Life is Beautiful

Today is my 29th birthday.  And it’s kind of funny to find myself here, living in Seattle as a mother of two children.  And I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as I compare where I am now to where I’ve been in the past few years on my birthday.  Last year we had only lived here two months and I was still very homesick and doubting whether I’d like it here.  I was pregnant and wondering what this new baby held in store for us.  The year before, Evelyne was a fussy ten month-old and I was still trying to figure-out what it meant to be a mom.

This year, however, my birthday comes at a time of great happiness and contentment.  I’ve thought so much lately about our family and my identity as a mother, and I feel like God has brought us to a place of much joy.  The past year has been rough…just the normal adjustments of a new baby, expanding to a family of four, sleep deprivation, and some postpartum depression thrown in there just for fun.  But now…. what joy.

We went out for lunch on Saturday to Red Robin (we do this every year for our birthdays because if you sign-up on their website, they email you a coupon for a free burger on your birthday!), and it was the first time the four of us have ever eaten out together.  It felt kinda like a coming-out for our family.  Harris is finally old enough to sit in our booster seat and eat by himself off a tray, Evelyne is old enough to sit in a big chair and act like she knows what’s going on.  I was curious how it would go, and I’m happy to report that it was a very pleasant experience.  No one fussed, no one complained (that I recall), and other than a small incident where I knocked my drink all over the table, it went perfectly.  Harris even ate lettuce from my burger!  (I’m still amazed that he’ll eat anything I put in front of him since Evelyne will eat hardly anything I give her.)  That lunch felt like a milestone for us… like we had made it.  We made it through the past nine months and have come out on the other side with a new appreciation and love for our kids.

I feel like God has been bringing thankfulness to my mind lately, and I have felt it in such an overwhelming way.  I love my kids.  I love my husband.  I love how the four of us are a family.  I’ve mostly been struck by how much I L.O.V.E. Harris.  I’ve always loved him, of course, but it’s one thing to love a tiny baby you just met who does nothing but suck the life from you (literally) and scream at you all day and night, and it’s another to love a chubby-cheeked, smiley, squealing with laughter when he sees you baby that you just want to mush all day.  I love this stage, I love that he finally loves me back, and I love the baby he’s turned into.  It was the same way with Evelyne… she was a fussy, colicky baby who never slept and I was depressed.  I loved her, but oh, I loved her so much more when she got older.  Partly because she was easier (as bad as that sounds), but mostly just because I actually got to know her the longer I’d been with her.

I was looking at newborn pictures of Harris the other day and seeing how incredibly cute he was kinda made me want to cry.

I wish I could go back and love that newborn baby the way I love him now.  Now, I’m obsessed with him.  I want to eat him whole.  I love to hold him and be near him.  And I know that, at least for me, that seems to be the normal course of things, growing slowly in love with the babies.  But as I look back, it still makes me sad that I couldn’t feel this same depth of emotion for him when he was the smallest and most helpless.  But it was the same with Evelyne, and I imagine it’ll be the same with the next baby.

I love the stage we’re in right now.  I love the ages of my kids (Evelyne will be 3 in December, Harris is 9 months tomorrow).  I love watching them grow and change and learn.  I’m excited as I look forward to what the next few years will bring.  I’m very happy here in Seattle, and I’m so thankful that God brought us here.  Clay is loving his job and is soaking-up every possible learning opportunity as he continues to take classes and learn advanced techniques in physical therapy.  We’re getting to know great neighbors and making new friendships and feeling much more rooted here.  We’re LOVING our church.  (www.seattlequest.org)  I feel like we’ve finally moved out of that “survival mode” stage and are back to a place where we can give more.  There will always be bad days and bad moments because, let’s be honest here, we are talking about raising tiny humans, and that can be incredibly difficult.  But wow, the joys are SO outweighing the not-so-great parts.  And I’m so thankful for my blessings this birthday.

Ahhh, the world of disciplining children…

So, I just wanted to quickly point y’all to a great discussion happening over on Adventures in Mercy. (this is one of my favorite blogs, by the way)  A reader wrote-in asking for advice from Molly, the blog author, and other parent readers regarding how to discipline her toddler.  Coming from a conservative Christian background that emphasizes “first-time obedience” and spanking, she wasn’t sure how to discipline in a way that remained firm but also showed grace when what she was currently doing had her feeling angry.  The discussion that follows in the comments section is pretty great as it’s simply advice and conversation on other ways to discipline from other Christian parents, some who are currently doing it with little ones and others who have been there/done that.  I enjoyed reading through it, and much of what the readers described is very similar to the ways we discipline Evelyne.  (one day I’ll actually get up enough energy to sit down and write about that)

So anyway, if you have young kids or might one day, I recommend checking this out as a starting point for thinking in more detail about other ways that Christian parents discipline without spanking.  Molly, the blog author, has also written lots of posts about how she changed from a punitive parenting model to a more grace-based method—HIGHLY recommend perusing around her site!  Adventures in Mercy

The Parenting with Gentleness Series

Right now

What I’m laughing at: Harris learning how to stand on his head—he stands his legs up while the front half of him is still on the floor, and it’s really funny!

What’s making me sore: I just started Tony Horton’s 10-Minute Trainer, and heavens to betsy, it’s hard!  I haven’t truly worked-out since, um….well…  there was that brief stint when Evelyne was about a year old, but that was over quickly… It’s really been QUITE some time since I’ve consistently pushed myself on a regular basis to exercise and stay in shape (like as in when I was engaged to my husband of five years!).  And I just had a baby 7.5 months ago which has left quite a bit of lingering weight, so these work-outs are requiring a lot of effort on my part.  It’s just 10 minutes, but it’s an INTENSE 10 minutes and I’m sore.

What I’m watching: Just finished the 4th season of Top Chef (Oh my gosh, what WAS Lisa still doing there at the end?!) and just discovered The Rachel Zoe Project.  (reality show about a fashion stylist to the stars)  Still diggin’ the Food Network.  Right now–How I Met Your Mother, Clay’s and my favorite sitcom.  The funniest show ever.

What I’m listening to: Elmo’s World and Little Einsteins (Evelyne just finished singing Elmo’s World, complete with her arm up in the air as she ended her performance on a crescendo.)

Where I’ve been: Outside!  We helped our neighbors throw a garage sale this past weekend, so I’ve been outside a lot lately.  It was fun to spend more time with the neighbors, and we made a little cash, too.  (a very little, like $30!  The first day I just broke even because I bought so many clothes for Harris and some pants for me.  Evelyne had a BLAST playing with the neighbor kids all day long, and now she asks to go outside when she first wakes-up in the morning because I think she assumes that there’s always a party happening outside our door.  Two of the neighbor’s nieces were here this weekend, and they’re 10 and 12.  The 10 year-old really took to Evelyne, and Ev LOVED her.  She spent all day playing with Ev and carrying her around on her hip (she wasn’t a whole lot bigger than Ev herself!), and Evelyne kept calling the girls “my sisters.”  We also had a cook-out (well, I guess people here call them bar-b-que’s, but I still can’t get my head around that since to me bar-b-que is a very specific food you eat, not the act of eating hamburgers.) out in the middle of the cove (another local difference, they call them cul-de-sacs here and think we’re hilarious for saying “cove”) on Sunday night and that was really fun.

What I’ve been eating:  Last night was a curried lentil stew that turned-out awesome (first time I’ve ever cooked lentils) and tonight was my first couscous.  Nothing fancy, people, just a bit outside of my boring box.

What I’m annoyed about: I went to the grocery store tonight at 8:30 specifically to get chicken on the last night of the 99 cents/lb. sale.  A sale I’ve been waiting weeks for.  They were out and I planned to ask for a raincheck (always ask for a raincheck!!!), but I got so distracted by my cheap Kashi cereal deal that I totally forgot and didn’t remember until I got home.  Now the sale is over and I’m out of chicken….but I do have a TON of cereal!

What I’m excited about: This weekend Clay and I are going away to Victoria, B.C. to celebrate our 5 year anniversary (that was last month).  We’re staying here , and although I don’t really know anything about Victoria, everyone keeps saying how awesome it is, and I’m excited to get away.  (I kept thinking about that this afternoon when I was wishing that I didn’t hear “Mommy?  Mommy?” every 15 seconds!)  My parents are coming to stay with the kids while we’re gone, and I’m excited to see them and for them to get to spend time with my beautiful babies.

What made me smile today: Harris blowing raspberries and spraying pureed broccoli/zuccini everywhere!  His little bottom lip pooches out when he does it, and it’s just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!  Oh, and Evelyne’s new favorite thing to do is exercise with me, and she says that her favorite is “the one with just the girl, not the one with the boy and the girl.”  (which means she likes the Pilates from On Demand and not the Tony Horton video)  She asked to watch the Pilates video, and I told her that I had to go cook dinner, but she wanted to watch it by herself, so I put it on and she got down on the floor and tried to do it!  She did get frustrated, poor thing, and said, “Mommy, I can’t do it!”  It was really sweet and hilarious to watch!

What I’m reading: Positive Discipline: The First Three Years and Unconditional Parenting.  They’re both great.  I’ll hopefully be writing more about what I’m learning from these books and the others that I’m hoping to start soon.  Unconditional Parenting is really rocking my world right now in a great way.  I would say that the author pretty much shares most of my discipline paradigm, but he lays the philosophical groundwork in a way that’s deepening my own convictions and pushing me to search my heart in how I was raised and how I hope to raise my kids.  I’m really loving it so far.

Aaaaaaand…..that’s all!

I should really be Mom of the Year

So, as you know, we’ve been potty training this weekend.  On our first day, when I got Evelyne out of the bed from her nap, she had had an accident and was really wet and it was all over her pants and the waterproof pad I put on top of her sheet.  I changed her and got her set-up with her Little Einsteins and snack (her after-nap ritual), and a few minutes later I noticed something.  Mimi, her stuffed lamb who’s her favorite lovey and best friend and she plays with all day and chews-on all the time, was soaked in pee.  And yes, she had been chewing on her since I had gotten her out of the bed.  We were pretty grossed-out and immediately threw Mimi in the wash.

Last night when I went to Harris at 3:30 a.m., I noticed that the whole front of his pajamas were soaked.  I think it’s the new diapers we’re using because he did this the night before, too, and he had only eaten once before that.  So, I had to go through the FUN process of fully waking-up and changing a screaming baby in the middle of the night.  When I took off his wet pajamas I thought I threw them on the floor.  Clay woke-up with him this morning and before he left for work I told him that I had had to change Harris’ clothes in the middle of the night.  He gave me a weird look and said, “Well then, you probably don’t want to hear this.  Where did you throw the dirty pajamas?”  Apparently, as I tossed them into the darkness, intending for them to land on the floor, somehow they landed over the side of his bed, and when Clay found him this morning, he was clutching his wet pajamas and his lovey, rolling around and chewing on them.

So, in the past three days, BOTH of my children have chewed on urine-soaked objects.  Someone make me a trophy, please.

Potty Training, here we go!

Today is Day 1.

Let me start this by saying that Evelyne has more or less been “ready” to potty train for quite awhile now.  It’s been ME who wasn’t ready, and for awhile I was actually discouraging her from using the potty because I totally wasn’t ready to tackle this job.  I really don’t understand why everyone tries to get their older kid out of diapers before the new baby is born because in my opinion, it is SO much easier to change a diaper whenever I get the chance than drop everything I’m doing and rush to the potty.  I love diapers.  Diapers are my friend.  I suppose if you have an easy baby who sleeps all the time it wouldn’t be so hard, but over the past 7 months, Harris has required a LOOOOT of attention and holding, like for hours at a time.  There were a couple of months there where I was holding him for all of his naps.  And as a newborn he would nurse for hours at a time.  It was much easier to change Evelyne’s diaper whenever I had a free moment rather than put him down and wait for him to scream (after I had just spent half an hour getting him to sleep) just so I could help her on the potty.  So, yeah, that’s why I waited.

I bought some big-girl princess and Minnie Mouse underwear about a month ago and contemplated doing it, but I chickened-out.  Yesterday, though, I realized that I don’t think I’m ever going to really feel ready, but she DEFINITELY already is.  We’ve already talked about it so much I think she’s probably been thinking, “Good grief, Mom, just go ahead and let me use the potty already!”   I might as well just take the plunge.  (I realized this as I watched her pooping in her diaper, IN the bathroom where she always does it…right before she comes to find me and say, “Mommy, I poo-pooed, change my diaper.”  Now that’s a child who’s ready to potty train!

So here we go.  She was excited to put-on her undies, and I think it helped that I told her that her cousin is wearing undies now, too, so she wants to be a big girl like her.  The first pee incident went all in her underwear, but they were the Gerber training pants so it didn’t make a mess.  The second one was in the potty.  The third one was half in her underwear and half in the potty.  The fourth one was in the potty.  The morning poop… the one that happens EVERY morning at the same time… it hasn’t happened yet.  That’s gonna be the real test.  This girl poops like 2-4 times a day and they’re all relatively loose (not to get too graphic or anything, but we’re not talking about something you can just plop in the toilet, they’re quite a mess), so we’ll see where she decides to dump.  Right now she’s taking a nap, wearing underwear and lined pants and sleeping on top of a waterproof pad that’s on top of her sheet that’s on top of another waterproof pad.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

I’m back.

Wow, what a slacker I’ve been lately.  I think I’ve written one post in the past month or so?  I hardly remember the days when I’d blog almost every day…oh yeah, that was before I had a baby!  But still.  Really, most of my absence can be attributed to laziness rather than sheer lack of time.  Blogging is kind of like a healthy discipline for me since it forces me to sit down and take time to record my thoughts, something that I always enjoy doing and find is good for my soul, yet when I get in a rut of coasting through life on autopilot, blogging takes a backseat.  And I’ve been coasting, but hey, I’m still here.  I’ve actually had lots of things lately that I’ve wanted to blog about, I just haven’t sat down and actually done it.  Here are a few things that we’ve been up to in the past month or so:

*Harris is almost 7 months old and is totally awesome.  I’m still not getting much sleep, but eh, I’m used to it, and he’ll sleep through the night sometime in the next couple of months, SURELY.  He’s not doing an official crawl yet, but he’s on his way and scoots and rolls all around the room to where he wants to go.  He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, but he’ll get up on his knees or push with his feet and lunge his body forward.  Sometimes he’ll actually get his legs into almost a standing position while the front half of his body is on his belly on the floor, so it looks really funny like he’s trying to do a somersault or something.  Right when he turned six months old something happened and all of a sudden breastfeeding wasn’t exactly working out for us.  Either my supply suddenly dropped or his hunger suddenly increased and I couldn’t keep-up, but despite almost constant nursing for weeks, he remained hungry and mad after nursing, so now we’re supplementing with formula and solids.  I was able to do about half nursing and half formula with Evelyne for her first year, so I’m hoping that it’ll turn out like that with him, too, and he won’t get a bottle preference and leave me in his dust.  Either way, he’s gaining weight faster and seems much happier.  He has the sweetest smile and cutest squeal of a laugh, and we’re enjoying him more every day.  

*Evelyne is just hilarious these days.  I love that she’s old enough for me to have full-on conversations with, and she is constantly cracking me up!  She has a major Daddy preference these days, and she even went through a phase (I think it’s over) where I couldn’t even tell her that I loved her without her saying, “No, Daddy loves me!”  I’d have to remind her that Mommy AND Daddy love her, and I think it’s sinking-in now.  And heaven forbid I ever said that she was my girl, she’d respond by saying, “No, Daddy’s my girl!”  Ha!  She’s really starting to love Harris, and when she sees him for the first time in the morning she hugs and kisses him and he squeals and smiles, and it’s just the most wonderful thing.  She also regularly looks at him and says, “Harris, you so cute!”  A few weeks ago I think she decided that she would finally act her age and start having “terrible two” moments.  The tantrums and occasional red-faced screaming are finally beginning in our house, and wow, are we excited that she’s reached this milestone.  Her new favorite discovery is big-girl puzzles.  She’s always been crazy about puzzles, but I recently bought the real jigsaw kind and she caught-on pretty quickly and is now doing 25-piece puzzles by herself. All. Day. Long.  And of course they’re Disney Princess puzzles, and she’s decided that she’s Cinderella, Daddy’s Prince Charming (as he dubbed himself), I’m Sleeping Beauty, and Harris (bless his heart) is Snow White.  Whenever she sees a picture of Cinderella she says, “Look, it’s me!”

*About a month ago I’d had enough and I finally saw a doctor and started taking an antidepressant.  I think I had been really confused about whether or not I “qualified” for PPD since probably about 80% of the time I felt normal and like myself.  But the other 20% I felt like an unhappy crazy person who was very irritable.  Since I started the medication, things have been great.  It wasn’t a dramatic difference, but I feel like myself.  I’ve had a much more positive outlook on motherhood and life in general, and Clay has noted several situations during which I remained happy and calm when he had expected me to freak-out and get angry.  So I think it’s working, and yay for that.  

*In light of my newfound mental and emotional stability, I’ve had an even stronger growing love for my kids lately.  I think it’s a combination of the Paxil and Harris just getting older and happier and more manageable.  Of course there are still crazy, stressful moments and days, but in general I’m just enjoying them so much more.  I really love the toddler stage so far, and I just can’t wait for Harris to get older so I can see what his personality will be like. I can’t wait to hear him talk, to sing songs with him, to get kisses from him, to watch him play games with Ev… all the fun things that I’m loving about Evelyne right now.  I’ve actually even start envisioning what having the third will be like!  Of course we’re still at least two years away from that, but the thought doesn’t send me into a panic anymore.  I’ll be really nervous, of course, but I’m really excited to see what God has in store for our family and what other sweet little blessings He will give us.  Last night before Evelyne went to bed she was being SO funny and SO cute, and Clay and I were talking about how much we’re going to miss this stage when she grows-up and how we’re going to have to keep having more kids so we’ll always have someone like this around us.  For those of you who have talked with me in the past six months, you know how radical a change of attitude that is from how I’ve been feeling up to this point, so I would definitely say God and the Paxil are working!  

*Been thinking about this lately:

The Bible is the story that delivers us the Gospel. It’s point is to get you to Jesus, the one mediator between God and man. It’s a big book to get you to a short message. You buy the whole field, but the treasure is the Gospel, not the book of Judges or financial principles from Proverbs. Once you have the Gospel right and you know what preaching is all about, then you can read and preach Leviticus or Malachi or whatever you want, as long as Jesus is in his proper place and the message is the Gospel, not the law, or the old covenant, or this week’s good advice.

                                                                                                                                                    - Internet Monk

*Next month my parents are coming to stay here for a weekend and watch the kids while Clay and I celebrate our 5th anniversary (which was last month) by going to Victoria, British Columbia.  We keep hearing that it’s beautiful, and I don’t think we’ve been away together since Evelyne’s been born, so I’m really excited.  Too bad I’ll probably be spending more bonding with my breast pump than with Clay.  

*I’m so glad that we survived the heat wave last week, although I feel like I barely made it.  One day it reached 105 which was the highest recorded temperature EVER in the Seattle area!  Our house reached 92 degrees a few times and pretty much stayed around 89 for a few days.  I just sat in one spot on the floor in front of a fan and as long it was blowing on me the heat was somewhat bearable.  But anytime I had to go to the bathroom or make something to eat and I didn’t take a fan with me (I usually did!), I would start sweating immediately and it would be rather unbearable.  The kids seemed to handle it much better than we did, and all of us pretty much stayed in our diapers/underwear for a few days.  Lots of nekkie time in our house.  Oddly enough, this week the temperatures have been in the high 60’s and low 70’s and the coolness has been a VERY welcome change!

*I’ve been really into watching the Food Network and other cooking shows lately.  I kinda go in phases with cooking shows and HGTV.  I get really obsessed with one of the other and watch a ton of cooking/decorating/real estate shows for a month or two and then I get totally burned-out and don’t want to watch any for a few months.  Then I rediscover the love and dive back in.  So right now I’m into food shows.  I discovered Top Chef for the first time, and thankfully Bravo has been running the entire season of Top Chef: Masters which I DVR’ed and have been watching.  I was also really into The Next Food Network Star and my favorite Melissa D’Arabian won (Clay was surprised that I let-out such a loud squeal of excitement when they announced that she won!).  She’s a stay-at-home mom with 4 kids under the age of 3 and no professional training and she was up against lots of professional chefs and she WON!  Her new show Ten Dollar Dinners just premiered on the Food Network and I can’t WAIT to watch it!  Oh, and I just discovered that her family recently moved from Texas to Kirkland, so I’m hoping to see her around town sometime.  (I still have my eyes open for Jason Mesnick, the former Bachelor who lives here)

*I’m a bit ashamed to admit, but I’ve also gotten into The Real Housewives of Atlanta on Bravo.  They ran the entire season last weekend back-to-back, so that’s pretty much what I spent last weekend doing.  I kept asking myself, “Why am I watching this?  This is ridiculous!”  but I couldn’t help it, it just SUCKS YOU IN, those ladies are so out of control!  Bravo’s really killing me lately.  This is why I haven’t been blogging.

*I don’t know what else.  But I’ll try to blog more and stay on top of things.  And because they’re so cute, here ya go:

 

 

Posted in Church, Commentary, In The Study, Theologia, Uncategorized · 171 Comments

Our First ER Visit

Well, check that one off the list of parenting moments I wasn’t looking forward to!  

Yesterday early evening after I put Harris to bed Evelyne and I were playing outside.  She has this little ride-on car that she was playing with, and briefly went around the corner a few feet away where I couldn’t see her.  I heard screaming and came running and found her on her back, the car had tipped all the way backward and she hit her head.  She had done that before and came away without a scratch, so I figured she probably bonked it pretty good but she was ok.  (I also realized she was probably ok when one of the first things she said was that she wanted me to pick-up her baby doll that I had dropped when I heard her crying.)  So I was holding and comforting her when I noticed she was bleeding all over my shoulder.  I kinda freaked a little when I saw blood on the back of her head, but I didn’t want to scare her, so I told her that her hair was messy (and it was, blood and dirt) and we needed to go inside so I could clean it. (And she said, “And then come back outside?”)  I called our doctor’s office, but it was closed, and rather than wait for the on-call doctor to call me back, I just called my dad who’s also a doctor.  By this point she had calmed down but said that her head hurt, and my dad said that we should definitely go to the ER to be safe.  

I gave her some Motrin, applied gentle pressure with a towel, and started putting a bag of frozen peas on a quickly developing HUGE bump on the back of her head.  I called Clay three times in a row (our signal for “Something’s wrong, drop what you’re doing and call me back!”) and when he called me back I just said, “Evelyne fell and hurt her head, she’s bleeding, and my dad said go to the ER.  I need you come home now!”  Thankfully we live a mile away from both his work and the hospital, so he came home very quickly and I was able to get her to the hospital.  Another major blessing is that one of Clay’s friends at work was getting ready to go home and was able to come sit at our house with Harris (who was asleep for the night) while Clay met me at the hospital.  

By the time we got there, she was acting fine, and when she saw Clay running up to the emergency room, she was laughing and yelling, “Daddy!!!  Daddy!!!”  Within 5 minutes we were seen by a triage nurse and she sent us straight to the back, which was great since the wait would have been over 2 hours had it been a different kind of injury.  We had to wash her hair a little bit since it was so matted with blood that we couldn’t even really see the wound very well.  Evelyne did awesome as the nurse and doctor examined her, never even put-up a fuss.  The only time she got upset is when they gave her some numbing shots and when they stitched her up.  Clay was holding her in his lap and keeping her head still, and I was trying to talk to her and calm her down while she cried and screamed, “Mommy!!!!”  I was crying, but I tried to keep it together for her since she was scared, but really, I felt like sobbing my eyes out.  The doctor kept having to look at me and say, “It’s ok, I promise she’s going to be just fine.”    She screamed even harder through the stitches, but I think she was just freaked-out since she couldn’t even feel anything.  It was AWFUL watching my baby being so scared and hurt and not being able to do a thing about it.  

So, two hours later, I picked-up a promised dinner of McDonald’s and we headed home.  (She really wanted to go play on the playground, but I think we would’ve completely scared all the other people with all the bloody mess her hair was by that point, so we just did the drive-thru!) The doctors wanted us to check on her a few times during the night to make sure she wasn’t throwing-up and was able to be roused, so Clay slept on the floor in her room to watch her.  This morning Clay said she felt warm, so he gave her some Motrin, and she was fine for most of the day.  Later this afternoon she got a high fever (not unusual for her, her fevers spike really high anytime she’s slightly sick), but it came down a bit after Tylenol and she got back to playing.  I called the doctor who said that as long as her wound didn’t look infected (it doesn’t), just treat the fever and watch her, but she’s probably just coming down with a cold.  (her nose was running, too)  Oh yeah, AND I had applied sunscreen to her eyelids this afternoon in a moment of complete idiocy, and it had run into her eyes and while she had a fever she was also crying about how bad her eyes were hurting. (as tears streamed down her face from her blood-red eyes)  Bad mommy moment, I felt awful.  

So. She’s in bed now, and I think she’s ok.  Every time I asked her about her head today she said it felt ok, even though it’s still a really huge bump.  But last night was definitely traumatic for me!  After it was over and she was in bed, I just kept thinking of all the what-if’s of what could have happened.  What if I had come around the corner and found her unconscious?  Would I have done the right thing?  Clay went over CPR with me again because I never feel like I remember the correct number of compressions and breaths.   

 I kept thinking about all those parents out there who have children who are truly sick, for whom hospital visits and being poked and prodded is a regular occurrence.  For the parents who really don’t know if their child is going to live.  I can’t fathom that kind of pain, and although Evelyne is ok, the brief fear that she might not be was enough to terrify me.  That girl is my world.  If something ever happened to one of my kids…  I just don’t know how I would go on.  I think I would really lose the will to live.  And my heart aches for all the parents who live with that reality daily.  I pray that God would be merciful and be very near to them.  And the bigger questions of “Why?  Why do children have to suffer and die?” come up.  And I don’t know the answer, but it’s a sad reality.  

Thankfully, Evelyne is ok as far as we can tell right now.  I think my paranoia about her getting hurt has shot-up to the skies, every step and slide and rock that I see now represents injury and potential death.  I’d really like to bubble-wrap her and make her wear a helmet anytime she’s not in my arms, but I’m guessing that’s probably not very realistic.  So I’m going to try to reign-in those urges and just pray for her and hug her and thank God that He has taken care of her.

Free Subscription to Parents Magazine

Click here to get a free 2-year subscription to Parents magazine!  I did this a couple of years ago and haven’t paid anything for the magazines that have been coming my way, so hopefully this means I’ll get another couple of years out of it!

Why I don’t breastfeed on a schedule.

Whether a mom chooses to feed her baby on a schedule or not is one of those issues that I had no idea was such a hot topic that many people have a strong opinion about until I actually had a baby.  (I mean, before you have a baby, you certainly don’t sit around and think about these things!)  So, for the uneducated and childless, we’re basically talking about whether you feed your baby based-upon what time it is or upon their hunger cues.  (or a combination)  And of course, there are moms who take both sides to the extreme– some won’t feed their baby until the clock says a certain time, and some whip-out the boob any time there’s a little fussing, no matter how long it’s been since the baby last ate.  And I would guess most moms fall somewhere in between.  

I would say that currently I’m somewhere between a combination and a whip-it-out mom, although I expect that I’ll slide more toward the middle-of-the-road as Harris gets older as I did with Evelyne.  Much of the way I nurse Harris is very particular to his temperament and individual needs, and some of it is because it’s simply what works right now.  However, since I had such problems nursing both my kids in the beginning (low supply, slow weight gain, etc…) out of necessity I’ve done a lot of research and learning about how breastfeeding works.  One of my favorite resources is www.kellymom.com, a great evidence-based website written by a lactation consultant.  If you’ve ever wanted to know anything about nursing, this website probably has information on your particular question!  Another good one (with instructional videos that are helpful for beginners) is www.drjacknewman.com. 

So I’m going to hopefully write a short series on a few things I’ve learned regarding how God designed our bodies to function in a breastfeeding relationship and why scheduled feedings aren’t a part of that design:

*If you are a scheduled-feeding mom and it’s working for you (your baby is happy and gaining weight normally), then just consider this a little extra information to tuck away in case you ever need it.  I’m not trying to invalidate your experience, but depending on how much flexibility you allow in your schedule, there’s a good chance you don’t represent the experience of the majority of moms, and frankly, I think you probably just got lucky.  

Part 1: Storage Capacity

One of the beautiful things about breastfeeding is that God designed every mom and every baby differently.  There is no one-size-fits-all, and to try to fit your nursing patterns into a schedule that’s not led by your baby’s hunger patterns can really cause problems.  One big reason for this is the fact that moms have different storage capacities in their breasts.  It’s not like each and every one of us has, say, 3 oz. inside each breast and as long as the baby nurses 4 times a day, he’s guaranteed to get 24 oz., which might be plenty.  While you may have a 6 oz. storage capacity, I might have a 4 oz. capacity.  So if I try to hold my baby off and only let him nurse 4 times a day, he only gets 16 oz., which is not enough.  This is one reason why some women have no problems feeding their babies at longer intervals, their babies are naturally receiving more at each sitting.  But to those of us who might have smaller storage capacities, while we are still able to produce plenty of milk for our babies over a 24-hr. period, they need more frequent access to it in order to drink the total number of ounces they need for the day.  

I’m guessing my storage capacity is on the smaller side because Harris still nurses every 2-3 hours (usually only 3 if he’s been asleep, if he’s awake it’s 2).  And he’s hungry!!!  This doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with my milk supply, but it does mean that he needs more frequent meals throughout the day.  This also doesn’t mean that he’s “snacking” or not taking-in a full meal.  And doesn’t mean that he’s not accessing the fatty hind milk that comes at the end of a feeding.  As long as I allow him to fully finish one before the other, he’s getting everything he needs to get.  (And I’m still a little confused about why we know from nutritionists and doctors that humans are healthier and function better when we eat fewer small meals throughout the day, yet we seem to think that’s a bad thing when it comes to babies!  Why is it “better” to try to get them to eat more in one sitting only a few times a day?  Why is the goal for us to not have to feed our babies very often?) Because a mom with a smaller storage capacity will have breasts that become full in a sooner amount of time than if her capacity was larger, it’s necessary for her to go ahead and feed the baby then in order to keep-up her milk supply.  The longer the milk sits in the breast without removal, the slower her production and the lower her supply.  (More on that in the next post!)

Here’s what KellyMom says:  

Storage capacity: Another factor that affects milk production and breastfeeding management is mom’s milk storage capacity. Storage capacity is the amount of milk that the breast can store between feedings. This can vary widely from mom to mom and also between breasts for the same mom. Storage capacity is not determined by breast size, although breast size can certainly limit the amount of milk that can be stored. Moms with large or small storage capacities can produce plenty of milk for baby. A mother with a larger milk storage capacity may be able to go longer between feedings without impacting milk supply and baby’s growth. A mother with a smaller storage capacity, however, will need to nurse baby more often to satisfy baby’s appetite and maintain milk supply since her breasts will become full (slowing production) more quickly.

 Think of storage capacity as a cup – you can easily drink a large amount of water throughout the day usingany size of cup – small, medium or large – but if you use a smaller cup it will be refilled more often.

Here’s what another lactation consultant said: 

Dr. Hartmann is a researcher in Perth, Australia, specializing in human milk production. In his laboratories, Dr. Hartmann has studied mothers before and after nursing sessions by making topographical-type maps of lactating breasts using video cameras and computer equipment in order to analyze changes. Their accuracy has been assessed at +/- 5%, an excellent percentage for this type of work. Dr. Hartmann has discovered, through this work, that the breast does not make all of the milk at nursing time, but rather is making milk around the clock. The rate of milk production between feedings varies according to the degree of fullness of the breast; the fuller the breast, the slower the milk production rate, and conversely the emptier the breast, the faster the rate of production for replacement.

Even more fascinating, Dr. Hartmann has also quantified differences in the maximum storage capacity of women’s breasts, identifying at least a 300% difference between the most one woman could store versus the most another could store in his study. Further, Dr. Hartmann noted that the women who had larger storage capacities often nursed at longer intervals, whereas women with smaller storage capacities nursed naturally at more frequent intervals [Comment: breast size appearance is not always a good predictor of production or storage capacity]. Most importantly, it was noted that all of these women had the ability to produce plenty of milk over 24 hours; what varied was the maximum amount that they could deliver at one sitting.

The implication for scheduled feeding is quite evident, as noted in one of Daly and Hartmann’s papers:

“At an historical level the typical four hourly breastfeeding schedule that
was once widely favoured in the western world [citations removed] may
not have caused problems for women with larger storage capacities but might
have had disastrous consequences for women with smaller storage capacities.
Such women, who needed to breastfeed more frequently, would have been
aware that their provision of milk was inadequate on a four hourly breast-
feeding schedule. However, rather than dispensing with the schedule, it is
clear that such mothers more often doubted their ability to provide milk for
their infants and instead introduced artificial milks.”

 

Aside from the actual physiology of how human milk is made and how that relates to the demand of the baby (more on that in the next post), storage capacity is one basic reason why breastfeeding according to the time on the clock and not the hunger of your baby is not a great idea.  It also gives reason to why some women generally don’t have any problem with it, their storage capacity is naturally larger.  But for the woman who has a smaller storage capacity and yet tries to nurse on a schedule with longer intervals (and yes, every 3 hours is too long for some babies, including mine!), it could be dangerous to the infant’s growth and spell the end of the nursing relationship as the mom’s supply plummets.  (as stated in the above quote, what really makes me sad is when the mom thinks that there is something inherently wrong with her body rather than the schedule she was putting her body under)

I plan to write another post detailing some more information about how milk is made and stored.  My intention is just that this will be an educational series of posts, whether you’re currently a nursing mom or not.  There are lots of opinions out there about how to feed your baby, and I’m not trying to add my voice to the many who are militant about any one particular way.  But I do think great consideration should be given to the way God designed our bodies to function and how we can best work with it instead of against it in order to feed our babies.  The human race has thrived for thousands of years as mothers nursed their babies with no idea of the time but simply paid attention to the baby’s hunger cues, and I’m guessing that everything will be ok if we ignore the time on our modern clocks and do the same.

Romance in the Baby Stage

It’s amazing, I’m actually the only one awake in the house right now.  Both kids are sleeping.  Actually, I think I hear some quiet babbling coming from Harris’ room, so I think he’s awake now.  (I LOVE it when they reach the stage when they babble when they wake-up instead of shriek and you have time to actually finish what you’re doing and go to the bathroom before getting them instead of running at full-speed to rescue them from the bed!)  It’s 7:30 a.m. and Clay just left for work and I woke-up about 15 minutes ago.  Harris and Clay, on the other hand, woke-up at about 5 a.m. this morning.  Harris is a bit of an early bird these days.  He always wakes-up in the 5 o’clock hour, sometimes even as early as 4:30 a few times a week.  (Yeah, I KNOW.)  Since I still feed him twice a night (and he often wakes-up yet another time besides that), I’m pretty tired and my night doesn’t feel over by the time 5 a.m. rolls around.  So my dear Clay, wonderful husband and parent that he is, wakes-up with Harris on the weekdays and lets me sleep-in until he leaves around 7 a.m.  (I get-up with Harris on the weekends and let Clay sleep-in and then I take a nap when he wakes-up.)  Having that extra hour or two of sleep makes ALL the difference in how I feel when I get up for the day.  

So let’s just say that what I consider to be romantic and what stirs my heart in love for Clay is really different these days.  I still love romantic gestures like flowers and backrubs, but what I NEED is a husband who is wiling to be an active co-parent.  And Clay is awesome at that.  He is a GREAT dad.  From the time Evelyne was a baby, we’ve shared much of the responsibilities of parenthood.  Of course most of it still falls to me since I’m breastfeeding and at home 95% of the time while he has another full-time job, but Clay has always made the most of his role as dad. When the babies are little, he gets-up in the middle of the night with them when he’s able.  When Evelyne was little and waking-up twice a night, he would give her a bottle once a night 4 or 5 days out of the week so I could have a longer stretch of sleep.  Harris won’t take a bottle in the middle of the night, but Clay gets-up to give him a paci and help him get back to sleep, and he wakes-up in the morning with him.  He’s always encouraged me to go out with friends when I can, even wanting me to go away for the weekend and leaving him as a solo parent.

 I think we first did that when Evelyne was 7 months old, I left for the weekend to go to an out-of-town wedding, and I remember feeling grateful that I could be so confident that everything was perfectly under control at home and Clay knew exactly what to do with her.  And now on the weekends when I get in the bed to take a nap (at least once a day when he’s home!) or have some alone time, I really don’t have any worries that he won’t know what to do with the kids.   He is an actively involved parent to the max.  He knows all the foods Evelyne likes and doesn’t like, he knows what Harris needs to nap and what times to put him down to sleep, he remembers to change their diapers, change their clothes, and sing their favorite songs.  Putting Evelyne to bed every night has been his job for about the past year or so. He reads her books, prays with her, rocks her, and sings songs. Every. Night.

I’m pretty aware that not all dads are like this, many are much less involved in the daily nuances of their kids.  Maybe this is also because I tend to talk his ear off about every little thing involving them, but he does a great job of really paying attention and learning what they need.  In a few weeks I’ll be leaving town again for a few days and Harris will be staying here with Clay.  The longest I’ve left him before is just a few hours, and while I”ll miss him a lot, I’m not worried in the least.  (I’m actually kinda worried about Clay, but not about Harris!  Surviving the sleep deprivation usually takes some teamwork!)  

Our lives really aren’t that exciting or super fun these days, mostly just because we’re pretty housebound since Harris can’t really sleep anywhere but in a dark room with a loud fan (not even the car, people!  I can count on one hand the times he’s fallen asleep in the car in his entire life, even as a newborn!) and needs to nap more frequently than we’d like.  Not to mention, by the time the weekend rolls around, I’m so excited to have an opportunity to take a nap and do something by myself (usually just reading a book or going to the store) that we don’t do much as a family or a couple. We still get out, but it can’t be for long or very far from home or else we’ll pay for with even less sleep that night!  It’s just the season we’re in, it was like this with Evelyne, too, and the older she got the more rested we got and the more we did fun things.

 And in this season, what I really need is a partner, someone to be there on my team.  Someone that I can turn to in the middle of the night and say, “I just fed him an hour ago and he’s awake again… Can you please deal with this?”  Someone that always says, “Sure! Go!” when I ask him if he minds if I go get in the bed and read while he watches the kids.  And Clay is the perfect person for me to be doing this parenting gig with.  So when you’re in the throes of young family life, romance takes a different form, and when I woke-up this morning after a couple of extra hours of sleep to a quiet house and Harris already taking his first nap…. I felt very loved and thought, “Wow, I definitely married the right guy!”