 4/17-4/24 Still sticking with 2 - 3 hours stretches at night. We mostly accepted that she didn't want to go to bed until 11pm, and the hours between 8pm and 11pm were the hardest of the day. We took turns jiggling her in a dark room, with lots of white noise, to try to get her to fall asleep deeply enough to transfer her. But once we got her down, she'd generally sleep from 11pm - 2am (or sometimes 3:30am!), wake up to eat and go down easily and sleep for another few hours. This felt super manageable. We weren't being super consistent about putting her in the SNOO for naps, because we were both home and it was too tempting to either hold her while she slept or go on little outings while she slept in her carseat.<br />
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Week 2: 4/24-5/1 No real change, but towards the end of the week we noticed that her sleep was much more broken, and the SNOO was having to soothe her a lot more. In practice, that meant that we weren't getting all that much sleep, because even though we didn't have to get up and rock her back to sleep, I would still wake up whenever she got agitated and then I'd watch her to make sure she fell asleep again (again - these aren't full wake ups with crying and open eyes, it's just her going through a light sleep cycle and struggling a bit to fall fully asleep again). She barely made any noise that this point, so a deeper sleeper probably would have been able to sleep through it, although I think most moms will wake up. <b>I think the SNOO was hugely helpful here, because if it wasn't soothing her back to sleep one of us would have had to get up to rock her each time. </b><br />
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Week 3: 5/1-5/8 Mostly the same as week 2. We're averaging 1 - 2 wake ups per night (really just for feeding, though, and she usually would go back down easily) and can usually count on a 3 hour stretch and even get a few 4 and 5 hour stretches. The time between 8pm and 11pm is still our hardest but once we get her down around 11, we at least know that she won't fight going down after feedings for the rest of the night (babies are weird - I'm not sure how to explain this but it was incredibly consistent). We're feeling pretty decently rested at this point, partially because we're still both at home on leave and can sometimes nap during the day.<br />
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Week 4: 5/8-5/15 Dustin goes back to work and Adrian's sleep starts getting off track (I don't think those things are related but it does mean that we can't take turns napping during the afternoon so things start feeling hard). We still have some nights that follow the usual pattern but we have others where she wakes up multiple times and we struggle to get her back to sleep in the SNOO. She will fall asleep easily after nursing, but then get angry when we try to transfer her. I start keeping her on my chest for longer and longer after nursing, hoping that she'll be deeply enough asleep to move her. It sometimes works but sleep deprivation is setting in. I am super focused on making sure she sleeps during the day so she doesn't get overly tired. I wear her for hours each day and it does seem to help because we no longer have to jiggle her for three hours to get her to sleep at night.<br />
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Week 5: 5/15 - 5/22 All hell breaks loose. Our longest sleep session in the SNOO this week is an hour and a half. We have mostly solved the transfer problem (by pre-heating the SNOO mattress and rocking her deeply to sleep before putting her in) but now she's waking up 30 - 45 minutes after we put her down, almost like clockwork, and the SNOO can't soothe her back to sleep. She is AWAKE. I am totally desperate, and end up letting her sleep in our bed for a few nights, which I really, really, didn't want to do (note - let's not have a co-sleeping debate here. I am 100% supportive of safe co-sleeping, but we just aren't set up for it, mostly because I'm not willing to kick Circe out of our bed - she is 13 and going through enough transition already). Adrian is a champion sleeper on my chest at night (and in her wrap during the day), going for up to six hours, but I'm barely getting any sleep because I'm so worried about her. We get a Dock-a-tot from a friend and test that out for a night and it works okay because at least we don't have to get out of bed as much to check on her, but I still want her in her bassinet if at all humanly possible.<br />
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Week 6: 5/22 - 5/29 I email SNOO in desperation, asking for advice and they immediately set up a phone call with one of their sleep consultants (if you get a SNOO, don't wait to ask for help!). The consultant calls as scheduled and I'm shocked and a little star struck when it's Dr. Harvey Karp himself (not sure if this is normal or if everyone else was busy). He is incredibly nice and asks a lot of questions about Adrian's sleep patterns, age, etc. and offers his recommendations, some of which might have sounded weird if we weren't already half delusional from lack of sleep. Per his advice we:<br />
1. Elevate the head of the SNOO a little bit. They sell risers for this but in a pinch you can do it by placing tuna cans under the legs, which is hilarious.<br />
2. Raise the baseline setting for the SNOO, so that it rocks a little more throughout the night (done through the app).<br />
3. Increase the white noise, possibly by using a hair dryer. We haven't gone this far and just increased the volume on our noise machine.<br />
4. Elevate her legs by placing a folded receiving blanket under them, inside the SNOO sack. We folded up a blanket into a square, placed it so that it was pressed against her butt and her legs would rest on it.<br />
5. Place a one pound bag of rice on her chest, to mimic the pressure she feels when she sleeps on us. I weighed out a pound of rice into a sandwich size ziploc, wrapped it in cloth and we zipped it inside her SNOO sack. Between the rice and the blankets under her legs, we had to size up to the medium sack and the entire set up looks totally crazy.<br />
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But it's working! After a few nights she actually seemed to associate all these things with comfort, because even if she was fussing when we laid her down in the SNOO sack, she would start to calm down as soon as we started zipping her in, and she seemed much happier. A few times we were even able to put her down drowsy but awake (the ultimate goal) and she would go to sleep on her own. Her sleep started improving and we were getting back up to four hour stretches. I started making an effort to put her down in the SNOO for at least one daytime nap, to help her adjust faster. They recommend having your baby sleep in the SNOO for all naps for best results, but at this point sleeping is her main activity, so if I set her down for every nap I'd almost never get to hold her and I'm not willing to do that.<br />
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Week 7: 5/29 - 6/5 Regression - she spent a couple days sleeping all the time, then a couple days not wanting to sleep. I guess this is a wonder week for her (she's a week ahead on that timeline because she was a week overdue) so maybe that's the reason. She isn't cranky, but it's so crazy to spend an hour rocking and soothing her to sleep, then the second I lie her down her eyes pop open and she looks at me with a huge grin. After a few days it clears up and she's willing to settle down again.<br />
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Week 8: 6/5 - 6/11 We finally start getting longer stretches of sleep! I'm not sure how much is due to the SNOO, how much is due to her age (and the fact that she's finally over 10 lbs), and how much is due to the fact that we have finally been able to get her to take a bottle. She has always had a hard time eating at night and she'd cry to eat but then pull off and cry every minute or two, leading to a ton of frustration for both of us. When I frantically googled "baby fussy in evening" all I got was a million hits about the witching hour and cluster feeding. She's usually a really efficient eater and doesn't do much comfort nursing, so it's a stark contrast to her daytime behavior. The night we were finally able to get her to take an evening bottle she drank five ounces and then went right to sleep with no bouncing and slept for six hours straight. Our new routine is for D to give her a bottle every evening before bed. I often just pump and then pour it directly into a bottle and for some reason she's much happier taking it that way. She's been really consistent this week with sleeping a 6 - 7 hour stretch, waking to eat and then sleeping another 3 hours or so. I never thought that consistently getting five hours of uninterrupted sleep would feel so good.<br />
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It's nice that the first two months wrapped up on a high note, but of course I'm worried that by posting this I'll jinx us and she'll go back to refusing to sleep. I just keep reminding myself that everything (the good and the bad) is just a phase, but it will gradually get better over time if we keep working at it.<br />
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If you have questions about the SNOO let me know and I'll do my best to answer based on our experience. My plan is to post three of these reviews, each one covering two months (since they usually stop using it at six months).<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/28435017298/in/dateposted/" title="Untitled"><img alt="Untitled" height="480" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/832/28435017298_ccf93f3370_z.jpg" width="640" /></a>Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-2903773618418102392018-04-30T11:18:00.001-07:002018-04-30T11:18:31.013-07:00Pre-baby splurgesWe made a couple of indulgent purchases for ourselves right before the baby arrived, since we figured that we'd be spending more time at home for the foreseeable future. We stepped things up in two specific categories, both of which directly related to being new parents:<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/40814481955/in/datetaken/" title="new coffee grinder"><img alt="new coffee grinder" height="480" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/947/40814481955_0295306f1a_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><br />
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Caffeine - we'd been using a 20 year old coffee grinder that we inherited from my parents over a decade ago. It had finally gotten to the point where it needed to be held together while in use, because otherwise it popped apart and spewed coffee everywhere. It took us six months of debate to finally pull the trigger on a really nice (and very expensive) coffee grinder (the <a href="https://amzn.to/2Jtraub" target="_blank">Baratza Virtuoso</a>), but I have no regrets. Our coffee tastes better, the grinding is quieter, and it's much easier to use and clean. We've been putting it through its paces since we went on parental leave and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get many years of use out of it.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/40995958814/in/dateposted/" title="new bedding"><img alt="new bedding" height="480" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/906/40995958814_7b234bf386_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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"Sleep" (it's probably more accurate just to say "bed" since these days we spend a whole lot of time in bed but NOT sleeping) - when it comes to sheets I like having just one really nice set that we use every day (plus a set of flannel sheets that we'll use if it gets really cold in the winter). It takes up less storage space, and I don't mind just washing them every Sunday and putting them straight back on the bed (no folding!). I'm a little crazy about sheets and I tend to read a million reviews before purchasing. I want to feel like I'm sleeping in a hotel, and I want them to be crisp and heavy, nothing sateen. I splurged on a set of <a href="https://www.parachutehome.com/products/percale-sheet-set?variant=4208398913" target="_blank">Parachute's percale bedding</a> a little over two years ago, and we really liked the sheets. They had a good texture and held up well to daily use, but two weeks before the baby was born they finally gave in and the fitted sheet ripped right through. I considered just repurchasing the same ones, but decided to give <a href="https://matteola.com/" target="_blank">Matteo</a> a try instead. They have <a href="https://matteola.com/showroom" target="_blank">a showroom in Los Angeles</a>, so we made a trip over there to check the sheets out in person before committing. We ended up getting lucky and we were able to find the exact bedding I wanted in the showroom, which meant we got 50% off (and I think there was some additional discount? I was extremely pregnant and not super aware of the math, but it ended up being so much cheaper than I expected). If you love heavy hotel bedding, I highly recommend <a href="https://matteola.com/fabrics/nap" target="_blank">Matteo's Nap line</a>. I can't speak to their longevity yet but they are thicker than the Parachute fabric and I'm sure they'll last at least as long. And yes, we did discuss how insane it was to purchase new white bedding with a dog and a baby, but I really, really love a stark white bed and we decided to just go with it and see how bad it got. A few weeks in and we're doing fine, although I have stepped up the washing to twice a week for the time being (this is definitely necessary because we're in bed at least 14 hours per day, it feels like, and I've given up and now eat some meals in bed too). I have to say that having really great bedding makes the long, sleepless nights and the bleary eyed breastfeeding sessions feel much better.<br />
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And yes, that is the <a href="https://www.happiestbaby.com/pages/snoo" target="_blank">SNOO</a> next to our bed, and yes, I will definitely be posting a review once I have a better sense of how it's working for us. Technically, this is our biggest indulgent purchase (although we got it on a big holiday sale and I have high hopes that we can sell it once she outgrows it). We've been using it since we brought her home and I *think* that it helps her sleep longer, but at this point we're all still adjusting to life and every single day is different, so it's hard to really say how big a difference it makes. But I'll update! I know I scoured the internet for reviews when I was trying to decide if we should purchase.<br />
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P.S. NOT a splurge but the accidental best purchase we made is <a href="https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40261255/" target="_blank">this lightweight Gladom side table from Ikea</a> - it's super simple, looks decent, weighs almost nothing and you can pull the top off and use it as a tray (which I do if I'm sitting on the larger couch). We got one for the nursery and one week after Adrian was born we realized it was so indispensable that we ordered a second. They are both in constant use, and we move them all over the house. I never start a nursing session without one.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/41090601064/in/datetaken/" title="ikea side table"><img alt="ikea side table" height="480" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/980/41090601064_4ee8578b37_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/40000534870/in/datetaken/" title="living room set up"><img alt="living room set up" height="480" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/951/40000534870_e68c8ee76d_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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P.P.S. - It hurts my heart a little to have all these cell phone photos on the blog and this morning I alllllmost broke down and got out my real camera because I miss having real pictures, but the process for getting actual photos up is so much longer (my phone uploads directly to Flickr for me whereas getting photos off the DSLR is a four step process that requires loading Photoshop on my ancient computer). Perfect is the enemy of good, right?Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1452621549434169941.post-22502336414184166532018-04-26T15:05:00.001-07:002018-04-26T15:05:19.911-07:00Welcome, Adrian Elaine! This little girl is just over two weeks now, but it feels like she's always been here.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/27856072948/in/photolist-26vuSdU-JrwHYm-25awkXk-26u1GUV-JrxDZN-Jju8hy" title="Adrian"><img alt="Adrian" height="439" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/975/27856072948_c4f334576a_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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I went off work the day before she was due, but she decided to take her time arriving. I was fine (and appreciating all the extra naps) until I hit 40 weeks and 4 days and I suddenly woke up feeling like I was going to crawl out of my skin. My doctor had already made an appointment for an induction at 41 weeks and 1 day, and I finally just gave in and accepted that nothing was going to happen before then. We used the extra time to see friends, mostly just trying to keep me distracted.<br />
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I was surprised by how disappointed I felt when I realized I might not go into labor naturally. We'd done zero labor prep (no classes, no reading, nothing) and I was feeling really unprepared and I had no birth plan other than knowing I was going to go for an epidural, but somehow the idea of being induced made me feel like I'd be leaving something unfinished. I'd made it through this entire pregnancy, and I wanted that moment when I would suddenly realize I was going into labor. But I made it to 40 weeks and 6 days with absolutely zero signs of labor approaching so I was increasingly resigned to the induction.<br />
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Well, at exactly 41 weeks I woke up to a painful contraction. By mid-morning I knew I was for sure in labor. I held out for as long as I could at home, but in the early afternoon I told D that I needed to go to the hospital. I couldn't tell if my contractions were six minutes apart or three minutes apart (it turns out they were three minutes apart but every other one was super strong), but they were getting increasingly hard to handle and it felt like they were ramping up quickly. At the hospital they hooked me up for the standard 20 minutes of monitoring, confirmed that I was 4.5 cm dilated and they went ahead and admitted me (probably partly because I was already a week overdue). Within 30 minutes of being admitted, I had an epidural placed and when they checked me again (about 45 minutes after my first check) I was 7.5 cm dilated. At this point, things suddenly started moving really quickly - the nurse got me an oxygen mask and asked me to put it on and started to say something about the baby and then the doctor on call came in and introduced himself and told us that the baby wasn't handling the contractions well and her heart rate had gone way down. He strongly recommended that we do a c-section right away, especially because of the umbilical cord (they'd found out that I had an SUA at our 20 week anatomy scan so we'd been doing extra monitoring during the third trimester). He was willing to let me try laboring a little longer but he felt 90% certain that we'd end up doing an emergency c-section. All of this feels really blurry but Dustin and I both interrupted him and just told him to take her out, whatever they needed to do. I remember feeling panicked, thinking that I'd carried her for so long and there was no way I was going to fuck it up at the very last minute. Since I already had the epidural placed they wheeled me straight into the OR. We had been in the hospital for maybe an hour.<br />
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I hadn't done any reading about c-sections so I was surprised when they strapped my arms down and I started to panic. Between the arm restraints and the oxygen mask and not being able to move my legs I was feeling really claustrophobic and I was terrified that I'd throw up and I wouldn't be able to take the mask off. They kindly found me a nasal canula to use instead of the oxygen mask which made it a million times better. Everything felt like it was moving at warp speed. They had the baby out in mere minutes and the NICU team started evaluating her and D was able to go back and forth between us and show me pictures and videos. It took another 20 minutes to close me back up, which felt like an eternity but I was able to relax as soon as they told us that the baby was okay and then the doctors started talking about their weekend plans and I remember thinking that I was probably not going to die because they would definitely not be chatting casually if anything was wrong.<br />
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Once the surgery was finished they brought Adrian over to me so I could hold her and then they wheeled us both into the recovery room. Everything had happened so quickly that I was in a bit of shock. We hadn't even had time to tell our families that we'd been admitted to the hospital. I was having a hard time believing that this was the baby who I'd been carrying all these months. She had a full head of jet black hair and the longest fingers and toes. I remember feeling overwhelmed and happy but I didn't have that instant sense of recognition that some people talk about. She was just this sweet, adorable stranger that we were suddenly in charge of. Over the next few days we slowly got to know her and fall in love with her. It feels like the craziest thing, creating a human being, bringing her home. Even at two weeks in we're still constantly turning to each other in disbelief. We have a baby, an actual BABY, who is going to become a tiny person and then an adult. I want everything to speed up and slow down at the same time. I love listening to the little noises she makes and we're already noticing how she changes from day to day. This is going to be such a crazy ride, guys.<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelgrace/27855891208/in/datetaken/" title="Adrian, 2 days and 2 weeks"><img alt="Adrian, 2 days and 2 weeks" height="640" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/910/27855891208_b76cee3acf_z.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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{two days vs. two weeks}</div>
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P.S. - I'll probably post about c-section recovery once I'm a little further along. Unsurprisingly, I hadn't prepared myself for a c-section so I had no idea what the recovery was going to entail. I'm incredibly lucky in that I also hadn't spent any time preparing for a vaginal birth (apparently I was just hoping this baby would magically appear?), so I didn't have any major disappointment that it worked out this way, but dealing with the recovery is more intense than I anticipated.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06819528155575569595noreply@blogger.com22