Monday, July 26, 2010

Routines

So here we are, at the halfway point of my maternity leave. I can't believe I'll be back at work in 6 weeks. It's gone by so fast. I have been treasuring every minute with my new daughter and while it will be difficult going back to work and leaving her all day, I get this little person in my life FOREVER which makes me smile and forget about how hard it will be. She and I have been bonding so much, and really getting into a good routine. I haven't read a lot of books about dealing with infants (most of what I read was about DURING pregnancy and how to deal w/childbirth) so a lot of this has been a learning experience for me.
I have been doing some reading online about routines and getting into a set schedule with your baby. For the most part, we have been just letting baby dictate the schedule and it has worked just fine. However, since I have to go back to work soon, getting a schedule in place is going to become more of a reality for us. One thing I have tried to do is when baby gets up in the middle of the night to nurse, I don't say a word to her or turn on any lights (unless I have to change her diaper, then I turn on the small light near the changing table) and I don't take her out of the nursery. What I was doing previously, was taking her out of the nursery or letting her sleep wherever she ended up. The new routine, involves moving her directly to the crib at night, and if she stirs or wakes up, nurse her back to sleep and leave her in the crib. I did this the other night in Kokomo as Matt's parents have a crib in their spare bedroom for Elise's cousin Ashlyn, who stays the night there frequently. Elise woke up twice to nurse and went right back down to sleep in the crib afterwards. Last night we tried this again, Matt moved her to the crib around 10 pm and she woke up at 2 and 4:3o to nurse. I woke up at 8 this morning and she was still fast asleep! If this had been a workday for me, I would have had to wake HER up!! I think it's working out great so far, but of course I'm sure she'll hit another growth spurt soon and throw this whole theory out of whack for me, lol. I just feel like the crib is a good, safe, secure place for her, where her neck and limbs won't be all sore like they would sleeping in the car seat or bouncy all the time. Plus the crib was a big investment, the mattress, bedding, etc was not cheap-let's get some use out of it! I think the problem before with the routine we were doing was that I would go watch TV, get on the computer while nursing and before you know, I had lost 90 minutes of sleep whereas now, Elise nurses quickly and gets right back into the crib and sleeps. I hope this lasts. We'll see how it goes!
I'm also a little concerned about how the routine will change once she enters daycare. I hope they don't let her sleep all day...then I won't get ANY sleep at night!! Remind me to ask about that... :)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Settling into Motherhood

Things are finally starting to settle down over here at the Kanable household.
Elise kind of has this routine going where she's awake most of the day, then settles into sleep around 9 or 10 at night, waking up once or twice in the night and back up around 7-7:30. Although right now she's fast asleep in the sling because I took her out in it when I walked Bijou, so I'm sure the movement against my chest lulled her to sleep.
As for me, I'm absolutely loving motherhood. I love looking into my baby's eyes and seeing her gazing right back at me. If I'm lucky, I will get a smile too!
The past couple of weeks were a little tricky however, as we struggled a bit to have Elise regain her birth weight. We have been to the pediatrician's office numerous times for weight checks, and on week 3 or so, Elise was still not up to her birth weight. We tried everything too, I took Fenugreek (still taking it), drank the Mother's Milk Tea, ate more, drank more water, tried not to stress, tried to get rest, I just think for some reason Elise was not getting enough nourishment from me. And we're talking round-the-clock nursing here, she was ALWAYS eating and I was never away from the couch to get up and do anything! Reluctantly, I supplemented with a little formula, and now Elise is above and beyond her birth weight, at 8.5 lbs! To be honest, I never thought I'd be one of those people to resort to formula and it still makes me cringe that we couldn't exclusively breastfeed, but I also could not stand seeing my baby starving and deprived of nourishment. I have even been pumping to supplement with my own milk so that she could get less and less of the formula because I'd much rather have Elise feed from me. However, pumping has not been entirely successful either. I only get a tiny amount when I pump, so I've had to wait a day or two to get enough for a 2-3 ounce bottle. This worries me because I will be going back to work after Labor Day and how is my supply going to magically produce enough milk to leave with her caregiver?! I have heard that supplementing with formula dwindles your supply, but I feel like I never really had a big supply to begin with. Anyway, long story short, we are working on this and I don't consider us over the hurdle yet, but we are doing all we can to make sure my milk is the majority of what she gets. It is more important to me, though, that my baby eats, regardless of how it may hurt my pride. I can't beat myself up about this because it's not healthy.
SO, aside from that minor setback, things are great. We have been getting out of the house more and more with our daughter, taking her to birthday parties, restaurants, street fairs, farmer's market, church, etc. It is finally starting to feel like summer to me as I was getting SOOOO fed up with sitting around the house all day!! We are settling in quite nicely over here and I hope to have lots of good news and reports in the weeks/months/years to come! :)