Back to school for Mr. Man

The Childcare Center at my husband's work has started up for the school year. Mr. Man's first day back was yesterday and it. was. glorious!

First off, Mr. Man LOVES it there. His classroom this year is similar to last year's and he was 100% comfortable, even after a summer's long absence. It probably helped that one of the teachers moved up from the infant to the toddler room with the handful of kids returning from last year. Same as last year, Mr. Man will be there three days a week; except that this year I plan on actually sending him all three of those days, whereas I kept him home as much as possible when he was widdle and teeny.

But the very best part of this arrangement is that R and I both have most Monday's off. So yesterday Mr. Man went to school and we had amazing adult time:
1. Breakfast. That I actually ate all of, myself, in silence while R and I both zoned out and stared at our phones because it is quiet and that does not mean that anyone is getting into something they shouldn't!

2. Shopping for household items. By ourselves. Quietly and efficiently! 

3. Lunch out! The witty banter was for our own amusement, involved no animal noises of any kind, and our food could sit near the edge of the table without being in imminent peril!

4. Time spent in a book store!! (ironically we bought a kid's book)

5. We watched Guardians of the Galaxy. We held hands. We are popcorn. Awww. Clubbing has been replaced with an afternoon matinee. 

When we picked Mr. Man up in the afternoon we were recharged and Mr. Man was pleased to see us...at least he waved the string cheese he was eating around a bit and insisted I sit near him while he continued to shovel food in his mouth. The teacher, the new one, went on and on about how much Mr. Man ate that day. Because she obviously didn't believe me when I told her that he has a black hole for a stomach. I'll admit, when you look at him, you'd probably think I was just a new mom wow'd at the increase of food that can accompany true mobility, instead of believing that my little guy, the youngest in his new class, can eat as much as most of his classmates put together. Which, apparently, is what happened.

FYI, the school provides meals but parents are asked to donate snacks. We hit up Costco to get our donations. The old teacher nodded in acknowledgment when we carried it all in. The new teacher laughed. At the end of the day, the new teacher told us she now understood why we brought so much

To Wean or Not to Wean, episode 2

The first pic of Mr. Man I've ever posted to this blog and he's got a boob in his mouth.

It's National Breastfeeding Week, so let's talk about ma bewbs.

A while back, I talked about my ambivalence? confusion? frustration? with weaning, or the potential for weaning, or the general mommy guilt for even thinking about weaning*...obviously it still isn't very clear to me.

*For the record, I wasn't thinking about weaning him before a year, just realizing that a year was coming up fast. The fact that I even had to write that shows how deep the mommy guilt goes. Ack, don't judge me!

Mr. Man was 10 1/2 months old then.

I just stared at that sentence for a full minute. It seems like I was just writing that post. Now my baby is not a baby. He's a toddling 13 1/2 month old. And he's still suckin' on the boob.

When I wrote my original post I was all, "he doesn't even ask to nurse." BAM. He started asking. There for a while, he was asking A LOT. Then we stopped nursing in the middle of the night **throws confetti into the air** and started offering him a sippy cup more often.

By the way, when he asks to nurse, he gets a very surly expression on his face, plucks at my shirt, and says "drink." I like to imagine it's the toddler version of walking up to the bar in a saloon and demanding whisky in a dirty glass.

For the last 2 months, Mr. Man usually only nurses 3 times a day. First thing in the morning, mid-afternoon, and before bed. Unless he's sick (we experienced our first bout of flu a few weeks ago, a.k.a. The Exorcist Experience). Or, like yesterday, he's teething up a storm and really needs his mommy. Or her boobs. Whatever. I've decided to equate the two. He loves me and my boobs.

So, how do I feel about breastfeeding now?

I still don't have strong feelings. Sometimes I super love him all cuddly and sweaty and pressed against me while in his jammies. Also, he stopped trying to do head stands while he nurses, so that makes things more pleasant. However, sometimes he wants to bob from one nipple to the other and back again, or insists on pointing out my eyes/nose/mouth/teeth/tongue over and over, which translates to getting repeatedly jabbed in the face. But this is balanced out by the special smile he gives me while nursing. It's always the same and I only ever see it when he pops off mid-nursing and grins up at me. Just thinking about it makes me all teary.

For those of you out there who are nursing or thinking about nursing, let me throw my two cents your way. In the beginning it can be hard. Your nipples hurt. It's messy. There's a lot riding on your tired shoulders. Over time, at least for most of us and I sincerely hope you can be included in that number, it gets easier. Get help if you need it and sooner, rather than later, Mama and baby will learn how to navigate the process.

Then, over the course of your nursing relationship, problems crop up. Biting. Distractions that cause baby to stop and start over and over. Growth spurts. Illness. Schedule changes. In my experience, there's a lot of ups and downs. Things will go very easily for a while then a new challenge springs up.

I'll admit, other than having an insatiably hungry child, my experience went pretty smoothly. I've never had a blocked duct or mastitis (thanks to the insatiability of said hungry child). The flip side is the time it took to nurse and pump and nurse and pump enough to satisfy him. Happy tangent: R is watching Mr. Man over the summer and I haven't had to pump in 2 months!!!!

Now that we have over 13 months of nursing under our belts, or diapers, or whatever, the process of nursing is easy. Our nursing schedule is predictable and I don't have to nurse in public so I largely avoid judgement for nursing a toddler. Of course, I get asked all the time by family and friends if he's still nursing. Mostly people just seem curious. I've never gotten any negative comments (yet), though friends who have already weaned obviously feel defensive, which is just weird and makes me feel the need to justify. I almost just wrote justify my decision, but it hasn't been a decision. If anything, it's been an indecision. I haven't tried to wean (except that middle of the night weaning, which was a gradual prolonging of when I would go to him, and within a week and a half he'd stopped waking up at all *throws confetti into the air again*). I don't want to take away something that brings him comfort. I also don't want to feel guilty when this part of our relationship comes to an end. But I know I will.

There's a lot of back patting in the breastfeeding community. I have seen several facebook posts where friends announce how long they have nursed or are still nursing. I also have friends who couldn't nurse and I can only imagine how that feels to see the virtual high-fives. I imagine they feel a lot like slaps to the face.

I feel hypocritical to tell anyone not to feel bad about how they fed their baby when I already cringe with anticipated guilt. I doubt we'll still be nursing a year from now. I hope Mr. Man weans himself and, though a bit of me will miss nursing, we will be able to just cuddle without the necessity of a boob in his little cherub's mouth. He's a very cuddly boy. I get lots of hugs and kisses throughout the day. He likes me to hold him and he hums while a sway back and forth. I think this will be enough to ease my guilt.

Soon we will not be able to afford him

Science tells me that Mr. Man's stomach is roughly the size of his fist. However, in this particular instance, science has more work to do. Either my child is supporting a thriving colony of tapeworms or he has a small black hole in his abdomen...maybe it is the size of his fist.

You see, Mr. Man is a medical marvel. He seems to be able to eat half his weight in a single sitting.

I recently received a weekly email update that informed me not to panic if my toddler hardly seems to be eating anything. That's normal. And I laughed and laughed.

Though he had nursed only an hour before (yes, we are still doing that, but that's another post), Mr. Man ate this breakfast today:
Cheerios...chubby handful after chubby handful
Several (adult-sized) handfuls of blueberries
Some cherries
A whole banana
A couple (adult-sized) handfuls of toddler puffs
At least 1/2 a piece of toast...off his parents' plates
1/2 a sippy of milk

There were tears when we cut him off because dude, you might explode!

And did I mention he eats every two to three hours?? We've taken to buying Cheerios from Costco, you know the two-box special.

 Last night at dinner he ate an adult-sized serving of meatloaf, green beans, and bread.

Of course, this means he fills his diaper with adult-sized craps. So maybe that black hole hypothesis is totally off base.

To Wean or Not to Wean, That is the Question

(Source)

Remember that time when nobody judged anyone else and we each had magic ponies that granted wishes? Yeah, me neither.

I've been trying to decide how long I plan on breastfeeding Mr. Man. My original goal was 1 year, and (I cannot even believe that I'm saying this) that's rapidly approaching. I didn't think much about it beyond that because 1 year was SO FAR AWAY *sobs into keyboard*.

Some women have very strong feelings about breastfeeding. They super love it or super hate it. I don't feel strongly about it. I don't like having to schedule pumping when I'm away from Mr. Man. Sometimes I wish I could have a beer with dinner on the occasion that dinner is ready before I nurse the baby *sob* to sleep. But those things are becoming less of an issue as he nurses less and is staying awake late enough to eat with us. There are times where breastfeeding is sweet and touching and special, and sometimes it's annoying because he has to pop off fifty bajillion times to point out that the dog is in the room or he keeps trying to snap my bra strap.

As I started researching extended breastfeeding*, the fact that many women have strong feelings about breastfeeding was rapidly apparent with the judging and the agendas and the I HAVE STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT THIS that were not so much hidden between the lines as waving a middle finger over the lines. And, because I am human, I started feeling defensive that I was even considering weaning.

*Extended breastfeeding = breastfeeding beyond a year. I don't know who decided to call it that either, but I'm guessing it was a man who wished his wife would stop breastfeeding so he had access to boobies again.

My brain started in with the rationalizations: I exclusively breastfed my baby who happened to eat every freaking hour he was awake for months and months. Do you know how much pumping that requires? I have suffered, people. My baby started getting teeth very early. He went through a nipple twisting phase - and sometimes I didn't trim his nails often enough! Serious suffering!

Of course, it doesn't help that most of my friends have breastfed their baby for two years or more. Though, my defensive brain points out, only one of them exclusively breastfed.

AND attachment parenting is the current thing. Whether you like it or not, there is always a current trend that does influence your behavior, even if you don't realize it. Sometimes you react against it, sometimes it just "coincidentally" coincides with what makes sense/feels best/works for your family, etc. I don't go out of my way to ensure my parenting approach is attachment oriented BUT (I admit grudgingly) the majority of the things we do fall in line with the crunchy attachment parenting zeitgeist: cloth diapering, breastfeeding, making our own baby food, baby wearing, room sharing yada yada yada.

Extended breastfeeding definitely falls into the attachment parenting camp, where it is viciously guarded by Le Leche League badge wearing warriors.

Speaking of Le Leche League, I went to one of their meetings recently. The topic was weaning. I was there to get some perspectives. Qualitative research, if you will. There were two women who dominated the discussion. One was talking about weaning her five year old. The other was talking about how to wean her oldest, as she was tandem nursing her three and one year olds. There's some perspective for you.**

**When I said I don't feel strongly about breastfeeding, I should note that I feel very strongly that I don't want to be either of those two women. Do NOT. Nope. No thank you.

The research on extended breastfeeding isn't very robust. Breastfeeding is great for babies, especially cognitive functions, IQ (which is often measured separately because research babble), and greater disease immunity. The research shows us that these benefits are strongest for babies who have been exclusively breastfed to six months and who have been breastfed for a year. No one is arguing that. Skirting around the statistical jargon and research methodology, basically the benefits after one year are about immunity. The toddler who is breastfeeding gets more antibodies and gets less sick and sick for less time. The other benefits may be there to some degree after a year, but there's not much evidence that supports it. There is some, but the research tends to have some pretty big flaws and it hasn't been reproduced.***

Personally, based on my research and personal experience, weaning is more about the relationship with my son. Much to my husband's chagrin and my mixed feelings of pleasure and guilt, I am my son's most favoritest person in the whole wide world. It's a big responsibility. But I don't think it has much to do with boobs anymore. He mainly likes to nurse to sleep, mostly to go to bed at night. Even then, he's just as happy with a bottle. We nurse several times during the day, but that's almost always me offering it based on our schedule. He doesn't nurse to help self-soothe. A cuddle from mama is all he needs.

Total disclosure: If there is an exposed nipple within his reach, he will latch on because nipple, obviously.

I think I could drop all but the three sleep/night related feedings (going to bed, middle of the night, first thing in the morning) without him even noticing. In fact, he doesn't always ask to nurse first thing in the morning, I just usually want him to because of throbby boobies.

So, here are my lists of the pros and cons to weaning him over this summer. 

Pros related to weaning:

• Mr. Man wakes up once in the middle of the night to eat and I could totally do without that. 
• I could finally stop taking that cruddy-tasting prenatal vitamin. 
• I would have my body back for however short of a time that is before we start trying to reproduce once more. 
• Will not accidentally get bit on the nipple! 
• No more pumping!!
• Getting to skip people judging me for breastfeeding my toddler, who, at 10 1/2 months, is already huge compared to me.

Cons related to weaning:

• When he's sick, it makes him feel better. 
• If he wakes up early in the morning, we can bring him to bed with us, I nurse him, and we all get another hour or two of sleep! 
• I currently eat whatever I want and continue to lose weight. 
• People judging me for not breastfeeding my toddler.

Basically, I need that magic pony so I can skip the judgment and guilt of either decision.


***For those of you who are interested and/or who want to fight about it, strap on your nerd goggles: The effect size (eta squared or r squared, depending on research design) representing the benefits of extended breastfeeding decline below statistical significance after one year in almost all studies. This is because most of those studies were not designed to measure effects after one year and the initial study grouped babies breastfed for one year or longer together; some studies were reanalyzed later to focus on extended breastfeeding - a big research no no. Studies specifically looking at the benefits of extended breastfeeding are often conducted in third world countries because there are not enough women in industrial countries that breastfeed beyond one year - in both of these populations (babies in third world counties and those in industrialized counties that have extended breastfeeding experience) there are other confounding variables that make comparisons to babies who have breastfed for less time very difficult (meaning there is something different about their mothers' education/health/resources/etc. that may be responsible for any differences found in the babies). Also also, many babies who are breastfed for an extended period of time are actually sick or weak in some way that leads their mothers to breastfeed for longer, which is referred to as reverse causality and is a prime confounding factor in much of this research. Then you toss in family size and birth order and the whole research design becomes so messy that odds ratios have to be interpreted with all these addendums and qualifiers and no one wants to bet their career on these findings but they HAVE VERY STRONG FEELINGS!

I'm resurfacing to tell you about my experience with motherhood - 7 months

I see it has been a month and a half  more than 2 months since I updated my blog. That's got to tell you something about my life. Basically, just read the last blog post and add a three week break from work, a revolving door of family and friends, and the giddy, tedious ambivalence of the holidays. And, since I wrote this and am now (hopefully) going to actually post this, another baby illness and a mad sprint to finish work-related projects.

I am still thoroughly addicted to my baby. Who, by the way, is now seven months old!! Babies have the ability to create micro worm holes, by the way, that cause them and those around them to move faster through time. Pretty sure that's a fact.

What I wrote 2+ weeks ago:
My baby now sits by himself, sometimes rolls places and obviously feels very brave and adventurous for doing so, loves to stand (with assistance of course), will occasionally try crawling (imagine flailing legs and a lot of squealing) before he rolls over, and has five teeth. He eats solids with wanton abandon...or at least as wanton as his abandon can be since mommy refuses to give him as much as he wants (He has never indicated he was full, ever. This kid can EAT.). He lunges for whatever catches his eye, making it important to keep a firm grip on him at all times. He has a desire to get his hands and teeth on ALL THE PAPER. He's babbling up a storm and his favorite sound is currently mama*. His feet are always soggy and he often waves a sock at us happily while yelling gu, which I believe translates to "HAHA, I have once again thwarted your attempt to imprison my feet with this hosiery!" 

An update to my update: 
He is now rolling everywhere and has almost figured out crawling. He pushes himself forward with his feet, rather than thrashing them uselessly. We are so screwed.He now has six teeth. And, the other day, I decided to see how long it took for him to give me the 'I'm full' signal. After 7 tablespoons of food he was still opening his mouth eagerly and I decided that this experiment was going to end in gastronomical disaster and cut him off. Also, screw you every single breastfeeding resource out there that claims a breastfed baby is better at identifying when he's full.

*My heart grows three sizes every time I hear it. **THIS is still totally true.

He is a reverse imagine of himself outside the house. Inside, he's loud and he never stops moving. Outside, he's a quite observer, studying everyone and everything. I swear if the kid could write he'd be taking notes on what everyone is doing...and then ripping them up and eating them.

The Little Guy gives his mama kisses. This involves grabbing me by my hair or ears, pulling my face to his open mouth, and then licking me. Sometimes he then screams in my face for good measure. R is super jealous.

I could go on and on. He almost always spends part of the day laughing uncontrollably at some mundane or unexpected thing I do (once it was saying the word "poop," another time it was laying on my back next to him and waving my feet in the air), so, of course, I do it one million times. He drools on everything I wear. I'm revising my "do not encourage the baby to move" policy and am encouraging crawling, because that's better than walking, which he really wants to do. He loves pureed kale but hates turkey. He stretches out the neckline of all my shirts. He has mommy and daddy wrapped around his pudgy, wet fingers and we love it.

Recently, I've seen a lot of "it's so hard posts" about having babies, about being a new parent, about the dramatic shift in life and identity that it brings. I'm not saying that isn't true. But for our family, our experience has been 90% positive. I realize that my husband plays a larger role than most, and that makes a big difference. We've been together a long time (13 years next month!) and I think that makes a big difference as well. And our baby is pretty easy. What can I say? We lucked out. That addendum aside, I want to add my voice to the online parent babble and say, it's not always that hard. Challenging? At times. Exhausting? Certainly. There's also poop and slobber, teething, biting, more slobber, and babies change the rules daily.

Yep. It's pretty awesome.

Feeding the Beast. The beginning.

Ugh. You guys, I got sick again. And so did the baby (poor sniffly, adorable baby).
A friend recently told me that once the baby gets sick that the whole family passes it back and forth and "you're never healthy ever again."

So far, only two of us have had the same virus and one has been spared...so as you can see, I'm still in denial.

Illness, continued lack of sleep,* work deadlines, impending winter (you know, yard clean up, swapping out wardrobes, time consuming dribble), family visits annnnd BOOM. That was my head exploding. Whatevs.

*R, "I never thought I'd look back at two months and think of that as the golden age of sleep."

Let's talk about food prep. R and I are very into taking the foods we get from the Farmer's Market and saving them for winter. We do this with the food from our own garden as well, but this year we basically practiced survival of the fittest in the garden. Because the baby takes priority over all things.

And in that vein, we didn't stay on top of our Farmer's Market winter prep nearly as well as usual. What we are prepping is largely baby food. Who'd a thunk, right?

Preparing and storing fruits and veggies now means that we'll have organic, nutritious food ready when he starts solids right smack in the middle of December.

So far we have canned pear sauce and apple sauce. Froze pear juice that we can later dilute with water. We have chopped/blanched/vacuum sealed carrots and parsnips. I currently have a basket of German butterball potatoes awaiting mashing and freezing. There are also an acorn squash and a couple of sugar pumpkins hanging out, meekly awaiting slaughter.

Of course, preparing for our little guy to eat solids has kicked off a new area of research (Surprise! Let's talk about Research Topic # 375! Let's start with Appendix B, as in Boring Your Socks Off, shall we?).

Traditionally, people start their babies off with rice cereal. I know that this is what our pediatrician will recommend because she mentioned it at his two month visit. Spoiler: we will not be feeding our baby rice cereal. Double spoiler and addendum: I am not trying to shame people who choose to feed their babies rice cereal; do what you damn well please.

It turns out that rice has a very high level of arsenic. The effects of arsenic vary, depending on exposure and the type of arsenic compound. We are all exposed to arsenic all the time, I'd just like to keep my son's exposure as low as possible. So, no rice cereal.

As I started researching rice cereal, it turns out there is no actual reason to start infants on grains at all. It's one of those "that's what we've always done" kind of things...except it isn't. It's actually a fairly recent trend and it turns out that there may be some very good reasons to delay exposures to grains. I say may be because I still need to verify what I've read.**

**That the production of amylase, the enzyme needed to break down grain, isn't produced in high quantities until after one year of age. To summarize, feeding a baby grains before that time is hard on the digestive system and may increase the likelihood of food allergies. Again, I am still planning on verifying this in academic, peer-reviewed publications (AKA don't believe everything you read on the internet).

At any rate, it seems like grains are recommended because they are 'iron fortified'. I can just make sure to feed my baby other foods that are high in iron, like meat or kale. So there's a good chance the little guy isn't going to be carb loading for quite a while.

I am also looking into baby led weaning. Basically, that's not pureeing everything and letting a child actually chew by feeding them things like steamed chunks of veggies. Based on my stockpile of fruit sauces, I am not planning on screaming any baby led weaning war cries. I'm thinking that we'll incorporate some of these practices, which is why the carrots and parsnips we prepped are sitting in our freezer in pieces rather than pureed.

This is just the first of what I'm sure will turn into many a ramblin' soliloquy about baby food and nutrition. I suppose I should also mention that the little guy is going to be exclusively breastfed until at least 6 months of age and that his primary nutrition will be breast milk until he's a year...barring some freak milk drought or something.

So join me, won't you, as I start my nerdy, hippy hybrid journey that I'm thinking of calling Feeding the Beast.
...
That's brilliant.
I'm totally using that. I'm changing the title of this post right now.