11 months...1st birthday just around the corner!

It's hard to believe, but in less than 30 days my little baby will celebrate his first birthday.  He's beginning to look less like a baby and more like a toddler, especially in pictures.  Here's his 11 month picture.  It was with our video camera, so the quality's not the best, but you can see how big he's getting:

For comparison, here's his 1-month picture:

Compare where his head and feet are in the two pictures!  He looked so little in that carseat as a newborn, now less than a year later he's just about outgrown it.  In fact, in my car I've already been using the convertible seat for a month or so.  But Kevin prefers the infant seat, so we'll keep using that in his car for as long as we can.

New developments

A few weeks ago we got him the Fisher-Price Stride-to-Ride Dino push toy.  He seemed hesitant about it at first but recently learned how to stand up and walk while pushing it.  He's got a similar push toy he plays with during the day at Grandma's. 

Here he is pushing his dino:

This is obviously an encouraging step on the road to walking but it's hard to predict when he'll take those first independent steps.  Could be tomorrow, could be another week, could be another month.  I'm still predicting that he'll be walking by his birthday but we'll see.

He still babbles a lot and has been making the "mama" noise more.  I still don't think he's referring to me when he says it but it's music to my ears nevertheless.  The first word might be coming soon, it'll be fun to see what he has to say.

Eating

Daniel's appetite for solid food has really increased a lot in the past few weeks.  He seems to enjoy just about everything, even foods you wouldn't consider "baby foods" like fish, kale, and shiitake mushrooms.  Blueberries and "orange stuff" like sweet potatoes and carrots are probably the favorites, and Puffs snacks are a big hit in our house too.  These days we generally eat meals together as a family.  Daniel either gets bite-sized pieces of what we're eating or some variation on it.  It's great that he can self-feed now so we can all eat at the same time instead of having to eat in shifts with one of us eating while the other feeds Daniel.  It's a little messy, but he does a pretty good job.

He has learned an unfortunate new trick in the past few days though.  The other night I was feeding him by myself and I put some cut-up pears and cauliflower on his tray, then went back to cutting up more.  I looked up and saw that most of the pieces I'd put on his tray were gone so I thought, "wow, he's really eating well!"  Then I happened to catch him dropping a piece on the floor and looked down to see a pile of dropped pieces on the floor!  He started to do it again so I gave him a stern face and said "no,no!"  He looked me in the eye, smiled, and proceeded to drop it anyway.  Really, defiance already?  I thought I had a little more time before we got there...

In other dining news, he's still as enthusiastic a nurser as he's ever been.  In fact, when we sit down on the couch to nurse he'll sometimes crawl over and try to start before I even get settled!  He drinks all the milk I send for him during the day and apparently wants more sometimes.

I set out with the goal of breastfeeding for at least a year and we're definitely on track to make it.  I don't plan to pump much past the 12 month mark, assuming Daniel takes to cow's milk, but I'll continue to nurse him morning and night and on weekends for as long as he wants to.  Maybe the day will come that I'm ready for that chapter in our relationship to close, but right now I still enjoy it and cherish those moments with him.  I'm certainly doing it for him, but I get as much out of it as he does.

Sleeping

Not a ton to report here.  He still sleeps well at night and naps quite well in the morning but less reliably in the afternoon.  Any given day he's fine with just the one nap, but

missing the PM nap on a regular basis makes him cranky and overtired in the evening.  So, to try to preserve that nap, we're trying the "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" approach of limiting the length of the morning nap and moving his bedtime earlier at night.  So far we've had mixed results, but one day he slept 11.5 hours at night, napped 90 minutes in the morning, and napped 2+ hours in the afternoon.  Then again, today he wouldn't nap in the morning but took a 3 hour afternoon nap.  Maybe we're moving toward just a mid-day nap.  I guess we'll know more in a few weeks once we see what's working and what's not.

Coming attractions

This next month will be a big one for us.  First, we have our first vacation as a family of 3, a 4-day trip to South Padre Island with our good friends Marko and Nicole and their son Alejandro.  Padre was an annual trip for my family when I was growing up and I hope it'll become a tradition for us too.  It's the comfort food of vacations.  It's not exotic and it won't likely be the trip of a lifetime, but it's as relaxing and comfortable as eating ice cream straight from the tub while lying on the couch in sweats.  There's no ambitious agenda of sights to see or things to do, which makes it perfect with babies.  We'll just get up, eat in the condo, go down to the water, nap, go out for lunch, then repeat in the afternoon.  In the evenings after the boys fall asleep the adults can enjoy sitting out on the balcony looking out at the waves, refreshing drink in hand.  It'll be a great trip and I've been looking forward to taking Daniel since before he was even born.

Then, in a few weeks we'll celebrate his first birthday with a swim party for his little friends.  We're hosting a joint birthday party along with our friends Charlotte and Alden, whose son Justin turns 3 a week after Daniel turns 1.  We have a lot of mutual friends, so we thought, why not combine forces to host one big party?  It should be a great time and we're looking forward to it.  We'll also have a small dinner party that night so Daniel can celebrate his birthday with his grandparents, godparents, and aunt and uncle.

We have two big milestones just around the corner, walking and first words.  Wonder if either one will come this month?

Pumping update: tales from the supply room

Deficit worries...

So Daniel is 10 months old, I've been back at work 7 months, and I'm still a twice-daily inhabitant of the repurposed supply room, aka the Mother's Room , at work.  Daniel still hasn't had a drop of formula since the NICU, and I still have over a gallon of frozen milk in storage. 

Which is all great, but there is a bit of trouble in paradise.  For the first 8 months or so I was pumping not just an adequate supply but a surplus, so that I could pump for the Mother's Milk Bank 3 days a week and still build up my stash.  But somewhere around the 8 month mark my cups stopped running over and seemingly overnight, I went from surplus production to deficit. 

At first I thought it was just a temporary drop but came to realize it was a permanent adjustment to Daniel's increased solid food intake.  It took me by surprise but I guess it shouldn't have; in comparing notes with friends, it sounds pretty common among moms who nurse past 6 months.  I've started taking fenugreek and drinking mother's milk herbal tea.  Not sure if they're helping much, but I'm doing everything I can.

The good news is that I have enough of a stash that even with about a 6-12 ounce deficit per week, I still have enough milk to continue feeding Daniel 12 oz of pumped milk a day until his first birthday and perhaps beyond.  The bad news is no more pumping for the milk bank.  I've got about 150oz in storage already allocated to the bank, and at least for now I'm still planning to donate it, but I'll keep it in the deep freeze till we cross the 12 month mark and successfully introduce cow's milk.

In hindsight, I should have stopped or limited by milk bank donations once Daniel started eating at least 2 solid meals a day.  Maybe for the next go-round I'll taper off donating once solids are introduced and then stop donation pumping altogether once we increase solids.  I think we'll finish okay this time, but now I know what to do differently next time.

Pump up while we pump
When you're a working mom, you don't have a lot of extra time, so you have to be a super multitasker.  Which is why I'm surprised it didn't occur to me sooner to take advantage of my pump breaks to sneak in a little exercise. 

A friend of mine at work is also a nursing mom and we both use the Mother's Room.  Last month she mentioned that she was thinking of bringing an exercise ball that we could sit on when we use the room.  So I built on her idea and brought in some dumbbells so we could get an upper body workout too.  Obviously when you've got tubes running from you to a pump on a table, your range of motion is somewhat limited.  But I've found I can get in a pretty good workout in 11 minutes, working shoulders, triceps, biceps, back, and abs.  I'm not saying I'll get that beach body just from pump break workouts but every little bit helps!

10 months old already?!

As Daniel's first birthday draws closer and closer, I can't believe my baby is growing so quickly.  It's amazing to think that 10 months ago he was a newborn, unable to even support his own head, and now he's crawling, standing, cruising, and feeding himself.  It is truly amazing how much a baby develops in his first year of life.  I already catch myself wanting to say "when he was a baby" even though he won't outgrow that label for awhile.

No huge milestones this month, but he did have his first plane trip (and first trip out of state) when we went to Tennessee to visit my brother.  More on that later, once I get pictures from my mom's camera in a few weeks.  For now, I'll just say that he handled the flights pretty well and generally had a pretty good trip.

News
This month brought his 5th tooth, on the top to the right, with the 6th (top to the left) on the way.  He has become more proficient at crawling and now has added the hand-opposite knee "cross crawl" to his repertoire in addition to his "butterfly stroke" scoot.  He is also pretty adept at cruising along the hearth, coffee table, crib rail, or bathtub.  He hasn't made any efforts to take a step yet but he is certainly mobile. 

And he can really scamper up the stairs now!  Here's a video:



He is still a pretty vocal little guy too.  He likes to babble ("dadada" is still a favorite) and has just started making a grunting noise and saying "brrr"...basically a raspberry without the tongue action and its accompanying slobber.  And he has learned to shake his head in response to us doing it or saying "shake, shake, shake."  He smiles while he does it, so he looks happily disagreeable!  He has also taken up picking his nose...sigh.

Sleeping
No big changes here.  Still falls asleep unassisted most of the time and sleeps straight through from 7:30-8pm until 6-6:30am.  The other morning he slept till 8, so I got to sleep 9 straight hours for the first time in ages.  That was a nice treat!

He still seems to do well with 2 naps a day, but will sometimes refuse to take one of his naps.  We've adjusted the times forward a bit so he generally goes down for his morning nap by about 9:15, up by 11:30, then down for the afternoon around 2, up by 4:30.  He doesn't sleep the full time each nap, but most days he will go down for 2 naps.  We're having some success with moving his morning nap up to preserve the afternoon one, but it seems fairly certain that when he moves to a single daily nap, it's the afternoon nap that will go.  Which will make it hard to go to church for awhile but should otherwise work well for us.

Eating
He still nurses first thing in the morning and last thing before bed, and takes 2 6oz bottles during the day when I'm gone or nurses twice more on weekends.    He eats 3 solid meals a day and while he was doing well with homemade purees or Plum brand organic blends, he has recently made it clear he wants to feed himself.  The past 2 nights we've cut up chicken and dried apricots and given him that plus some cooked brown rice and he has happily fed himself, and done a pretty good job of it.  He's still a pretty eager diner and likes most everything he tries.

He'd be a bit embarrassed that I'm sharing this (but hey, what are moms for if not to embarrass our offspring?), but he was having trouble for awhile with constipation.  He'd strain to have a BM and tense up and cry like it was really painful.  We tried a few things but juice and a water-Karo syrup mix seem to be doing the trick for now.  It was no fun seeing him in pain :(

Pictures
Every month(ish), we've taken a picture of him in his infant carseat to track how big he's getting.  This month we got the standard picture plus a variation on it showing off his new skill:
 

Look, I'm standing!




10 month picture









































And, one in his Easter outfit:

Guest post

The DFW Cloth Diaper Group blog administrator requested some guest blogs from working moms, so I wrote a column which ran today.  It's part of a series in which working moms address some of the main obstacles working parents who want to CD face.

Here it is: http://dfwclothdiapergroup.blogspot.com/2011/05/i-cant-use-cloth-my-caregiver-wont-be.html

9 months old: up and onward!

In this case procrasting a few days  2 weeks on the monthly update paid off, as I now have several more updates to share.  Every Monday when I take Daniel to my mother in law's house she swears he's changed over the weekend.  Usually I just think, well, that's just grandma talking, but in this case she would actually be right.  He really did change a lot over just a few days!

New developments
About a week ago Daniel learned how to pull up to kneeling and standing.  He showed this new trick off for the first time last Saturday afternoon when I went in to get him from his nap (which he didn't take, having decided to spend that time making noise instead).  For awhile when he'd see me come in he'd crawl over to the side and reach through the slats to grab me, but this time he crawled over, kneeled, put his hands on the top rail, and pulled up to standing.  We both laughed, and he was especially pleased with himself.  Then I thought, time to take down the mobile and lower the crib mattress!

Also, we can now crawl up the stairs.  When we first tried a few weeks ago he needed a little help but has steadily improved, and now he can climb the full staircase unassisted (albeit heavily supervised).  Which means it's time for Kevin to install the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs!

And, we have 2 new teeth.  The 2 top middle teeth both cut through last weekend.  And as I'll mention below, we have some new developments in dining.

In other news, he's become quite a bit more vocal and can make the ba, da, la, ma, na, and ya sounds as well as a high-pitched gurgle and a lower growl.  He can also make a clicking noise and loves to blow raspberries, even if-especially if-he has food in his mouth.  Cute as it is, we've decided it's probably best not to encourage it!  He isn't trying to say any specific words yet but he has a lot to communicate!

We also got Daniel his convertible car seats once we finally saw them on sale.  We installed the one for my car but will see how we like it before we commit to it for sure.  It's definitely in our future, but Daniel is still well within the weight limits for his infant seat so we can keep him in that for several more months.  But we don't really use his old seat as a carrier anymore anyway, and never really did, and we're wondering if he may be more comfortable in the convertible as it gets hotter.  He's only ridden in it once so far so we'll have to report back next month once we've used it more.

9 month checkup
This month we had our first checkup with a pediatrician closer to the house and overall we were satisfied.  We liked the previous doctor, but we didn't love the long waits that were a feature of every visit so we decided to try another option.  I liked that the office had separate sick and well waiting areas and we were taken back within 5 minutes of our appointment time and saw the doctor within about 15-20 minutes.  Overall we liked the doctor...she wasn't enthusiastic about our choice to delay some vaccines (example: not giving Hep B at birth because D had no risk factors for it) but she seems willing to respect our decision.  We'll see how the next appointment goes.

Daniel weighed in at 17lb 1oz, so he had only gained an ounce from last month, but he grew a whole inch and a half to measure in at 28in.  He's definitely on the lighter end of the weight percentile chart but the doctor wasn't concerned.  He is eating well and the picture of health, and when your parents were long skinny kids...odds are you'll be a long skinny kid.

Eating
He nurses first thing in the morning and right before bed and takes 2 bottles and 3 solid meals every day and is a healthy eater.  I've heard that some babies start to lose interest in nursing around this age but D is as enthusiastic as ever.  In fact, now sometimes when I'm arranging the nursing pillow he gets impatient and crawls over and tries to latch on!

Daniel is enjoying a nice variety of foods and seems to like thicker textures.  I still make foods for him, but we're also really liking the Plum brand baby foods.  I like that they use organic foods, whole grains, and go beyond the basics to include things like quinoa, lentils, spinach, and pumpkin.  Daniel seems to like just about everything he tries.  He can self-feed himself puffs (like Cheerios) and grabs the spoon away to feed himself.  While he's a bit messy with it, he does generally hit the target pretty well.

He is also drinking fairly well from a sippy cup.  We tried some with a spout but he seems to prefer a straw instead.  He can pick up his cup, bring it to his mouth, drink from it, and put it down, all unassisted.

Sleeping
The good news is he still sleeps quite well at night, going down by 7:30 or so and sleeping till 6 or so.  The less-good news is, he isn't consistently getting 2 naps a day anymore, but he gets cranky when he misses one so it seems clear that he still needs 2.  We had been doing well putting him down from 9:45-12 and then again from around 2:30-4:30, but lately he hasn't been sleeping in the afternoon.  We're thinking we'll try to nudge his morning nap up closer to 9 and get him up by 11 or so, then try to get him down for the afternoon by 1:30-2.  Hope it helps...it might just be that he's resisting naps right now so he can practice his new tricks and he'll go back to his old patterns soon enough, but we'll see if adjusting forward a bit helps.

Pictures
A few weekends ago we had some pictures taken in the bluebonnets.  Daniel was more interested in taking in the scenery than smiling, but I think the photographer still got several good shots.  Here are a few:

8 month update: better late than never!

Well I started this post shortly after Daniel turned 8 months old, then with the busy-ness of the last few weeks I look up and here we are halfway through the month.  So, it's a bit dated now, but here we go!

First, his official monthly picture:

Developments
The biggest news this month is that Daniel is gettiing better and better at crawling.  Initially it's been more of an army-crawl or, as my parents described it, like doing the butterfly swim stroke on the floor.  He's still not really pushing off with his knees yet but he can move pretty well with his current technique.  It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were celebrating when he could scoot a few inches to grab a toy, now he is traveling the full length of the floor, and quickly!

In other news, he seems to be working on his third and fourth teeth, the top two middle ones.  One night a few weeks ago, for the first time in a long time, he woke up crying at night and had to be soothed back to sleep, and a few other evenings he had a harder time getting down.  The teeth still haven't pushed through but I can definitely feel the bumps under his gums.

He is also learning to say ma-ma.  I know he's not actually saying the word "mama" yet but I still love to hear him make the sounds in his sweet little voice.  It still amazes me that 8 months ago he was this little newborn who couldn't even hold up his own head and now he's crawlling, saying mama and...kissing the dishwasher?

Yes, kissing the dishwasher.  In recent weeks he has learned how to give kisses (sloppy but so sweet) and become more interactive with his reflection in the mirror.  These two developments, along with crawling and saying mama, are all on display in this video, in which he spies his reflection in the stainless steel dishwasher door and decides to show some affection:



Sleeping
Not much to report here.  Still sleeping well at night and napping reasonably well by day.  We've moved away from our previous routine of putting him down for a nap within 2 hours of waking and now he "sleeps by the clock."  Up 6:30-7:30, down for his first nap by 9:30-10, wake him up by 12 if he is still napping, back down againi by 2:30-3, and down for the night by 7:30-8.  It works out to 14-15 hours of sleep per day, which seems to be good for him.  He goes down easily nearly every time if we abide by that schedule and he seems alert and playful during the day.

Eating
We've had some big changes on the food front.  At his last checkup he had dropped down to about the 10th percentile in weight so the doctor said it was time to bump up his solid food offerings (which we had planned to do anyway but hadn't gotten around to setting up his high chair at Grandma's).  So we've gone from one solid meal a day to three. 

For now we are viewing the solid food as a supplement to, rather than substitute for, the breastmilk he still gets four times a day.  So a typical day's food for him now involves nursing when he wakes up, breakfast of cereal and fruit (or sometimes avocado), a bottle before his first nap, a solid lunch of veggies and sometimes shredded chicken, a bottle before his second nap, a solid dinner, and nursing before bed.  He's eating everything we put in front of him pretty well but we're trying to keep the milk intake up and have introduced a sippy cup of water too to fight the constipation issues he's been having. 

For a few days whenever the backed up feeling hit he'd stop crawling, stick his butt in the air, cry, and look up with this "help me!" look on his face.  At first we thought it was a bad reaction to his first experience with yogurt (and since I haven't reintroduced it yet I still can't rule that out), but he seems to be feeling better now.  He's already doing pretty well with a sippy cup with a straw and can pick it up, hold it, and put it in his mouth to drink without assistance (though not consistently).  He can use the spout sippies too but needs a little help tilting it back far enough.  We haven't introduced any other liquids yet and I'm in no great hurry, but once he becomes better with the cup we'll start transitioning his milk from bottles to cups.

I've been trying to make most of his food for him (in addition to the milk, of course).  It's not that I don't trust the jarred foods, but it's nice to know I'm feeding him something made with love, and know exactly what's in it.  So far I've successfully pureed sweet potatoes, apples, blueberries, green beans, avocado, peas, parsnips, and chicken, and I've started a frozen stockpile of these.  So Daniel continues to take over the freezer, between that, his milk, and his teethers.

Caregivers
This month Kevin's mom, who normally watches Daniel during the day, was out of town for a week.  Then, Kevin left for a two week business trip to Bangalore, India the following weekend so my mom came back to help me out that week.  This week I'm solo parenting and dropping Daniel off at MIL's again during the day, but for two straight weeks Daniel and my mom, his "Mimi," had the opportunity to bond during the day.  As I expected, Mom was wonderful with him.  One of the benefits of being a working mom is that it creates space for Daniel to form a close relationship with my MIL, so it was nice for him and my mother to get some special one-on-one time too.  Daniel's lucky to have two grandmothers (and grandfathers) who love him so much and are so good with him.

He adjusted pretty easily to being at home during the day and being with my mom instead of MIL.  He and Mimi will have the opportunity to bond again in a few weeks when MIL travels again.

While Kevin is away, Daniel and I have been able to talk to him on Skype almost every day, and we can see each other on video.  It's cute to see Daniel break into a big smile when he hears and sees Daddy!  And Kevin recorded himself reading a book called Guess How Much I Miss You that I read to Daniel every day so he can hear Kevin's voice.  I'm managing well enough going solo (though I was 15 minutes late to work today after Daniel needed more attention than usual this morning) but I know it's hard for Kevin to be so far away for so long.  Saturday afternoon can't come quickly enough for any of us!

You have GOT to be kidding me

This is the kind of thing that really ticks me off: http://www.newser.com/story/114737/study-breastfeeding-mothers-seen-as-less-competent.html.  The gist of the story is that men and women view breastfeeding moms as less competent than other women in general, and specifically less competent in math.  Are you kidding me?

As for the math part, well, you got me there.  I'm no math whiz and you'll never catch me saying otherwise.  But that was true well before motherhood came on the scene.  And given that lawyers aren't known for our math skills, I guess I have good company ;)

As for competence, first of all, why would choosing to nurse mark me as less capable than if I had chosen to feed formula?  For the record, I don't judge the formula feeders; formula is a viable option for women who can't nurse, and the most important ingredient for a child's health is love.  Nursing moms don't have the monopoly on that.

But, anyone who wants to talk about nursing moms being incompetent, walk a day, a week, or 8 months in my shoes and get back to me.  You'll be waking up by 5 every weekday, nursing twice a day, pumping four times a day, and putting in a full day's work.  Sound tough?  It is.  And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  My baby's worth all that and more.

More importantly though, it's sad to think that people really view nursing moms so negatively, because I've never felt more competent than I do now as a mom. I've accomplished a lot of things in my 32 years that I'm proud of, but knowing that I can grow, protect, and deliver a life into the world and then nurture him with the most perfect food nature can provide is the most satisfying, empowering accomplishment of all.  There's no greater feeling that knowing I can satisfy his needs so completely, and I already know I'll miss it once that stage of life is past.

I'm glad to see several high-profile celebrities lately make a point of proudly saying that they breastfeed.  These women can outsource nearly every detail of their lives, and they still choose to reserve this most important task for themselves.  And for all their money and fame, they have no advantage over the rest of us there, no shortcuts.  I think their example says a lot.

I believe that in order to reverse this unfortunate stereotype we nursing moms need to encourage and support other moms who choose to do this.  Not look down at those who don't, but help lift up those who do.  A few weeks ago a lady in my office saw me walking with my pump bag.  I don't recall that we had ever spoken before, but she stopped to tell me how much she admired that I was still nursing even after returning to work.  It was just a moment's conversation but it made my day.

Now whenever I walk through the building with my bag, I like to think that I'm silently serving as an example that you can be a mom and a capable worker.  Maybe seeing that I can make it work will encourage the next new mom to try it too.  Or at least not to view those of us who do as incompetent.


Ok, off the soapbox and off to bed...