Nursing

This post has been a long time coming and every time I want to sit down and write it, I talk my self out of it. I am not one for confrontation so I just normally sat back and let people run their mouths and offend me, but today I take my stand.
With the birth of our friend's little girl, I am reliving the first few weeks Allen and I had with Noah. Allen and I talk all the time about how much we loved the stay in the hospital, and we truly did. When we got home, we of course were on cloud nine with our little man and could not have been happier. Noah was born on a Monday and had his first check up with his pediatrician on Friday. When he was born he was a whopping 8 lbs 7.5ozs! A big boy! I had always plan to nurse Noah, never considered anything else. I always knew that there could be complications with it and it was possible that I would not be able to but I figured I would just cross that bridge if I got there.
I tried while in the hospital with the help of lactation consultants to nurse him, and I thought I was doing pretty good and we had gotten the routine down. There were some struggles along the ways but I was feeling comfortable enough with it by the time we got home. When we went to the Dr's appt. that Friday they of course checked his weight, little man was down to 7lbs 6ozs. Not good, but (in our Dr's words) "nothing to light your hair on fire about" either. (I LOVE our pediatrician!!!) He told us he wanted to see us back in on Monday for a weight check. My milk had just come in and he was pretty sure Noah would start putting his weight back on.
Monday morning came and we went in for our weight check, which I was confidant we were going to Ace (like it was a math test or something) and again Noah still only weighed 7lbs 6oz. He was a week old and over a pound under his birth weight. Our Dr. sent us to see the lactation consultants at the hospital to get some help and a feeding plan.
We went to the consultant Monday after the doctor and Noah ate like a champ! She even said if he ate like that every time he should gain weight in no time, they had us come back the following day because babies should gain 1/2 oz a day (i think that is right...sorry if I am wrong but you get the general idea) we go the following day and Noah has again gained nothing. We feed again with the lactation consultant and he eats so well! We pretty much repeat the process. We are to come back Wednesday for a weight check. We go back again Wednesday and Noah has gained some weight but not enough to get excited about. At this point they recommend that we rent a breast pump, and I rotate pumping and bottle feeding with nursing. While doing this I am recording how often he is eating, how much he is eating, and how much I am pumping. They have advised me to go to the health food store and get a pill to help with my production.

At this point it is Friday, we have been to the lactation consultant every single day that week. By Friday she has me solely pumping and bottle feeding as she is feeling that I have low production along with the fact that Noah is a little bit of a lazy eater. With me pumping, we can know exactly how much my body produces and how much he is eating.

We visit the consultants a few more times and I talk to her several more times over the next week or two. We figure out that the health food pill is not really helping me at all so I get a RX that I can only take for a week to help production. This pill works and I am so excited because for the first time I am producing enough to feed Noah, not have to supplement with formula and actually had some to store away for later!
I took my last RX pill and two days later it was like I was a different person, I was only producing about two ounces and Noah needed a lot more than that, so we were back to supplementing with formula. Huge disappointment.
After talking again, for what would be the last time, to the lactation consultant. I had to make a decision. It had been 6 weeks and for four and a half of them I had been pumping every 3-4 hours (on top of bottle feeding Noah every three hours.) I was pumping and I was still having to give Noah formula on top of the breast milk. My body simply would not produce enough milk to keep up with Noah's needs, period. I had to make one of the hardest decision I have had to make and stop pumping.  Noah was going to be, from then on, a formula fed baby.

What bothers me is this, there are people out there that want to bash moms that choose formula for their babies but they have no IDEA why the mom has chosen formula. I know that there are some moms that are 100% breastfeed, (and luckily these moms have not had any problems) and I know there are some moms that never even try breastfeeding, because they simply just dont want to, and you know what. It is none of my business and it is none of yours either. That is between them and their doctor. I saw someone on facebook post an article about breastfeeding recently and then have the nerve to type with it "...Formula is bad." Really?!? Formula is what is keeping my child alive and so many other children alive, so is it worse to give my child formula or to let him starve? Answer me that...

I just want people to know that there are other reasons out there why moms "choose" not to nurse. It may or may not be thier choice but it happens and no one should be judged for it, because in 5 years when my son is going into Kindergarten with all of the other kids, you will never know who was formula fed or breastfed. You will only know that this child is loved and cared for very much and has been since the day he was born.

Bored

It is so funny to me how your out look on life changes as you get older. The first time this really hit me was when my grandmother passed away in 2006 and we went down to Florida for her funeral. I had not been to her house in years before this and as soon as I walked in I just remember thinking "Wow, nothing in here has changed, yet everything seemed so different" I remember when I was little everything looked so big, now at 21 the ceiling in the kitchen was just an arm raise away. And now that I am an adult, having conversations about the past with my parents, it is almost comical to hear stories from an adult's prospective compared to what I remember happening as a child.
I sort of feel like a child today as I have been sitting at the house all day with Noah, because Allen has been working and since we have no where to go, I am bored. I remember when I was little I would always tell my parents "I'm bored" and they would tell me to go outside, go play with your barbies, go call ___ and see what they were doing today, etc just basically go do something to stop whining and entertain myself. I always thought "Wow, I want to be a grown up because they never get bored and they can go wherever they want"  but I am an adult now and can go wherever I want and today I am bored!
Allen is home now, but he is "resting" by playing a video game, the dog is snoring beside me and Noah is taking a nap. I know, I know,  should be basking in the quiet and soaking it all in, and normally I do, but for some reason today I just want to DO something. I have had an itch to "craft" lately but not sure what direction I want to take that in. I do love to scrapbook but that is not the crafting I have been wanting to do. I don't know what it is though. I almost feel like I want to try something new.. sewing maybe...that would require lessons and lead to me needing to purchase a machine... I think I wish I could find something that I could make and sell. As I have blogged before I have fallen in love with Etsy and I wish I had something I could sell on there! I would love to actually get orders and make something for people to buy. Maybe I will start searching for that "something" :) Don't worry you will be one of the first to know if I find it!

I'm Back!!

Oh my! I am soo excited to be back on here! Life with an 11 1/2 month old is a little crazy! :) We were having some wireless trouble and I can't really blog much while the man is awake, and if wireless is down, so is the laptop. Long boring story, anyways! Yes, Noah is 11 1/2 months! I am sad and so excited at the same time! He is growing up right before our eyes and I feel like I have missed it all because it has all happened so fast!

We (as in me with a lot of help from friends and mother in law) are planning Noah's first birthday party and I am sooo excited about it! We are doing Vintage Cowboy theme! :) How cute, right?!? I will try to post pictures as soon as possible! His invitations are so freaking cute, I wish I had other uses for them! I found them on Etsy. I will say, Etsy used to be a site I would cringe at the thought of even typing the name in my browser because there is so much stuff on there it overwhelms me to look through it, but if you are looking for something in particular, oh my goodness, they have the cutest things on there! I also ordered Noah his birthday T-Shirt from Etsy as well. It has a Vintage Cowboy on it of course :) Hoping to get it in the mail tomorrow, can not wait to see it on him!

As for the little man himself, well he is a full blown crawler now, he waited until two days before his 9 month dr appt (which had been rescheduled due to vacation and was actually only about a week from him turning 10 months) to start. We were so excited!  He loves to be "chased" even though sometime he doesnt always "run" from you, he just sits there and laughs. And now that little guy is in to everything!! And he does not appreciate being told "no." He has a bit of a temper, so I am guessing we are really going to have our hands full in the next year or so. He is so close to walking now too! He stands all by himself but is just too scared to take a step :) He has 9 teeth now! He really is like looking at a little toddler with all of those teeth smiling back at you!

 So much has changed, and I plan to do better with my blog, I always have good ideas for my posts but when I have time to type the laundry and dust are yelling too loud for me to type.
I will do better. I promise! Be patient with me friends! :)

Officially a mom

It has happened... I officially become a true mom on Monday night.  **Fair warning, this may gross you out***
Allen and I put Noah to bed about 10 Monday night, I went to bed around 11. At 11:45 Allen came in our bedrooom, woke me up and said that I needed to come check on Noah with him because he was soaking wet and crying. He thought he had MEGA leaked out of his diaper and needed help changing sheets, etc. When we get back into Noah's room though, Allen turns on his lights and notice it was not pee at all, it was spit up. Being that I had been awake all of 1 minute, I thought nothing of my soaking wet child and proceeded to strip him and his bed down. While I was doing that Allen cleaned off Noah. This stuff was EVERY where! In his nose, ears, hair, stuck in his neck roll, seriously everywhere.We put him back down, he went back to sleep immediately.

As I walked back to our bedroom, I thought, that was a lot more than spit up... I laid back down only to hear Noah screaming again about 5 minutes later. I gave Allen a minute to go in there to see if he just needed his Paci re-inserted, but Noah would not calm down. His cries only got louder and angrier. I get up from bed and Allen asks if maybe he is hungry since he spit up so much. I told him I really didn't know and picked Noah up to calm him. As soon as I had him in a vertical position, he exploded on me. For the first time since he was born, Noah had projectile vomit. It was not pretty. I put him on my clean shoulder, only for him to do it again. I am now completely soaking wet in baby throw up.I handed Noah to Allen and told him to go stand in the tub with him while I change. I figured if it was going to be projectile at least it would be easier to clean up in the tub. I go change, strip Noah down for the second time, and then go sit with him in our rocker. We knew he officially had a stomach virus. Not good....
Allen went and got towels and we wrapped our little man in a towel and had others to catch what we knew would be coming up. For the next 2 hours he would sleep about 10-20 minutes, wake up, immediately start crying and then the vomiting would continue. The worst I think was when he started to dry heave. It really broke out hearts! Allen went to bed about an hour into it, so it was just me and little man left to tough it out.
About 1:30 was the last time he got sick. I propped him up in the chair so I could get some water and decided to leave him there as I sat on the couch next to him since when he was sitting with me every-time I moved he woke up. He slept there until about 4, then I moved him to his bed since I felt like we were over the vomiting stage.
Tuesday he woke up with the other end of a stomach virus. This lasted most of the morning. I began to worry as the day went on because he of course was barely eating and I knew I hadn't changed a wet diaper all day. I Googled signs of Dehydration in infants and it said no wet diapers in 6 hours and excessive sleep/lethargic. Check and Check... I called the doctor. The nurse was very worried that he hadn't had a wet diaper and told me if he didn't have one in the next hour he would have to go to the ER. The thought made me tear up, while I was on the phone with her, however, THANK YOU JESUS, he wet his diaper! No ER!!
We pushed a lot of Pedialyte through him and he is definitely getting back to himself. He is still not eating as well as he normally does, but we can tell he is getting stronger every day.
I figure overall we have done really well, he is 8 months old and this is the first time he has been sick, it broke my heart not being able to fix it for him.
But I know this was the first of many times I will hurt because he is hurting and can't fit it. I love that baby!!

Daddy put him in his laundry basket. He is standing all by himself!

Friends

I was hanging out with some of our very close friends the other night when we starting reminiscing about how we met each other and what our first impressions were of each other.
This is always a funny thing to talk about with good friends, because generally there are always crazy things behind your first impressions. For example, my oldest friend Tosha... (Love you girly!!) We have known each other for 18 years and we often go back to the first time we met in 3rd grade, and it makes us laugh every single time! She was sitting at the desk in school and I walked in. This being the first day of school, you sit where you want/can. I was brand new to the school and later found out she was too. We were 8 years old and neither of us knew a soul in the school expect our siblings. She was sitting at the desk with her head resting in her hand and her face was all smooshed up because of her hand. I came up beside her to sit down and according to her, I gave her the nastiest look of all times as I pulled the chair out super slow. Now I can honestly tell you I have no idea what I was thinking about her but it is just funny that all these years later we talk about that day.
While we were talking about this the other night my friend, Larry gave me such a great compliment though when we started this whole conversion. He said that over the course of the past 7 years that he has known me, I haven't changed. I haven't converted myself to be like anyone else or to fit in. He said since the beginning, I have had the attitude of "this is me, here I am. Take it or leave it." And I have been thinking about what he said all week! As minor as it was it was just awesome to hear someone say that about you. I don't want to be known as someone who changes how I act based on the people that surround me. I have known TOO many people like that in my life and have always been annoyed with them. I am just so happy to know, that even if it is only Larry, that someone out there thinks this of me and it really made my week!
I love all my friends and I am so glad through all the ups and downs that I have been through in my life that God has me here surrounded by such an awesome group of people!

Little man bouncing away! :)  (it is really blurry b/c it was taken with my phone)

I had good Intentions

I woke up today with so much on my mind. I needed to get the house de cluttered, dusted, CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN our bathroom, wash and put away some laundry, and clean up the kitchen. What have I done today you ask?  I did unload and re load the dishwasher, semi attempt to wipe down the counter, picked up like 3 things on our bathroom counter, and washed a load and put away a load of laundry. That's all she wrote...
My body feels good, but my head has a lot of pressure in it (Thanks to my sweet Hubby who shared this head cold) and my eyes just want to shut. I am not tired at all, but my eyes don't appreciate being open today.
So I just took a hot shower and here I am...on the computer. I have thrown in the towel on cleaning today, because you know what? All my clutter, clothes, and durst (<~~I just made that word up by accident and I LOVE it!! Dirty Dust ha ha!) will be there waiting for me tomorrow, maybe with a little more added on top!

Yesterday my sweet little baby man turned 7 months old! In FIVE months he will officially not be considered an infant anymore! Oh my, 7 months of my life has never gone by so fast! If you are wanting time to fly by, have a baby because seriously, I can hardly believe still that this precious little boy is mine much less that he is 7 months old!
My BFF can attest to this, but in high school I always had the feeling deep inside that I would never be able to have kids and now I am on my way to having a 1 year old! Crazy how God has your life planned out!

Speaking of that, I went to Women's Community last night at church and we studied Genesis 37. Our Speaker Beth Lee is so awesome, and she spent some time talking about why God let Joseph walk like 65 miles, unknowing what was about to happen to him, to his brothers and then they ended up throwing him in a hole and selling him to traders. He let it happen because He saw the bigger picture. Joseph saved his families' lives when the famine came and had God not allowed him to be sold, they probably all would have died.  I love that thought, no matter where you are in life or what has happened or will happen, it is allowed for a reason and that reason is because God sees the bigger picture in your life.

Beth says it so much better and makes it really stick with you but I just like knowing He is here every step of the way!

You can't look at this picture and not smile!

Sweet Baby Man

Compliments

I was out and about last Friday in town with Noah. We had some errands to do before the weekend, one of which included us going to Office Depot to order some business cards. We park in the parking lot, I go around the car to get his stroller out of the back and load his car seat into the stroller and proceed into the store. This is when I hear " I love your jacket!"  I turn because you don't often hear a male voice yelling compliments about someone's apparel in the parking lot and discover the voice is talking to me. I smile and say thank you (to be nice), and then he proceeds to yell something about me being beautiful. I again smile and walk into the store.

Now you are probably thinking one of two things...1) "Wow that must have made you feel good!" or 2) "Really?? While you were pushing your child in a stroller???"

How did it make me feel? You ask....Well I have to say, I was among those thinking "Really?? With my son in a stroller you yell at me across a parking lot???"  
First off, lets start with the obvious. I understand that there are a lot of single moms out there, so me pushing the stroller is not necessarily a give away that I am married, but come on guys, if you want to give a lady a compliment, how about NOT screaming across the parking lot of an office supply store.
But this is the kicker! This guy, was A) not attractive, B) a smoker, and C) yelling at me from the passenger's side of his friend's MINI VAN....And not even yelling at me from his own window mind you, he has his friend roll down the driver's side window so he could yell over him.
Now lets take a stroll back to 1999 when TLC put it the best

"I don't want no scrub
A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me
Hanging out the passenger side
Of his best friend's ride
Trying to holler at me"

ahmmm... I rest my case, Thank you TLC.

I did however call Allen to tell him about my experience and he responded with "Oh yeah!"
My response... "That's right! Your wife's still got it!" ha ha ha :)