being at home

I'd like to start by saying how lucky I am to be able to stay at home. I'm so lucky that Andre loves me enough to make this decision with me. I'm so glad that we've decided to have me stay home and take care of the kids and the house instead of rushing back into the work force. It's a challenge sometimes, but Andre is working his tail off and I thank God for him every single day.
So having said that, I've been having a hard time with being home with only Isaiah to talk to all day. It was easier during the summer when the kids were home too. But now, after they have all gone off for the day, the house gets very very quiet.
The benefit of that is when Isaiah falls asleep, there are not crazy loud kids running around waking him up. He takes nice long naps now that they are in school. And I get a lot done around the house during these naps. But then the house is even quieter.
I try to keep the tv on sometimes just for the noise, but ultimately it just drives me even more crazy. I've been addicted to pandora.com for non-stop music for whatever mood I'm in that day. Thats great. But it's not conversation.
I try walking around town, at least that gets me some adult contact. But the casual talk of groceries being rung up isn't quite what I'm looking for.
I spend way to much time on things like facebook, getting little snipets of conversation, even if it is typed. And sometimes that helps.
The best days of the week are tuesdays and thursdays. Tuesday I go to a women's Bible study with my mom. The women in our group are fantastic. Those are great days. And Thursdays I get to hang out with Andre in the morning. Those are great days too. I wanted to join a MOPS group or a LLL group, but the meetings are all so far away and I can't justify the gas it would take to get there each week.
Of course, I wouldn't trade my life or my role for anything in the world. And soon enough Isaiah will be following me around all day talking nonstop and I'll wish it were these days again.

The day breastfeeding wasn't enough to comfort Isaiah and the heartbreak it caused.

Okay, that's a bit dramatic.

Monday I took the kids in for check-ups. Isaiah had his first shots. I suppose he had his Vit. K at birth, but as I was half dead from the c-section still, I don't remember that. I don't do Hep B shots so this were his first vaccines. I hate the whole vaccine issue. I'm not brave enough to say no completely so my compromise has always been to get them all but Hep B and chicken pox but to space them out farther. So, Isaiah got his first two shots.

He was fine at first. He screamed at first of course but calmed down quickly after. He nursed for a few minutes and then fell asleep. He stayed pretty sleepy until after dinner time. Then the screaming started. I've never really heard Isaiah scream and cry before. He's not a big cry-er. He just kinda lets us know he's unhappy usually. But this time, he was screaming. The hardest part for me was that he did not want to breastfed at all. He seemed to be calmed a tiny bit by the skin to skin contact and having the boob right there, but he wouldn't stop screaming long enough to actually eat. He'd finally scream himself out and start to almost fall asleep, but then he'd stretch out his legs (like he does when he's sleepy) and then that would make him scream and scream again.

I tried everything I could think of. I tried to walk with him but it was too hard to hold him comfortably without hurting his sore legs. I tried a warm bath (which he usually loves) but not this time. So after a few hours of this, Andre called to get the correct dosage for tylenol and we gave him some. That seemed to finally help, and he started to slow down a little. I laid down to nurse him so his legs were free and we both finally collapsed.

Oh ugg. What a night. I'm not used to breastfeeding not being the cure-all. It can come in handy sometimes, he goes to sleep easier than the older kiddos ever did. But with them, all I had to ever do was whip out the boob and they'd stop crying (this does not include Aiden's colic phase... ).

The new stats that we learned at the doctor, by the way, are 14 pounds and 24 inches. Gotta love chubby chubby breastfed babies.

The doc was telling me that most breastfed babies respond better to vaccines that formula fed babies. I found that so interesting. I've never heard this benefit before. I found a good site that explaned this further. It basically says that since the baby is getting so many immune factors from the breast milk already, that it's body is able to respond to the vaccine even better and that they will have a longer lasting immunity. How cool is that?

Now, two days later, he still has the shot bumps on his legs but is otherwise back to his chillbilly self.

Spit Happens

Solstice and Aiden never spit up much so Isaiah is providing a whole new experience for us. I don't know how one little baby can provide so much spit up. Sometimes it seems like everything he just ate comes back up. The kids came up with calling it "cheesing", as in,"Isaiah cheesed me! Get me a spit-up rag!!" So far the only real issue is the crazy amount of laundry it makes! At least with it being breastmilk spit up, it doesn't stain at all.


from babycenter.com:
Why does my baby spit up so much?
He's probably just getting the hang of feeding. And he's not alone: About 40 percent of young babies spit up regularly. The peak age for spitting up is 4 months.When your baby takes in air along with his breast milk the air gets trapped in with the liquid. The air has to come up, and when it does, so does some of the liquid.Babies take in a lot of nourishment in relation to their size, and some of them really like to eat, so sometimes they become overfilled and, well, overflow.A newborn's digestive system isn't fully developed, either. The muscles at the bottom of your baby's esophagus, which control whether food is coming or going, may still be getting up to speed.

His other issue with spit is being super drooly. He soaks the whole front of his shirts. It gets even worse when he's hungery. When I'm getting him in position to eat and he knows its coming, he starts spitting like wild. It cracks me up. I guess his mouth is just watering!

bathroom nursing

I went to visit my friend Christy's church on sunday. Her and her husband run a church in Livonia. They were having a kids day on sunday with a puppet show and an ice cream social so the kids and I skipped NorthRidge and headed out there.

Their church is a little more old fashioned feeling... maybe it's just me... but I just wasn't sure how people there would feel about me feeding Isaiah in the middle of the service. Luckily he was more than happy to look at the puppets and the light show and not worry about eating his was through the service. So after, while the big kids were scarfing down ice cream, I did the walk of shame to the bathroom and sat in there, smelling the nasty "air freshener", and nursed my baby.

I did get a chance to talk to a pre-teen girl about breastfeeding while in there. She commented that my shirt was cool, and I said I liked it because it made feeding Isaiah easier. And then I got a chance to talk about how awesome breastfeeding it. Maybe it will stick with her.