happiness is...

my beautiful, sleeping family. this photo makes my heart at peace and swell with love at the same time.

curiousity got the better of us

I have more milk than I (or Sullivan) know what to do with, and as a result, he can't drink all the milk I have so some is left over and saturday i woke up with a plugged duct. I thought I had one before, and maybe I did, but this one was so painful it woke me up in the middle of the night and I could not go back to sleep. the only way to cure a plugged duct is to get the plug out. if the plug doesn't come out, the whole area could become infected, and i did not even want to deal with that so my plan on sunday was to do whatever i could to get that plug out. i would have sullivan nurse that side, and then i would use my pump to get any extra milk out. This worked out nicely because ryan has been feeding sullivan a bottle at night and it was nice to have a lot of extra milk in the fridge for exactly that purpose. And since we had all this extra milk, i thought it was time we taste our son's sole source of nutrition.

It was time to sample the breastmilk.

Ryan and I both took sips from a bottle i had just pumped. The verdict? I was pretty underwhelmed, thinking it would have some very distinctive flavor, but it really just tasted like watery milk (Ryan made a big production of it, but he said it hardly tasted like anything at all). maybe we should try it cold? or a gulp instead of a sip? meh. i think i'm over it, but i can at least say a tried it. and sullivan seems to like it, so that is all that matters. except he doesn't seem to love it when i eat a lot of onions or garlic, so i guess i'm cutting those out until i am done breastfeeding. i thought my diet would open up now that i am not pregnant anymore but it is turning out to be more restricted. who knew all this stuff about breastfeeding.

my baby smells like belly button

the reason i woke up at 7 on saturday morning is because my breasts were killing me. they were literally overflowing with milk. so although sullivan seemed content to sleep the morning away, he had to eat, otherwise i was going to explode.

most of the time, getting him to go down for the night is a very delicate dance where one little noise or slight jostle will wake him up and the process must be started all over again. waking him UP, however, is a whole other story. i wiggled his arms, rocked him around, talked to him...nothing. as a last resort i decided to take of his pajamas, hoping the change in temperature would rouse him. no luck there either; he seemed perfectly content in his diaper.

so i am playing with his arms when i notice a whitish substance in the crease of his armpit. I thought it must be lint from his clothes, so i went to pick it out. but instead of feeling like cloth, it was more...organic, like the consistency of thick lotion. so what do you do when you have a substance on your finger and you aren't sure what it is?

you smell it, of course!

and may i say....pew. PEW. it smelled like it came straight out of a belly button. i cleaned the rest out of that armpit and moved on to the other one, where i found another stash of the smelly substance. i think it was vernix, that cheesy stuff that covers babies in utero that protects their skin before they are born, it just hadn't come off. i mean, it was WAY up in his armpits so i can see how it was missed during his baths. but now we are making sure we get all the folds and creases when we bathe him. easier said than done. as he gets fatter, he is starting to get rollier than a shar-pei.

So long to the days of deep sleep...

Saturday morning, I wake up to see it is about 7:00 a.m. This is what went through my head:

Wow, Sullivan slept a long time! Awesome, maybe this is the start of him sleeping through the night. Wait, how long exactly did he sleep? I fed him around 1:15, so...almost six hours, that is pretty good. Umm...maybe too good. how long are they allowed to sleep? Is that too long? Is he okay? IS HE BREATHING???? Okay, yes he is breathing. Why is he sleeping so much? He didn't eat that much during the night, does that matter?

This all went through my head in the span of about a second. Of course Sullivan is fine, he was just sleeping. So even though he is able to sleep longer, the quality of my sleep has not been any better because i have thoughts of SIDS and aspirating spit-up floating through my head. Which I am sure will eventually be replaced by worry about how he is doing in school, and if he is making friends, which will then be replaced by worrying about if he is doing drugs and that is why he is late coming home. So I am pretty sure that I will not sleep again until he is at least 18 and away at college, although that presents a whole different set of things i can worry about.

what day of the week is it?

the alarm went off this morning and instead of hitting the snooze button, we listened while drifting in and out of sleep. i heard the dj mention something about friday, and i asked ryan 'isn't it thursday?' 'no, it is definitely friday,' he said. being home has thrown me into this twilight zone where i don't even know what day it is. further, i am not even excited about the fact that it is friday! i am looking forward to ryan being home for the weekend so we can hang out, but the thrill of knowing i have two days off before i have to go to work is gone. saturday and sunday are just days like any other. weird!

they grow so fast

last night, as ryan was holding sullivan, i noticed how nicely he was fitting into his 'puppy pals' sleeper. this is one of my favorite outfits--it has little paws on the bottom of the feet! too cute. but my realization of the nice fit led me to the next thought....soon he was going to be too big for it! then he won't be able to wear puppy pals ever again.

ever again!

he is almost a month old, i can hardly believe it. we have come so far! had so many firsts, learned so many things. and while there are many more to come, many moments have passed, never to return again. you could say this about everyday life, like 'oh, this is the only october 3, 2008 that there will ever be' but it is so much more poignant when you are talking about a baby who is growing and changing before your very eyes.

i was writing a thank-you note to someone who bought a 6-9 month outfit for him, and i said 'i can't wait to see him in it!' but the truth is, i can wait. he will be six months before i know it. he will be in COLLEGE before i know it.

before sullivan was born, ryan wanted to put a little note on the door of his room saying 'cherish these moments' so that when we have to get up in the middle of the night with him, we would read that and remember to hold on to this time. but i don't need the note. everytime i look at him i am reminded that his time as a baby is short. don't grow too fast sullivan!

THE diaper change

i fed sullivan, and went to change his diaper. these seems like a non-event not even worth mentioning, but...

oh dear.

the diaper was wet and dirty. no biggie. i get out a wipe, a new diaper, and put on a pee pee tee pee. first, he poos as i am wiping his bum, but luckily i catch all of it in the wipe. nice! however, at some point the pee pee tee pee came off, so of course he peed all over himself. and since i had his legs up from the wiping, it was a straight shot to the face. i abandon the diaper to wipe his face clean of urine. He sneezes, and more poo comes out, all over the outside of the new diaper and the changing pad. i finish wiping his face and go back to the diaper, getting ANOTHER clean one out. Sullivan has been squirmy all this time but now is quiet. just as i look at his face, he spews milk down the front of him and onto the changing table. So now he and the changing table are covered in poo, pee and puke. bath time!

i give him a bath and he sits very nicely, i think enjoying being back in a watery environment. after he is all clean, i pull him out and into one of his cute little hooded towels. wait, what is that on my leg? PEE! he peed. again.

here is a picture of him in his second hooded towel, finally clean after the hour long diaper change.

a new food provider

ryan has done a great job of staying involved with sullivan even though his interaction with him at this point is fairly limited. he brings him to me for feedings, changes him, burps him, etc.

there is all this debate about when to introduce bottles to newborns. you don't want to do it too soon, otherwise they will get used to how easily milk flows from a bottle and will not want to work a little harder to get it from a breast. but you don't want to do it too late either because then they will be so used to dealing with a real nipple they won't want to deal with fake nipple. seriously, i had NO idea all the issues that arise when feeding babies.

ANYWAY, we thought last night would be as good as any to give it a go. since i have been using the nipple shield, we figured that is practically like a bottle nipple anyway, so he should have no problem. AND i recently started throwing in a few 'naked boob' feedings and he seemed to be doing okay with those, so why not?

there was a little drama at first because when i first started pumping sullivan was sleeping, but a few minutes in he was awake and hungry and crying. ryan was frantically trying to clean new bottles and read the instructins on how to put it together (another mind blower, who knew bottles could have so many parts? a venting system? what?), and then sullivan pooped and it got all over his back and in his hair, so before any feeding could be done, he had to be changed and scrubbed with several baby wipes.

by the time ryan settled into the chair with the bottle sullivan was in full blown, red-faced scream, but as soon as the bottle hit his lips he calmed and started eating. Ryan looked up at me with the biggest grin that made my heart explode. He was so happy to be able to feed his baby and to calm him, since the only reason his seems to cry is when he is hungry. It was the sweetest thing. We had to take a picture. :)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we did give sullivan a bath after the poo incident.