Bottle Embargo

Leah is currently waging a battle against her bottles. My little protester! That's right Leah, damn the ma- , Oh wait this is a bad thing. Since last week, Leah has been refusing to take a bottle. Which means on the two days she is with my MIL, she doesn't eat the entire 9 hours that I am gone. Well, my MIL tries to get her to drink, but it's probably only an ounce or so that she'll get down. Brian has even come home during the day to help try, but to no avail. 


I spoke with our Pediatrician as well as consulting Dr. Google and they both said there is not a whole lot I can do, and then they both made the same points:


1. Babies will not starve themselves. She is not smart enough to be so stubborn as to put herself in serious danger. Is it good for her not to eat? Of course not, but she will be okay. 
2. Eventually she will forget why she is not taking the bottle, and eat like normal again.
3. She will soon be on solids, so if she is not drinking by then she will at least have that. 


She nurses perfectly with me, so on the days that I am at work, I only pump once instead of two to three times, that way I am extra full for her when I get home. Uncomfortable, but ready to oblige her growling little tummy. I usually pump every night about 3-4 hours after she's gone to bed, but I will skip it on the nights before I work that way her morning feeding with me is extra plentiful as well. At first I wondered if I should just go home on my lunch breaks to feed her, but our pediatrician just said that would only reinforce her not having to take a bottle...


I've read that changing the bottle/nipple can be helpful at times. But it only works about 40-50% of the time . I have been using Dr. Brown glass bottles, which worked PERFECTLY until recently. I went shopping yesterday, and found the nipple on the Tommie Tippie bottles to be the most different looking compared to the Dr. Brown. I'm disappointed that they only come in plastic with no glass alternative. But I'm sort of desperate at this point. So I'll give this a shot. She's home with my MIL right now, so I should know in a few hours whether it worked or not. 


My poor MIL has tried a lot of different things to help. She tried feeding her in different positions - Leah sitting up, laying down, on her side. She's tried feeding her on my nursing pillows. Still with no luck. So today she is going to take one of my night gowns with her when she feeds her to see if that will help. 


Any other suggestions, homies?

Six Months (!)

Dearest Leah,

It is completely, 100%, inSANE that you are six months old already. 

And how is it possible that I love you 400 times more than I did the day before? 

And that happens every day.

Towards the end of last month you came down with your very first cold. Thanks to our God Son, whom we babysat. You started with a tiny cough, then two days later your nose was so stuffy you had to pull away from nursing in order to take a breath. Though you never developed a fever (thankfully), you did develop your first Ear Infection... Poor monkey. I was so ridiculously worried about you, I couldn't sleep. The irony is from that point on you started sleeping through the night. I wish I could take credit for this awesome new breakthrough, but it is all you! And I am SO grateful. 

I am swapping out clothes for you at an alarming rate. You slip right into your 6-9 month pajamas, though very few of your 3-6 month clothes have fit for a while now. 

We haven't yet moved you on to solid foods, your Doctor wants to see you sitting up by yourself before we get you started there. Or at least a little more sturdy. Which I am totally fine with. I look forward to exclusively nursing you just that much longer. In addition to that I am researching the Baby Led Weaning style of feeding. And I won't lie. I'm kind of excited that you are just this much closer to hopefully overcoming your inability to digest the proteins in Cows milk; cause friends, I miss cheese like the deserts miss the rain...

Your arms are swiftly getting long enough to take a good swipe at the animals on your mobile. It's pretty hilarious to watch you try to pull them closer to you.

Despite my strongest efforts I was not able to get you to smile for your six month pictures. You were much too fascinated and distracted by the appearance of the camera itself... But I don't care. 

I love this picture, and I love you. So, SO much.

Can't wait to see what the next month brings...

Love, Momma

Something Is Stopping Me

In the very back on the third shelf in my refrigerator sits a tiny stockpile of expired meds. Four vials of Menopur, one Ovidril trigger shot, and one Prometrium suppository. I received the Menopur in January of 2010. It came from a mutual friend who got pregnant from a medicated IUI. She gave us the leftovers in hopes that it would do the trick for us. The Ovidril is from my very last Donor IUI in December of 2009, I had ovulated before I could trigger. And the Prometrium is from my IVF cycle, I had one remaining suppository that the nurse gave me the go-ahead to skip which I gratefully took her up on because I was so fricken constipated, I couldn't imagine allowing my body to increase it's progesterone levels a single point higher. Oh yeah, and my partially used follistim pen is in there too. It's been over three years that most of those meds have been taking up a small corner in the back of my fridge, and I just can't throw them away. Something is stopping me.


I know I probably say it a lot, but seriously, every morning when I look at Leah's smiling face, I wonder how the hell we got so fucking lucky. I stare into her eyes, and marvel to myself... She's ours. 


I look at my Stats through blogger, and I check out the traffic I'm getting on a weekly basis. The links I find take me to blogs of women who are just starting out, or finally starting an assisted cycle, IUI - IVF. And I want to reach out to them, like so many of you did for me during the last four and a half years that my blog has existed. But I get halfway through their posts and I can't go any further. Something is stopping me.


I realized just the other day that it has been months since I checked the toilet paper after I pee. Months. It used to be such a steady habit. A ritual. For so long I checked it and examined it; cried about it. But I don't need to check it anymore. 


It takes me a little time to write my posts here, sometimes an hour, sometimes three. I usually come up with a title first, for some reason, and it spurs me to poor my guts on to my keyboard. But not this post. I've started it a dozen times over the last five months. It had no title. Just notes of things I wanted to include and random paragraphs that were weak attempts at trying to explain how I still think about Infertility every single day. But something was stopping me.


A while ago it occurred to me that I had forgotten about my fourth Blogiversary in January. The 31st to be exact. And when I went back to take a look I realized I had posted Leah's birth story that day. Four years later...

More often than not I am able to look back at our horribly difficult journey with gratitude. Gratitude for the lessons it taught me, for the women it lead me to, for the strength and depth it gave my marriage. But there are times when I am reminded of the heartache and udder despair it brought. It was crippling. For a second I can't breathe. For a second I can feel every ounce of misery. And I have to stop. I have to think of something else. Because for so long it held me hostage. And I don't want to let it do that anymore. But something is stopping me... 

Primalizafied

Yes, I’m making up words now. Call it too much spare time (ha!), call it too little education. But I like it. And it’s my laymen's term for keeping things simple and following the Back to Basics mentality when it comes to parenting.  I like to think of how animals raise their babies. Ape's don't drop off their kids with grandma, or use the Ferber method... Yes, I understand there is a distinction. I walk upright, can drive a car, and have never, ever, thrown my poop. 

(i feel the need to point out that I'm not judging anyone, just making a funny)

I have to say Motherhood has surprised me in so many ways. I’m not saying I deserve an award or anything or have really even been challenged yet, but I’m rather delighted by how naturally taking care of Leah has come to me. Not always easy to do, but the inclination has come fairly effortlessly. It is however occasionally sidelined by the knowledge of urban myths, horror stories, and the basic yet all too real irrational fear of accidentally killing my child. I’m also very surprised by how “granola” my outlook and preference is in regards to taking care of and providing for her. I suppose you could file me under Attachment Parenting, but I hate to commit to or lump myself in to any one singular belief. Before having Leah, when I thought about what kind of parent I would be, I imagined mostly outlines of integrating her into our family, rather than changing our way of life to accommodate her. It’s not that I didn’t think having a baby wouldn't change things, and maybe it was just the naiveté of a first time expectant parent, but I really thought I would want to implement a much more rigorous schedule that would make her adapt to our lifestyle . But now that she’s here, call it the “you never know until you’re in those shoes” effect; but in my head, conforming our lives around her needs makes more sense than attempting to teach an infant to live like an adult. Now I will say, I think we’ve been blessed with a very easy baby. But so far working around her demands has gone pretty well. I don’t let her cry much. Most of her fussiness stems from being overtired and I make every attempt to soothe her while she’s upset. I carry her around a lot, that’s not to say she doesn’t get plenty of floor and tummy time while I watch her from the kitchen or fold laundry on the couch. And when in public I’m almost always wearing her. (LOVING the moby wrap, btw) Will this backfire on me someday? Maybe. But right now she’s a pretty happy baby, which makes for a very happy momma and daddy. I look at this method as a lifestyle choice. I didn’t choose to have a baby so I could keep living the same existence, I wanted something different. So it’s not a sacrifice for me; it’s a way of life.

As far as my plans for sleep training goes, I am remarkably grateful to say she started sleeping through the night on her own before I could get halfway through the No Cry Sleep Solution book I bought. I take no credit for this, and instead give it all to her thumb. Because during the week when she discovered it, she instantly learned how to self soothe. So because of her thumb I am sleeping through the night along with her. With the exception of getting up around 1am to change her. I am working to teach her to learn how to fall asleep by herself, but I don’t let her cry in the process. I rock her and shush her to the point where she is almost asleep, and then I set her down in her crib, eyes mostly open, and leave the room. About 65% of the time she will roll over and go to sleep. I know this because we have a video monitor. Other times she flips around and sometimes talks herself to sleep. But I leave her be unless she starts to cry. Then I go in and start the process over. Will this bite me in the ass someday? Maybe.

I sleep with her stuff. Her blankets, her clothes. This probably sounds nuts, let me explain. She has two main swaddling blankets. Yes, I still swaddle, but I leave one arm out. I sleep with whichever one she is not using, that way she can always smell me. And the night before the days that I work, I tuck whatever outfit she is going to wear between my nighttime nursing bra and my nightgown, so she can smell me all day, not just at nap time. Weird maybe, but harmless.

She's on the verge of six months and we all know what that means: Solid foods. While I am generally ecstatic to witness each milestone, this one makes me a bit sad. Because I won't be exclusively breastfeeding anymore. I'm thankful to say breastfeeding has gone very well for me, us. And I have loved every minute of it. It's our special quite time together. And it's a fabulous excuse to leave the room when I'm over the company that's in my house. For some reason she nurses just a bit longer then... I do plan to BF for a while longer. Probably into the range of what they consider Extended Breast Feeding. The AAP recommends supplemental BF'ing up to 24 months. I'm not saying I'll be the one whipping out my girls at the park for a snacky-snack. I honestly see it as more of a morning and bedtime routine when she's that old. But who knows, she may not want it that long, or my body may not cooperate to that extent. We'll just have to see. The moral of the story is, this is one more step towards her not breastfeeding anymore, and I'm sad to think of it ending.

I guess my reason for this post is to justify what floats around in my silly little brain and to silently address the people who think it's their right to critique my method of parenting. Who I won't even bother to respond to, who have much older or grown children who say; "Go out, you need a break!" Actually, I don't. I like this job. This is what I signed up for. This is my new life. And I don't want to miss a single second of it. 

Wouldn't It Be Nice...

Since the day I brought Leah home from the hospital I have been counting my lucky stars. Even now I can hardly fathom the fact that she is my daughter. I wake up every morning excited and astonished to greet the baby babbling and kicking off her blanket, ready to start the day. There were so many days I spent paralyzed with fear that we would never know parenthood. And experiencing it makes me want that for all of you so much more. 

Two days ago we got a certified letter from my RE. It’s a letter requesting direction on what we would like to do with our remaining embryo. It's also bill for storage fees. We of course plan to keep it, for now. The further we got in to the process of Infertility, the more we felt like just one baby would suffice. Partially was because of the financial implications. We knew it would take plenty of money to get pregnant to begin with, so we assumed we may not be in the position to A. do IVF more than once, and 2. We sort of liked the idea of being able to provide the extras (including paying for college) for one child as opposed to maybe splitting our resources between two. I think another big reason was that I just felt so fragile then. Like one baby would be all I could ever handle. 

But now that Leah is here, I look into her eyes and when I think about the amount of love and joy I get from seeing her little face- well I just can’t imagine not at least trying to experience all of that again. I loved being pregnant, and I love watching her grow. And I would love, love, LOVE to experience this all over again. I of course realize that this is a very premature conversation, because A. Umm, i just had a baby five months ago. 2. We don't know if we will be in the position to afford another child. and C. Don't even know if our one remaining embryo would make it through the thaw, let alone implant post transfer. But I will tell you this.  I will never go on Birth Control again, and I will never do a fresh IVF cycle again. IVF was fucking hard, really hard. Granted I did not have the smoothest cycle, (Remember the Whore-bag Cyst that delayed my cycle by SEVEN weeks???), Obviously worth it, but still... And as far as the birth control goes, there are two reasons. The first being that because of my clotting disorder MTHFR, I shouldn't be on any progesterone based Contraception pill because it can increase my risk of stroke. (yes, I know there are other options) And second, even though three different RE's told us we had a less than 1% chance of getting pregnant naturally; if we get pregnant and it DOESN'T cost us 20k - I'm okay with that. 

Part of me is surprised by my feelings on this, because I was pretty well set on being happy with one baby. But to tell you the truth I have missed being pregnant from the day after I delivered. And now more than ever, I feel like being a mother is something I was made to do. And I hope that we are lucky enough with all aspects to be able to have another baby someday, but if not I know I won't regret a thing, and that we are still very lucky to have the most amazing baby girl ever.