One month

My how time flies when you are caring 24/7 for a little human!  Ellie is now officially one month old.  Horrah! At her one month doctor visit she weighed in at 9lbs 8oz and has grown an inch (21.5 inches long if you're interested). She is waking up to her world and is spending more and more time awake and alert.  Sometimes at the inconvenient hour of 3am! She is especially fascinated with the wall above her changing table and the ceiling fans.  I'm not sure what she sees exactly but they are mesmerizing to her. It melts our hearts when she catches our gaze and smiles.  Technically babies don't social smile for another few months, but it sure seems like she's recognizing and smiling at us. I'll let myself believe that she knows she's looking at me. She seems to recognize our voices and we're starting to understand her different cries as well.

We are still having a hard time with breastfeeding and I am pumping and bottle feeding her for the time being while we (we being the team of doctors and specialists whom I now talk with on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis) figure out the complex nature of these ever-so-hard-to-kill infections. Fingers crossed that we can get her back on the boob once this is all sorted. It doesn't seem to bother her however and she is thriving all the same. She sleeps pretty well for a newborn -  she usually takes two hour naps during the day and sleeps three to four hours at night. However on Saturday night she slept for six hours and Sunday night for seven! The first night we decided to wake her up because I was worried she would be starving and cranky when she did finally wake up.  That was a huge mistake because she was cranky anyhow and ended up staying awake for the next three hours.  My parents  have nicknamed these cranky periods "Kraken episodes".  This nickname was lovingly given to me by my grandfather who likened me to the legendary sea monsters of giant proportions. Apparently Ellie takes after me in this regard.  The good news is that I eventually grew out of it and hopefully she will too. 

We are growing accustom to life as a family of three and life with a newborn.  This past month has been a whirlwind of diapers, projectile spit-up, bottles and doctor visits but we are finally getting into a routine. I've gotten really good at doing things one handed - eating, washing my hands, typing on the computer, making a bottle... you get the idea. We've started venturing out of the house more often and have gotten brave enough to take Ellie out with us shopping and even out to eat a few times. It usually takes us all day just to get out of the house for one outing. Ellie really likes her stroller and we both enjoy taking walks around the neighborhood.  We are looking forward to taking her on longer trips so we can visit family and friends. Chico will likely be our first destination. It will be interesting to see how she does on long car rides.  I suspect we'll be stopping a lot!  Tom insists that it will be fine because we can listen to Marketplace Money on the way there, and apparently Ellie likes Marketplace Money.  She may look more like me right now, but she's definitely going to turn into a little Tom. :) Below are some pictures from the past month. Most of them were taken with my phone (one handed, ahem) so sorry if they are a little fuzzy. Hopefully in the coming months we'll get better at this.

One month

On papa's hand

Awake

I love my chewpie

Tom trying to sleep - Ellie demanding otherwise

Power fist

Wide eyes

Ellie on her throne

Breastfeeding 101

Breastfeeding. In my opinion it is one of the greatest and most rewarding things a mother can do for her child.  I see it as an inherent right as a woman and a mother to have the ability to feed and nourish your child in the way that nature intended.  Not only does breast milk protect your baby,  it is easier to digest, fights disease, it's cheaper than formula, and it can be a joyful bonding experience.  There are also health benefits for the mother and nothing melts off the baby weight like breastfeeding.

So if nature intended women to breastfeed, why is it so damn hard?! All the mothers I have ever met have stories of how hard the first few weeks of breastfeeding were for them.  Nipple pain is almost like a hazing into motherhood. Since becoming a mother I have been asked "So how are your nipples?" more times than I can count. And I am no exception to this rule.  Breastfeeding has been a rocky road. 

The first week of Ellie's life, we discovered that she was tongue-tied which led her to latch incorrectly.  Not knowing what I was doing I let this go on too long and it caused her to give me abraded nipples (think raw, bloody stubs.  Ouch!)  After a visit to the lactation consultant, she advised us to pump for a week while my nipples healed so we could learn to re-latch her correctly. 

Then during week two, I somehow contracted a breast infection -likely due to the abraded nipples. My doctor wasn't sure if it was Mastitis, but put me on antibiotics anyhow because the infection caused my breasts to become really sore and tender thus making breastfeeding really painful. So again, I laid off the breastfeeding and pumped while my breasts healed.

And then in week three, just when it looked like my breast infection was clearing up, I developed a yeast infection.  It's a common side-effect of antibiotics because they wipe out all the good bacteria in your body leaving you vulnerable for yeast.  For anyone who has ever experienced it, yeast is extremely painful.  It is commonly described as "sharp razor-blade like pains shooting from your breasts". Somewhere in there I tried to breastfeed again and because I wasn't fully healed and because the baby's latch was so strong (she's like a vacuum cleaner) that it caused her to give me milk blisters on my nipples (Think a blister full of milk on the end of your nipple. Fun, right?). I ended up in urgent care which turned out to be a huge waste of time because they didn't do anything for me that my doctor wasn't already doing.  Another lovely side effect of the antibiotics, pain and stress is that my milk supply plummeted.  Like in half. So on top of it all, we have been having to supplement my milk supply with formula. Not cool.

It is now week four and we are still battling the yeast infection.  At one point it looked like it was going away thanks to a miracle ointment recommended by our lactation consultant (love that woman), but it is back with a vengeance. I am hesitant to re-latch her until everything is cleared up so we don't come across yet another latch issue.  It's really hard to tell when I am latching her wrong when I am already feeling pain.  I can't tell if it's pain associated with the infection or pain associated with a bad latch.  Le sigh. 

I really, really, really hope once I am able to heal she will "remember" the breast.  One of my biggest fears is that she's been bottle fed for so long, that she is getting lazy with the bottle, despite our best efforts to make her gape, etc. Because I have to pump very frequently in an attempt to rebuild my milk supply, that usually means that someone else has to hold her and feed her.  Pumping and feedings seem to coincide most of the time. So as you can imagine, it's really hard to do both at the same time. This was easier said that done when my mother was still staying with us but now that she is gone and Tom is back at work, it makes for some very long and challenging days.  I know, as everyone always says, "this too shall pass".  As my mom put it, I'm looking forward to the day when I can breastfeed her at Starbucks while sipping a latte.  Meaning that we've master the whole breastfeeding thing and I can do it anywhere at anytime.  It's been a long rocky road, but we're hanging in there, and we'll figure it out. It's worth it.