I Spy...

I spy, with my little eye, two tiny TEETH!
(Please excuse the messy yogurt face.)

The Rest of the Story

I realize that I never shared the conclusion, more or less, of my breastfeeding journey. Having shared the rest of this struggle in such detail, it's only fair to share the end of the story. I guess it was early in November that I felt like we had reached a crisis point, again, and the breastfeeding clinic had given us all the help they could offer. I got tired of Andrew's constant rejection of the breast and finally decided to bottlefeed all day.

Since then I have been pumping twice a day, getting between 10 and 15 oz of breastmilk. He gets two breastmilk bottles and two formula bottles each day, and, until recently, at least, he nursed once overnight and once first thing in the morning. The past few weeks he has been losing interest in the morning nursing session, however, and since he's been sick he's been refusing to nurse at night as well.

Sooo... I guess my breastfeeding days are over. And I think I'm going to stop pumping when my current prescription for domperidone runs out in a few weeks. I have a great deal of regret and disappointment about the way things turned out, but I have made peace with the decision to stop. I did the best I knew how to do. Maybe, if I had it to do over, I could have done better. Or maybe not.

An interesting side note to the end of my lactation is that my cycles may or may not resume, and we'll need to make some decisions about TTC#2. Since I believe it was the removal of my minor endo that allowed me to conceive Andrew, I think our best chance at conceiving again without intervention will be sooner rather than later. While I am terrified at the prospect of being responsible for two very young children, I'm sure we'd manage, just as millions of families do every single day, and I'd be beyond thrilled to get a BFP in the months to come.

Photo and Mini Update

Here's the winner from our belated photo shoot:



Man. Remember, just a couple of days ago, I said this: "He can sit up by himself, and he's so close to crawling and pulling up and standing. And he has a tooth!" Well, since then he progressed to proper crawling and another tooth broke through! Things are happening so quickly these days! We are so not ready for a crawler, and he's going to be walking before we know it!

Eight months old!

My little Andrew is three-quarters of a year old! He can sit up by himself, and he's so close to crawling and pulling up and standing. And he has a tooth! He just amazes me every day. Whenever I look at him I just want to squeeze him and cover his soft chubby cheeks with kisses. And I do, several times a day. My darling boy.

Unfortunately he spent his big day still quite grumpy with his first cold, so we didn't do pictures. I'll do them just as soon as he's his happy little self again.

Pause.

No-go on all things Ferber related last night and today. My baby has his first cold, and it's a bad one. Poor monkey. I can't possibly let him cry when he's miserable and coughing, so I've gone back to rocking him to sleep and answering promptly when he cries. Maybe we'll try again next week.

Ferber day 2

Well. The difficult part was actually 9:40 p.m., shortly after I posted yesterday's entry. That's when his nighttime wakings usually begin. He cried on and off, more off than on, for an hour. We went in to soothe him twice. It wasn't too bad. I was worried about what to do about wakings after we went to bed, but as it turns out I didn't need to do anything! He fussed briefly once and cried once, at about 3:30, when I decided to change his diaper and nurse him. It turned out to be the best night we've had in some time.

Today, we put him down for his naps drowsy but awake, and neither time did we have to go in for soothing. He certainly didn't go right to sleep, but he didn't cry much, either. Which makes Mommy feel better about this whole thing.

Unfortunately he seems to be a bit sick today. Feeling sorry for my exhausted little monkey, I rocked him all the way to sleep at bedtime. Oops. That was 3.5 hours ago and he hasn't woken up yet... will this be the first time he's slept through the night in months? (Or did I just jinx it?) Will update tomorrow.

Ferber

After several more wretched nights, I have reluctantly agreed to try the Ferber method. Gulp.

Tonight is night one, and so far so good. I put him down drowsy but awake 1.5 hours ago and he went to sleep within five minutes. He's fussed briefly a couple of times since then but nothing serious yet. But I think this is the easy part: nighttime wakings will be difficult, especially since we sleep in the same room. (He has always slept in his crib, but his crib is in our bedroom.) I'm also anticipating him having difficulty falling asleep at naptime.

I'll keep you posted!

Rocking My Baby

I still rock my baby to sleep. I know that I should probably stop, that I need to give him the chance to learn to fall asleep on his own, but rocking works so well for us. And I love it. Those are some of the most tender moments I've experienced as a mother.

For the most part, when I rock him to sleep, he goes down for naps and for the night quickly and with little protest. If I lay him down "drowsy but awake," on the other hand, his eyes will pop open the moment his head hits the mattress and he'll kick and flail and roll around until he gets stuck and needs to be rescued. Or, lately, until he falls to the side from a push-up position and hits his head on the crib rails and I rush to comfort him.

However, for the past several weeks he's been waking up MANY times a night, and I wonder if sleep training would help that. I've tried just rubbing his back instead of picking him up when he cries, and that worked for exactly one night. The second night he was having none of that — backrubs only made him more upset.

But last night was wretched. I don't know if I can take much more.

A New Blog

I've started a second blog called Haiku Mommy. In answer to my desire for a more creative outlet, I've decided to challenge myself to write a haiku a day for the entire year of 2010. I'm not promising greatness; I'm just going to have fun with it. I'm doing it for me, but you're welcome to check it out. :)

Pictures!

November favourites:




December favourites:




Christmas photo shoots: