Sitting up

Over the past few days, Noah has been working on sitting himself up from a lying down position. This morning he was doing it constantly, and just now I saw him on the baby monitor sitting up in his crib :)
He's been working on crawling but mostly prefers to sort of fish-flop around. This means he can now get into Nathan's toys, so I've had to confiscate a few. He puts EVERYTHING into his mouth, so I have to be really vigilant. Last week, I found one of Nathan's little letter stamps inside the pack-n-play, which, according to Nathan, jumped into the pack-n-play all by itself. Amazing, lol.

Noah's update

Noah is weaned. 

Let me back up. As I'd mentioned, I had been trying to get Noah to start taking bottles during the daytime in order to prepare him for day care. I had originally planned to pump bottles for him, but pumping has yielded little return, and to be honest, my time is too valuable to be spending 20 minutes hooked up to a pump to only get one ounce. For this reason, we tried formula bottles and my plan was to just nurse in the morning and at night.

I had limited success with sending him to my mom's- the first overnight he did okay taking bottles, but the most recent time he more or less went on strike, only drinking 3 oz. in a 27 hour time period. I tried giving him bottles too, but he had largely refused these and on one particular occasion vomited the entire bottle onto me immediately after drinking it. A week later, when he repeated this performance after eating some homemade yogurt/granola/banana smoothie, I began to suspect that I was seeing a pattern. I definitely wanted to get things figured out before he starts day care- I was scared that he would throw up there while he was in his crib and no one would see it happen, among other things. I called the doctor the next morning and believe it or not, they squeezed me in just an hour after my call (with my favorite doctor, too!). The doctor listened very carefully to all of the details (the vomiting had happened only three times in his life, but I just had a mother's intuition) and my strong family history of allergies. She advised me to use Nutramigen formula (free sample, thank goodness!), which is hypoallergenic, and gave me lab orders. The doctor also expressed some concern at his progress on the growth curve- he had fallen off yet again, I believe down to the 10th or 5th percentile. She said that sometimes this happens as they begin to crawl, but suggested that we cut back on solids to encourage more nursing. He LOVES solids and was readily eating 8 oz. per meal, so little wonder that he didn't do much nursing. 

It so happened that I already had a lab appointment that same day to do my drug test for school, so I just added a second appointment for Noah. Sadly, taking blood from an infant is far more difficult than when you or I get our blood drawn, as their veins are buried under a nice padding of pudge. They had to stick both arms and do a lot of digging. :( He cried so much that he broke out in hives all over his face (he does this when he cries a lot). 

On Wednesday, we finally got the call from the nurse with the results, and my (and my mom's) feeling that he was allergic to something was confirmed. He is highly allergic to dairy, and moderately allergic to dog dander (Jason is in serious denial about this part). We could continue with the Nutramigen, but I thought since it smelled nasty, it probably tasted nasty too, so we might have better success with soy. After two days of trying to decide what would best serve our collective needs (and having a massive battle of the wills with Noah), I decided that it would be less confusing to Noah to just do bottles 100% of the time. In addition to the allergy issue, his lack of weight gain had me thinking more seriously about whether he was getting enough milk while nursing. He's so laid back that he rarely acts hungry so maybe he hasn't been getting enough all along. Going to bottles will allow me to measure his intake and maybe gradually increase it as well.

At first, he would only accept the bottle while sleeping. Oh, and let's not mention the amount of money I've spent on every. single. kind. of bottle and nipple out there. I actually ended up ordering from Amazon the nipples that look like his pacis. They arrived, and lo and behold, they are a proprietary size that didn't fit any of our other bottles. I ended up having to ask a BabiesRus employee to test a bottle (of course the most expensive bottle known to man) with water from the water fountain and the paci-nipple. 

Anyways, today was better and he took 3 solid bottle feedings plus a little more. I noticed immediately that his diapers have been WAY heavier, which may be an indication that he was indeed getting shorted at the breast. Now I have to stop eating whatever I want, since I won't have the calorie burn of breastfeeding, but I've also heard that quitting will cause your body to let go of a few "emergency storage" pounds, so we'll hope for that. 

Lucky for me (unlucky for my dad and brother), I was raised in a household with VERY allergic people, so I know the drill. Jason will learn the drill (as he started to today when I made him completely wipe his hands and the steering wheel in my car down after eating nuts). We just can't take any chances.Allergies often occur together, and the blood test can have false negatives. So it will be touch and go for a little while. His next appointment is May 8th for his 9 month visit, so hopefully we can figure out next steps and check his weight gain at that time. 

What have I done?

Well, pre-school stress has kicked in. The stress of anticipation, for me anyways, is always worse than the actual "stressful" event. This week I attended CPR class and a meet n greet with some of my cohort, and I'm a somewhat sickening combination of excited, nervous, and stressed out.

Interestingly, there's been a distinct shift in my body's ability to handle stress. When I was working, I was in a constant state of stress response/arousal- cortisol flowed through my veins as much as oxygen did. Now, when I get a jolt of stress, it feels totally overwhelming. Not in a panic attack kind of way, but in a whoa, what is this strange feeling my body is having kind of way. I would say it took a good 4-6 months for the stress-y feeling to leave my body after leaving my job, but now I'm going to have to re-acclimate to that. I almost feel as if it would have been easier had I not left work, since now I'm going to have to get used to stress and a fast paced life once again, rather than just moving from one high-stress thing to another. I can see how it would be difficult for a stay at home parent to return to work, just for this reason.

On the one hand, I'm super excited about all of the stuff I'm going to learn. I'm completely satisfied with my decision to do the accelerated BSN @ UCF, because my cohort is made up of people a lot like me- same age range, similar life experience- so I don't feel like "the old one" in my class. They also seem to be a pretty smart, reliable, and congenial bunch; people I can actually count on throughout the program (I have trust issues when it comes to study groups and group projects, because a lot of times things aren't up to my standards).

On the other hand, the thought that keeps scrolling through my head like the news ticker on CNN is What Have I DONE?!?!? I left a perfectly good, well-paying job to pursue something that I THOUGHT would be my passion. But what if it turns out not to be? What if this was all a huge mistake? The rational side of me says, well, if you don't like nursing just go back to whatever it is you were doing before. You didn't have to trade in your M.M. for this degree, and you can still use the old knowledge in your brain. The money thing will work itself out. Also, when my brain says What Have I DONE?!?!, and I really think about it, I've done a lot of good stuff:
- learned to REALLY relax
- spent more time with my family
- vastly improved my relationship with my husband
- taken advantage of an irreplaceable opportunity to spend QT at home with my boys, teaching them and watching them grow

And now it's time for the next chapter. Deep breaths.

What Nathan learned at school this week

When Nathan and I are in the car, we like to play a game we call "put on your listening ears." Basically, we just take turns making up stories. Nathan's almost always involve a dinosaur, alligators, little boys, and some kind of vehicle. On this particular day, the story ended like this: "and the car was on the sidewalk and then the dinosaur ate the cow. AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." He learned the pledge of allegiance at school this week :) I would have never known, since every time I ask him what he did at school he says "nothing." LOL

Noah's first sleepover

This weekend was my first night away from Noah- he went to my parents' house for an overnight stay along with his big brother. I was REALLY anxious, but I also knew that I had to let him go sometime, and with school starting in just over a month, I'm going to have to get used to being away from him pretty soon. Everything turned out fine ("just like I said it would," my mom would say :)). He didn't seem to have any separation anxiety, they had fun at the beach, and he even slept pretty well.

It was SO weird not to have any kids around- I'm used to Nathan being away, but Noah is a pretty constant fixture. I'd love to tell you that we went downtown and partied, went out for a fancy dinner, and then slept in, but that would be a lie. What I did do was go see a movie (so, see, at least I did one fun thing!), go to Target sans kids (an easy and pleasant experience!), and clean the blinds (I'm afraid Nathan will try to copy me if he sees me doing it).

After the big sleepover, I went to my parents' to hang out for a while and pick up Noah, while Nathan stayed there so he could have a special Busch Gardens day with them today. In the 24 hours that Noah was away, he learned how to get up on his hands and knees and rock. It's true that babies change overnight.

Speaking of overnights, I had waited to blog about this in case it was a fluke or (worse) I jinxed it by blogging about it. But, here it is: Noah is sleeping through the night! It started last week and has become pretty much regular now- I nurse him and put him down sometime between 6 and 7 and then don't feed him again until 5 or 6! There was a time when I would have thought a 6 a.m. wakeup time was totally unacceptable, but this actually works out good, because I can get up, nurse him, and ease into my day. In a few weeks, this valuable time when Nathan's still asleep will be instrumental in getting organized enough to get out of the house on time.

That's all there is to report!